an Arch-derivative distro?

nightfrost · 2005-08-12 09:18:25

I'm going to propose something here that I hopefully will not regret. I've been using Arch for some time now and I must honestly say that after a couple of weeks of using it, I realized that this is where I stop. Arch is my kind of Linux and I have no need to start using any other distros. I'm not a programmer, I'm one of the new-wave Linux Desktop users. I originally moved over to Linux due to ideological/philosophical issues, and now I'm sticking around for more reasons than that. With this rant, I'm trying to say I've never felt like your average power-user/programmer, etc. I manage to solve my problems most of the times, I fiddle around, I write bash scripts, and I like the arch philosophy. I like the whole KISS-thing.

Now, the feeling I get when I roam the Arch forums is that there's quite a few people here who have an instinctive disdain for gui-apps. And more importantly, lots and lots of people don't want the forums here to be flooded with newb-posts. Me included; I really like the fact that most arch users are competent users. However, the general community attitude seems to me to be comprised of an internal conflict. On one hand, things are as described above: "keep the newbs out". On the other hand, there is the nagging feeling that "this distro is freaking sweet, I want to share it with the world!"

I'm thinking it would be a good idea to create a derivative distro aimed for the end-user. Why would anyone create an Arch derivative to that end, as there are other distros, such as Ubuntu, FedoreCore, Suse, Vector (?) etc., that do that already? Well, firstly, because I think Arch has the best implementation of things, and is the only distro (of those I know a least) to be i686-optimized (which really makes a difference in responsitivity on a desktop system). Furthermore, with an Arch-end-user distro, we would never have the newbs on these forums, cause they would stick with the forums for the derivative distro. Also, the whole question of where we want to take Arch could focus on other things.

So, I guess I'm asking if anyone would be interested in working on any such project.

And before I quit; I'm sorry for the lengthy post, I didn't realize it would be this long when I started writing it.

z4ziggy · 2005-08-12 09:43:37

GUI frontends are always welcome, even if they arent part of the official Arch base system. u can always create the GUI tools and eventually they will be included in one of the repositories. i dunno why make a complete new distro just for providing the GUI frontends...

nightfrost · 2005-08-12 09:54:23

Sorry, if I was unclear. The gui-apps are of course minor issue. Consider, the other things I wrote; an arch-derived distro aimed for the end user (i.e. somewhat preconfigured) would be a good idea

...firstly, because I think Arch has the best implementation of things, and is the only distro (of those I know a least) to be i686-optimized (which really makes a difference in responsitivity on a desktop system). Furthermore, with an Arch-end-user distro, we would never have the newbs on these forums, cause they would stick with the forums for the derivative distro. Also, the whole question of where we want to take Arch could focus on other things.

z4ziggy · 2005-08-12 10:02:33

yes, i do understand, but by "aimed for the end user" this mostly implicates GUI frontends. providing a "somewhat preconfigured" system can still be achived using some nice gui/friendly tools. iono, i just think making a complete new distro (which means repositories, repackaging everything to "suit" the new distro schemes, etc) is a bit overhead for this task which can be accomplished by adding those tools to our lovely, existing, Arch distro

omho...

nightfrost · 2005-08-12 10:14:23

Fair enough. But that's basically possible to do with any (or most) derivative distros isn't it? I mean, you can start off with Debian proper and get an Ubuntu; and you can start from Slackware and get a VectorLinux, right? And still, there has been a need to create these derivative distros.

Also, creating a new distro sure means a lot of work, but one can start pretty simply, I guess, and take it from there.

For me, an arch-derivative would mean I can share the lovliest distro with everyone (include recent Win-users), without having them flooding the real arch community. Much in the same manner that Ubuntu users (i.e the average/end-user) generally don't participate in the debian community...

robot5x · 2005-08-12 10:44:48

I understand your point, but I really think that noone here has any problem at all with 'newbies' (god I hate that word). For me, arch was the perfect platform to learn a lot more about my system and about linux - I did that through reading a lot, experimenting, trying things out for myself, and then turning to the very helpful people here when I got stuck. I don't see a problem with that, but what people don't like (and this goes for anywhere, I suppose) is posts like 'URGENT - something won't work, PLZ HELP' which is just plain silly.

Arch is arch because it encourages a deeper understanding of linux, a 'gui-distro' based on arch would not, therefore, be anything like arch at all.

nightfrost · 2005-08-12 10:59:59

I agree with you. The community takes newcomers to its bossom very heartily, but still there is a level of competence in the forums - at least I get that feeling. It might be what arch does to people, or it might be that people who start using arch have a certain disposition. Add to that, the debates you'll find if you search for "arch distrowatch mainstream" or similar, debates that in my opinion seem to convey unsureness - but mostly awareness - of what kind of users the community wishes to attract.

Anyway, I like your counter arguments and urge for more If I do change my mind, I might spend my free time doing other more important things for Arch

dtw · 2005-08-12 11:27:41

Someone proposed this before and got flamed off the boards

The basic gist of the flaming has already been covered: a newbie friendly Arch wouldn't be Arch. It would be an i686 distro, that uses pacman and the Arch repositories aimed at new linux users.

I don't think an i686, pacman based distro is a bad idea but i agree with ziggy - all the hard work is done.

To achieve what you would like to achieve I would suggest that you head over to Vector and steal their VASM (Vector Adminstrative and Services Menu) tool and port it to Arch.

You could also write some bash scripts that will install complete desktop environments using pacman and on top of that include custom configurations for each WM/DE wrapped up in proper pacman pkgs, as Archie does.

Lastly, I think a newbie friendly/only phpbb board would be a good idea - keep them away from us! I was an admin at Vector Linux and their newbie friendly no-RTFM finally got the better of me - it just like trying to ice skate up hill. Trying to introduce decent posting practices, get people to search the forums before posting...nightmare

kth5 · 2005-08-12 12:18:45

i agree that there's no real reason to create a spinoff arch for endusers but there are some issues that for example can't be handled by an "not so competent" enduser on arch.

for example why does someone need to install a full gcc if they do not intend to compile anything? there's nothing bad about it in general but there are still users who enjoy having a system installed that only has what they use and not what the repository suggests to be helpful and may confuse them. by only having the libs installed that are really needed from gcc on runtime you can save about 68MB. also make, patch etc. aren't needed for an enduser-system in my opinion and should stay optional. this is where problems with arch arise btw. unless you know what you're doing you can't remove gcc since there's a small percentage of the package you really need. missing make and patch for example break makepkg (pacman).

to sum up, i'd suggest to make development stuff optional for this kind of thing that should do it on the repository's side.

the most painful act for a newcomer is to install and configure his/her installation for the first time.
to fix this some kind of assistent in the installer would be nice, maybe just a few more notes on the screen in the installer itself even that guide the user more through what he/she needs to do. also the cd should boot into the installer directly but of course it doesn't have to be X based. to create a seperate installer doesn't necessarily need a fork of arch, right?

also necomers tend to not know what the names of packages are they need/want and what is behind a package called xmms maybe. imagine you look for something like winamp, so you're looking for an mp3player during the install...
a few more "install profiles" would be nice to have the installer preselect packages and help around this. categories could be like these:

desktop/xfce
desktop/gnome
desktop/kde
development/general
development/java
development/mono
development/docs
games/
multimedia/
office/abiword
office/openoffice
server/http
server/database
server/mail

a.s.o.

for the rest arch really should stay the same, no configuration helper GUI stuff like YaST or anything which would conflict with the philosophy of arch. if that's you intention you better should fork it.

brain0 · 2005-08-12 12:28:32

I thought about sth similar the other day. I thought about creating an alternative Arch installer and a central GUI configuration tool that comes with it (and is kept up to date via its own repo). This config tool could be designed to un-newb the newbs somehow. But I think you won't find someone who will write that.

But - if someone writes it - the "new" distro could use all arch packages and stay arch-compatible while being newb-friendly.

Kern · 2005-08-12 12:52:01

I guess I'm asking if anyone would be interested in working on any such project.

Sorry dude, not me. i prefer to concentrate on helping apprentice Archers via the recognised current structure of Forum/Wiki. Helping users to help themselves.

i dont mind feeding newcomers a little 'til they've learned to use the Arch knife, fork and spoon but im not into redesigning the cutlery to suit folks that can't use the current set.

Let complete newbs grab a Linux distro they are comfortable with, one that already meets their level of PC literacy. once they've established some form of base knowledge then they can graduate to a distro that's a bit leaner on inbuiltpreconfiguredwipesyourarsetoo help.

dtw · 2005-08-12 13:08:09

...or of course there is Kern's perspective, which i more fully subscribe to - maybe Arch is great because it's NOT your first distro...

CyberTron · 2005-08-12 13:23:35

dibblethewrecker wrote:

Someone proposed this before and got flamed off the boards
The basic gist of the flaming has already been covered: a newbie friendly Arch wouldn't be Arch. It would be an i686 distro, that uses pacman and the Arch repositories aimed at new linux users.

Well, I believe I am that person although, I have slightly changed my perspective since I belive that Archie is going towards the "newbie" friendly archlinux

Although, a board for newbies wouldn't that hard, I have the community: linuxportalen.com and it has an ArchLinux board, the problem is though, that for it to become a great newbie portal it has to have some people that are "linuxgods", which I am not, I am good, but perhaps not that good..

I could easily maintain a newbie forum, no problemz, but how should things be, should we who (in the future) moderate the newbie forum ask the persons here on the non-newbiie forums for things we couldn't solve?

there are some problems with taking the newbies away, since if all are newbies noone can teach the others....

rasat · 2005-08-12 14:29:01

kth5 wrote:

the most painful act for a newcomer is to install and configure his/her installation for the first time.
to fix this some kind of assistent in the installer would be nice, maybe just a few more notes on the screen in the installer itself....

The conclusion is to have live CD with hd installer what AMLUG did and now Archie does the job.

About forging Arch. When forging something the aim is to improve or fixing problems in the original. In Arch what are there to improve or fix?

nightfrost, want to give something to end-users? Go for Archie and help in the development.
http://user-contributions.org/archie.html

phrakture · 2005-08-12 15:27:45

Yikes, a whole lot of responses here. Time for phrakture to respond! Time for phrakture to talk in the third person!

Alright, to start off, this has been discussed a million times - but I'm not faulting you or anything - it's hard to find threads like this because you don't know what to search for.

The basic points aren't many:
a) Arch is what it is because it forces you to configure and control things by hand
b) No one really despises GUI apps, it's just that once you start messing with console apps you realise how insanely powerful they are compared to their cousins (who here switched from xchat to irssi?)
c) There are a million other newbie friendly distros out there, and the fact of the matter is, no one really sticks with them long. They become proficient and move on to other distros.

On a side note, have you seen http://frugalware.org and http://www.rubix-os.org ? Both use pacman, though rubix uses slackware's package structure.

kth5 · 2005-08-12 15:34:19

phrakture wrote:

b) No one really despises GUI apps, it's just that once you start messing with console apps you realise how insanely powerful they are compared to their cousins (who here switched from xchat to irssi?)

i did cos i switched from a local irc session to a remote one running in a screen. ;-)

nightfrost · 2005-08-12 18:59:21

Wow! I'm overwhelmed. Thanks a lot for all your responses, and I think now the better idea is to try and help out as much as I can with Archie. That seems to be pretty close to what I want anyway. In addition, of course, to a newb-forum. In reply to Cybertron; I don't think linux-gurus are really necessary there. People like you and me are necessary there, i.e. people who get by in the linux world. If the "newb-questions" are of such nature that none of us can answer them, then perhaps they're ready to move on to the "real" Arch forums.

As a sidenote, what would be really cool would be a console window integrated somehow as part of the wallpaper under the desktop environment.

So once again, thanks for your views, and z4ziggy, what's my next move if I wanna help out with Archie?

z4ziggy · 2005-08-12 19:13:33

lol... 1st, tnx for joining in so quickly
2nd, choosing your project is all up to you - im waiting for the new pygtk pacman frontend to be finished (and hoping it will become as eyecandy as jacman :-)), iphitus has finished a beta release of his pygtk hd-installer, and those are the most important (imho) tasks for non-Arch user.
as far as the Archie project itself, i think the most important part is the uclibc system, but i dunno if thats what u looking for (building an Arch uclibc based system with PKGBUILDS and uclibc replaces glibc). u might wanna work on the kde version, though u should check on the unionfs-mailinglist for kde patches.
if u have any other suggestions, questions, please share, and we'll pick up from there

nightfrost · 2005-08-12 19:26:26

I actually had two people suggestion over pm that I should join the Archie project, and what I've managed to pick up since my first post, I think Archie is the way to go

Like I suggested in my first post, I'm by no means a coder, but I can test, build, and come with suggestions. I'd like to read up some more on where archie is going and what's planned before I come with suggestions. Is there an archie mailing list? Which is the best way to keep contact with other people on the project?

arooaroo · 2005-08-12 19:39:00

There was always a time when coders were non-coders...

Regarding Archie, I don't think there is a mailing list, but there are forums at Rasat's User-Contributions.org.

http://user-contributions.org/archie.html should give you all the info you need.

z4ziggy · 2005-08-12 19:46:37

our forums here.

no mailing list atm, nor chatroom, though since dibble had joined were gonna have 4 Archie based distros already... so maybe we would... 8)

magnum_opus · 2005-08-12 20:30:39

phrakture wrote:

a) Arch is what it is because it forces you to configure and control things by hand

maybe to you and the rest of the old hands. Myself, i was essentially a newb when i installed arch (well a linux newb, in no way a computer neophyte). i picked/stuck with arch because it had a simple directory layout (compared to say a debian), which meant i could actually find things when i needed to. it also had dependency resolution so it won over slackware (though i did a brief stint in vector) and pacman had also aquired a pretty good reputation by the time i installed it both for working well and for fresh packages. plus being 686 optimized (while i still don't really know what it means a programing level, something about instruction sets i think) meant it was fast (or so the internet told me).

thing is arch is a really nice system even ignoring the KISS administration.
there's no reason some one shouldn't use it as a base for another more "friendly distro" it might not be "arch" but it'd still be a fine distro.

deficite · 2005-08-13 02:25:01

I think Arch is a good beginner's distro simply because they'll learn it once and learn it right.

nightfrost · 2005-08-13 08:44:26

Alrighty, I'm now registered at the archie forums, so I'll dive in as soon as I can

scarecrow · 2005-08-13 10:44:36

phrakture wrote:

On a side note, have you seen http://frugalware.org and http://www.rubix-os.org ? Both use pacman, though rubix uses slackware's package structure.

Frugalware isn't Arch- it's Slackware core using (renamed) RPM packages, and pacman as package+dependency manager. Not a bad distro, but still quite buggy.
Rubix resembles Arch a bit more, but still it ain't Arch and not noob friendly, either...
BTW aren't gtkpacman (in AUR), jacman (also there) and webmin GUI tools for Arch administration?

Arch Linux

#1 2005-08-12 09:18:25

an Arch-derivative distro?

#2 2005-08-12 09:43:37

Re: an Arch-derivative distro?

#3 2005-08-12 09:54:23

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#23 2005-08-13 02:25:01

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Re: an Arch-derivative distro?

#25 2005-08-13 10:44:36

Re: an Arch-derivative distro?

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