Why the HELL did I ever try any other distro?

RecoveringGentooholic · 2007-02-13 13:12:41

Let me preface my comments by saying I was, at one point, a gentoo fanboy. That is, until I discovered I could get a system up and running that's just as fast as a gentoo box in oh, a third of the time.

Long live Arch.

dreckslord · 2007-02-13 13:15:05

cool if you are so fast plz help me to solve my problem long live u!

Adams · 2007-02-13 13:23:17

I was a gentoo fan too. Everything was very nice except those compiling times.. Argh.. After some time a friend of mine, told me about Arch..

It was love from the first startup .

And now I'm a happy Arch user.

RecoveringGentooholic · 2007-02-13 13:23:50

dreckslord wrote:

cool if you are so fast plz help me to solve my problem long live u!

In all honesty, I learned a LOT in gentoo about how my little HP nc4000 works (i.e. hardware/modules/etc..), so the setup of arch was rather easy.

I used the pre-set hard drive configuration, loaded the OS, added acpi stuff, installed X and put openbox with conky and adesklets on it. Right now, my Ram usage is 65MB of 1 GB available and my processor's averaging about 6% usage. Even while browsing in opera and installing stuff in a terminal, the highest I've ever seen it get was about 20%.

When compared to windoze, that's pretty powerful for such an old system.

Echo · 2007-02-13 14:27:10

I was an ex-gentoo'er too. It was the first distro that allowed me to stop chasing problems with dependencies. I just thought the compile times was a mandatory trade off. I still like gentoo...The first time I installed Arch I had the gentoo handbook right beside me.

With that said, the Arch Dev's do a great job and you'll find the forum helpful if you ever need it.

powerthunder · 2007-02-13 14:27:14

I was using Gentoo too but because of the long compile times, I switched to ArchLinux, and I love it.

Dieter@be · 2007-02-13 15:51:04

I have 2 gentoo boxes and 1 arch, i love them both, i don't think i could abandon either one of them

arch has some advantages over gentoo, but gentoo has advantages over arch too, the systems are both great and have many common elements but a different approaches on some aspects, not better or worse, just different, and more or less suited for certain wishes

daedalusman · 2007-02-13 16:25:04

I use to use Ubuntu linux, which is a good distro for a beginner, but not for me. Being somewhat of a nerd and wanting more power over my system and installed files I learned of arch. Once I finally got arch installed and up and running everything now works so much better in arch than things did in ubuntu and have can have a truly minimal setup. I will never use another distro again. Arch just kicks too much ass. Thanks to all the devs and TU's and the forum community that makes arch such a damn good distro.

archuser · 2007-02-13 17:28:40

I've used mandrake 9 and 10, fedora core 5, ubuntu dapper and even tried centos and mepis.

I have to tell ya that arch is actually easier to use and configure, more configurable, and faster than any of those on my system.

(a lot of it due to the great developers and package selection we have)

Last edited by archuser (2007-02-13 17:29:34)

jb · 2007-02-13 17:43:45

Something tells me there won't be much disagreement in this thread...

Anyway, I thought Gentoo (1.something, before the version number was YEAR.PointRelease) was alright; I was just irritated by a few too many in the community while asking for help. Not to say they were all like that, but they stand out the most amongst the group.

codemac · 2007-02-13 19:03:15

I forgot to set up speedstepping for my laptop on gentoo my freshman year of college....

I had to send in my laptop to get my cpu, motherboard, and hd replaced as they had melted a little.

Then I looked around for another distro

Mikko777 · 2007-02-13 20:25:29

jb wrote:

Something tells me there won't be much disagreement in this thread...

I've used gentoo too! sucked alot. Then I found arch and it sucked less. But then i found this uber great distro called Ubuntu! Ubuntu just works and no need to fiddle stupid xorg configs! I never try another distro again!

(sorry just had to)

chaosgeisterchen · 2007-02-13 20:34:28

Mikko777 wrote:

jb wrote:
Something tells me there won't be much disagreement in this thread...
I've used gentoo too! sucked alot. Then I found arch and it sucked less. But then i found this uber great distro called Ubuntu! Ubuntu just works and no need to fiddle stupid xorg configs! I never try another distro again!
(sorry just had to)

Preferences differ (SCNR).

heathen · 2007-02-13 21:34:36

I started with ubuntu... it worked well for me to make the transition. But, once I started to play with configuring things I realized that ubuntu wasnt going to work for me. So, I started distro hopping, FC5 & 6, PCLinuxOS, slackware, gentoo. Then I was pointed arch at the suggestion of a friend. I like the simplistic approach and once you figure out what's going on, the configuration comes pretty easily.. now i just have to remember all my command line crap...

RecoveringGentooholic · 2007-02-14 12:25:01

heathen wrote:

I started with ubuntu... it worked well for me to make the transition. But, once I started to play with configuring things I realized that ubuntu wasnt going to work for me. So, I started distro hopping, FC5 & 6, PCLinuxOS, slackware, gentoo. Then I was pointed arch at the suggestion of a friend. I like the simplistic approach and once you figure out what's going on, the configuration comes pretty easily.. now i just have to remember all my command line crap...

The command line is THE biggest selling point of any Linux system to me. You can do so much with it. When I used Gentoo, I even scripted my entire install. Try doing that with Winblows.

jb · 2007-02-14 17:31:37

RecoveringGentooholic wrote:

The command line is THE biggest selling point of any Linux system to me. You can do so much with it. When I used Gentoo, I even scripted my entire install. Try doing that with Winblows.

There are installation scripts for windows; I know because we used one at work that would connect to the domain, select a windows NT version, and it would install it across the network, bypassing all the questions it normally would.

But, yes they are very uncommon. At least MS acknowledged the lack of a CLI as a problem and have attempted to correct it.

phrakture · 2007-02-14 18:08:38

jb wrote:

At least MS acknowledged the lack of a CLI as a problem and have attempted to correct it.

powershell is terrible compared to something like bash. The features are cool, but the usability is terrible.

As for the CLI part: I read an article talking about the "rebirth" of the command line, that made a very good point.

Compare:

$ grep "some text" some.file
google site:somesite.com "some text"

$ wtf RTFM
google define:rtfm

$ units feet meters
google feet in meters

Search engines are becoming command lines.

codemac · 2007-02-14 21:55:45

Not to mention in Vista you press the windows key, type the program name, and press enter! Non-suck launcher in windows, built in!

archuser · 2007-02-14 22:39:43

codemac wrote:

Not to mention in Vista you press the windows key, type the program name, and press enter! Non-suck launcher in windows, built in!

All you had to do in XP was press Windows+R to get the run dialog and type in the program name there.

edit: oops, I forgot to mention that I take a little extra step to get that functionality. Simple create a folder called 'shortcuts' on your C: drive and create shortcuts for your programs in there. Then put the folder into the path.

Last edited by archuser (2007-02-14 22:50:20)

jb · 2007-02-15 00:46:09

phrakture wrote:

powershell is terrible compared to something like bash. The features are cool, but the usability is terrible.

Hence, I said "attempted."

.:B:. · 2007-02-15 07:10:26

Mikko777 wrote:

jb wrote:
Something tells me there won't be much disagreement in this thread...
I've used gentoo too! sucked alot. Then I found arch and it sucked less. But then i found this uber great distro called Ubuntu! Ubuntu just works and no need to fiddle stupid xorg configs! I never try another distro again!
(sorry just had to)

1. Ubuntu might work out the box but you'll have to do a lot of fiddling if it doesn't; if it does, then you don't learn anything
2. Arch is by far one of the most powerful distros - it does require you to do a lot of work, but it rewards you (read: you learn a lot). In that respect it's identical to Slack, which gives you everything you need, but does not do everything for you.
I have set up Arch on my laptop, on my desktop, and on my server (three completely different configurations cause they, obviously, all do different stuff). It didn't take my long - at all. With Ubuntu, you spend a full hour on installing/fetching upgrades from the internet/etc. Then you still have to set up an awful lot to polish the distro.

I have installed Gentoo - in my i-want-to-try-every-single-linux-distro period - and I did get it up and running, but that's a one time effort only - it's not worth the time you spend on it. Plus the whole procedure with unmasking stuff in emerge...

Last edited by B (2007-02-15 07:14:06)

dienadel · 2007-02-15 07:29:19

OK,

My first try of linux was moreless in 1997. I tried RH and Caldera ;-) They survived in my PC about 1 week. It seemed to be a big virus :-)

Then, in 2000-2001, i bought my actual PC, and installed XP. But it was horribly slow, so, hating MS, tried Linux again, with RH.

But, again, the same problem: i had the sensation that i a lot of sofware was running or installed, and, didn't know why. That mixture of GTK and QT made me crazy. I prefer seeing how the things are made, before, seeing the whole thing, and discovering, how it was made.

So, i discovered a thing that sounded fine: Linux from scracth (LFS).

I made love with LFS ;-) for about 3 years. I learned what software is, how it works, the dependencies. But, not a the first try. Once made a complete system, i discovered new things that make the system better. At this time, i tried Gentoo, just to try, but didn't like. I prefered making myself the system.

After 4 or 5 system "construction", morelees November 2005, a new version of LFS came up, so i began to make it. When finished LFS, and before starting BLFS, i realizaed, that i was tired of compiling.

So, i decided, that time of LFS was finished, as what i was looking for when i knew about it, was perfectly made (thanks LFS). In that moment, a knew exactly what i want:

- Binary, no more compilation!! :-)
- Good Package system
- Actual software, but only using oficial repos
- Minimal base system (one LFS). After that, i'll install only what i want
- minimal editing of configuration files to make it work

So, before installing distros, i started to read the manuals of every distribution: gentoo (has binary package), RH, Fedora, Suse, Ubuntu... but all of them had things that i didn't like. Until i found someone in the net talking about Arch. I read the user manual and thought: this isn't possible, is what i want, exactly!!

So, i installed the base system, rebooted, made a "pacman -S kde", copied my xorg.conf from LFS to Arch, and... perfect!!!. I only had need of editing 3 or 4 conf files to have my system as i want!!

And, here i follow :-)

bye

NoOneImportant · 2007-02-15 07:34:24

I've tried many distro's. I first started with Ubuntu, then Fedora, then Open SuSe, and Gentoo which I have had horrible experiences with (damn CHOST!) and I eventually found myself back at Ubuntu. Then three days ago when I had given up on my latest attempt to get Gentoo working with a desktop, I heard and read about Arch so I downloaded the ISO for the latest version and began trying to install Arch yesterday. With Arch I have a fully-functioning desktop and almost everything configured just the way I like it without any of the bloat that I got from Ubuntu (e.g server apps, bluetooth support, rhtyhmbox, totem: crap I am not going to be using). So far so good.

Last edited by NoOneImportant (2007-02-15 07:36:16)

RaisedFist · 2007-02-15 08:11:07

I watched this topic and all the stories seem to be almost the same. Mine is also like one of yours.

I found out about Linux in 1998. It was RedHat 5.2 or something like this. We had it on the highschool's server. There I used for the first time pine and BitchX Then started to learn ipchains and more inner workings of Linux.
Then I installed Debian as desktop on my home computer. That was the time when I experimented a lot. Gnome, KDE (1,2), enlightenment... good times old times.
After some years I tried Slackware, Gentoo, then Fedora (only once) and then I was stuck to Ubuntu for the last 2 years. But I started to feel like I don't like it. I don't like all the package hell and the slowliness in everything, so I remembered reading an excellent review of Arch on osnews.com and decided to give it a try. I'm almost sure that I will never go back to other distros. Arch is all I need. Simple, fast... Best.

iphitus · 2007-02-15 11:26:26

So the uh point of this thread, is different distros suit different people, hardware and workloads. Yah? Yah.

Arch Linux

#1 2007-02-13 13:12:41

Why the HELL did I ever try any other distro?

#2 2007-02-13 13:15:05

Re: Why the HELL did I ever try any other distro?

#3 2007-02-13 13:23:17

Re: Why the HELL did I ever try any other distro?

#4 2007-02-13 13:23:50

Re: Why the HELL did I ever try any other distro?

#5 2007-02-13 14:27:10

Re: Why the HELL did I ever try any other distro?

#6 2007-02-13 14:27:14

Re: Why the HELL did I ever try any other distro?

#7 2007-02-13 15:51:04

Re: Why the HELL did I ever try any other distro?

#8 2007-02-13 16:25:04

Re: Why the HELL did I ever try any other distro?

#9 2007-02-13 17:28:40

Re: Why the HELL did I ever try any other distro?

#10 2007-02-13 17:43:45

Re: Why the HELL did I ever try any other distro?

#11 2007-02-13 19:03:15

Re: Why the HELL did I ever try any other distro?

#12 2007-02-13 20:25:29

Re: Why the HELL did I ever try any other distro?

#13 2007-02-13 20:34:28

Re: Why the HELL did I ever try any other distro?

#14 2007-02-13 21:34:36

Re: Why the HELL did I ever try any other distro?

#15 2007-02-14 12:25:01

Re: Why the HELL did I ever try any other distro?

#16 2007-02-14 17:31:37

Re: Why the HELL did I ever try any other distro?

#17 2007-02-14 18:08:38

Re: Why the HELL did I ever try any other distro?

#18 2007-02-14 21:55:45

Re: Why the HELL did I ever try any other distro?

#19 2007-02-14 22:39:43

Re: Why the HELL did I ever try any other distro?

#20 2007-02-15 00:46:09

Re: Why the HELL did I ever try any other distro?

#21 2007-02-15 07:10:26

Re: Why the HELL did I ever try any other distro?

#22 2007-02-15 07:29:19

Re: Why the HELL did I ever try any other distro?

#23 2007-02-15 07:34:24

Re: Why the HELL did I ever try any other distro?

#24 2007-02-15 08:11:07

Re: Why the HELL did I ever try any other distro?

#25 2007-02-15 11:26:26

Re: Why the HELL did I ever try any other distro?

Board footer