Considering Arch

frank_einstien · 2006-08-09 19:36:18

Hi

Im looking forward to switching from Kororaa XGL. Its actually a great distro.

I would like a few clarifications?

1. how fast can I get working? In terms of installing X,KDE 3.5 and open-office? What about XGL?

2. The package manager- Do I have to maintain a bloated database (like gentoo) and a slow-as-continent-drift package manager but which can automatically fetch and update dependencies or like the one in Vector ( based on slackware) which uses binaries, and fast and efficient? Yes I know im nitpicking, but just doing weekly updates took hours in my part of the world.

Do i need to bust my head trying to carry a pcakage /bw two computers?
And also do I have to mess with each package just to get it working?

3. Speed- Hows bootup speeds? GUI response?

4. System resources- How does it fare with 256 MB RAM? how much space do I have to set for / partition?

5. Does it utilize Intel IGP with correct drivers. Yeah saw the xf86-video-intel-i810 but I had (till now) bad luck with it...

Thanks for being patient to read all this.

Waiting for reply

phrakture · 2006-08-09 19:49:40

frank_einstien wrote:

1. how fast can I get working? In terms of installing X,KDE 3.5 and open-office? What about XGL?

This depends on skill level. I like to use cactus's verbage and say "Archlinux is a meta-distribution". That is to say, arch is what you make it. It is trivial to do:

pacman -S kde

and install all of KDE, but configuring X is probably the biggest hurdle.
Openoffice is equally as easy.

frank_einstien wrote:

2. The package manager- Do I have to maintain a bloated database (like gentoo) and a slow-as-continent-drift package manager but which can automatically fetch and update dependencies or like the one in Vector ( based on slackware) which uses binaries, and fast and efficient?

This sounds more like a biased statement about the crappiness of given package managers, than a question about Arch, but I'll answer what I think you meant. Archlinux uses 'pacman'. It is a binary package manager, that installs all dependancies and whatnot, and can easilly update your system (pacman -Syu).

frank_einstien wrote:

3. Speed- Hows bootup speeds? GUI response?

Depends on how much is running. I can boot into X (ratpoison) in under 20 seconds. But that's fairly minimal.

frank_einstien wrote:

4. System resources- How does it fare with 256 MB RAM? how much space do I have to set for / partition?

Again, like the answers to 1 and 3, arch is what you make it. If you run one or two apps, it'll be fine, but running 400 things at once will cause problems. Size, also, is a factor of what you install.
Using the "ftp" install, arch installs the very bare minimum of what is needed to get a working system. The rest is up to you to install. It can be as small as 300MB (I think) or as large as 10GB.

frank_einstien wrote:

5. Does it utilize Intel IGP with correct drivers. Yeah saw the xf86-video-intel-i810 but I had (till now) bad luck with it...

I'll relegate this question to anyone who actually runs an i810. I know many have it working, but don't know the specifics.

tomk · 2006-08-09 21:36:55

Phrak's got most of your stuff there - I'll pick up these:

frank_einstien wrote:

Do i need to bust my head trying to carry a pcakage /bw two computers?
And also do I have to mess with each package just to get it working?

I'm not sure what you mean by carrying packages, but if it's what I think you mean, you can download packages on one Arch machine and install them on another with no problems, unless they are hardware-specific, and the hardware concerned is different on the two machines. How you get the package from one machine to the other is entirely up to you, but I would recommend a network.
You don't have to "mess" with the packages, but in most cases, you do have to configure the application to get it working - but I expect you already know that.

phrakture wrote:

I'll relegate this question to anyone who actually runs an i810.

Umm.... delegate, maybe?

ScriptDevil · 2006-08-10 03:56:22

Configuring X need not be a problem. u can do a hwd -x after pacman -S hwd.
This will use vesa.
If u want the intel specific driver, then pacman -S xf86-video-intel-i810
and merely substitute it and the motherboard name in /etc/xorg.conf

knappen · 2006-08-10 09:11:21

Regarding bootup time and speed in general, Arch outperforms anything that I have tried.

Try it, it is definately worth the effort.

DeusExLinux · 2006-08-11 02:54:22

The i810 driver worked for me without a hitch.. the xf86-video-intel-i810 driver worked like a dream (was much easier to get working than my bloody ATI driver)

majikstreet · 2006-08-13 16:07:17

(My first post on these forums!)
I have arch on a spare computer with only 128mb ram, and it runs pretty fast. Faster than you'd expect. I timed arch booting up on that computer and compared it to my main computer which is running ubuntu (which has more memory, a faster processor, bigger hard drive, etc) and arch was faster... I have the times somewhere....

EDIT:
I found the times.... (These times on are on two different computers!)
Ubuntu: 1 min 11 sec 21 milisec
Arch: 0 min 58 sec 72 milisec

Also, I am able to have a useful computer while only using a little bit of space with arch. My arch computer is using less than 2gb and has like 5 different window managers (one being xfce), firefox, gaim, and some other stuff.. I still could fit a lot more.. (That computer has a 4gb hd)

Jarsto · 2006-08-14 07:33:30

I'll limit my response to points three and four.

3. It's the fastest booting linux distro I have so far discovered, and one of the most responsive. It feels very light and quick to me, but that's just a subjective impression of course.

4. System resources, unless you want to do something quite heavy 256 MB of RAM should do the job. I've had arch, with X and KDE, boot into approximately 50 MB of RAM. As far as the size of / goes, assuming you don't have a seperate /usr , /opt , or /var but do have a seperate /home you might be able to get by with 5 or 6 GB (depending on how much you install) but for a normal system I wouldn't feel really comfortably with much less than 10 GB myself. If you have a (relatively) small partition be sure to run "pacman -S -cc" to clear pacman's entire cache of packages regularly.

jaboua · 2006-08-14 12:22:09

I don't feel comfortable with small root partitions either

And the speed... It's not subjective, it's a fact

frank_einstien · 2006-08-19 06:29:57

Hi

Sorry for the delay...

Im defintely downloading. Im right now in the FTP link .../0.72/ Which image would you reccomend?

Thanks

Gustavo · 2006-08-19 06:49:15

Get base via bittorrent:

http://www.archlinux.org/static/torrent … se.torrent

majikstreet · 2006-08-19 17:50:22

Another plus of arch: The developers are active on the forums (and probably on IRC too!)

mr.MikyMaus · 2006-08-19 23:19:42

Hi!

Maybe a little late, but still...:)

Right now I'm running Arch on an Asus A3FC laptop with Intel 945GM graphics and I use the i810 driver without any problem. The only issue may be with some exotic display resolutions. My LCD is 1400x1050 but the card's bios does not support it natively. It is however no problem to patch the bios the way you need, using, in my case, the 915resolution utility (which can be found in AUR).

Have fun, Arch's definitely a good choice;)

-Miky.

frank_einstien · 2006-08-24 01:58:30

Hi

I am right now downloading arch (at ~10 kbps average) now it will be over soon. If KDE, X, OOffice are as large as i made out to be, I would like to download them separately. I saw packages in community, extra, testing and stuff, now which one is 1-stable and 2-latest of all the packages of the above three?

Thanks

Snowman · 2006-08-24 02:37:04

Most stable: current, extra, community
Latest: testing.
Only critical/ important packages go in testing first. The other packages go directly in extra.
I would recommend only using current, extra, community packages for now. You could always enable the testing repo once your system will be setup.

frank_einstien · 2006-08-24 09:29:08

Hi

Just saw the excellent wiki. The list of packages for KDE is here http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Des … E_Packages . I hope I could download all this stuff by myself.

Where do I place the tarballs of the packages so that pacman picks it up?

And can I mount a CD (or something) to "this" directory so I can save space?

thanks

Sigi · 2006-08-24 11:12:02

frank_einstien wrote:

Hi
Just saw the excellent wiki. The list of packages for KDE is here http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Des … E_Packages . I hope I could download all this stuff by myself.

You don't have to download them one by one.
A simple

pacman -Sy kde

will install all packages in the group kde. If there are already downloaded packages somewhere in your system simply move them to "/var/cache/pacman/pkg/" (if I remember correct)

frank_einstien wrote:

Where do I place the tarballs of the packages so that pacman picks it up?
And can I mount a CD (or something) to "this" directory so I can save space?
thanks

Have a look at the file "/etc/pacman.conf" in which you are able to define where pacman should search for packages. ("remote and local repositories")

Arch Linux

#1 2006-08-09 19:36:18

Considering Arch

#2 2006-08-09 19:49:40

Re: Considering Arch

#3 2006-08-09 21:36:55

Re: Considering Arch

#4 2006-08-10 03:56:22

Re: Considering Arch

#5 2006-08-10 09:11:21

Re: Considering Arch

#6 2006-08-11 02:54:22

Re: Considering Arch

#7 2006-08-13 16:07:17

Re: Considering Arch

#8 2006-08-14 07:33:30

Re: Considering Arch

#9 2006-08-14 12:22:09

Re: Considering Arch

#10 2006-08-19 06:29:57

Re: Considering Arch

#11 2006-08-19 06:49:15

Re: Considering Arch

#12 2006-08-19 17:50:22

Re: Considering Arch

#13 2006-08-19 23:19:42

Re: Considering Arch

#14 2006-08-24 01:58:30

Re: Considering Arch

#15 2006-08-24 02:37:04

Re: Considering Arch

#16 2006-08-24 09:29:08

Re: Considering Arch

#17 2006-08-24 11:12:02

Re: Considering Arch

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