A few questions before I try arch

mvdan · 2012-02-17 16:53:09

First of all, my apologies in case this ends up as a flaming post. You've been warned

I've been a Debian Unstable user for about a year now, and so I'm used to a rather minimalistic destkop (awesomewm) and common cli usage. I really like it, but for the last few months I'm starting to get interested in Arch, since many of the times I look for something on scroogle, either your wiki or your forums pop up. Having said that, I just have a few things circling in my head, and thought you might be able to clarify them for me:

* Would bare-install Arch bring any advantages versus bare-install Debian Unstable? In other words, apart from the repositories and all the extra stuff, is there anything I'm missing?
* I like the debian official repo approach, so I'd probably not use AUR; Would that mean a "drawback" in my end user experience?
* What is your position towards free software, exactly? For instance, I'd have already switched if you had "free" and "non-free" repos, or at least package tags. I know about parabola, but I'd rather ask your opinion on this before I take any action.

Thanks for your patience, greatly appreciated.

Daniel

bernarcher · 2012-02-17 17:00:27

Moved to Newbie Corner.

mvdan, did you search the forums? Similar questions were asked again and again.

litemotiv · 2012-02-17 17:01:27

Arch would give you (even) more control over your configuration than Debian Unstable, since you fully decide how to setup your system yourself. For instance, which init system you want to use.

This is entirely up to you, if you don't need or want any of the software in the AUR, you don't need to use it.

You will generally only find free software in the Arch repos, except for certain much requested software such as proprietary video drivers. There are always free alternatives though. Again, this is entirely up to you, Arch is all about choice.

mvdan · 2012-02-17 17:02:28

bernarcher wrote:

mvdan, did you search the forums? Similar questions were asked again and again.

I did, but didn't find exactly what I was looking for.

mvdan · 2012-02-17 17:10:13

litemotiv wrote:

You will generally only find free software in the Arch repos, except for certain much requested software such as proprietary video drivers. There are always free alternatives though. Again, this is entirely up to you, Arch is all about choice.

I'm not against certain kinds of non-free software, such as network card drivers. Nevertheless, I fail to find any kind of... discrimination between free and proprietary software. I'd like to keep my system at least 99% free, so that would definitely be a factor.

litemotiv · 2012-02-17 17:11:13

Also good for an introduction to what Arch is (and isn't):

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Arch_Linux
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/The_Arch_Way
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ar … tributions

Barrucadu · 2012-02-17 17:39:00

mvdan wrote:

I'm not against certain kinds of non-free software, such as network card drivers. Nevertheless, I fail to find any kind of... discrimination between free and proprietary software. I'd like to keep my system at least 99% free, so that would definitely be a factor.

There is no such discrimination - if you don't want a non-free package, don't install it.

karol · 2012-02-17 18:37:11

mvdan wrote:

What is your position towards free software, exactly?l

Pragmatic. If it works and we can distribute it - put it in the repos.

/dev/zero · 2012-02-17 21:02:27

mvdan wrote:

I've been a Debian Unstable user for about a year now, and so I'm used to a rather minimalistic destkop (awesomewm) and common cli usage. I really like it, but for the last few months I'm starting to get interested in Arch, since many of the times I look for something on scroogle, either your wiki or your forums pop up.

Hi mvdan,

This was almost my exact same situation before I switched to Arch a few months ago. I was running minimal (netinst) Debian and kept encountering Arch every time I googled something. I liked the philosophy. When I purchased a new laptop that Debian didn't offer drivers for, this pushed me over the edge.

mvdan wrote:

* Would bare-install Arch bring any advantages versus bare-install Debian Unstable? In other words, apart from the repositories and all the extra stuff, is there anything I'm missing?

Linux is Linux. Arch is nice, but don't expect it do "more" (whatever that means). In fact, it does less, and I see this as better. Eg, we don't have the annoying "update-alternatives" system, and everything that happens in your system at start-up is configured through a couple of simple text files.

mvdan wrote:

* I like the debian official repo approach, so I'd probably not use AUR; Would that mean a "drawback" in my end user experience?

It depends.

You can search for packages available through pacman here. You can search for packages available through AUR here.

Since you said you're already used to a minimal setup, I trust you'll know what packages you plan to use, and can do some research about whether they're in the repos or the AUR.

However, don't be scared of the AUR. Packages you install from AUR are still managed by pacman. You can uninstall them or update them any time you want.

mvdan wrote:

* What is your position towards free software, exactly?

Are you asking us individually, or are you asking for the "party line"?

I prefer free software because free software is supposed to offer more options and better stability. When free software has fewer options or worse stability than its non-free competitor, I will go non-free.

cfr · 2012-02-18 00:37:33

I have a somewhat less pragmatic approach to free vs. proprietary software. I've chosen Linux partly because the system is not in danger of being locked down or turned into a kind of glorified shopping experience. I want to be able to run whatever I say on my machine. I'm prepared to put up with some inconvenience and to do some extra work to use an OS which offers greater freedom.

I am less dependent on proprietary software than I was running Debian. Why? Because I always planned to put Linux on this machine and I tried to ensure the hardware would be supported out-of-the-box by free drivers. At the same time, I'm pleased that I can run acroread on this machine. I don't particularly like acroread and I would prefer a free alternative (especially one which didn't crash all the time and, even more, one which let me complete a PDF form in presentation mode and save the result) but for now, at least, I need acroread. Similarly for flash.

So I have a sort of principled preference for free software but I'll use whatever works if that's the only way to get stuff done. If I need a certain function, I won't wait until somebody develops free software with it if there's an alternative I could use in the meantime.

I'm not really sure that you're asking the right question. Arch allows me to choose 100% free software if I want but it also allows me to use non-free software if I choose. I prefer the former whenever possible but I don't exclude the latter. Other people make different choices. Arch doesn't come with the "non-free" labelling you find in Debian if you enable non-free repos. (I need this in Debian to get wireless working on my older laptop.) Arch doesn't warn you. It assumes if you say you want to install x, you want to install x.

But the information is there. You can check the licence of a package before downloading and installing it through the package manager. So if it matters to you, it is easy to never install non-free software. Moreover, you can decide what you regard as free and what not. The package manager tells you the specific licence rather than giving you an "official" judgement on whether a particular licence is sufficiently free or not. (But it doesn't specify the version which I rather wish it did for e.g. GPL.)

kyla · 2012-02-18 18:20:48

As cfr stated, the licenses are all stated, you can either search the web interface or do pacman -Si packagename to see the license, then just look further into anything listed as 'custom'. Some packages in the AUR will state that they are non-free. You can also sort of intermingle parabola and arch if you're careful. Just add parabola's libre repo and specify one of it's mirrors in pacman.conf. Then when searching for a package with pacman, the libre alternatives will appear too.

Arch Linux

#1 2012-02-17 16:53:09

A few questions before I try arch

#2 2012-02-17 17:00:27

Re: A few questions before I try arch

#3 2012-02-17 17:01:27

Re: A few questions before I try arch

#4 2012-02-17 17:02:28

Re: A few questions before I try arch

#5 2012-02-17 17:10:13

Re: A few questions before I try arch

#6 2012-02-17 17:11:13

Re: A few questions before I try arch

#7 2012-02-17 17:39:00

Re: A few questions before I try arch

#8 2012-02-17 18:37:11

Re: A few questions before I try arch

#9 2012-02-17 21:02:27

Re: A few questions before I try arch

#10 2012-02-18 00:37:33

Re: A few questions before I try arch

#11 2012-02-18 18:20:48

Re: A few questions before I try arch

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