How bleeding edge are we?

Leigh · 2007-06-12 04:54:45

I was just browsing frugalware's repositories and was surprised that this distro is much more up to date than Arch! Not to mean that Arch is behind, as I would much prefer stability rather than jumping the gun on updates. hmmm, I was just surprised. Most distros I become curious about are pretty far behind in updates compared to Arch. Just how different is Frugals pacman-g2 from Arch's pacman?

tomk · 2007-06-12 08:27:46

To use your own phrase, how bleeding edge do you want? Or to look at it from a different perspective, is our apparent 'out-of-date-ness' relative to Frugalware causing you any concern? Our policy in this area is very clear - we try to have the latest stable version of any particular application in our repos. Additionally, the unstable and community repos provide pre-release development versions of many applications.

If there are particular out-of-date packages that you would like to see upgraded, make sure they are flagged out-of-date, and we will get to them as soon as we can.

Regarding pacman-g2, I know nothing. Maybe ask them what the difference is, or use them both for a while and judge for yourself.

buddabrod · 2007-06-12 10:11:39

I think the only difference to pacman is their own *.fpm package.

Since Arch is in most cases much faster when updating packages than gentoo, i see no need for changing the distribution. I like Arch, the people and everything so i will continue to use it.

STiAT · 2007-06-12 13:44:55

No, there is quite more difference. The pacman-g2 is actually a own spinnoff from pacman. Why - i don't know. Maybe, they think pacman develops too slow, they had other thoughts about alpm or for which reason ever, and they got some people (vmikos and others) who're very actively developing pacman-g2.

pacman-g2 has some nice features brought in, as well as pacman3 has some things to prefer. The code base of the two projects already differ a lot.
I still think a merge of the resources would still be the best what could happen for both... but i don't have to worrie about this.
I think a spin-off from arch providing the same distribution with another package base is quite sad.

Also, arch has AUR, what's a good point on using arch, since a lot of build files for arch are available there.

Both distributions are good choices. Though, my point of view is that spin-offs with the same targets are simply unnecessary, and waste of resources.

Yours,
Georg

detto · 2007-06-12 14:33:48

Please don't start this topic again ^^
Yes, pacman-g2 differs from pacman. Both now (since arch finally got v3) have good things to show. As dtw said try both and judge yourself, though its not the package manager only that should decide about a distro to use imo. For arch and fw there is 'makepkg' too, which is different too in both distros, too. Because of that it might not be a simple task to reinforce developement, and iirc there was a time where both wanted to contribute to each other, but PLEASE.... look above

Though, my point of view is that spin-offs with the same targets are simply unnecessary, and waste of resources.

If you're speaking about the distros itself (and not pacman) then here we go with a big assslap They both have NOT same targets and therefore it's no unnnecessary work. Arch=KISS, FW=simple enough+more easy/accesible. (my pov/2c)

Regards,
deTTo

Last edited by detto (2007-06-12 14:36:12)

tlaloc · 2007-06-12 20:04:41

Yeah,

hopefully, the pacman/pacman-g2-wars are gone and forgotten. If not, you cannot still read up the particulars in forums, the pacman-dev list, or in FW documentation (build your own opinion on that). Since I haven't ever tried Frugalware, I am much more interested in this statement:

detto wrote:

Arch=KISS, FW=simple enough+more easy/accesible. (my pov/2c)

I bet that there are still one or two FW-Devs or Users hanging around here. And since I don't have a clue, I would like to see a second opinon on detto's 2 cents (in a strictly pacificst manner).

hussam · 2007-06-12 20:47:08

Haven't tried furgalware before, but the last time I saw their page on distrowatch.com , it appeared as if they aren't a rolling release distribution anymore. Correct me if I am wrong?

Leigh · 2007-06-13 11:59:38

tomk wrote:

To use your own phrase, how bleeding edge do you want? Or to look at it from a different perspective, is our apparent 'out-of-date-ness' relative to Frugalware causing you any concern?

Personally, I like arch's stability, and before running across frugal, I thought arch was about as up to date as you could get with a linux distro. don't misunderstand me, I've been using arch since 2004 and am a happy camper. I'm just a linux buff, always looking and always curious. Curious enough to dual boot with arch and frugal now. Sorry about bringing up the pacman question. I didn't realize it was an old heated topic.

hussam, their not listed as a rolling release. The way I understand it, and maybe I'm wrong, is they put out a new release every six months with their stable repository, but through their current repository doing a system upgrade keeps you up to date as a rolling release. I don't really see much difference between arch and frugal in upgrading the system with pacman. I do think arch's latest installer is much better than frugal's! Besides the obvious pacman similarities, I have to say arch and frugal are totally different. It's very hard to compare them!

Last edited by Leigh (2007-06-13 14:32:24)

shen · 2007-06-13 14:37:50

There is quite a bit of difference between the two. The only real common factor is pacman. The init and basic structure is quite a bit different. Frugals init is more like slack then arch and not as simple to configure as arch is.

Frugal isn't really a rolling release... They have two basic repos.. the stable which will be listed by the version number like the .6 repo and current which is where they put new updated packages being worked on for the next release. For example when .7 is ready what is in current will be moved to the .7 stable branch and newer packages will be added to current to prepare for the next release. So it's not technically a rolling release like arch although you can update your system with the current branch but it can tend to be a bit unstable. At least that is how it was explained to me by one of the devs.

As far as packages being more up to date all I can say is compare the amount of packages our devs maintain compared to frugals and you will understand our devs have quite a bit more work on their hands.

Last edited by shen (2007-06-13 14:39:10)

detto · 2007-06-13 21:36:18

Frugals init is more like slack then arch and not as simple to configure as arch is.

No its not Since Frugal goes own way it also has not Slackware's init system anymorem but SysVinit. Many of arch users hate it, i dont really like it too, but it works and quickly removing/adding a service (whenever needed at least) is quite simple (service foo add). Upstart will be there soon

As far as packages being more up to date all I can say is compare the amount of packages our devs maintain compared to frugals and you will understand our devs have quite a bit more work on their hands.

Hm, dunno exactly how much packages Arch has now in current && extra, but iirc it was about ~3500. (may have grown already a bit) Frugalware now has ~4200 which is quite a bunch too

cactus · 2007-06-13 22:16:43

I was always a bit confused as to why frugal kept the name "pacman" on their package manager, when it was clearly a fork of the codebase. I think keeping the name the same lends itself to confusing end users.

oh well.

atordo · 2007-06-14 13:32:53

Being a Debian user for years, Arch is more bleeding edge for me than I could wish

For example, it was quite surprising for me that KDE 3.5.7 was available for Arch even before the the official announcement on KDE's page:
http://www.kde.org/announcements/announce-3.5.7.php (dated May 22)
http://www.archlinux.org/packages/search/?q=kde (KDE 3.5.7-1 packages dated May 21)

tcmdvm · 2007-06-14 15:31:15

Usually the code is available for KDE before the official announcement is available. If you notice some other distributions their KDE releases usually correspond with the official announcement.

I didn't realize a stable release was considered "bleeding edge".

detto · 2007-06-14 15:50:58

cactus wrote:

I was always a bit confused as to why frugal kept the name "pacman" on their package manager, when it was clearly a fork of the codebase. I think keeping the name the same lends itself to confusing end users.
oh well.

Officialyl it's called pacman-g2, only the link 'pacman' exists that links to 'pacman-g2'

hussam · 2007-06-14 17:02:22

In a world where there are too many distributions, the reason I appreciate ArchLinux is that it is original. I was made from scratch. It's not a Debian or Redhat fork like most other distributions.
I will always see Ubuntu as a Debian derivative. Zenwalk will always be a Slackware fork. PCOSLinux is a Mandirva fork and now there's people even forking PCOSLinux. Instead of forking a distribution, why don't people just contribute to it and make it better?

As far as I am concerned, ArchLinux is a breath of fresh air because it is original and that's why I solely use ArchLinux.

Last edited by hussam (2007-06-14 17:03:19)

ataraxia · 2007-06-14 18:10:36

And to me, Mandriva is still Mandrake, and a Red Hat fork itself.

paulr · 2007-06-14 18:24:09

I don't know Zenwalk, but it'd have to be going some to be much more bleeding edge than Arch is.

Short of being built out of CVS, difficult to see how it could be much more bleeding edge - packages seem to appear in Arch PDQ after their release.

cactus · 2007-06-14 18:27:10

detto wrote:

Officialyl it's called pacman-g2, only the link 'pacman' exists that links to 'pacman-g2'

I guess you didn't get my point.
I was saying they should have called it something *different*. Like frugalpac or something.

Examples:
Xorg wasn't called XFree86-g2.
Ubuntu wasn't called Debian-g2
OpenBSD wasn't called NetBSD-g2
NeoOffice wasn't called OpenOffice-mac or OpenOffice-g2
NetHack wasn't called Rogue-g2
Joomla! wasn't called Mambo-g2

You get the idea....generally when forking, you rename the new project.

......and are you saying that they link to pacman.. but the link goes to their version? They aren't even giving attribution to the origin of their fork?
wow. I hope I just misinterpreted what you said..and that they aren't really doing that.

samoturk · 2007-06-14 18:55:07

What about emacs and xemacs?

detto · 2007-06-14 19:10:14

cactus wrote:

detto wrote:
Officialyl it's called pacman-g2, only the link 'pacman' exists that links to 'pacman-g2'
I guess you didn't get my point.
I was saying they should have called it something *different*. Like frugalpac or something.
Examples:
Xorg wasn't called XFree86-g2.
Ubuntu wasn't called Debian-g2
OpenBSD wasn't called NetBSD-g2
NeoOffice wasn't called OpenOffice-mac or OpenOffice-g2
NetHack wasn't called Rogue-g2
Joomla! wasn't called Mambo-g2
You get the idea....generally when forking, you rename the new project.
......and are you saying that they link to pacman.. but the link goes to their version? They aren't even giving attribution to the origin of their fork?
wow. I hope I just misinterpreted what you said..and that they aren't really doing that.

pacman-g2 (or if you like to call it frugalpac) is still pacman (and as of 3 not much different, still it is. but not much, hehe.) and because they forked the tree and changed things in it, it was renamed to sth more appropiate: pacman-g2. the link i talked about basically is just a simple "ln -s pacman-g2 pacman" and nothing else. so users can type "pacman" instead of "pacman-g2" (which is a bit longer). and yes, they give attribution to the origin work: http://frugalware.org/about so, yes: you misinterpreted that

cactus · 2007-06-14 19:26:05

samoturk wrote:

What about emacs and xemacs?

xemacs was originally called Lucid Emacs, and was later renamed Xemacs.
GNU Emacs, is another Emacs editor.

Emacs, in this case, was originally a class of editor macros. Both GNU emacs and Xemacs are editors that use Emacs_Lisp.

Read the history of emacs, and you will see there are many emacsen (or emacs editors).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emacs#History

If you notice, most of the other emacs clones *do* in fact use far different names. Here, the similarity in naming is due to the type, or class, of editor known as an emacs. You could picture this more of a *BSD similarity, where there are many BSD derivatives off the original BSD.

However, naming a project as `cactus-ng`, or `cactus-g2` would imply that `cactus` is the old dead project, and `cactus-ng` is the new project.

This is not the case in pacman. arch pacman and frugal pacman are forks and not *really* 'continuation in lineages' that a postfix notation such as pacman-g2 (short for pacman generation 2, or second generation) implies.

At the very least it is in poor taste.

Sorry to have drifted so far off-topic. Maybe a forum mod can split all this garbage off into an off-topic post or something.

lumiwa · 2007-06-15 02:03:17

cactus wrote:

samoturk wrote:
What about emacs and xemacs?
xemacs was originally called Lucid Emacs, and was later renamed Xemacs.
GNU Emacs, is another Emacs editor.

You are wright about history of emacs but the history is not important. emacs and xemacs are here at this time. And how many users, special young generation know about history of emacs? They use emacs/xemacs NOW.

ARCH Pacman and Frugalware Pacman is something which looks like that both side of develepers don't like to hear. And here is IMO point. Users don't care.

Last edited by lumiwa (2007-06-15 02:05:11)

AndyRTR · 2007-06-15 09:50:00

Don't fall into distro wars again. Frugalware and ArchLinux are not that much different. We both have a bleading edge rolling release development tree. Frugal has the additional stable tree they focus on for their "releases". Beyond that they provide tools for easier configuration we don't want to have in our core distribution. There's enough space to work together on certain projects beyond pacman.

cactus · 2007-06-15 15:37:43

I fully agree Andy. Well said.

Misfit138 · 2007-06-15 20:20:50

I like both distros, but I must admit, since I am more familiar with Arch, it is just much more logical and convenient to stick to Arch than to relearn how to build and tweak a system on FW. I have installed 0.6 just to testdrive it and it was nice, but Arch has my heart.
And as was stated, there ARE too many distros; Too much fragmentation and too much reinventing the wheel.
I think there is room for Arch and Frugal, which appeal to different folks, but there is also an overlap, as proven by this thread. (Many of us have tried both)
I must say also that Arch has a terrific, friendly and thriving community- dare I say the best. I am constantly asking dopey questions on the Arch Newbie sub forum and all those who offer help are consistently patient and polite. I am as thankful for this as I am for the hard work that the devs put into the distro itself.
Long live Arch.

Arch Linux

#1 2007-06-12 04:54:45

How bleeding edge are we?

#2 2007-06-12 08:27:46

Re: How bleeding edge are we?

#3 2007-06-12 10:11:39

Re: How bleeding edge are we?

#4 2007-06-12 13:44:55

Re: How bleeding edge are we?

#5 2007-06-12 14:33:48

Re: How bleeding edge are we?

#6 2007-06-12 20:04:41

Re: How bleeding edge are we?

#7 2007-06-12 20:47:08

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#8 2007-06-13 11:59:38

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