Which will be your next distro after Arch Linux?

Ankka · 2007-04-23 06:34:25

Dusty wrote:

I have a horrible confession to make... I've been using the Ubuntu Fiesty Fawn Beta for the past few weeks. It was supposed to be just a quick install to see what it was like before I installed Arch on my laptop, but it worked so well I just didn't bother to go with Arch.
Yet. ;-)
As I always say when people say they've moved on from Arch: "He'll be back!"
Dusty

Happened to me with edgy last fall...

It's very hard to get the motivation to install something new on a computer that works really well already.

pecan · 2007-04-23 07:07:36

I'll be swapping arch and kubuntu on my main system and secondary system pretty soon. k/ubuntu is a very nice distro, I only have two problems with it. Its a very bloated distro, and also its around 5 times harder to configure stuff if you don't use a GUI. Arch has neither of those problems.

pelle.k · 2007-04-23 16:05:44

its around 5 times harder to configure stuff if you don't use a GUI. Arch has neither of those problems.

Tell me about it! I hear Suse is even worse in that regard...
Also, im soo used to makepkg and PKGBUILDS by now. Other than that, the one thing keeping me from having ubuntu installed besides arch, is the fact that ubuntu can't suspend my core2duo system (gigabyte, 965GM chipset). I blame the 2.6.20 kernel though. core2duo systems is only "fully" supported in kernel 2.6.21 from what i've heard...

rivierrakid · 2007-04-24 08:15:12

its around 5 times harder to configure stuff if you don't use a GUI. Arch has neither of those problems.

yup Im in this boat too... I thought Id use xbuntu on a mythtv box as *buntus are so easy to use... but when setting up and fiddling, filtering through thousands of useless forum posts to only find answers using guis or fresh linux noobs wanting to help out.

I decided to dump it and never return when someone posted a link to a patch for an emulator to play well in myth (which I still couldnt get working in ubuntu)... the link was to AUR.

I loved Slackware but it seamed to be falling further back in time, then Arch Noodle came along with all its shiny new up to date apps and impressive stability, it was like slackware on steroids.

So for the time being, Im going nowher but Arch.. but the best thing is, I dont want to.

I do try the odd livecd, mainly for candy (looking glass etc) just to keep an eye on desktop evolution.

Master One · 2007-04-24 20:59:27

daedalusman wrote:

I think I am going to give one of the BSD's a try

That's what also was in my mind once, I tried it with FreeBSD and OpenBSD, but gave up on these, because there is too much missing what I'm used to have in GNU/Linux. The other major downside is, both have fixed releases, which requires getting your hands dirty every time a new release comes out (especially with OpenBSD, which wasn't even upgradeable until one of the last few versions, which means you always had to do complete reinstallations in the past). I don't think I want to stick to a system that has no rolling-releases again.

daedalusman wrote:

Oh yeah, I have foresight installed as well and I must say it so far has be a disappointment for me. Conary crashes constantly, making an upgrade of the system unbearably long. Once rpath gets those problems with conary straightened out foresight linux will be one of the best distros out there, but right now I wouldn't recommend it anyone unless they wanted to file bug reports all day.

I can not say the same, conary is rock stable here, not a single crash or annoyance until now. There are *huge* things going on at Foresight & rPath right now, conary is already at version 1.1.22, Foresight got to v1.2.1 in the last days (although that's not important, because it's a rolling-release, and only a snapshot for the CD/DVD installer), and I am really impressed. The userbase and devteam is still small, but I am sure this will change very quickly, and they will become a major player. Their next generation software management system eliminates a lot of problems all the other systems have (including pacman), and creating new packages by yourself (writing recipes & cooking them) & making them available online for use by anybody else (by easily creating an rBuilder Online account) is easier then everything else I tried before (including ebuilds for Gentoo and pkgbuilds for Arch). I may sound biased right now, but it's really worth it taking a closer look.

mosor · 2007-04-25 01:30:06

I think there will be no 'next distro' after Arch . After making a 5-6 years pause of Linux on the workstation (been using WinXP), I had to start using it again because of my development work. Tried Debian, Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Fedora, and finally Arch. Fell in love at first sight . Now I use it not only for development, but for all my computer related tasks... so long WinXP .

There is one distro that I will most likely try in near future: Gobolinux. I really dig their FS structure, if only they had package and userbase like Arch.

Last edited by mosor (2007-04-25 01:31:03)

emphire · 2007-04-25 06:45:48

Master One wrote:

That's what also was in my mind once, I tried it with FreeBSD and OpenBSD, but gave up on these, because there is too much missing what I'm used to have in GNU/Linux. The other major downside is, both have fixed releases, which requires getting your hands dirty every time a new release comes out (especially with OpenBSD, which wasn't even upgradeable until one of the last few versions, which means you always had to do complete reinstallations in the past). I don't think I want to stick to a system that has no rolling-releases again.

Have you tried FreeBSD Stable? (I think OpenBSD has a 'stable' version too). It's basically a rolling release. If you don't want to compile each time you update, you can do binary updates of FreeBSD-stable with freebsd-update (I think it's part of the distribution now... if not it's in the package collection). I think FreeBSD-stable also uses a different package set than the releases do (and there's ports & portupgrade for really new packages).

FreeBSD has an impressive number of ports, but it's lacking a few things I like in linux. For one thing it doesn't support ACPI on my hardware yet (mind you, linux doesn't do it perfectly for me either). I really wish it had a better volume manager too (lvm is way ahead of vinum right now). The other major thing it's missing for me is virtualization programs (vmware, virtualbox, xen, etc). I think kqemu is in the package collection for FreeBSD-stable now though. Jails are great but not quite flexable enough for me.

On the plus side, it sounds like FreeBSD 7 will take care of most of these problems (zfs for a volume manager replacement, xen support, improved jails). I'm actually pretty stoked to try freebsd 7 when it comes out (supposedly this fall... but we all know how open source deadlines tend to go).

Master One · 2007-04-25 21:47:59

AFAIK stable branches in FBSD & OBSD only get backports in addition to the security backports for releases, but you nevertheless have to do a dist-upgrade once a new release comes out, which is not really a rolling release as I understand it. I may be wrong in this point, but I remember a file explaining steps to perform such a dist-upgrade, and it meant getting your hands dirty or thing were going to break badly. My major problem was, that OBSD may be the most secure system out of the box, but it's barely useable except for traditional server use, especially because most software is that much outdated. FBSD is up to date, but it's not suitable for me for server or desktop/laptop use (showstopper was missing zoneminder for my server, missing cyberjack-driver for my chipcard-reade, missing SPDIF audio support, and missing vmware for desktop/laptop use, and these things most likely will never be available for the *BSDs).

Hands down, it does not look like FBSD will come even with GNU/Linux anytime soon, although it has the superior concept.

Last edited by Master One (2007-04-25 21:48:32)

emphire · 2007-04-26 02:58:47

Master One wrote:

AFAIK stable branches in FBSD & OBSD only get backports in addition to the security backports for releases, but you nevertheless have to do a dist-upgrade once a new release comes out, which is not really a rolling release as I understand it. I may be wrong in this point, but I remember a file explaining steps to perform such a dist-upgrade, and it meant getting your hands dirty or thing were going to break badly. My major problem was, that OBSD may be the most secure system out of the box, but it's barely useable except for traditional server use, especially because most software is that much outdated. FBSD is up to date, but it's not suitable for me for server or desktop/laptop use (showstopper was missing zoneminder for my server, missing cyberjack-driver for my chipcard-reade, missing SPDIF audio support, and missing vmware for desktop/laptop use, and these things most likely will never be available for the *BSDs).
Hands down, it does not look like FBSD will come even with GNU/Linux anytime soon, although it has the superior concept.

Yeah... stable is just basically backports. Although I've never had much trouble moving between releases when I was running stable. I found moving to the next release (which happens every 6 months or so) was less work than dealing with the occasional problems with pacman/arch upgrade. In arch in the past month or so, I've had to deal with the move to pata, the move of gnome from /opt to /usr, kernal upgrades breaking alsa, having to add acpi modules in the new kernel, and lots of python packages being broken for a while in the move from python 2.4->2.5).

With FreeBSD, you just have to read the release doc and it will usually just have two or three things that require you do change a few settings or add a couple of users/groups (and some new toys to check out). I find it kind of handy knowing when to expect to have to make changes.

Oh... and vmware might be coming to FreeBSD soon... old versions used to work and now rsync has started since rsync.net started a bounty on it (http://www.rsync.net/resources/notices/2007cb.html). That said, I'm using linux for now but I think I'm likely going to move to FreeBSD when it moves to version 7 for my server (and maybe my desktop depending how it looks in that area... I hear they're doing a lot of work on catching up on the desktop front).

oli · 2007-04-26 08:43:44

Master One wrote:

AFAIK stable branches in FBSD & OBSD only get backports in addition to the security backports for releases, but you nevertheless have to do a dist-upgrade once a new release comes out, which is not really a rolling release as I understand it. I may be wrong in this point, but I remember a file explaining steps to perform such a dist-upgrade, and it meant getting your hands dirty or thing were going to break badly. My major problem was, that OBSD may be the most secure system out of the box, but it's barely useable except for traditional server use, especially because most software is that much outdated. FBSD is up to date, but it's not suitable for me for server or desktop/laptop use (showstopper was missing zoneminder for my server, missing cyberjack-driver for my chipcard-reade, missing SPDIF audio support, and missing vmware for desktop/laptop use, and these things most likely will never be available for the *BSDs).
Hands down, it does not look like FBSD will come even with GNU/Linux anytime soon, although it has the superior concept.

It depends on your point of view. For most *BSD users, *BSD is indeed superior because it has got all they need in their daily work, whether it is a server or a mere desktop system.

hussam · 2007-04-26 15:01:16

I don't see myself ever using any other linux distribution than Archlinux.
If I even have to stop using Arch for some reason, I will look for some other operating system.

Noneus · 2007-04-26 15:14:27

I don't see any reason to switch to another distro. Arch covers nearly everything. If there is something really exciting in an other distro mostly someone writes PKGBUILDs for arch. So why switch?

Another OS is an other issue. I'd like to try. But I don't have the time. And I know by now no other OS will give me the things I use and love.

clarence · 2007-04-27 12:34:29

I won't stop using arch but I will be dual booting with haiku-os when haiku reaches r1.

onearm · 2007-05-01 08:34:04

I have absolutely no reason to drop Arch anytime soon. I'll keep trying new distros in a dedicated partition (currently occuped by Ubuntu 7.04) but I doubt I'll ever find something better than Arch

Already tried *bsd, too few drivers for a desktop system which is a pity because the various bsd flavours are indeed good, but I see Arch as a way to taking the good things from the bsd world and the same from the linux one and merging them together, so no point in dropping it for a bsd imho.

mlan · 2007-05-03 11:07:36

I've been using Arch for about three months now, and I don't remember ever being this satisfied with a distro before. There is nothing that bugs me about this distro. And that has never been the case before with other distros

sH · 2007-05-03 11:42:49

Tried numerous distros, last one was kubuntu, which is a really nice distro, because everything works and it is not so slow as most people say it is.
But then I wanted to change my locale, and then I wanted to change it back. I had to use a lot of "dpkg-reconfigure xyz", install many tools for configuring and it still did not switch my locale. I had to use file search to search for files and the locale is actually stored in three different files. I changed them by hand and it switched my locale. But the "dpkg-reconfigures" didn't solve it the right way.

Annoying. Then I remembered ... there was this distro back then... with this single configuration file named rc.conf...
Well, that was the time when I changed to Arch. Hopefully no more distro-trying.

murkus · 2007-05-03 12:07:59

Mine will be OSX dual booting with (hopefully) archlinux. When this happens, I've no idea yet.

.murkus

cb951303 · 2007-05-17 12:09:37

I want a arch based distro which is more user friendly just like debian-ubuntu relation. until then I'll keep using arch...

ataraxia · 2007-05-17 14:13:21

So much support for FreeBSD in here. It's been a great OS - I used it as my primary system from 3.2 to about 4.5.

You know how every OS seems to have that annoying design issue that you can't see until you've been using it for a while? Well, for FreeBSD, it's the inability to easily replace or remove parts of the base system. Don't like sendmail? Too bad, you're stuck with it. You can have postfix, but sendmail hangs around anyway. Some parts provide knobs to avoid building them during a buildworld, but that's not really supported by the devs. Binary upgrades are risky, and source upgrades are slow (this applies to both the base OS, and the ports).

So I think I'll stick with Arch (And as for Arch's "annoying design issue"? Monolithic packages with very many deps. But honestly, that's the easiest design issue to live with that I've ever had, especially with big disks, broadband, and not starting those "extra" daemons by default like Debian does.)

Lontronics · 2007-05-18 20:47:17

Just wanted to say I made the step some weeks ago.
First tried OpenBSD and using NetBSD now.

Although not already everything is 'up and running' I have to say I do like the strategy of most BSD's.
They are very secure, and for NetBSD, their hardware support is great.
Even with my one year old Dell Inspiron 9400 (usb, pmcia, widescreen, touchpad etc...) everything seems to be recognised.

Arch is great, and it was running out of the box here, never let me down.
But as I started this topic with the question 'Which will be your next distro after Arch Linux?" and my own answer 'probably one of the BSD's', this is reality now.

Jan.

Anders · 2007-05-19 00:43:08

I'm most likely not moving away from Arch Linux, but operating systems I would like to try are:

OpenBSD on a server. I kind of like their idea of security.
FreeBSD on my laptop. FreeBSD seems to be the most desktop friendly BSD (after PC BSD).
Solaris on my laptop, did try Nexenta for a while. Was quite nice actually.
Debian GNU/kFreeBSD - tried this ages ago, it's probably in a better shape now so it's worth a try

wegface · 2007-05-23 08:18:04

Anyone here that tried debian or a *buntu varient i suggest to try sidux (pure debain sid distro). It is very fast and powerful like arch linux, not slow and dumbed down like the *buntus.

filenox · 2007-05-23 11:39:58

The software in Debian is much older than the software in Arch

wegface · 2007-05-23 11:55:12

I'm up to date in both and the software in debian sid is pretty much same state as arch atm.
Forget debian stable/ testing. SID is where its at. I'm very impressed with arch so far tho.

Last edited by wegface (2007-05-23 11:55:28)

banana989 · 2007-05-23 16:20:36

My next distro would probably be Ubuntu. I installed Feisty on a spare computer and it was a breeze. I found Arch years ago and use it because it is lean & mean. Ubuntu makes me feel less in control than Arch does and it also feels (and is?) bloatier than Arch. So as long as I have the time to configure things in Arch I will keep using it as my main distro.

Arch: less bloat,more control, more time consuming
Ubuntu: more bloat, less control, less time consuming

Arch Linux

#51 2007-04-23 06:34:25

Re: Which will be your next distro after Arch Linux?

#52 2007-04-23 07:07:36

Re: Which will be your next distro after Arch Linux?

#53 2007-04-23 16:05:44

Re: Which will be your next distro after Arch Linux?

#54 2007-04-24 08:15:12

Re: Which will be your next distro after Arch Linux?

#55 2007-04-24 20:59:27

Re: Which will be your next distro after Arch Linux?

#56 2007-04-25 01:30:06

Re: Which will be your next distro after Arch Linux?

#57 2007-04-25 06:45:48

Re: Which will be your next distro after Arch Linux?

#58 2007-04-25 21:47:59

Re: Which will be your next distro after Arch Linux?

#59 2007-04-26 02:58:47

Re: Which will be your next distro after Arch Linux?

#60 2007-04-26 08:43:44

Re: Which will be your next distro after Arch Linux?

#61 2007-04-26 15:01:16

Re: Which will be your next distro after Arch Linux?

#62 2007-04-26 15:14:27

Re: Which will be your next distro after Arch Linux?

#63 2007-04-27 12:34:29

Re: Which will be your next distro after Arch Linux?

#64 2007-05-01 08:34:04

Re: Which will be your next distro after Arch Linux?

#65 2007-05-03 11:07:36

Re: Which will be your next distro after Arch Linux?

#66 2007-05-03 11:42:49

Re: Which will be your next distro after Arch Linux?

#67 2007-05-03 12:07:59

Re: Which will be your next distro after Arch Linux?

#68 2007-05-17 12:09:37

Re: Which will be your next distro after Arch Linux?

#69 2007-05-17 14:13:21

Re: Which will be your next distro after Arch Linux?

#70 2007-05-18 20:47:17

Re: Which will be your next distro after Arch Linux?

#71 2007-05-19 00:43:08

Re: Which will be your next distro after Arch Linux?

#72 2007-05-23 08:18:04

Re: Which will be your next distro after Arch Linux?

#73 2007-05-23 11:39:58

Re: Which will be your next distro after Arch Linux?

#74 2007-05-23 11:55:12

Re: Which will be your next distro after Arch Linux?

#75 2007-05-23 16:20:36

Re: Which will be your next distro after Arch Linux?

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