Arch Linux

fhd

Member

Registered: 2007-04-27

Posts: 4

Website

I'm new and I think I like it.

This is an unproductive fanboy-message (=spam), but I thought I could post it anyways

I didn't post this to "Arch is best" since I wouldn't say that Arch is the best. I just like it a lot, and wanted to share that

The point is: I like Arch.

My real Linux age started about 4 years ago with Gentoo. I used Mandrake and SuSE before Gentoo, but I don't count  that. With Gentoo, I started to understand operating systems in general, and it was the first time I ever had fun setting up and using an OS. I learned a bunch of things from that, Gentoo has real superb documentation after all. Back then, we guys doing stage 1 installs from a text-only live cd were considered "cool", today the Gentoo community considers us "ricers" or something.
I didn't do that for any speed benefit. I never felt any recognisable hyper speed with Gentoo in any way - I just liked the way you install it. Starting with the very base and then get everything you need.

Stage 1 in Gentoo meant that you even built the base system and the build tools yourself - this isn't supported anymore today. It didn't make much sense back then, but I found it totally cool to have my computer working on something real big while I'm at school.

Well, Gentoo had and has many benefits, but after 4 years, it lost it's "charm" for me. You have a LiveCD GUI installer, the packages aren't as up to date as they used to and I'm sort of sick of compiling something like KDE, which just takes too much time.
I'm not a student anymore, I am a programmer since two years and I need systems that does a job fast and reliable, since I have like a 12 hour day and there is certainly something better to do at home than to stare at compiler output.

One week ago, an old friend told me about Arch and I thought that I could give it a try. I'm just stunned. It brings back the Gentoo feeling of the old days and I feel like 17 again

The installation rocks - the guide is good and the whole process is very easy. The best thing is package configuration. Base only contains few and one can really pick only what he needs. The first thing I dropped was lilo along with wireless and pcmcia tools. I don't know how many of you guys have ever installed a debian and did the manual package selection. Remember dselect? After going through that, even a programmer would consider buying a mac. Archs ncurses selection is just good.
Okay, 20 minutes have passed and the system is installed. I booted.

Was a good feeling. A nice marked up sysvinit greeted me that bootet incredibly fast (like 10 seconds) and I had my login prompt. Now I was stuck - there was no greeting message pointing out some further documentation, and I didn't install links so I couldn't look up how to use pacman.

I have very bad experiences with man pages other than those of category 3 - totally bloated with useless GNU --something-nobody-will-ever-need-number-three options and impossible to extract information from when not unemployed. Info pages are even worse. I love Arch for not providing them. This is the worst idea GNU people have ever had.

But I had no choice other than rebooting Gentoo, and I dislike giving up. So I read the pacman manpage (the old friend told me it's name - otherwise I would have been stuck) - and I was surprised. It was really understandeable. So I fired it up, so see that the program even explains itself in a wonderful way.

So it was no problem to install links. I went to the wiki and followed the X11 howto.

Long speech short sense - I had X, windowmaker and firefox all in some minutes ready to go.
So I started reading the wiki with firefox in X. The next adventure would be to install KDE.

I've been using fvmw2 and fluxbox for the last three years, then went to gnome and began to hate it. Though KDE looks like kindergarten, I gave it another try and after some hours of kde-look.org browsing, I had it actually good looking. I love the playful cleverness you see everywhere. You can directly use kde-look.org as wallpapers from within the wallpaper selection dialog. KDE just has everything I need (and way more, but that can happily be deactivated ).

Okay, now I was frightened. Since KDE has so many components, I had a quick look for meta packages to make everything easier. I noticed that there are only the usual bundle packages, but no split ones. I was very happy when Gentoo introduced the KDE split ebuilds, but I don't care for arch not having them. Arch has no useflags, so I didn't care. I also don't care about 10 MB of disk "wasteage" with programs I will probably not use.

So I just got myself kdebase and startx'd it.
First thing to notice: Wow, this looks clean.
Second thing to notice: This sucks.

There were absolutely no programs in the K menu and clicking the home icon asked what application to start it with.
After a short board search, I found someone who had this problem some time ago.
He reinstalled kdebase - so did it.

Relogin - everything works.
And THIS was clean. I just love the default K menu. I love the branding. I love everything about this. Have been using Kubuntu at work, but it just sucked. The Arch KDE is the most wonderful default KDE I've ever seen, so I didn't bother theming it for the first three days.

Beeing busy with desktop environments, I installed the newest nvidia driver and beryl. After deactivating some KDE effects, beryl works like a charm. NEVER did together with KDE with (K)Ubuntu or Gentoo on that box. Stunned. Happy. Okay, one bad thing: I don't see the logout screen - but since I use startx, there's only one option anyways.

Now it was time for the usual 64-bit multimedia trouble.
After adding the community repository, I looked up how to do it. My first mission was to view my favorite trailer (QuickTime mov). On the board, I saw that people use to install "codecs" for that, but I'm 64 bit, so I was unsure if it would work. Just installed kmplayer and codecs. It works. Wonderful. After that, I had to view youtube movies - another quest.

So it was time to finally use makepkg. I heard of it, I heard it was like Ports and I LOVE Ports. It really is like Ports. It is in a wonderful clever way very understandeable. Not comparable to the complicated ebuilds installing 20 patches at a time. I found the AUR page and all the two packages I needed for my flash nsplugin. Was easy to do. Works.

Now it was time to do the most distusting thing: view my favorite rmvb movies. rmvb sucks, I wasn't able to view it with something other than helix realplayer, and I never liked that software for not beeing able to use alsa. But I had to. It was relatively easy to locate realplayer for 64 bit in AUR. But there were dependencies having dependencies all only available via makepgk. So I had to download like 8 packages and figure out in what order to build and install them.
The last package - realplayer itself - had a problem. Helix changed their link. I manually downloaded realplayer and slightely changed the src= association in the PKGBUILD.
After that, I was able to compile and install it.
Starting it was a sad experienced - all the fonts where missing. Luckily, I knew how to control it blind. So disabling arts along with everything else that does sound made my new baked realplayer worked.

Okay, now I had everything I need and wanted to test the system for usability.
Setting up my design, manually branding my favorite icon theme for Arch. Setting everything up. I used konqueror to browse for my files and despite all my other kde experiences, the file associations are just what I expect. kmplayer opens all types of videos. During clicking all of my different video types, I accidentaly clicked one rmvb and kmplayer opened up.
What can I say - it WORKS! I don't know whether this is because mplayer can use original realplayers codec or because the codecs package has rmvb support, but I love it. Now I can view them with a good player.

You are doing a great job out there. Arch is what it should be: Light and clever wherever you look.
It was a very good idea to create pacman instead of using dpkg or rpm with all it's medievality.
You don't need a GUI installer, Arch is after all supposed for people who know a little UNIX.
You don't need to gain popularity - your community is great, the system is great.
In general, I feel like using a binary lfs here. This is a great feeling, it's the first time in a while that Linux meant fun to me.

Please do me one favor and stay how you are

This was probably the longest post in my live. I don't say Arch is best. There are some things I dislike. Some things I like more about other distros. Nothing is perfect - Arch is very close to that though. I just felt the need to thank you for that.

Mikko777

Member

From: Suomi, Finland

Registered: 2006-10-30

Posts: 837

Re: I'm new and I think I like it.

So what is the best?

Also theres KDEmod for modular kde, dunno if its for 64 bits tho.

PS:You produce a lot of text and welcome

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Planet KDE | Opendesktop.org | Chakra Project

fhd

Member

Registered: 2007-04-27

Posts: 4

Website

Re: I'm new and I think I like it.

So what is the best?

I wouldn't judge. I've been to Arch for a week, you know? But as said, it's VERY close to it.
What I dislike after a week is makepkg not handling dependencies automatically (which would be overhead, so probably not appropriate).

Also theres KDEmod for modular kde, dunno if its for 64 bits tho.

Don't actually need that as said ... I see no real benefit of having that other than not beeing a KDE user or having Gentoos useflags.

PS:You produce a lot of text and welcome smile

Yeah. Wonder why I'm still employed? So do I ...

lloeki

Member

From: France

Registered: 2007-02-20

Posts: 456

Website

Re: I'm new and I think I like it.

there's indeed a 64 bit repo for kdemod

I see no real benefit of having that other than not beeing a KDE user or having Gentoos useflags.

well, not having more than half of kde when you indeed don't need it, I installed a fully functional kde system as light as xfce. kde being highly modular (at run time) in its architecture  with kparts and such, this is as close as use flags as it can get with binary.

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To know recursion, you must first know recursion.

phrakture

Arch Overlord

From: behind you

Registered: 2003-10-29

Posts: 7,879

Website

Re: I'm new and I think I like it.

What I dislike after a week is makepkg not handling dependencies automatically (which would be overhead, so probably not appropriate)

What do you mean? Can you explain this a little more?

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http://phraktured.net

scarney

Member

From: Wisconsin, US

Registered: 2006-07-11

Posts: 173

Re: I'm new and I think I like it.

welcome, long winded one. 8)

Crooksey

Member

From: UK ~

Registered: 2006-08-14

Posts: 415

Website

Re: I'm new and I think I like it.

After reading that my battery is nearly dead, so just a quick hello

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Arch Linux since 2006
Python Web Developer + Sys Admin (Gentoo/BSD)

lloeki

Member

From: France

Registered: 2007-02-20

Posts: 456

Website

Re: I'm new and I think I like it.

What I dislike after a week is makepkg not handling dependencies automatically

while it does not handle (fetch+build) to-be-built dependencies (e.g from aur or abs), it does handle packaged (from pacman repos) dependencies: try -s switch, and even better: makepkg -sr. see man page for details.

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To know recursion, you must first know recursion.

test1000

Member

Registered: 2005-04-03

Posts: 834

Re: I'm new and I think I like it.

i think yaourt does though.

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KISS = "It can scarcely be denied that the supreme goal of all theory is to make the irreducible basic elements as simple and as few as possible without having to surrender the adequate representation of a single datum of experience." - Albert Einstein

fhd

Member

Registered: 2007-04-27

Posts: 4

Website

Re: I'm new and I think I like it.

What I dislike after a week is makepkg not handling dependencies automatically

while it does not handle (fetch+build) to-be-built dependencies (e.g from aur or abs), it does handle packaged (from pacman repos) dependencies: try -s switch, and even better: makepkg -sr. see man page for details.

That's what I meant. -s is really handy.

What I also miss is makepkg looking up and fetching PKGBUILDs as well as handling source dependencies.
Then again, this is emerge. I can boot Gentoo if I want that

I'm currently fine with building only stuff I cannot get via pacman from source.

rbrownclown

Member

Registered: 2006-12-29

Posts: 125

Re: I'm new and I think I like it.

Nice post.  One of the most balanced Arch testimonies I've read.

I've been using Linux 3 years.  For a while, I stuck to the easy distros.  Ubuntu, SuSE, etc.  I was tempted to switch to Gentoo, but I got the vibe that there's lack of direction in the Gentoo community.  Reading about stages one through three and booting the live-CD verified this.  Their GUI installer is so awful, it shouldn't even be there.  The text-based installer (through the live-CD) wasn't much better.  It just seems that they don't know where they're going with things.

What got me hooked on Arch was KISS.  I LOVE the idea behind the project.  Unlike Gentoo, these guys actually have a direction.  Providing the most clean, simple base system possible and building from there is a dream come true.  Unfortunately, I'm currently using Ubuntu Feisty Fawn.  I got curious.  I'm planning on switching back this weekend.  I should really build myself a "test" machine.

Excessive

Member

Registered: 2006-09-27

Posts: 13

Re: I'm new and I think I like it.

Arch is the best Linux distro out there. Nothing is even close to its superiority. I just don't like the stability of Linux in general, and Arch is suffering from this as well. A working feature is not working after an update (not suing anyone from Arch, its the application coders' fault from around the world). How can a coder break something which works good in a new release? Solving bugs with new bugs? This is the thing which made me switch to FreeBSD, as it  is more stable than Linux (as far as I see, using it for 1 weeks and didn't get any weird error until now).

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void life () {
  // void
}

Winblowz99

Member

Registered: 2007-03-24

Posts: 27

Re: I'm new and I think I like it.

That was a very nice "review" of Arch. I agree with you on most points, including that makepkg should resolve dependencies automatically.

I can relate to a lot of what you said about Gentoo, as I have recently come from that community. You'll find that while the Arch community is not as large as the Gentoo community, we are all extremely helpful and easy to get along with

cr7

Member

Registered: 2006-11-28

Posts: 103

Re: I'm new and I think I like it.

What I dislike after a week is makepkg not handling dependencies automatically

You can use yaourt.

dachser

Member

Registered: 2007-04-20

Posts: 8

Re: I'm new and I think I like it.

just do "makepkg -bi"
-b for building dependencies and -i for installing everthing in the right order.
This was my mistake too, i was just minutes away from writing a script that resolves deps