first impression by a new user

garba · 2006-12-22 22:52:43

First thing, hello to all! As you should have already guessed by now I am a new proud archlinux user, and as such I'd like to share my impression with the fellow archers . Simply put, this distro has what it takes to become one of the best linux distro out there for advanced users. It's simple, elegant, and comes with a solid package base. Its package system is wonderful because it skips all the automation craze that plagues the deb and rpm worlds. Baking and installing your own packages from source is both easy and convenient without all the useless overhead that comes with debs and rpms. On the other hand, there's one thing I am not very comfortable with: the release cycle. I seem to understand arch's current release is in constant flux, and all packages from the extra, testing, community etc repos are built against the current branch. I think things should be tidied up a little here, perhaps a release cycle like debian's would be easier to keep up with. Besides these minor flaws, I believe most linux distros should learn from archlinux when it comes to no-nonsense system management. I'd also like to hear from those of you who deployed archlinux in a production environment and what their experience has been like so far, do you think the base system is a solid ground to build upon or we should give it some more time to consolidate a little? Well that's it, see you on the forums! Regards, andre

detto · 2006-12-22 23:03:22

Heyho, welcome aboard!

The rolling release system is s.th. special and a wonderful thing with arch. you are always up2date and things are mostly kept stable. Well, its the only distro i used that combined both criterias this well!
IIRC pacman3 (which is coming soon) will have a feature where you can specify a time like (for example:) 3 days. then only packages get upgraded that are 3 days in repositories already and are pretty safe to use because most other users that wont use this time delay future have eventually reported a bug or s.th. that might be wrong with a package.

...as you can see german users are here too, (my english sux pretty well :? ) ....

garba · 2006-12-22 23:30:24

hello detto thx for your swift reply yes i see your point but as i've already pointed out in my previous post this might be an hinderance if you are planning to deploy arch on production machines... and that's what makes debian a good candidate in that respect

chilebiker · 2006-12-23 00:09:24

in my short experience with arch i found out that if you stick to the current, extra and community repos, you're pretty fine. i never had serious problems so far.

i love the rolling system. as mentioned before, that way you're always up to date.

mucknert · 2006-12-23 08:36:54

There have been some threads about Arch on production machines (e.g. web-servers). Although it is possible because Arch comes with almost all packages needed, few recommend it because of the rolling release system and the breakage, that might occur because of that. I believe the beauty in Arch is, that it can be made a server distro, alongside a lot of other things, because it gives you the freedom to. But nethertheless it is not it's primary role, at least not in my opinion. I, for myself, would not use it on a server just because I find that a production server has different requirements than my home-server or my desktop. I don't need to be up-to-date on a production-server, concerning version-numbers but I need to be very up-to-date concerning security-updates. That's a thing Arch can not offer with pacman at the moment.

That is not a bad thing but it makes it kinda hard to deploy it at servers, as you said. One could change that by making "stable" repositories which also stay the same in version-numbers and only incooperate patches to fix security holes but that would take off the point of KISS and of bleeding edge. It would also create of unneeded overhead in work and management of how repositories are dealt with. In other words: Arch is not supposed to fill this need but it can if you don't mind the work. A release cycle like Debian has is a great feature of Debian but it does not quite fit into the world of Arch.

Okay, enough of this. Hope you enjoy Arch and contribute to the Community!

garba · 2006-12-23 09:41:47

I've been a debian user for years and as far as ease of management goes, i don't think debian is that good. The problem with debian is, as I have already pointed out in my first post, that it is slowly turning (actually, it has already) automation craze where the package mantainer simply has to show off how good at bash scripting he is. Just look at the postinst scripts for example. This means that if you steer away from the intended layout, you'll end up with a system which is very hard to maintain. In my opinion, for an experienced user a "binary" package should just contain static data. That is, configuration files, post installation scripts, and dynamic data SHOULD not be part of the package, it should be up to the admin to take care of that. And this is something I can do when pakcaging my software through makepkg. I think this is a point which should be kept in consideration when deploying a distro for advanced users: the package manager should just be a mean to reduce deployment times and keep track of installed packages. On the other hand, a security fix will require you to rebuild the package. Well, pick your poison...

noamsml · 2006-12-24 06:06:41

Personally, I wouldn't deploy Arch as a production distro for two reasons: (three, if you count the fact that I don't actually manage any production environment )

1. Arch has no "stable" branch, and security updates are mixed in with functionality updates.

2. Arch still has some stability issues. I guess this is less critical if an update breaks X.org, but it might be painful if it breaks, say, apache. Granted, pacman3 seems to solve this problem quite elegantly.

That being said, I love Arch's simplicity and the lack of small annoyances (like -dev packages) that always drove me nuts in debian and Ubuntu. I also like makepkg very much.

Acid7711 · 2006-12-24 06:42:01

Yes, makepkg is very nice, however sometimes I wish all those builds were available within a separate pacman repository so you wouldn't have to searching around for a 3ed party app to search and make things easy, or go hand making directories, moving files, solving the dependencies (which most of the time are only available inside AUR repository thus having to repeat the same thing multiple times in multiple levels).

Don't get me wrong, I love Arch and I love pacman, but I do feel it would be muuuuuch easier if the AUR repository was somehow incorporated into pacman in such a way that it wouldn't use it by default since it's not technically "stable". Maybe my ideas and thoughts are flawed, but that's just my feelings on the matter. This viewpoint is coming from someone who is an ex-gentoo user and is used to everything being in a single easy to access repository/tool.

Snarkout · 2006-12-24 17:03:47

Acid7711 wrote:

Yes, makepkg is very nice, however sometimes I wish all those builds were available within a separate pacman repository so you wouldn't have to searching around for a 3ed party app to search and make things easy, or go hand making directories, moving files, solving the dependencies (which most of the time are only available inside AUR repository thus having to repeat the same thing multiple times in multiple levels).

Don't get me wrong, I love Arch and I love pacman, but I do feel it would be muuuuuch easier if the AUR repository was somehow incorporated into pacman in such a way that it wouldn't use it by default since it's not technically "stable". Maybe my ideas and thoughts are flawed, but that's just my feelings on the matter. This viewpoint is coming from someone who is an ex-gentoo user and is used to everything being in a single easy to access repository/tool.

While I imagine this is what you mean by a 3rd party app, there are a few very good AUR automation tools available. I use aurbuild and think it does an admirable job. That being said, sure, it would be easier for me as an end-user if pacman had an option that would allow me to pull from the AUR or point it at a PKGBUILD. The lack of that functionality doesn't bother me at all though.

rev · 2006-12-24 17:31:04

Snarkout wrote:

...it would be easier for me as an end-user if pacman had an option that would allow me to pull from the AUR or point it at a PKGBUILD. The lack of that functionality doesn't bother me at all though.

And speaking for myself, the said lack of functionality may push new Arch users off a little. Nothing serious, of course, but this feature would be useful for sure.

RedShift · 2006-12-24 18:10:57

http://www.archlinux.org/pipermail/arch … 12765.html

Acid7711 · 2006-12-24 21:01:15

Snarkout wrote:

Acid7711 wrote:
Yes, makepkg is very nice, however sometimes I wish all those builds were available within a separate pacman repository so you wouldn't have to searching around for a 3ed party app to search and make things easy, or go hand making directories, moving files, solving the dependencies (which most of the time are only available inside AUR repository thus having to repeat the same thing multiple times in multiple levels).

Don't get me wrong, I love Arch and I love pacman, but I do feel it would be muuuuuch easier if the AUR repository was somehow incorporated into pacman in such a way that it wouldn't use it by default since it's not technically "stable". Maybe my ideas and thoughts are flawed, but that's just my feelings on the matter. This viewpoint is coming from someone who is an ex-gentoo user and is used to everything being in a single easy to access repository/tool.
While I imagine this is what you mean by a 3rd party app, there are a few very good AUR automation tools available. I use aurbuild and think it does an admirable job. That being said, sure, it would be easier for me as an end-user if pacman had an option that would allow me to pull from the AUR or point it at a PKGBUILD. The lack of that functionality doesn't bother me at all though.

Yup, that's exactly what I meant by 3ed party app. I've tried both qpkg and aurbuild. Now, I don't have any problem going into abs and doing it by hand, but sometimes the multiple levels thing gets a little annoying. Things built on others that are only located inside AUR repository as well. that's about my only gripe with it.

But yes, if pacman somehow merged in the abilities of aurbuild, I would be THRILLED with Arch. Right now, it's replaced every other distro, and I've tried them all. I love it! But that, I think, would pretty much complete pacman and make it extremely powerful.

test1000 · 2006-12-24 23:10:07

yaourt 'implements' aurbuild.

Acid7711 · 2006-12-25 07:16:45

test1000 wrote:

yaourt 'implements' aurbuild.

Again, only another 3ed party app. I'm talking about direct pacman integration.

mucknert · 2006-12-25 10:39:17

Acid7711 wrote:

test1000 wrote:
yaourt 'implements' aurbuild.
Again, only another 3ed party app. I'm talking about direct pacman integration.

ln -s /usr/bin/yaourt /usr/bin/pacman

Keep the applications simple and do NOT try to fit everything including kitchen sink into one app! Use one tool for one job! That being said I'd say: include aurbuild into current and make it an official part of the distro but do not cramp everything into one programm!

Romashka · 2006-12-25 12:07:53

noamsml wrote:

Personally, I wouldn't deploy Arch as a production distro for two reasons: (three, if you count the fact that I don't actually manage any production environment )
1. Arch has no "stable" branch, and security updates are mixed in with functionality updates.
2. Arch still has some stability issues. I guess this is less critical if an update breaks X.org, but it might be painful if it breaks, say, apache. Granted, pacman3 seems to solve this problem quite elegantly.

I hate Debian's "stable" branch. Building web hosting server on it is a PITA
(because there need to be features too - I had to use dotdeb.org packages for PHP, Apache etc.)

The only thing Arch misses is "Security Team" that would fix 0-day security issues very quickly.

About stability: after doing large update in Debian it didn't boot after this. That was the last time I used Debian on server.
Now I use Testing + Unstable even on server (of course I do pacman -Syu manually) - and no problems.

P.S.: no offense to Debian here, it was just an example.

garba · 2006-12-25 20:36:43

Debian has come to a point where i can no longer understand what kind of audience it's targeted at. What I hate most about it is its postinst-preinst scripts and all that crap. Have you ever realized how many nasty scripts get run as root behind your back as you apt-get around? It's insane, it's my solid belief that a package should be nothing but a convenient way to get a prebuilt piece of sofware, and that's it. The amount of effort it takes to build a debian package is ridicolous. Not to mention the discrepancies with the upstream version because of all the pacthing that the debian devs seem to enjoy so much. Here on arch everything is built straight from the source with makepkg, a simple, no non-sense script which takes another no non-sense chunk of data (PKGBUILD) and that's it. And lo and behold, we have a perfectly working system. This is what I call a thinig of beauty when it comes to engineering: simplicity. I don't want to turn this post into a rant against debian, but after trying out arch I finally realized how miserable debian packaging policy is.

My suggestion for pacman would be providing an option to strip from the package configuration files and templates for variable data, and most of all, an option to at least overview the install script before it's run (any idea where i should post a spec for community review?). Another thing this distro needs is IMHO an overall repository overhaul (better naming schemes and consistency for example) and a DVD, "snapshotted" release including the "extra" packages. Besides this, I really don't know what else I could ask for, I am gonna stay here for a loooong time to come

Romashka · 2006-12-25 22:00:38

garba wrote:

My suggestion for pacman would be providing an option to strip from the package configuration files and templates for variable data,

This is not a good idea, IMO. makepkg already strips info and doc files by default, stripping config files is a bit overkill.

garba wrote:

and most of all, an option to at least overview the install script before it's run (any idea where i should post a spec for community review?).

This is vital option for aurbuild/qpkg/yaourt - utilities that help to install packages from AUR (those in Unsupported repo), but is not very useful for packages from official repos (maintained by devs) and Community (maintained by TUs - Trusted Users) , because these packages can be trusted (if user has no paranoia).

garba wrote:

Another thing this distro needs is IMHO an overall repository overhaul (better naming schemes and consistency for example)

Not a complete overhaul, but I agree that some things can be improved.

garba wrote:

and a DVD, "snapshotted" release including the "extra" packages.

votes++

garba wrote:

Besides this, I really don't know what else I could ask for, I am gonna stay here for a loooong time to come

Arch Linux

#1 2006-12-22 22:52:43

first impression by a new user

#2 2006-12-22 23:03:22

Re: first impression by a new user

#3 2006-12-22 23:30:24

Re: first impression by a new user

#4 2006-12-23 00:09:24

Re: first impression by a new user

#5 2006-12-23 08:36:54

Re: first impression by a new user

#6 2006-12-23 09:41:47

Re: first impression by a new user

#7 2006-12-24 06:06:41

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#8 2006-12-24 06:42:01

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#9 2006-12-24 17:03:47

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#10 2006-12-24 17:31:04

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#11 2006-12-24 18:10:57

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#12 2006-12-24 21:01:15

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#13 2006-12-24 23:10:07

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#14 2006-12-25 07:16:45

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#15 2006-12-25 10:39:17

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#16 2006-12-25 12:07:53

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#17 2006-12-25 20:36:43

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