Was there a surge in Arch Linux users this week?

whol · 2004-02-12 04:21:25

The osnews.com article about AL seemed to be quite popular. There also seems to be growing rivalries between Slackware and AL, and between Gentoo and AL. It's nice to be the underdawg!

I was curious if the latest PR has had a resulting surge in new AL users? Or is it not possible to tell?

thx!

Xentac · 2004-02-12 05:44:58

Yeah, when you notice more people on the forum and IRC... and when our bandwidth usage goes way up. That's how you can tell.

jlowell · 2004-02-12 05:53:42

Hi whol,

You know, I think it'd be pretty hard to say. I participated over there and there were two responses that interested me, one public, the other private. One Gentoo user was interested in how we set optimization flags for package builds. Once I explained he said he'd download and try Arch. Another Gentoo user contacted me privately and, knowing that I'd indicated that I was a former Gentoo user, he asked me to compare Arch and Gentoo for him. I tried my best to do that and I hope he'll give us a look but unless these guys pop up here somehow and identify themselves, I'll never know if they really followed up. Sixty-three years of living has convinced me utterly that many people, particularly immature people, will simply tell you what they think you want to hear and you'll never hear from them again. One hopes, nevertheless, to have a positive impact.

As to the rivalries, I do think that many Slack users there felt threatened by the review. There was just too much baying by them about their distro for their statements to be anything but attempts at self-assurance it seemed to me. The Gentoo crowd seemed a lot like the newly rich, self assured but in many instances insufficiently exposed beyond Gentoo to justify that attitude. When the blush is off the rose, they well may wind up here.

Regards.

jlowell

d3c3it · 2004-02-12 12:48:54

im a gentoo user *dont flame me yet, let me explain * ive got a couple of machines at home, 2gentoo, 1 xp *moving to linux when i get time* now 1 the boxes is a laptop, krappy 1.1ghz celery, my first gentoo box. takes me about 22hrs to set the whole thing up how i like X, kernel etc. Which, once done, fine, everything works. but when it comes to updates then it gets silly i got to a point where my laptop is on for 12hrs just updating and im not doing any work. it just cudnt cut compiling that much source so this is what brought me to arch.

i had tried it many moon ago, i broke it. couldnt even get it to boot, _but_ it wasnt arch's fault, i was a noob and i messed it up *i went back to redhat at that point* so the other day i read that osnews article and i thought id give it another blast, i went and downloaded the base cd last nite, burned it then installed it, 20mins later arch was done. 20mins? your joking. ive yet to install anything yet and the config files were abit confusing at first, but ive got used to it now and iam really impressed, its not leaving my laptop now. its so easy to update but with the flexabilty that ive come to like. so there you go it won me over.
i also like the fact of submitting packages, it seems alot more "friendilier" than submitting ebuilds in gentoo, if i ever get time i may even give that ago.

scottro · 2004-02-12 13:28:11

Do it now before we get really big. O/S news isn't slashdot, but in a way, I guess Arch has almost been slashdotted.

Having used Slack and Gentoo, I'm always surprised there aren't more comparisons to Debian, which seems the most similar, at least as far as package management--I sometimes type pacman -Sy in Deb and apt-get in Arch.

Scott

sarah31 · 2004-02-12 16:09:15

there are probably alot of people checking it out but as for how much larger the "community" got is any one's guess. whether arch can keep those it gains is another story. t would be good if it could gain some people with a wide variety of skill so they can help the dev team. i am afraid though that alot of the people gained this week will move off later to the next trendy distro.

d3c3it · 2004-02-15 01:34:37

well ive had a couple of days with arch now, today ive spent all day playing with abs and im afried to admit that you now have a perm user. abs is fanastic. i dont know how you guys have done it but stuff seems to compile alot faster now compared on other distros. Thanks very much.

sarah31 · 2004-02-15 07:31:05

d3c3it wrote:

well ive had a couple of days with arch now, today ive spent all day playing with abs and im afried to admit that you now have a perm user. abs is fanastic. i dont know how you guys have done it but stuff seems to compile alot faster now compared on other distros. Thanks very much.

thats what having conservative CFLAGS/CXXFLAGS does. why overload the boat when it floats better with less people in it?

d3c3it · 2004-02-15 11:14:06

all i have to say is "yay"
btw is there any webcam software for capturing and uploading?
if not ill give making a package with abs for camorama a go *this is a thing i would like to do*

jlowell · 2004-02-15 11:24:23

d3c3it,

I've set C & CXX flags in /etc/makepkg.conf for "-march=pentium4 -03 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer" and have experienced absolutely nothing at all in the way of trouble since I installed last Summer. By all means feel free to be more enterprizing than using the defaults settings if you'd care to.

jlowell

d3c3it · 2004-02-15 12:41:57

cool ill take a look at that, but atm i think ill keep it standard its very speedy

ive also another question, is there any how to's on writing a PKGMAKE file? ive got as far as extracting and compiling but how do i set up the installing of the files and obtaining the md5 of the package as well?

Egil.B · 2004-02-15 12:46:04

I have switched from Gentoo to Arch, because of the OSnews article. 8)
Time will tell if it'll be permanent or temporary

Xentac · 2004-02-15 16:57:16

Check /var/abs/PKGBUILD.proto. That's a basic prototype. Usually it's better to use DESTDIR in the final make install line, instead of prefix.... but it's less supported.

jlowell · 2004-02-15 17:16:23

d3c3it,

Additionally, if memory serves, our standard documentation goes into some of the requirements if you're planning to submit packages. That, too, can be instructive. Welcome!

jlowell

jlowell · 2004-02-15 17:35:08

Egil,

Welcome to Arch!

Yes, I quit Gentoo for good about a month ago. While I'd always had Arch in place on my machines, I'd had Gentoo in place longer and considered it my principal distro. That's over now and I've never regretted giving Arch first chair. You can do a lot with Arch that might not be immediately apparent; there are even both unofficial and official scripts available that automate source rebuilds. While I've not used them extensively, as a former Gentoo user, you may be interested in considering them.

Again, welcome.

jlowell

Arch Linux

#1 2004-02-12 04:21:25

Was there a surge in Arch Linux users this week?

#2 2004-02-12 05:44:58

Re: Was there a surge in Arch Linux users this week?

#3 2004-02-12 05:53:42

Re: Was there a surge in Arch Linux users this week?

#4 2004-02-12 12:48:54

Re: Was there a surge in Arch Linux users this week?

#5 2004-02-12 13:28:11

Re: Was there a surge in Arch Linux users this week?

#6 2004-02-12 16:09:15

Re: Was there a surge in Arch Linux users this week?

#7 2004-02-15 01:34:37

Re: Was there a surge in Arch Linux users this week?

#8 2004-02-15 07:31:05

Re: Was there a surge in Arch Linux users this week?

#9 2004-02-15 11:14:06

Re: Was there a surge in Arch Linux users this week?

#10 2004-02-15 11:24:23

Re: Was there a surge in Arch Linux users this week?

#11 2004-02-15 12:41:57

Re: Was there a surge in Arch Linux users this week?

#12 2004-02-15 12:46:04

Re: Was there a surge in Arch Linux users this week?

#13 2004-02-15 16:57:16

Re: Was there a surge in Arch Linux users this week?

#14 2004-02-15 17:16:23

Re: Was there a surge in Arch Linux users this week?

#15 2004-02-15 17:35:08

Re: Was there a surge in Arch Linux users this week?

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