Is Arch really the best choice?

vicious · 2005-01-24 22:20:26

I'm confused.

At the beginning when I used Arch, I thought it was the best distro out there. Good package manager, lots of packages actively maintained.

But then came stability problems - gradually. More and more programs seemed to be unstable.

Now I'm using CRUX - since the accident of removing /etc. And I must admit that I NEVER had any stability problems with it (now and before I moved to Arch). Everything works flawlessly.

Is there everything all right with Arch? Maybe it's on the verge of turning into another Redhat/SuSE/Mandrake?
Arch tries too follow KISS principle, but does it really do so? pacman is certainly not the most obvious piece of software.

Is Arch's release policy beneficial?

Last but not least, I'm not so sure if Arch is really that much improved compared to CRUX. I found CRUX extremely pleasant thanks to it's prt-get utility.

cactus · 2005-01-24 22:39:03

well, I would likely say that arch's stability issues would stem from the small community. Not a whole lot of devs, and an ever increasing package set.

I think some bugs are incorrectly attributed to arch as well. Being so quick to release, lots of upstream issues are likely noticed in arch before other distros that are slower to update. I am sure the gentoo folks feel this effect as well.

I have found arch to be very stable. Of course, I use it in such as fashion as to ensure greater stability (I don't update every day, I have a small package set on my server. I have some custom packages.)

For me, the best part of arch is that it is so "bleeding edge" (note the bleeding part ). That, and the fact that I can very easily modify pkgbuilds in abs, and generate my own packages. heh..try doing that EASILY with rpms and debs.

sarah31 · 2005-01-25 00:33:22

Never found Arch unstable.

CRUX lacked alot of things. prt-get was pretty much a lame duck when I used it it was extremely limited in its abilities so much so that I never used it because i found it easier to manage ports myself.

Their community while I thought they were pretty good at first I found to be very hard to get along with. Many replies to my questions were either not answered or the replies were a bit snooty.

CRUX also is not very cutting edge unless you use a few of the CLC personal repos. CLC is poorly managed and many ports are duplicated by the contributors.

CRUX never seemed any more or less stable. When I used it as well I feared when the next version was to come out because upgrading was not "on the fly" like Arch was. CRUX was way too much work for me.

I don't really see the point in the stab you take. If CRUX serves you better then so be it ... move on. Sorry but since I rarely ever had stability issues that were not self caused i cannot relate. (You mentioned that you removed /etc? well that can cause alot of instability and enough that you may not ever get it back the way you wanted without reinstalling.)

Dusty · 2005-01-25 00:50:43

sarah31 wrote:

Their community while I thought they were pretty good at first I found to be very hard to get along with. Many replies to my questions were either not answered or the replies were a bit snooty.

It takes a special community to be able to put up with you Sarah... and just look at us, we not only put up with you, we love you!

This thread is basically pointless, as the questions involved do not have factual answers, but depend on the opinion of each individual user. In my mind, asking people to post their opinions without any benefit is as much a waste of time as asking people to post a picture of their desktop... everybody wants to post it, but most people don't bother to look at other people's screenshots... and why would they want to?

Dusty

sarah31 · 2005-01-25 00:53:26

feh, most of them di dnot even know me before. There was one guy on irc that was such an ass i think most people would never talk in fear of him launching into them with some elitist bS.

cactus · 2005-01-25 01:09:00

lol..yikes.
That would suck. I am very thankful that the arch community is considerably more friendly. I have been on forums where you get severely roasted for not posting something in a proper subcategory..nothing says welcome like being shown the ropes from the perspective of the hangman's noose.

sarah31 · 2005-01-25 01:12:11

we should be roasting you for that avatar

phrakture · 2005-01-25 04:03:14

vicious, stop with the useless flames....

you're like a child flaunting his new toy as if it's better than everyone elses... this is the fourth post I've seen from you in the "I switched to Crux and it's sooooo much better" vein. just stop.

you're not winning any friends here...

cactus · 2005-01-25 04:17:50

sarah31 wrote:

we should be roasting you for that avatar

me?

sarah31 · 2005-01-25 06:33:42

cactus wrote:

sarah31 wrote:
we should be roasting you for that avatar
me?

ja

cactus · 2005-01-25 07:20:37

*looks innocent*
8)

dtw · 2005-01-25 11:40:23

phrakture! is that a banana in your pocket or are you pissed at vicious?

(ahem)

i amuse myself at least

a salient point from phrakture tho i feel

the only stability prob i ever had is when an pkg comes in and loads of pkgs need to be recompiled to work with it OR when a pkg is updated to inline with a major pkg update (which some dial up users avoid) but that does not have the required version of the major pkg specified in the dependancy as it could and SHOULD - so you get broken pkgs for unknown reasons -saying you shoudl always pacman -Su just doesn't cut it - some pkgs could be better put together which would improve the system

vicious · 2005-01-25 16:39:58

Haven't you noticed that this thread is not really about CRUX. It's about Arch.

The problem is: most of you think that Arch Linux is (more or less) perfect. That's why you use it. That's fine - but is this an objective or subjective attitude?

What is the goal of Arch Linux project? What's the target user profile? Is this a distribution for geeks or newbees? What's the scope of the project - what tools should be implemented specific for Arch?

The problem is that Arch is just a mix of ideas from different places. It's a CRUX's spinoff and a wannabe Fedora with slight traces of Debian. You might say that it's a mix of the best ideas - but that's not true.

If I wanted a bleeding edge distro, I would go for Gentoo.
If I needed an absolutely simplistic distro, I would go for CRUX.
If I was a newbee, I'd go for Fedora Core.
If I needed stability, I'd go for Debian.

Each of these goals excludes the others. You cannot have a stable bleeding edge distro. You cannot have a simplistic newbee distro.

Where does Arch fit?

Nowhere! It's features are not coherent. Parts are simplistic (boot scripts, abs). Parts are not (pacman). You want hardware autodetection without autoconfiguration. You want gui frontend for pacman, but not for config files.

Arch doesn't have ANY feature which would make me say: "this is the best solution i've seen; no other distro has it". Arch is just average - for some people it might be a good option, but others should find something more suitable for their application.

Dusty · 2005-01-25 17:26:29

phrakture wrote:

vicious, stop with the useless flames....

Couldn't just ignore him, could you phrakture? You just can't seem to control yourself...

Dusty

Dusty · 2005-01-25 17:29:16

vicious wrote:

What's the target user profile?

Just Judd.

woodstock · 2005-01-25 17:49:27

vicious: You make some really good points, and many of which I've been thinking about for quite some time. But I'm afraid that you're preaching to the wrong crowd.

I've pretty much stopped using Arch for many of the reasons in your post, but remember Arch is a young project and there are always problems when things first get off the ground. I bet you anything Debian/Slackware/Redhat all had their fair share of structural/goal problems in the beginning. I can't say for sure for those distro's but I do know that Gentoo, even back at 1.4 was having HUGE problems with low quaility ebuilds and a gerneral instability all round.

I'm using a different distro, but I'm still going to follow this project, because it does have many nice qualities.

Parts are simplistic (boot scripts, abs). Parts are not (pacman). You want hardware autodetection without autoconfiguration. You want gui frontend for pacman, but not for config files.

I know exactly what you mean. Unfortunantly this goes for many distros. Debian got into this problem of trying to please everyone, this is not an easy goal for anyone. The Arch dev's honestly seem snobbish sometimes when it comes to feature requests and anything interms of automation. They connect automation with bloat and less control over the system, ever hear of OPTIONAL? And a script to make life easier (some automation for trivial things) isn't what I consider bloat.

Where does Arch fit?

Well, it obviously fits in somewhere, as it has built itself a community of some sort. Every distro fits somewhere, many are redundant IMHO.

One thing that really annoyed me was all the Gentoo bashing that happened on these forums awhile back and still now (though rarely). This was very typical of a community based around adolescents. This isn't all wrong though.

http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php? … hlight=age

There is nothing wrong with being passionate toward your distro of choice, just don't force it down other peoples throats or look down on other projects.

Arch has a lot going for it, I for one will keep an eye on it. For now I will stick with what I'm using.

P.S. Don't take any of this to heart. I'm just voicing my opinion. Take it or leave it.

sarah31 · 2005-01-25 17:56:08

vicious wrote:

Haven't you noticed that this thread is not really about CRUX. It's about Arch.

When you compare expect the criticism of what you used to compare it to. In this case you used CRUX as the standard which you seem to think is perfect compared to Arch.

You must be ignorant if you don't expect people to come down on your standard.

The problem is: most of you think that Arch Linux is (more or less) perfect. That's why you use it. That's fine - but is this an objective or subjective attitude?

Some may think it is perfect but not everyone. Don't speak for everyone unless you wanna get burned yourself.

As for subjective or objective. Both. You on the other hand are simply trolling so your objective is to piss people off because you have subjectively pissed in everyone's corn flakes.

What is the goal of Arch Linux project? What's the target user profile? Is this a distribution for geeks or newbees? What's the scope of the project - what tools should be implemented specific for Arch?

Goals? Does a distro need them but if you read Judd's reasons for making the distro who he made it for you would not ask such a stupid question.

The problem is that Arch is just a mix of ideas from different places. It's a CRUX's spinoff and a wannabe Fedora with slight traces of Debian. You might say that it's a mix of the best ideas - but that's not true.

now I know you are trolling. Just go away ok? Arch is none of what you say. It takes a bit of a few projects out there but it not a wannabe or a copy of anything.

Nowhere! It's features are not coherent. Parts are simplistic (boot scripts, abs). Parts are not (pacman). You want hardware autodetection without autoconfiguration. You want gui frontend for pacman, but not for config files.
Arch doesn't have ANY feature which would make me say: "this is the best solution i've seen; no other distro has it". Arch is just average - for some people it might be a good option, but others should find something more suitable for their application.

And CRUX has what? prt-get?

this thread should be locked as your only goal is to be a venomous troll . Okay you don't like the distro> MOVE ON YOU LITTLE INGRATE>

xerxes2 · 2005-01-25 18:25:43

vicious wrote:

Haven't you noticed that this thread is not really about CRUX. It's about Arch.

yes

vicious wrote:

The problem is: most of you think that Arch Linux is (more or less) perfect. That's why you use it. That's fine - but is this an objective or subjective attitude?

subjective, why would I use Arch if I don't want to?

vicious wrote:

What is the goal of Arch Linux project? What's the target user profile? Is this a distribution for geeks or newbees? What's the scope of the project - what tools should be implemented specific for Arch?

Arch is mostly a distro for developers and other hacker wannabes, people that just wan't a stripped down system that never let you down.

vicious wrote:

The problem is that Arch is just a mix of ideas from different places. It's a CRUX's spinoff and a wannabe Fedora with slight traces of Debian. You might say that it's a mix of the best ideas - but that's not true.

Fedora wannabe?? Who said that?

vicious wrote:

If I wanted a bleeding edge distro, I would go for Gentoo.
If I needed an absolutely simplistic distro, I would go for CRUX.
If I was a newbee, I'd go for Fedora Core.
If I needed stability, I'd go for Debian.

lol! go for gentoo! Are you a ricer? Haven't used Crux but I doubt that it's better than Arch. Fedora is just a Red Hat playground so it's not a serious distro. Debian would be a better choice but I said it before that it's Arch' destiny to challenge Debian as the best vanilla distro, atleast on the desktop. Debian has more than 1000 devs so it's not so easy for Arch at this point to compete with it.

vicious wrote:

Each of these goals excludes the others. You cannot have a stable bleeding edge distro. You cannot have a simplistic newbee distro.

I think that Arch will never be a newbie distro, there are tons of them already. No need for more..

vicious wrote:

Where does Arch fit?

In my boxes it fit's perfectly, and probably in many others too.

vicious wrote:

Nowhere! It's features are not coherent. Parts are simplistic (boot scripts, abs). Parts are not (pacman). You want hardware autodetection without autoconfiguration. You want gui frontend for pacman, but not for config files.

Where have you heard this? There is no work beeing made on making Arch "easier", not that I heard of atleast. All the gui pacman frontends are not easier than cli, it's more that it looks better than the ugly terminal.

vicious wrote:

Arch doesn't have ANY feature which would make me say: "this is the best solution i've seen; no other distro has it". Arch is just average - for some people it might be a good option, but others should find something more suitable for their application.

The nicest feature for me in Arch is the lack of features. It's also nice that you can code in almost "all" language without need for fiddling with manual installations. Mplayer plays "everything" out of the box, absolutely rocksteady base system(I don't use gnome or qt though) and smart developers that fix problems pretty quick.
Go Arch!!! Fight the whingers!!!

sarah31 · 2005-01-25 19:00:51

vicious reminds me of John Lowell. Just doesn't know whne to shut his yap and move on.

Yay vicious thinks crux is better good for him. Move on you just become a big pink ass trolling around for flames while representing another distro. Not many people will wanna use CRUX if it is populated with people that don't know how to grow up.

vicious · 2005-01-25 20:10:25

sarah31 wrote:

vicious reminds me of John Lowell. Just doesn't know whne to shut his yap and move on.
Yay vicious thinks crux is better good for him. Move on you just become a big pink ass trolling around for flames while representing another distro. Not many people will wanna use CRUX if it is populated with people that don't know how to grow up.

I don't say CRUX is perfect. But it has one feature that Arch Linux lacks - personality. Even Debian, Slackware, Gentoo and Fedora have some personality - which Arch is a bit lacking.

I'm not a troll. I didn't start this post to annoy you. I said what I wanted to say and I won't relate to your numerous posts. At least there were two people who understood my words.

Thank you very much.

lucke · 2005-01-25 21:18:24

One man's meat is another man's poison, as they say :-)

cactus · 2005-01-25 21:20:55

personality?
To me arch has lots of personality. I love pacman. One I learned a little (it didn't take long) I found it very easy to use.
I also really like that there is no automation. This is not a distro for people new to linux/unix. If you want automation and gui tools, go for SuSe/RedHat/Mandrake.

Honestly, I don't see why people have to get on their high horse to bash the distro when they find something they like more. I am glad you found something that you like more.
You came back just for the sake of bashing this project. There really can't be another reason. You have already moved on, at least that is the jist of what you posted. All you have really done is basically call everyone stupid who still really likes this distro. People who don't think arch is missing a *ahem* personality. People who have no problem squeezing all they can out of it. People who thoroughly enjoy all that arch has to offer them.

Is it perfect? No! I don't know of anything in life that is perfect. I am a picky sonofabitch.
Is it improving? Yes!

Bah. I am starting to see why sarah is so cranky most of the time.

sarah31 · 2005-01-25 21:40:23

cactus wrote:

Bah. I am starting to see why sarah is so cranky most of the time.

I get cranky from post like this that serve zero purpose. Vicious may have good reason to make a post about the faults of Arch but he is doing it in completely the wrong way.

Say your piece but leave the analysis and insults for your new community. I have heard this type of "complaint" so much it get really annoying when someone wraps it all up in a completely venomous package. It does not help whatever points he feels are valid.

Not only does he take aim at Arch in every way possible but he uses another distro to make his point and then says that you can't criticise my new perfect distro because we are talking about Arch.

If you read his posts he isn't talking about Arch at all. He claims it is a unstable, poorly managed, copycat piece of crap.. Everything that people say are a benefit to Arch are a defect to him.

Well i used Arch for three years without any major problems except ones that I caused myself. Lots of other people use it without any major issues. It is used on many servers both medium sized and small. It has had a huge amount of success and has a very generous user base. It has an attitude that promotes ALOT of user contributions.

If you read vicious posts they do not reflect a reality other than what he lives in all on his own. He also does a huge diservice to CRUX who wants to go to a community that has member s like this?

Dusty · 2005-01-25 23:34:05

sarah31 wrote:

If you read vicious posts they do not reflect a reality other than what he lives in all on his own.

There is no reality other than that in which each of us lives. I mean, in my reality, I'm married to you, Sarah, and we never fight!

Arch is for people that like Arch, and most certainly not for people that don't like Arch. I figure people that use Linux are doing pretty well without wondering which distro is best for other people. But I could be wrong.

Dusty

phrakture · 2005-01-26 00:15:32

vicious wrote:

I'm not a troll. I didn't start this post to annoy you. I said what I wanted to say and I won't relate to your numerous posts. At least there were two people who understood my words..

You're wrong. You are a troll. And a bad one at that. Please explain, if not for the sake of trolling, the reason for continuing to post here when you have moved on. I can understand the like of the community, but there is no reason to post about how "bad" Arch is.
A constructive poster proposes fixes and changes.
A troll posts open ended statements without proposing any changes.

You are, vicious, a troll. You've done nothing but piss me off since that dark day you descended on the arch forums. Your arguments are always open ended and childish. I've decided I'm going to continue this post in a way you would be proud of:

vicious wrote:

I'm confused.
At the beginning when I used Arch, I thought it was the best distro out there. Good package manager, lots of packages actively maintained.
But then came stability problems - gradually. More and more programs seemed to be unstable.

No, you're wrong. Arch is the best ever. It rules and you suck.

vicious wrote:

Now I'm using CRUX - since the accident of removing /etc. And I must admit that I NEVER had any stability problems with it (now and before I moved to Arch). Everything works flawlessly.

Man, CRUX is bad I tried it once and it deleted my hard drive from my computer and it had all these problems because I don't know what I'm doing ... so I switched to Arch and it's totally like soooo better ROFLMAOBBQ!

vicious wrote:

Is there everything all right with Arch? Maybe it's on the verge of turning into another Redhat/SuSE/Mandrake?
Arch tries too follow KISS principle, but does it really do so? pacman is certainly not the most obvious piece of software.
Is Arch's release policy beneficial?

Yeah Arch's policies are the best. Argument over.

Eh I'm tired of this.... vicious, the problem is that you really don't know what you're doing. I just searched through these forums, and looked at your old posts.... Arch is not for you... those who are here like it. You're talking to deaf ears.... now go away....

Arch Linux

#1 2005-01-24 22:20:26

Is Arch really the best choice?

#2 2005-01-24 22:39:03

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#25 2005-01-26 00:15:32

Re: Is Arch really the best choice?

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