why you choose ArchLinux?

Trilby · 2020-08-03 15:28:03

I'm not sure I follow your point. That was a purely technical discussion. I don't know enough about it to know whether his position on that technical point holds water or not, but by all means disagree*. I find a lot of ESR's personal/political views disturbing, but as far as I know he's never tried to write them into a software license. Once people started pushing political issues in software license, it is fair game to counter with opposing political views. Software license should have remained technical matters as the bug report you just linked to did.

* I do think it seems silly to not handle bad input better, but I can see the reasoning behind not expecting a bit of software to behave poorly when you give it the wrong input: garbage in, garbage out. There is no existing software that couldn't be deliberately abused into some sort of seg fault or failure. The solution isn't more complex code, sometimes it really is to tell the users to stop being asshats.

EDIT: I just renamed a video file to "test.pdf" and tried opening it in mupdf. That was not handled gracefully at all. I don't think mupdf is liable for that nor does it need to be patched with a test early in it's execution that ammounts to `if (user == idiot) exit(1);`.

Last edited by Trilby (2020-08-03 15:30:54)

eschwartz · 2020-08-03 15:55:33

OTOH, gif2png is sometimes run as a webapp accepting arbitrary input from anyone on the internet. So you'd sort of hope it doesn't cause serious issues when doing so.

esr decided to establish this "policy" AFAICT after getting annoyed that people reported bugs, and responded, essentially, "I hate the thought of caring about such bugs so much I will add special code to the program to prevent *any* segfault from ever being reported to me, ever".

This is a bit less understandable than mupdf reporting 867 lines of

error: invalid key in dict
warning: name is too long
error: invalid key in dict
warning: name is too long
warning: ... repeated 8 times...

followed by

error: no objects found
mupdf: error: cannot open document

and exiting 1. Which AFAIK is not trapping segfaults, merely parsing the file and correctly deducing it cannot be parsed.

(Note: mupdf does fix bugs reported by google's oss-fuzz project.)

Trilby · 2020-08-03 16:14:37

Ok, so you disagree with him on technical grounds about a technical issue. And I think you have a good point. I still don't follow how or if there's a connection to the preceeding points. If you are trying to posit that he's become lazy as a coder or software maintainer, I'd not agree with the conclusion, but you've entered a valid bit of evidence for such a claim. But again, I just don't see the relevance of that to the preceeding discussion.

Last edited by Trilby (2020-08-03 16:15:10)

ondoho · 2020-08-04 07:17:10

Trilby wrote:

My claim was (and still is) that the article itself did not prove anything or even provide sound evidence. It established the position of the author and as such functions as a shibboleth to declare which side of an issue the author is on. But position statements that say "the evidence is available, do your own resurch" are not arguments and cannot prove anything. The only evidence against ESR presented in that article is that he used colorful language.

IMO linking to the messages that form the body of the topic in question is sound enough; how could it get sounder if that's what the article is all about.
If the linked original messages disappeared you might correctly state that the article is worthless.

If you think the author is "siding with the PC folk" you are sorely mistaken.
Yes, an opinion is expressed, but not that opinion.
I have that on good authority.

PS: I can see why you aren't running your own blog, no article could ever meet your own standards.

Awebb · 2020-08-04 08:33:22

ondoho wrote:

PS: I can see why you aren't running your own blog, no article could ever meet your own standards.

And there we go. The article pisses me off, too. This has nothing to do with Trilby's standards. I just tend to ignore opinion pieces and simply click on the sources and see for myself. It could have been a headline, a collection of links and some lorem ipsum, would have looked less hissy.

EDIT: Ah, I see, it's your blog. Explains your defensive behaviour.

Last edited by Awebb (2020-08-04 08:35:24)

schard · 2020-08-04 09:59:15

I again risk being the noodge here, but what again have the last two pages contributed to the topic of why you all chose Arch Linux?

Alad · 2020-08-04 11:19:12

Clearly they choose Arch Linux to argument on the internet. (I learned English that way... beats any language course )

Buddlespit · 2020-08-04 11:29:39

schard wrote:

I again risk being the noodge here, but what again have the last two pages contributed to the topic of why you all chose Arch Linux?

I chose Arch Linux to watch the senior forum personnel blow off steam, wag their dicks at each other and learn a language.

VoDo · 2020-08-04 11:33:28

I chose it because I wanted to pass the forum sing in test what was harder then Arch/macOS dualboot Installation!

Awebb · 2020-08-04 11:56:59

Buddlespit knows good entertainment!

2ManyDogs · 2020-08-04 12:04:26

Can we stay on topic please? I'd rather not split out all the blog argument posts (and the snarky posts about the blog argument).

I chose Arch because I was trying everything. I kept it because of the wiki and the forum. Sometimes I'm not so sure about the forum.

Alad · 2020-08-04 21:39:21

On topic... I chose Arch because a guy on a Linux forum told me to "just do it". I kept it because of the little islands of community members that cooperated without getting in each other's way.

stephenboston · 2020-09-29 08:58:55

I was tired of Ubuntu and alarmed by a foreboding that they will move the entire distro to snaps. Their fetish for the mobile experience is an eye-roll. So I tried manjaro and found it full of snappy stuff and other crud so...

I heard that installing Arch can be an instructive challenge. And that is so. I am finding that.

Pellaeon · 2020-09-29 16:22:19

I wasn't a fan of all the preinstalled crap that comes with most other distros, and a friend recommended Arch so I jumped ship.

DocS · 2020-11-04 22:46:33

Reason 1 is I explicitly did not want a "user-friendly" system that tries to make it as easy as possible to switch from Windows/Mac to Linux. Actually I've made bad experiences with that approach. I want to learn Linux from the ground up, and I found that a "user-friendly" system may actually be detrimental to that.

Reason 2 is that I want things minimal and I hate bloat. A further incentive for this is that I consciously bought a cheap-S Celeron laptop to run it on. I love the approach that there's nothing until you choose to install it. I love that it doesn't even have a text editor until I choose to install one -- not to mention a whole desktop environment.

Reason 3 is about choosing it over other minimal distros. There are many minimal distros around, but I'm still a noob and there's a great lot of resources and community to rely on if I go with Arch. I don't believe it's a great idea to go for an obscure distro that only a hundred people use if I'm new to the whole thing.

Reason 4 is in hindsight, because I learned about it after choosing it: the philosophy of pragmatism. I'm no ideologue and I don't care if my firmware is "non-free". I just want my hardware to work. I believe I get where the FSF is coming from and I respect their approach, but I'm not a friend of making it an unnecessarily painful experience. It's about freedom of choice, right? If I follow the ideological route and I can't use this and I'm not allowed to use that, chances are I'll find myself in an environment that's just as restrictive as the closed systems I'm trying to leave behind. Apologies if I'm getting this all wrong, I'm still a total noob, that's just my current understanding.

icar · 2020-11-04 23:05:37

Unevitably, you eventually end up encountering issues in your system that require you to handle. With any distribution with the configuration and package selection automated, you depend on some ancient blog post to solve it for you. On Arch, on the other hand, since you chose to install those packages, you chose to modify that configuration file and you were reading the last pacman's output while updating, you find yourself being, at the very least, capable of identifying the source of your problem. Most of the times, the solution is trivial. Other times, you know enough about your system that you can come here and with the help of others, troubleshoot it.

This is Arch. It's the way I like my computer. And I love to be up to date.

zpg443 · 2020-11-04 23:43:02

I migrated from Windows to Debian to Arch, and so glad I did.

Arch is simply the most useful, flexible and best-documented distro you can find for Linux.

And when including AUR, it is just about the most comprehensive array of free software known to mankind.

I would not even think of changing to another distro...and KDE works like a charm on it.

Pellaeon · 2020-11-06 04:04:23

I'd used Ubuntu a fair bit in the past, but it came with a whole bunch of packages I didn't want or need and it felt bloated and locked in. Arch lets me take control of exactly what is in the system from the start, and requires you to configure everything to your liking, which is quite important to me.

Also, the wiki is awesome, and works all the better when used with the native platform.

Mr Green · 2020-11-17 16:26:52

I was running Mandrake at the time and wanted to learn more about Linux and someone suggested Archlinux. Joined forums and managed to get up and running with some help. Been using Arch ever since.

Why would anyone use anything else?

Trilby · 2020-11-17 16:30:27

Do you use arch, or archbang? Is the head of the archbang project not even using it?

GaKu999 · 2020-11-17 23:18:34

Trilby wrote:

Do you use arch, or archbang? Is the head of the archbang project not even using it?

This poses an interesting question.
When I install Arch, usually I follow the guide, can't imagine an installer script and if I made one, it would be plain vanilla (yet for making a live USB I only sent a BTRFS snapshot to it, then changed /etc)

I guess it depends on what receives changes, or the usage of some script that alter the system in such a way that is just plain un-compatible with what Arch is supossed to be. (to be made by the user, not by a third-party script, or borked UTube guide)

I guess as long as it's one faithfully installed Arch in it's own system, it will still be Arch, not matter how many things you change, even if you somehow switch the init system, or replace glibc with musl (if the time comes when it's doable in a sane way)

...

Yet what the heck I know about what defines a distro, I may be plain wrong about everything said so far.
The name is sort-of catchy tho, "ArchBang, it makes you computer go BANG"

aralkis · 2020-11-21 01:35:00

I chose arch because I wanted to be intimate with my own system. And since I am "hardware challanged", it helps to keep overhead to a minimum. I like the model of rolling update. Arch makes it easy to have an up to date system, and that is wonderful. And I have very few problems with upgrades.

Archlinux documentaiton is top notch, and never fail to get through. Also, I love the package management system. It is super easy to make your own PKGBUILD and install any source built app properly. Even if some AUR package is outdated, I can often update it myself and don't have to wait someone to do so. So if I want some bleeding-edge feature in one of my apps or apply a patch to solve some bug, I can build and maintain a package myself.

But if I had a super machine, I would probably go gentoo, TBH. But archlinux is a good compromise.

GSMiller · 2020-11-27 20:04:11

I chose Arch because it requires intelligence and skills.
It was an easy install, all my hardware was supported.
The wiki rules.
I want to use a distro created and maintained by like-minded people, as well as the community. Bleeding edge software, bleeding edge minds.

owain · 2020-11-27 20:45:20

stephenboston wrote:

I was tired of Ubuntu and alarmed by a foreboding that they will move the entire distro to snaps. Their fetish for the mobile experience is an eye-roll. So I tried manjaro and found it full of snappy stuff and other crud so...
I heard that installing Arch can be an instructive challenge. And that is so. I am finding that.

Interesting: after various abortive dabblings, my first time actually using Linux as my main OS was with Ubuntu, around the time of the "100 paper cuts" project. (Of course, I've just scared myself, by checking how long ago that was.)

The paper cuts just kept on coming, though, and trying to diagnose problems was fraught with lots of eager but naive "open a terminal window and cut-and-paste this:" stuff.

The number of times I'd find someone linking to the Arch wiki increased enough to pique my interest. So I investigated.

murffatksig · 2020-11-28 00:07:25

At this point, I'm not sure I can remember my exact reasons for choosing Arch. I think it was a combination of Pacman and learning. Pacman was cool from the start, and installing Arch on many different systems has taught me more about Linux than any book ever could/did.

Arch Linux

#726 2020-08-03 15:28:03

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#727 2020-08-03 15:55:33

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#728 2020-08-03 16:14:37

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#729 2020-08-04 07:17:10

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#730 2020-08-04 08:33:22

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#732 2020-08-04 11:19:12

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#735 2020-08-04 11:56:59

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#736 2020-08-04 12:04:26

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#737 2020-08-04 21:39:21

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#738 2020-09-29 08:58:55

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#739 2020-09-29 16:22:19

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#740 2020-11-04 22:46:33

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#741 2020-11-04 23:05:37

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#742 2020-11-04 23:43:02

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#743 2020-11-06 04:04:23

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#744 2020-11-17 16:26:52

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#745 2020-11-17 16:30:27

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#746 2020-11-17 23:18:34

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#747 2020-11-21 01:35:00

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#748 2020-11-27 20:04:11

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#749 2020-11-27 20:45:20

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#750 2020-11-28 00:07:25

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