very impressed noob

adhesivesynergy · 2007-07-04 11:45:29

I'm relatively new to Linux (about 4 months) but I've already grown pretty comfortable and have used all sorts of distros, always finding something not quite right with them all. I recently broke yet another gentoo install and decided to go back to my first distro, Ubuntu, which bored me to tears. I tried Zenwalk and Slackware and found the system much less clean than I expected, so rather than spending hours figuring out what the hell the default setup had done and how to undo it, I decided to give arch a try, not expecting much. At first I was baffled by my inability to install until I realized that setting my seperate /home partition mountpoint was screwing up the install and tried again, this time editing fstab after the install, and I easily got it to work. And I have to say, I'm already very impressed. Pacman is a hell of a package manager and once I figured out the logic of it the simple installation method was excellent. In fact I have to say that I think Arch's installation procedure is the best of any distro I've tried. It doesn't impose irritating one-size-fits-all default settings that you have to go back and tweak for hours like almost all other distros, it ingeniously manages to offer incredible choice in a simple, streamlined fashion that is seldom overwhelming. Not counting my earlier confusion I doubt it took me more than 25 minutes to install, config, and setup a functioning xserver with kde and all the apps, drivers, and plugins I need. I hope this distro continues to grow because after trying it for a day I can already tell I'm going to be sticking with Arch Linux for some time to come. My only gripe is that as a spoiled former user of debian/gentoo I've grown accustomed to having every single linux package in existence available at a whim, but I suppose if Arch catches on it'll only be a matter of time before portage gets some competition for "1337est package manager". Anyhow, I hope this distro continues to grow and improve, I've read so many reviews and testimonials from people who were like me chronic distro-hoppers only to find in Arch something they could really stick to, and now I can see what they mean.
Keep up the good work!

iphitus · 2007-07-04 11:59:36

Great to hear you like it!

For those packages we don't have in pacman, take a look at the AUR, Arch User Repository. Think of it as a user contributed repository of ebuilds, except we call them PKGBUILDs - and ours are a bit nicer. If you want a command line tool to access the AUR, try yaourt, it's on the AUR.

Also make sure you have the [community] repository enabled in /etc/pacman.conf -- it has packages built by the Trusted User group.

For any acronyms or anything you don't understand, take a look at the wiki: http://wiki.archlinux.org

Oh, and welcome

James

Last edited by iphitus (2007-07-04 11:59:50)

dhave · 2007-07-04 12:31:43

Welcome. I share your enthusiasm.

One comment: don't forget where your Enter (carriage return) key is

Last edited by dhave (2007-07-04 12:34:54)

pelle.k · 2007-07-04 14:00:36

don't forget where your Enter (carriage return) key is

hehe. that was funny!
btw, welcome adhesivesynergy

adhesivesynergy · 2007-07-04 22:38:17

dhave wrote:

Welcome. I share your enthusiasm.
One comment: don't forget where your Enter (carriage return) key is

A very bad habit of mine

Arch Linux

#1 2007-07-04 11:45:29

very impressed noob

#2 2007-07-04 11:59:36

Re: very impressed noob

#3 2007-07-04 12:31:43

Re: very impressed noob

#4 2007-07-04 14:00:36

Re: very impressed noob

#5 2007-07-04 22:38:17

Re: very impressed noob

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