So is arch basically gentoo without the long compile times?

elasticdog · 2005-09-01 15:20:47

I too think that the tarball release is a great idea...I would however have to counterpoint one of the arguments made above against the current installer:

butters wrote:

2) You don't need to worry about arch's install CD having support for your network card (will it be able to do an FTP install if my only network interface is ipw2100?)

You are right, the auto-detecting script might not always catch all network cards, but that doesn't mean you're SOL...you also have the option of selecting it manually, and full use of the other virtual consoles to load whatever you may need.

butters · 2005-09-02 04:47:30

elasticdog wrote:

I too think that the tarball release is a great idea...I would however have to counterpoint one of the arguments made above against the current installer:
butters wrote:
2) You don't need to worry about arch's install CD having support for your network card (will it be able to do an FTP install if my only network interface is ipw2100?)
You are right, the auto-detecting script might not always catch all network cards, but that doesn't mean you're SOL...you also have the option of selecting it manually, and full use of the other virtual consoles to load whatever you may need.

My point is that Arch is not a distro defined by its installer. I bet I'm not the only person on these forums that would recommend taking every Arch developer off the installer projects and reassigning them to pacman, documentation, and infrastructure projects. There are LiveCD projects that have put massive amounts of work into making it boot and autodetect a broad selection of hardware. Why replicate the work, and why suggest that users install from an inferior boot medium?

In the case of Gentoo, the alternative guide to installing from Knoppix was incredibly popular because you have a full desktop environment with networking throughout the installation. With Arch it's a little more work, since you "need" an Arch-specific script in order to install. Mounting the Arch iso as a loopback to access quickinst is a good first step, and the base tarball is the next step.

You really only need a few pieces of information from the user to do an Arch install:

1) which partitions are for Arch?
2) what is the mountpoint for each?
3) what filesystems for partitions other than swap?
<or select autoformat whole drive for Arch>
4) any other bootable partitions?
<or select use existing bootloader>

That's it. It's all about how to get the system on the disk and how to boot it. With this information you can set up fstab and menu.lst (which should be called grub.conf btw). From lsmod (livecd) and /usr/src/linux/.config you can create a zealous (safe) modules section for rc.conf, and that's all you need to ensure a clean standalone reboot. With coldplug/hotplug these days the modules stuff might not be necessary for any hardware devices essential for proper boot.

Installation is really simple. No need to go and make it hard.

cactus · 2005-09-02 05:21:02

Arch is a meta distribution.

butters · 2005-09-02 08:44:52

cactus wrote:

Arch is a meta distribution.

Thankfully other people are gifted in brevity, unlike myself.

phrakture · 2005-09-02 14:45:23

butters wrote:

cactus wrote:
Arch is a meta distribution.
Thankfully other people are gifted in brevity, unlike myself.

I like how not even that sentence was brief

Mr Green · 2005-09-02 14:57:55

In the case of Gentoo, the alternative guide to installing from Knoppix was incredibly popular

emmmm

ristretto · 2007-07-09 23:58:45

(sorry to be posting to a really old thread - but it seems to be timeless)

Correct me if I'm wrong, I'm an ex-gentoo-arch-noob.

Gentoo allows me to downgrade (for the most part, if the ebuild is available.)
From what I've seen so far, on Arch, you're on your own.

For example. pacman -S fluxbox will get you version 1.0rc3

On gentoo, you get the choice of

1.0_rc3_p4949
1.0_rc3_p4944
1.0_rc3-r3
1.0_rc3-r2
1.0_rc3-r1
1.0_rc3
0.9.15.1-r2

(only the bottom two are considered stable - Jul 10th NZ time)

If I think there's a bug in the latest stable version, on Gentoo I can downgrade say to 0.9.15.1-r2.
In Arch, I'm not sure how easy that is. Gentoo really shines in this regard. Does Arch?

Last edited by ristretto (2007-07-09 23:59:26)

jb · 2007-07-10 13:59:16

pacman is designed only to 'upgrade'. I quote because you can upgrade to lower package revisions if you have them... but you have to explicitly state their location. I was going to suggest the nluug.nl mirror as a place to find older packages, but it seems they don't have them anymore. But I'm sure one of them still keeps older ones.

Additionally, you can make your own older packages by changing the version number in a program's PKGBUILD; most of the time, that's all that's required. Once that completes, just 'pacman -U pkg-file' and you've successfully downgraded.

Oh, almost forgot: if you haven't run pacman -Sc(c), look in /var/cache/pacman/pkg/ if you want to downgrade to a previously installed version.

ristretto · 2007-07-10 21:48:53

Unfortunately this is a new install. It never had Fluxbox .9 on it, so I can't downgrade locally.

Thanks for the ideas. I'll see if I can build my own .9 package now.

Mefju · 2007-07-10 22:03:41

You can always grab older PKGBUILDs from CVS.

paulr · 2007-07-11 07:18:55

I've never understood why people say Gentoo is always up to date ; it simply isn't true. Gnome, for example, is still in 2.16. Yes, there are 2.18 ebuilds but there will be little support for anything in testing.

Arch is significantly more up to date in its 'default' form than Gentoo, and on my machine, it's faster as well.

ristretto · 2007-07-14 07:09:23

I don't think *I* said it was up-to-date. I did say there were stable choices of fluxbox that weren't the latest.

Bola · 2007-07-21 06:35:00

At my eyes arch is more similar to slackware than to gentoo...

iphitus · 2007-07-21 12:38:07

ristretto: if you want a different version, take a look at abs and changing a PKGBUILD's version to the one you want.

As it is, Arch tends to package the latest stable version.

Arch Linux

#51 2005-09-01 15:20:47

Re: So is arch basically gentoo without the long compile times?

#52 2005-09-02 04:47:30

Re: So is arch basically gentoo without the long compile times?

#53 2005-09-02 05:21:02

Re: So is arch basically gentoo without the long compile times?

#54 2005-09-02 08:44:52

Re: So is arch basically gentoo without the long compile times?

#55 2005-09-02 14:45:23

Re: So is arch basically gentoo without the long compile times?

#56 2005-09-02 14:57:55

Re: So is arch basically gentoo without the long compile times?

#57 2007-07-09 23:58:45

Re: So is arch basically gentoo without the long compile times?

#58 2007-07-10 13:59:16

Re: So is arch basically gentoo without the long compile times?

#59 2007-07-10 21:48:53

Re: So is arch basically gentoo without the long compile times?

#60 2007-07-10 22:03:41

Re: So is arch basically gentoo without the long compile times?

#61 2007-07-11 07:18:55

Re: So is arch basically gentoo without the long compile times?

#62 2007-07-14 07:09:23

Re: So is arch basically gentoo without the long compile times?

#63 2007-07-21 06:35:00

Re: So is arch basically gentoo without the long compile times?

#64 2007-07-21 12:38:07

Re: So is arch basically gentoo without the long compile times?

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