Slackware users on Arch

sash · 2005-11-28 03:34:08

We've had a fair number of posts comparing Arch to other distros (Gentoo and Debian come to mind from recent threads).

Here is a discussion from the Slackware forum on LinuxQuestions, where Slack users voice their opinion on Arch Linux:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions … did=385992

What is interesting is that quite a few of those users kind of see Arch as a better alternative.

Sorry if this is a repost.

stonecrest · 2005-11-28 04:05:58

That was interesting, thanks for posting sash.

tomk · 2005-11-28 12:38:15

Haven't read it all yet - don't know if I will. I got this far:

Arch is excellent, except for <snip> its "I am soooo cool" community.

Are we really? 8) 8) 8) 8)

arooaroo · 2005-11-28 12:43:06

As it happens, I am soooo cool.

atze · 2005-11-28 14:16:08

well also came form slack (and vectorlinux). I like Arch alot more that slackware, It has alot of speed, It's configuration files are really a beauty and pacman never failt me.
People how like slack because of its packagemanament... i really don't understand them. I believe (and encounterd) the slackware system to be more of a dependency problem unless you really like compiling, well what's the fun of compiling anyway.... As far as i know it does'nt really speed up my systemen (not faster that arch..)

sash · 2005-11-28 15:37:25

atze wrote:

well also came form slack (and vectorlinux).

I have some Vector background also. Used it on a server at my Universtity and on my 2 desktops at home. When I started visiting this forum, I was kind of surprised to see some Vector users here. Now if I could just get Arch going on my K6-2...

atze · 2005-11-28 15:40:42

sash wrote:

atze wrote:
well also came form slack (and vectorlinux).
I have some Vector background also. Used it on a server at my Universtity and on my 2 desktops at home. When I started visiting this forum, I was kind of surprised to see some Vector users here. Now if I could just get Arch going on my K6-2...

Well Arch is a little more compicated that Vector but it is at least as fast and more stable and more bugfree (i found vector to be kinda buggy).

ozar · 2005-11-28 15:46:59

sash wrote:

What is interesting is that quite a few of those users kind of see Arch as a better alternative.

I prefer Arch and have so for the last eleven months, but if it were to ever go away forever ( :shock: ), I'd definitely be a reborn Slacker.

Spider.007 · 2005-11-28 19:04:34

I am a slackware>arch user as well; pacman is definitely the major 'pro' for Arch. Using the sysupgrade switch really felt a lot better then searching for package updates thru repositories myself. Arch is as clean, or maybe even cleaner then Slackware

deficite · 2005-11-28 21:57:08

There were some good comments in there, but.....jeez, some people really need to lighten up. It's not like people saying they like Arch better than Slack is going to make Pat stop doing Slackware. I think some people are sick of their distros and don't want to admit it because that'd mean them learning something new.

Oh, and to those posts dissing the Arch message board: in the summer some of us don't have much to do so we end up taking it out on the board

shadowhand · 2005-11-29 01:02:00

I have never been a Slackware user, and never intend to be, but it was an interesting read.

Personally, I'm a Gentoo/Lunar refugee. I never used Slack because of the lack of a native package manager, which I consider to be absolutely necessary for any modern distro. It's strange to think that if pacman didn't exist, I never would have considered Arch (and now I wouldn't consider anything else!)

zba78 · 2005-11-29 12:59:59

ozar wrote:

sash wrote:
What is interesting is that quite a few of those users kind of see Arch as a better alternative.
I prefer Arch and have so for the last eleven months, but if it were to ever go away forever ( :shock: ), I'd definitely be a reborn Slacker.

My sentiments exactly. I came from slack to arch and what kept me here was pacman.

It'd be nice if patrick himself allowed slapt-get to be a native part of slack (and of course make new package resolve dependancies via it)

stavrosg · 2005-11-29 15:26:00

I am a slack refugee, too (the monthly hops through FC3 and Ubuntu do not count . What made me leave was the dependency resolution inexistence, and the small scope of provided packages.
if I were to install something else, I'd go for Debian or Ubuntu, because of apt more than anything, though I'd miss the i686 packages

Neuro · 2005-12-04 21:13:16

Well, I've also came from slack. I made the mov somewhere in February, I think.

I wanted a good distro for the desktop. You know, the latest stuff, the i686 optimisation and such. The first thing that struck me was pacman. Under Slack I used the usual installpkg/upgradepkg tools, and didn't use 3rd party repos, I compiled everything myself using checkinstall. While sometimes this worked just fine, some things required dependencies that I also needed to compile by hand.

I was pleasantly suprised by pacman, the PKGBUILDs and the abs system. I still compile a lot of apps myself, including the kernel, but most of things I'd need tocompile just for the sake of beign able to use them (not to fine-tune), are in the current/extra repos. It just all seems to work so well together

But (there is always one, isn't there? ), while Arch is really superb for a desktop, I just wouldn't trust it on a server. On my home server I run a really stripped down Slackware install with a custom grsec kernel (2.6, I really don't understand why Pat didn't make the move yet ). And that's for one fine reason: even Slackware's -current branch is rock solid. Although the packages are the latest ones, they are tested. In server use, one really shouldn't stick to the bleeding edge, but to things that are tested and work. But that's my own opinion.

Gullible Jones · 2005-12-04 21:55:51

Now there's something I agree with, to some extent. In Arch, some packages (e.g. udev, gcc, firefox) are tested pretty well before being sent to Current or Extra. But others (e.g. xine-lib, as shown by the recent fumble with it) are not really tested quite enough. I suppose the problem is really the size of Arch's community: we might not have enough people for adequate testing of all the packages in Testing and Unstable.

All that said, I've barely encountered any bugs at all in Current, and only one showstopper in Extra, so in the stability department Arch would seem to fare suprizingly well.

Snowman · 2005-12-04 22:35:03

Gullible Jones wrote:

Now there's something I agree with, to some extent. In Arch, some packages (e.g. udev, gcc, firefox) are tested pretty well before being sent to Current or Extra. But others (e.g. xine-lib, as shown by the recent fumble with it) are not really tested quite enough.

That's because only crucial/important packages goes to testing. A lot of packages goes to current/extra without going in testing first.

Gullible Jones wrote:

I suppose the problem is really the size of Arch's community: we might not have enough people for adequate testing of all the packages in Testing and Unstable.

Agree. For testing to be efficient, you need a lot of people using testing. The users with limited computer knowledge don't use testing for fear of breaking their system and not being able to fix it. And several users who have the knowledge/confidence to use testing (like myself) are TU so they can't use testing as the packages in the community repo needs to be compiled against the current/extra repo. It doesn't leave a lot of users using the testing repo.

Gullible Jones · 2005-12-04 23:35:28

Well, the solution here is clearly to start promoting Arch as a desktop/workstation OS. If we get a few hundred more users, we might be able to open up a niche for ourselves in the server market.

T-Dawg · 2005-12-05 01:06:41

For me the things i dislike about Arch Linux is the mods at the forums. They have a very holier-than-thou attitude.

I'm offended...

Gullible Jones · 2005-12-05 01:15:10

Huh? I've barely ever seen a mod cop a holier-than-thou attitude...

(And if you think the mods are rude here, you're clueless - not to be holier-than-thou, of course. Seriously, check out the Gentoo forums, and then tell me that the mods here are rude.)

afu · 2005-12-06 05:08:04

They have a very holier-than-thou attitude.

That's why I run both. Because I can. Arch on my desktop, Slack on my laptop. And I have to deal with RedHat at work on the servers. But that really isn't so bad.

Just kidding about the holy thing. Lots more people know more than I do.

joeSVK · 2005-12-24 11:04:31

thats my opinion. Rock stable slackware on servers is very comfortable to use and trust. But on desktop its Slack little bit borring, compilation etc... But very stable too!!! Anyway, iam on Arch only a few weeks, but i like him... maybe is good for server too, i dont now...

TPJ · 2005-12-25 07:20:23

I'm just one of those Slackware refugees.

I really liked Slackware (well - I still like it!) - it was simple, easy to use, stable, and it's philosophy was good ("Slackware - all that you need, nothing you don't.").

But the picture wasn't so pretty. The first problem was that I'm working on machines with P3 or P4 processors. While working on Slackware I was always thinking "What am I paying for, if the distro I use doesn't make use of it?". I like to compile some things by myself, but on Slackware I found it useless. Why should I bother with compile anything for my architecture, it all the rest of my system (all the shared libraries!) was compiled for the old i486?

Therefore I started to look for some alternatives. First I took a look at source-based distros, like Gentoo, Lunar and even LFS. But they weren't what I needed. I needed a distro, that would allow me to install binary packages and that would allow me to easily build such a packages from source. And this distro should be still easy to configure and to install. I definitely didn't want to bother with reading some long handbook.

And then someone told me about Arch. I was told, that Arch was a distro similar to Slackware (because it was simple), but compiled for i686. I tried it and I found it a very good distro for me.

All is compiled for i686 (and from my experience I can say that it's enough; I tried to compile for P3 or P4, but I wasn't able to notice any significant difference in performance), many binary packages are available (for now I have found anything I needed) and building my own binary packages is very easy with abs. The system is easy to install and to configure. And it works much faster than my old Slack used to work.

And there's such a wonderful map on the Arch Wiki!

postlogic · 2005-12-25 11:46:05

I came from Slackware as well. I seriously like Slackware, and would probably not have tried it hadn't slapt-get borked my system, and zaxx recommend it to me. So I tried it and here I am.

The fact that everything is controlled through text-based configuration, and not some central control panel is extremely appealing for my part. I hate feeling like I don't have control of my own system, like I tend to do when I've tried those graphical thingies giving you "complete and utter control through one simple GUI". *cringe*

And pacman... mmmm.. pacman.. Frankly, I got so tired of compiling everything (with checkinstall, of course) when I didn't run slapt-get.

Not to mention how most packages aren't necessarily bleeding edge, but pretty up to date, having undergone thorough testing first. People tend to look at bleeding edge like it's a bad thing. In this case it isn't. When stuff is moved to current, I can be sure it'll work the way it's supposed to, unless I'm a bonehead or my system is borked.

Arch is my favourite distro. It's fast, lightweight, and easy to use (IMHO). Thanks!

Arch Linux

#1 2005-11-28 03:34:08

Slackware users on Arch

#2 2005-11-28 04:05:58

Re: Slackware users on Arch

#3 2005-11-28 12:38:15

Re: Slackware users on Arch

#4 2005-11-28 12:43:06

Re: Slackware users on Arch

#5 2005-11-28 14:16:08

Re: Slackware users on Arch

#6 2005-11-28 15:37:25

Re: Slackware users on Arch

#7 2005-11-28 15:40:42

Re: Slackware users on Arch

#8 2005-11-28 15:46:59

Re: Slackware users on Arch

#9 2005-11-28 19:04:34

Re: Slackware users on Arch

#10 2005-11-28 21:57:08

Re: Slackware users on Arch

#11 2005-11-29 01:02:00

Re: Slackware users on Arch

#12 2005-11-29 12:59:59

Re: Slackware users on Arch

#13 2005-11-29 15:26:00

Re: Slackware users on Arch

#14 2005-12-04 21:13:16

Re: Slackware users on Arch

#15 2005-12-04 21:55:51

Re: Slackware users on Arch

#16 2005-12-04 22:35:03

Re: Slackware users on Arch

#17 2005-12-04 23:35:28

Re: Slackware users on Arch

#18 2005-12-05 01:06:41

Re: Slackware users on Arch

#19 2005-12-05 01:15:10

Re: Slackware users on Arch

#20 2005-12-06 05:08:04

Re: Slackware users on Arch

#21 2005-12-24 11:04:31

Re: Slackware users on Arch

#22 2005-12-25 07:20:23

Re: Slackware users on Arch

#23 2005-12-25 11:46:05

Re: Slackware users on Arch

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