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#1 2016-04-27 17:40:36

encelo
Member
From: Oxford, UK
Registered: 2005-02-23
Posts: 96
Website

A rant from an old user

Hello, dear Arch Linux community!

I have been a user for a very long time now, since Wombat was released, and I used to host a repository of binary packages when AUR was still in beta testing.
I remember upgrading my system every day with a 56k modem and yet enjoying the process, I remember when everything was a discovery, when the wiki was small and when most packages were still missing.
During the years I have installed our beloved distro on many computers and I have never had a problem: desktops, laptops, netbooks... even on my ODROID-C1 thanks to ALARM. tongue

In the past I have been a Trusted User for a short time and I worked on PacStats. After more than ten years I am still a daily user and I maintain some AUR packages. <3

Is there any other long-term user willing to share some experiences from the past? wink


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All problems in computer graphics can be solved with a matrix inversion. - James Blinn.

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#2 2016-04-27 18:18:14

headkase
Member
Registered: 2011-12-06
Posts: 1,975

Re: A rant from an old user

No ranting!  Er, wait, registered date.. wink  I'd say you have earned the right to call your thread a "rant" by now.  smile

I've only been with Arch for a few years.  I own a few machines and the one I'm typing on right now is Windows because it's where all my games are.  Arch however is simply the best Linux going.  Back in 2005 I would have been on Ubuntu 5.something, like Hoary Hedgehog I think it was.  That was my first Linux.  smile

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#3 2016-04-27 18:41:42

Rumor
Member
From: Albany, NY
Registered: 2006-07-07
Posts: 638

Re: A rant from an old user

I remember Wombat. Like headkase I started with Hoary Hedgehog and dual booted that and Arch. I think I went full time with Arch right around the time Voodoo was released and have not looked back since. So it's been around 10 years. What tipped the scale for me was no longer having to rebuild the kernel every time nvidia released a new driver. The process under whatever the Ubuntu release of the time was (Breezy?) grew tiresome, while it was usually much simpler with Arch. I wanted an OS that stayed out of my way and didn't insist on giving me options I didn't ask for. That, to me, is what Arch does. That, and I like the community here better.


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#4 2016-05-02 00:17:39

punkrockguy318
Member
From: New Jersey
Registered: 2004-02-15
Posts: 711
Website

Re: A rant from an old user

Hello from another TU!  I remember distro shopping from for a couple years (01 - 04) until I finally made the jump to linux from XP at the time.  I really liked Debian for its package management, but i386 CFLAGS were honestly pretty slow on my relatively modest pentium 4 compared to i686.  And I can't remember how old Debian Woody was at the time, but the stable release was a matter of YEARS old in terms of packages (which seems to be much better now).  I'm not sure the CLFAGS would make as much a difference now, as most applications are more IO-bound (and most everything is just x64 anyway), but it made a noticable difference for me when I tried Arch.  Mandrake and SuSE were nice when their configuration tools worked, but if you had to configure /etc it was sort of a nightmare of in some cases autogenerated config files.  I tried Gentoo once but at the time it was my only PC and I really wanted to get on AIM and it took forever to even compile that far on my machine (I forget if I knew about "naim", a popular ncurses client at the time) so I gave up.  Arch was great in that even though you had to configure things yourself, there was a community of other people also configuring things themselves and good documentation to help you figure things out.  It was a really great learning experience and I've stuck with Arch for a while.  I breifly switched to Ubuntu because I liked the idea of debian-unstable on 6 month release cycles, but came quickly back to arch even way before the unity disaster (mostly from frustration of having to use third party repos to get modern applications or compiling from source or in some cases even having to upgrade to stable+1 just to fix a showstopper bug).

It seems Arch is an even more popular distro then it was when I started and I am really happy to see that.  Arch is better than ever (IMHO) and I don't plan on switching anytime soon.  It's cool to hear other old school stories like OPs

edit:  i haven't looked for an archive but I remember having some "pretty sick packages" in my TUR.  XMMS plugins, early projectM builds, frostwire (limewire client), some gaim plugins (pidgin nowadays), gtk2 themes.  the good stuff big_smile

edit2:  i just checked the "Trusted User" link you posted and I was unaware of this group.  I had a trusted user repository pre-AUR; at the time you had to get people to vouch for you on the mailing lislt and you could essentially just have your own hosted "TUR" repo.  not sure if that's in the wiki any more or if anyone else rememebers

Last edited by punkrockguy318 (2016-05-02 00:24:09)


If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.   1 Corinthians 13:2

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#5 2016-05-02 14:23:55

drcouzelis
Member
From: Connecticut, USA
Registered: 2009-11-09
Posts: 4,092
Website

Re: A rant from an old user

I joined post-logo change, so I haven't been a user terribly long...

Apparently I started using Arch Linux just a few months after Allan actually was breaking stuff, instead of people just blaming him for things. smile

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#6 2016-05-02 22:41:09

Allan
Pacman
From: Brisbane, AU
Registered: 2007-06-09
Posts: 11,365
Website

Re: A rant from an old user

Ah - those were the days...


Why call a repository "testing" if nothing is going to break?

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#7 2016-05-02 22:43:00

Scimmia
Fellow
Registered: 2012-09-01
Posts: 11,463

Re: A rant from an old user

drcouzelis wrote:

Apparently I started using Arch Linux just a few months after Allan actually was breaking stuff, instead of people just blaming him for things. smile

Not sure it's a good idea to tempt fate like this.

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#8 2016-05-07 21:10:26

nomorewindows
Member
Registered: 2010-04-03
Posts: 3,362

Re: A rant from an old user

Allan wrote:

Ah - those were the days...


Why call a repository "testing" if nothing is going to break?

You mean it breaks in testing too?


I may have to CONSOLE you about your usage of ridiculously easy graphical interfaces...
Look ma, no mouse.

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#9 2016-05-08 17:38:16

enrique
Member
Registered: 2005-10-25
Posts: 95
Website

Re: A rant from an old user

Oh yeah, the good old days.

And so long time since a reinstall:

~> head /var/log/pacman.log
[2009-01-17 13:09] installed filesystem (2008.07-1)
[2009-01-17 13:09] installed findutils (4.4.0-1)
[2009-01-17 13:09] installed gawk (3.1.6-2)
[2009-01-17 13:09] installed gdbm (1.8.3-5)
[2009-01-17 13:09] installed gen-init-cpio (2.6.17-3)
[2009-01-17 13:09] installed gettext (0.17-2)
[2009-01-17 13:09] installed pcre (7.8-1)
[2009-01-17 13:09] installed grep (2.5.3-3)

Kind regards, enrique

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#10 2016-05-08 18:17:26

bstaletic
Member
Registered: 2014-02-02
Posts: 658

Re: A rant from an old user

Allan wrote:

Why call a repository "testing" if nothing is going to break?

Well, when I decided to enable [testing] I expected at least one problem every month. Nope... never had a problem to report. If I wasn't running Gentoo I'd ask you to break something for the lols.


Has anyone said anything about tempting faight?

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#11 2016-05-08 18:45:07

Roken
Member
From: South Wales, UK
Registered: 2012-01-16
Posts: 1,251

Re: A rant from an old user

Damn, my earliest Arch install is 2012, but that was my second go. The first was probably a year before. However, with Linux,

Ahem, https://lists.debian.org/debian-68k/200 … 00013.html

EDIT: Damn, just reading that makes me all nostalgic.

EDIT2:I just read the history to that. I really put a lot of work into getting Debian working on my Miggy.

Last edited by Roken (2016-05-08 18:51:45)


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#12 2016-05-08 18:49:45

enrique
Member
Registered: 2005-10-25
Posts: 95
Website

Re: A rant from an old user

@Roken

Well 2002 is cute, but 1998 is old school: https://lists.debian.org/debian-68k/199 … 00014.html smile


Kind regards, enrique

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#13 2016-05-08 18:52:37

Roken
Member
From: South Wales, UK
Registered: 2012-01-16
Posts: 1,251

Re: A rant from an old user

Don;t you love how we live forever smile


Ryzen 5900X 12 core/24 thread - RTX 3090 FE 24 Gb, Asus Prime B450 Plus, 32Gb Corsair DDR4, Cooler Master N300 chassis, 5 HD (1 NvME PCI, 4SSD) + 1 x optical.
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#14 2016-05-08 22:32:31

0x29a
Member
Registered: 2012-09-28
Posts: 101

Re: A rant from an old user

I've got this RAID-5 driven, Arch-Only rig since early 2011, and for last five years I've never ran into any problems with it. It's rock-solid stable.

And I've been installing Linux for my girlfriend parents few weeks ago, since they bought themselves a new rig and didn't wanted to do MS anymore.

Hell - decided to try some new, 2016 LTS releases of various "stable" linux distros, distros for "beginners" ( my gf parents are kinda old-timers, so I couldn't just throw bunch of consoles at'em ), distros that received very good reviews on respected websites and in big, respected magazines.

First, I wanted to see what happened in the land of Red Hat since I was a 14y old kid and my neighbour gave me that 9 or 12-cd's installation media for Shrike. I used it for a while and then ditched it for Debian which worked much better on my killer 800mhz Celeron PC. But enough off-topic, I downloaded new Suse LTS.

After fresh installation, I couldn't even log in. X server segfaulted and died, stupid login manager segfaulted and died, and then kernel panicked after console login.

Well, well... That's user friendly. Ok, so I downloaded new Fedora. And guess what... Didn't even booted up. Flashing num-lock lamp after 5 secs after GRUB.

Okay, so no rpm-based package managers for me... How about something from nice Debian world?

Ubuntu LTS had font rendering so f****d up that I couldn't even make out what's going on during installation phase. Kubuntu had the same problem. But as it went, I booted into new installation, fixed font problems, and then it crashed. It crashed once, it crashed twice, it reloaded X's after launching Firefox, and...

... and then I installed Arch.

No crashes, no slowdowns, no nothing. And my gf's parents are doing very fine with somewhat customised Plasma setup.

Arch: Install once, run for eternity.

@enrique: your log is a testament for that, lol.

Last edited by 0x29a (2019-05-21 12:28:44)

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#15 2016-05-09 08:00:43

enrique
Member
Registered: 2005-10-25
Posts: 95
Website

Re: A rant from an old user

0x29a wrote:

@enrique: your log is a testament for that, lol.

smile

The install is running on its 3.rd motherboard, from AMD+ATI to AMD+Nvidia to Intel+Nvidia, from a RAID-5 (3 discs) to a single SSD. Same procedure every time; mount new disk, rsync, recovery cd, install grub smile

The same system has also been cloned to my HTPC and my laptop. But I think I'm doing a clean install on my next laptop just for the fun of it wink


Kind regards, enrique

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#16 2016-06-22 19:41:51

loserMcloser
Member
From: Canada
Registered: 2004-12-15
Posts: 128

Re: A rant from an old user

I guess I've been using Arch for close to twelve years like you and some of the other "Registered in 2004/2005" users who have posted.

I had been using Slackware for a few years, but the package management at that time was terrible. I tried some other "lightweight" distros (Vector, Puppy, DamnSmall, etc.) and was never really happy with them. Tried Gentoo, didn't like that either. Went back to Skackware and started recompiling packages for i686. What a huge time sink that was. (Ahh, the endless free time of youth.)

I don't remember how exactly I came across Arch, but am I ever glad I did. It was exactly what I was looking for. Been using it on everything ever since --- workstations (home and work), laptops, home file servers, HTPCs, you name it. Eventually did away with the Windows dual boot (except at work, annoyingly I still need that from time to time). Very happy Arch user here, can't imagine using anything else.

Cheers!

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#17 2016-06-23 06:01:19

x33a
Forum Fellow
Registered: 2009-08-15
Posts: 4,587

Re: A rant from an old user

This thread should be renamed "Arch Veterans United".

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#18 2016-07-07 11:41:20

Mardukas
Banned
From: Lithuania
Registered: 2007-08-05
Posts: 121

Re: A rant from an old user

Started using ArchLinux in 2007 (before that used Debian Sid for a year, and before that - Mandrake distro that came with a KDE tutorial book - my first encounter with Linux). Was using it on desktop until late 2010, when I learned C# and realized I wanted to be a professional C# developer (before C# I was on the fence whether to be sysadmin or developer, because working with Java, Python, C++ and PHP (God...) wasn't all that fun) - so I've embraced the Microsoft realm with Windows 7, Visual Studio, .NET, SQL Server. And it's nice. Stable platform that just works, unlike hipster infested Node bullshit ecosystem with myriards of sheit like left-pad delivered when you type npm install, with C# not being corporate bore and having Linq, some functional programming functionality and is constantly improved (with 7th version getting pattern matching aww yiss), good generics, dynamic objects, etc.

Now, after six years, I'm getting bored of Microsoft stack. Tried Rust - too verbose syntax and too irrelevant, Go - really primitive, good for burned out developers who are fed up with clever hacks and expressive language abuse from their younger peers, but I'm 26 years old, not for me. Ruby, JavaScript - well, dynamic languages are just not my cup of tea.

I was about to switch to Scala (or Kotlin), but Microsoft delivers in it's dev department - it open sourced .NET. Jetbrains working on multiplatform IDE - https://www.jetbrains.com/rider . So it's time to go back to Unix! Bought Macbook Pro (because I'm not a teen anymore, and Linux on desktop is and always will be good only for hobbyists, and with wife now I have better things to do than manage my desktop, plus I'm using it for work, so reliability is a must too) and working with .NET Core, with PostgreSQL, nginx (wayyy nicer than IIS), Redis, ElasticSearch (well we used ES in Microsoft world too), etc.

I also bought a nice hobby server - i7 6700 @ 3,4 GHz with 64 GB RAM and 250GB SSD RAID-1 array (yeah, not a Xeon, so without ECC RAM, and SSDs are SATA3 consumer oriented Crucials, but it's for personal use, good luck getting proper server hardware atleast as half as powerful for the same price). And for server OS I've put my old Linux love on it - Arch.

Some things have changed - instead of rc.d we have systemctl (systemd), most notably. But pacman is here with newest packages and AUR supplies everything else (https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/dotnet-cli/ smile), while still adhering to KISS principle.

Last edited by Mardukas (2016-07-07 11:44:29)

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#19 2016-07-07 12:13:55

drcouzelis
Member
From: Connecticut, USA
Registered: 2009-11-09
Posts: 4,092
Website

Re: A rant from an old user

Mardukas, I think you've successfully offended every operating system and every programming language in a single post! big_smile

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#20 2016-07-07 14:04:21

mrunion
Member
From: Jonesborough, TN
Registered: 2007-01-26
Posts: 1,938
Website

Re: A rant from an old user

drcouzelis wrote:

Mardukas, I think you've successfully offended every operating system and every programming language in a single post! big_smile

Ha!

I think the "I'm 26" == "not young" sentiment is hilarious! No offense, Mardukas, but I'm 46 -- and I started with Windows 3.0 when programming, and I have never experienced the "stability" you claim Microsoft to have. Always having to reboot a server for a random problem. Always having to work around junk they do. Their file system getting in the way all the time. And who compiles a website?!? Java at least got it right when they did that. Microsoft just makes you jump through hoops to deal with things in "compiled" websites. Give me a scripting language for a website any day. At least I can fix the issues with an SSH connection and VI.

But I am an "old-school" developer who would prefer C/C++ to C#. (Note: I think C# is an excellent language.) So I have a very different outlook on things!

Last edited by mrunion (2016-07-07 14:04:44)


Matt

"It is very difficult to educate the educated."

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#21 2016-07-07 14:16:34

Mardukas
Banned
From: Lithuania
Registered: 2007-08-05
Posts: 121

Re: A rant from an old user

Never had to reboot a Windows Server outside of updates, but then again, I haven't used old Windows 3.0 era servers, lol.

Their OS is stable, and tools are also stable. NuGet is the package manager for ages, same libs, meanwhile javascript lands changes every week or so.

And we do not use C# for "websites", it's React and sometimes Angular.

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#22 2016-07-07 17:06:16

bstaletic
Member
Registered: 2014-02-02
Posts: 658

Re: A rant from an old user

You guys make it sound like the language one prefers is somehow dependant on one's age. I'm 22 and, if given the choise, opt for C/C++. On the other hand, I'm not interested in web development, quite the opposite, give me an (8bit) MCU, a datasheet and I'm sold. big_smile I'm also amazed what some people can do in assebly.

How needs TFLOPS of processing power anyway!

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#23 2016-07-07 17:33:52

Meskarune
Member
From: Helsinki, Finland
Registered: 2009-03-21
Posts: 361
Website

Re: A rant from an old user

Its been crazy how the user base has just exploded. I remember when the irc channels and forums only have a few hundred users, and now we get more new people all the time.


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#24 2016-07-08 04:21:47

x33a
Forum Fellow
Registered: 2009-08-15
Posts: 4,587

Re: A rant from an old user

After seeing the last few posts on this thread, this thread should be renamed as "Arch Veterans Divided" instead of united tongue

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#25 2016-07-21 01:10:27

hotsauce
Member
From: Ann Arbor
Registered: 2005-12-28
Posts: 125

Re: A rant from an old user

I first played around with linux using my housemate's Red Hat computer, but got my real full-time start with Mandrake. They had some kind of naming debacle, and the distro was always kind of bad, so I distro-hopped for a year or two (stayed on Vector linux for a while). I finally settled on arch around 2005. IIRC, the main reason for me back then was that Pacman "just worked".

Then, I went to grad school and no longer had any free time to fiddle with computers, so I got a mac for a few years. Again, it "just worked". Now I'm going full circle, back to Arch (on the main desktop machine, at least).

EDIT: and here I am resurrecting a dead thread for no reason...

Last edited by hotsauce (2016-07-21 01:42:37)

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