You are not logged in.

#226 2012-10-30 14:25:02

WonderWoofy
Member
From: Los Gatos, CA
Registered: 2012-05-19
Posts: 8,414

Re: why you choose ArchLinux?

I started with Arch Linux because I got sick of the status quo.  It seemed like many choices of distributions with the same few X environments.  I tried some with minimal window managers, but quickly realized that the beauty of a window manager only setup is that you can make it whatever the hell you want. So it seemed silly to be using a preconfigured mindow manager. 

Also there is the fact that when I had issues with other distributions, more often than not I found myself in these forums and the Arch wiki.  Of course I wasn't seeking direct help from here while using a different distro, but I was certainly able to often find great information here.  Or at least a place to start searching.  It was a breath of fresh air from places like th ubuntu forums, where there are hundreds of blatantly wrong answers followed (sometimes) by the right answer several pages in, often from one of only a handful of people.

What is funny though, is that I came here looking to create my own X environment, and more and more I find myself working in the console using framebuffer applications.  Tmux has been probably one of the more amazing finds that I have come across. 

What I ended up liking the most about being here is probably the community (as I expected), but I never realized how amazing a rolling release could be.  No six month upgrades, and new stuff all the time.  It even encouraged me to get an Ivy Bridge computer rather than seek a slightly older one, as I had much more confidence that my hardware would be supported.  In fact, I have so much confidence in this system now that I have recently updated my system to full testing repo.  No problems yet, but we shall see how that goes. smile

Offline

#227 2012-10-30 14:33:14

madnerves
Member
Registered: 2008-03-13
Posts: 20

Re: why you choose ArchLinux?

WonderWoofy : what a happy writting. I'm glad also that you found the lost treasure XD smile

Last edited by madnerves (2012-10-30 14:33:24)

Offline

#228 2012-10-30 14:40:44

WonderWoofy
Member
From: Los Gatos, CA
Registered: 2012-05-19
Posts: 8,414

Re: why you choose ArchLinux?

Well thank god it was not lost forever, else I would still probably be putzing around with gentoo.  In fairness to gentoo though, I really like it for the most part.  I just don't like compiling everything, and the portage system, although extremely flexible, is not the easiest to work with, and to really be proficient you need a number of tools/packages for simply package management.

Offline

#229 2012-10-30 15:05:00

hadrons123
Member
From: chennai
Registered: 2011-10-07
Posts: 1,249

Re: why you choose ArchLinux?

wonderwoofy wrote:

In fact, I have so much confidence in this system now that I have recently updated my system to full testing repo.  No problems yet, but we shall see how that goes. smile

Not to put you off, but I have been at your stage at some point and honestly someday things will break. Its the nature of the rolling release. But it should encourage you to fix the issue rather than switching to something else.
There are lot of people I have seen left ArchLinux since they faced some issues. The fun in Arch Linux is  breaking things and fixing it. Enjoy fixing things!


LENOVO Y 580 IVYBRIDGE 660M NVIDIA
Unix is user-friendly. It just isn't promiscuous about which users it's friendly with. - Steven King

Offline

#230 2012-10-30 17:09:17

illusionist
Member
From: localhost
Registered: 2012-04-03
Posts: 498

Re: why you choose ArchLinux?

hadrons123 wrote:
wonderwoofy wrote:

In fact, I have so much confidence in this system now that I have recently updated my system to full testing repo.  No problems yet, but we shall see how that goes. smile

Not to put you off, but I have been at your stage at some point and honestly someday things will break. Its the nature of the rolling release. But it should encourage you to fix the issue rather than switching to something else.
There are lot of people I have seen left ArchLinux since they faced some issues. The fun in Arch Linux is  breaking things and fixing it. Enjoy fixing things!

indeed ...You never get bored with arch. There is always something interesting going on.
in fact WE (arch users) always like to play with our setup and never get satisfied with anything.

Last edited by illusionist (2012-10-30 17:10:52)


  Never argue with stupid people,They will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.--Mark Twain
@github

Offline

#231 2012-10-30 17:25:06

smakked
Member
From: Gold Coast , Australia
Registered: 2008-08-14
Posts: 420

Re: why you choose ArchLinux?

Because it was nice and simple and handled dependencies well , coming from slackware in the early days here.
systemd move has made it even better to setup and install aswell. Just keeps progressing and getting better all the time.


Certified Android Junkie
Arch 64

Offline

#232 2012-11-02 03:56:16

mamamia88
Member
Registered: 2012-08-29
Posts: 483

Re: why you choose ArchLinux?

Started with Ubuntu.   When they decided to ditch gnome altogether and start to go their own way with Unity I started to see the writing on the wall.  I would always hear good things about arch.  Well one day I just said screw it i'm going for it.   So glad I did.     Why do I prefer arch over other distros right now?  A. Binary rolling release.   Installing every 6 months just to get the newest stuff is so last century.  Comping everything from source like gentoo would be way too time consuming.B.  The aur.    I can't tell you how many times i've tried to compile stuff even just by reading the readme file and failed.     The aur is so simple to use it's amazing.    C. Last but not least I have my system setup exactly the way I want.

Offline

#233 2012-11-02 04:17:45

Perfect Gentleman
Member
Registered: 2012-10-25
Posts: 222

Re: why you choose ArchLinux?

rolling release, light, customizable.

Offline

#234 2012-11-02 04:30:44

WonderWoofy
Member
From: Los Gatos, CA
Registered: 2012-05-19
Posts: 8,414

Re: why you choose ArchLinux?

hadrons123 wrote:

The fun in Arch Linux is  breaking things and fixing it. Enjoy fixing things!

This is exactly why I enabled the testing repo!  We'll see how it goes!  I figure I can always go back to the normal repos.  That is the beauty of Arch, even when it breaks, fixing is always a viable solution, as things are typically vanilla enough that information, whether from these parts or upstream, can usually help lead to a fix.

Offline

#235 2012-11-02 05:09:54

kinleyd
Member
From: Bhutan
Registered: 2012-09-21
Posts: 142

Re: why you choose ArchLinux?

Ah, so many reasons... where to start?

1) No bloat, maximal customization: Starts with just the command prompt and you pick the rest.
2) Fantastic documentation - gets you going easily, and teaches you *so much* along the way.
3) Rolling distro - no artificial (imho) six monthly roll outs, that often break your setup every six months and come with all kinds of experiments with the default de, etc. (I'm looking at you, fill-in-the-blank!)
4) As up-to-date as I'm comfortable with. Updates come really quick after a stint in the testing repo (which is too bleeding edge for me)
5) pacman and AUR - very well designed package managers
6) Great community - Forums are very helpful

What's left to say? I'm a very happy camper.

Offline

#236 2012-11-02 05:19:12

kinleyd
Member
From: Bhutan
Registered: 2012-09-21
Posts: 142

Re: why you choose ArchLinux?

mamamia88 wrote:

Started with Ubuntu.   When they decided to ditch gnome altogether and start to go their own way with Unity I started to see the writing on the wall.  ...

When Unity came out, my first reaction was, "Hey, this thing seems to be optimized for smaller touch screens. I prefer the desktop, dammit!" Sadly, I still think Canonical got ahead of itself and started looking at mobile at the cost of desktop.[1] Actually, why sadly, because I ran the hell out of there and look where it landed me - Arch!

[1] Edit: Just look at the default size of the icons. You don't need icons that size to click on with the mouse - it's optimized for fingers and touch screens.

Last edited by kinleyd (2012-11-04 15:07:34)

Offline

#237 2012-11-02 16:24:25

Thaodan
Member
From: Dortmund, Nordrein-Westfalen
Registered: 2012-04-28
Posts: 448

Re: why you choose ArchLinux?

kinleyd wrote:
mamamia88 wrote:

Started with Ubuntu.   When they decided to ditch gnome altogether and start to go their own way with Unity I started to see the writing on the wall.  ...

When Unity came out, my first reaction was, "Hey, this thing seems to be optimized for smaller touch screens. I prefer the desktop, dammit!" Sadly, I still think Canonical got ahead of itself and started looking at mobile at the cost of desktop. Actually, why sadly, because I ran the hell out of there and look where it landed me - Arch!

Its a bit OT but it goes be hated by the community: they try make their own thing, move back from the communuty, most things they done are only for ubuntu, they get all the glory and do nearly nothing compared to the other distrubtions.


Linux odin 3.13.1-pf #1 SMP PREEMPT Wed Mar 5 21:47:28 CET 2014 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Offline

#238 2012-11-02 22:59:22

Chuck Arch Linux
Member
Registered: 2011-06-23
Posts: 81

Re: why you choose ArchLinux?

I use Arch Linux as an alternative to Gentoo.....I was bored of waiting for the compilation process to finish.

Offline

#239 2012-11-06 04:32:43

endived
Member
Registered: 2011-06-14
Posts: 9

Re: why you choose ArchLinux?

I keep coming back to it. 
Have worked with Debian for the last couple of years but I've grown a beard for systemd and Gnome 3 on the desktop, which is not the priority of Debian at this stage.  Debian has a broader vision than 'Linux-Only'.  That is what makes it a truly interesting project but my interest is in the latest and greatest Linux stuff right now and then even Sid lags behind, especially during the freeze.  I could be wrong, but that's my appreciation.
Tried Mint/Debian edition.  It seems you need to juggle with sources.lists a lot in LMDE if you want to keep things rolling and then the Debian Sid way of things makes more sense to me. 

Fedora is a bit underestimated as a distro, I think, especially if you like systemd and Gnome. 
But it's a lot of work to obtain a desktop you can use on a daily basis.   It's by far the best and quickest installer but after the initial install you have to plug in a bunch of other repo's to build a usable desktop.   Then you have to optimize the boot process since it really seems to start anything that can be started.   Disable SELinux and whatnot.  Patch a few packages that were already patched in Arch 6 months ago and never found their way upstream.  Find packages that are not in any repo.
It's quite a list of things to do before you can actually start tinkering or working.  But I've three computers and I really don't see myself going through all this every 6 months since I never managed to upgrade Fedora without a clean install.   Maybe I should look into a Fedora minimal or customized install. 

Arch is a lot of work as well, and not without its flaws, but somehow I got used to doing things the Arch way.  From there every other distro is overly complicated, if you want to find a balance between la dolce tinkering and getting stuff done.   
I think I've finally landed and I hope I can find a couple of pet projects here or a way to contribute.

Last edited by endived (2012-11-06 04:41:18)

Offline

#240 2012-11-06 13:04:05

Antoine
Member
From: Picton Ontario
Registered: 2012-10-11
Posts: 90

Re: why you choose ArchLinux?

Here's what I like about Arch:

[kurosawa ~]$ ls -al /usr/local/bin
total 8
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root 4096 Oct 23 10:30 ./
drwxr-xr-x 11 root root 4096 Oct 23 10:30 ../

And that's the full output. I won't post the output from OS X. OS X is kind of the exact  antithetical opposite of a "rolling" release.  Here's a sad thing ...

[peckinpah ~]$ /usr/bin/rsync --version
rsync  version 2.6.9  protocol version 29
[snip]

... and it doesn't work very well either. That's why I have 100 megs of stuff in /usr/local/bin on that machine. (Some of our income derives from using propietary software that's unavailable for Linux, which is why we use OS X).

I was a Crux user for a while, I even maintained a couple of packages. My first Linux was Red Hat 5.(something) on a strange upgraded 386 that I eventually ran NT on for a while.

Arch is the easiest installation I've ever done. I've installed Slackware and Red Hat and FreeBSD and I can't remember how many others (and Archbang and I failed at Manjaro) and Arch just installs itself almost.

As for the testing repos (per WonderWoofy): the nature of my system requires me to enable them, and I haven't had any problems so far.

Offline

#241 2012-11-10 19:19:01

weareconvo
Member
Registered: 2012-11-09
Posts: 1

Re: why you choose ArchLinux?

Noob here.

My Linux journey was long and convoluted. Sometimes the smallest events lead to the biggest changes, and for me, it was simply that I wanted to make a web app. I did a ton of research, and eventually decided on using the Django framework. I was on Windows at that time, and I went to install Python. I was totally astounded at how difficult it was, and how the tiniest problems were nearly impossible to debug, other than sending a message to a mailing list/forum and praying. So I decided, hey, I used to use Linux at work (programmer at a software company)... I never set it up, but how hard can it be?

And so it begins. My distro hopping journey went like this:

- First, I installed Linux Mint, for no other reason than I went to distrowatch and picked the top one. It worked fine for a month or so, but at some point, I became incredibly annoyed that it automatically installed a search redirector on firefox. So I went to remove it, which was not an easy task, and from there tried to remove as much as I could, only to fail. I then looked at the package list, and realized: All the packages I really want to remove have the word "mint" in them. Maybe I don't really need Mint, when then led me to...

- Ubuntu, which lasted a week, but I got annoyed again at how I didn't really know which packages were safe to remove. I'd remove a few, and things would be fine, then I'd remove another one and somehow brick the machine. So I decided: Wouldn't it be easier to just start small and build up? Let's see...

- Ubuntu Minimal. This fit the bill somewhat, but I tried to install OpenBox on it, and I couldn't get rid of this damn glitchy Splash screen. So I decided, maybe a smaller distro that wasn't so heavily branded...

- TinyCore. However, that was too far in the minimal direction, and I was in way over my head - I had no idea how to get to a point where I even had a package manager. So I searched around for less minimal distros and went to...

- CrunchBang. It wasn't bad. However, their forum community wasn't very nice, and I really didn't like the fact that they relied on debian-stable. I was doing the Python thing again, and found that my Python was only 2.6. And so at last, I came to...

- Arch! It hasn't been easy. But it forced me to learn a TON about how Linux really works - the initial install taught me about bootloaders, debugging problems with dhclient taught me about networking, finally disabling the damn motherboard beep taught me about blacklisting kernel mods, and so many other examples.

I'm now at the point where everything on my system is there because I consciously decided it would be, and that's a great, great feeling that you just don't get with many other Distros, let alone other OS's.

Offline

#242 2012-11-11 14:23:44

carlocci
Member
From: Padova - Italy
Registered: 2008-02-12
Posts: 368

Re: why you choose ArchLinux?

I chose it because of the init scripts, rc.conf and no documentation.
Yeah, I know.

Offline

#243 2012-11-12 08:51:57

lmello
Member
From: Brazil
Registered: 2012-11-06
Posts: 300

Re: why you choose ArchLinux?

I'm a Slacker, but I need another machine to train my IT skills (for obvious reasons).

Why I chose Arch:
- Needed a GNOME 3 desktop which didn't split libraries and header packages (Like Debian or Fedora). I hate that, because you'll eventually need to compile something.
Why I like Arch:
- Vanilla packages
- KISS physolophy like good ol' Slackware
- Awesome package manager
- Vast documentation
- Great community
Things that could improve:
- More 'basic' packages in 'base' and 'base-devel' groups. Things like dialog and wget for instance.

Last edited by lmello (2012-11-12 08:54:34)


Fundamental Axiom of the Universe (aka Murphy's Law): Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong.
First Digital Deduction: Nothing obeys Murphy's Law so well as computers.
Second Digital Deduction: Everything go wrong at least once.
Third Digital Deduction: Things go wrong even when there's absolutely no possibility of anything go wrong.

Offline

#244 2012-11-22 15:35:16

Leios
Member
From: Okinawa, JP
Registered: 2012-03-16
Posts: 73
Website

Re: why you choose ArchLinux?

About 4 years ago, I learned about linux. After a few google searches, I found Arch. That weekend I started my first Arch install. I guess you could say that I initially chose Arch becuase I wanted to learn about everything linux has to offer, and Arch seemed to be the perfect vantage point for that. After installing, though, I started genuinely enjoying Archlinux, particularly the simplicity of the OS.

I guess I was aesthetically attracted to that simplicity.

Offline

#245 2012-11-22 16:00:15

10PinkPanther
Member
From: Croatia
Registered: 2012-11-10
Posts: 374

Re: why you choose ArchLinux?

Becouse I wanted to learn more.I like to tweek,install,re-install and find out how things work.I'm not afraid to break something and then trying to fix it or do everything from schratch.And in my opinion Arch teaches you a lot about Linux system and how it works.

Offline

#246 2012-11-30 11:10:13

_voidStar
Member
Registered: 2012-09-20
Posts: 10

Re: why you choose ArchLinux?

Because it comes with gcc AND g++ and rolling release upgrading. Linux without these is pointless.


***_vS***

Offline

#247 2012-11-30 13:01:49

kazuya
Member
From: Texas
Registered: 2007-09-05
Posts: 24

Re: why you choose ArchLinux?

I choose and run Arch, by means of the Arch-based distros. Arch in itself is a very great base for building a distrolet around. Ridiculously speedy due to the KISS philosopy, bleeding edge applications and packages, minimalistic philosophy to package management, and super great performance versus any other major distro out there, except maybe gentoo-based distro.

I always came back to Arch for these reasons, but I stayed in Arch mainly because of distrolets like Archbang, Manjaro, and Bridge Linux.
These distros truly opened my eyes and I am sure many others like me to the wonderful potential of Arch that we knew always existed.

I can no longer bring myself to use any of the Ubuntu-based or rpm distros any longer. Arch now feels light years ahead in terms of ease of management and use.

Big Nod and thanks to the developers and contributors even though I do not necessarilly agree with everything they do. I can not deny the awesome effort they and the intelligent contributors and users have put towards this wonderful OS.

Thanks.


Opensource; Become a part of it.

Offline

#248 2012-12-03 23:34:00

puntmuts
Member
Registered: 2005-02-22
Posts: 138

Re: why you choose ArchLinux?

This weekend I will migrate my last machine off ArchLinux. As stated earlier I'm sick and tired of the non compatible and poor documented changes that will break my remaining server in a short while. After 8 years it will be no more Arch for me.  Today I had to fix my mailserver again, nothing major, but again caused by updates / changes. If I wanted fixing or changing my machine I change it myself.  I like to prepare and upgrade whenever I have time/means or a purpose to do so, not when some developper of Arch decides I have to change my system.

Been there, done that and got totally fed up with it. I migrated 4 machines already and the last one will be migrated off ArchLinux this weekend. I have better things to do then fixing broken machines caused by updates.  (?)Ubuntu, my last machine will belong to you as well.
Have fun using and fixing your ArchLinux.


Out / Gone
Mirgrating all my machines off ArchLinux . No longer part of the ArchLinux community / users .
Done. Goodbye.

Offline

#249 2012-12-04 01:00:28

ackt1c
Banned
From: Visalia, California
Registered: 2012-10-10
Posts: 241

Re: why you choose ArchLinux?

Extra

Last edited by ackt1c (2022-11-05 15:49:27)

Offline

#250 2012-12-08 11:07:46

beroal
Member
From: Ukraine
Registered: 2009-06-07
Posts: 325
Website

Re: why you choose ArchLinux?

customization


we are not condemned to write ugly code

Offline

Board footer

Powered by FluxBB