New User, Great Beginning, Couple questions

jkirchner · 2007-09-14 14:50:44

Hello all. I installed Arch Linux last night on my Dell XPS 400. I have a Dual core 2.8Ghz Pentium D with 4 Gigs of ram and an nVidia 7300LE. The install was one of the smoothest I have ever done. I had previously tried/used Fedora, SuSE, Slackware, Debian, and lastly Ubuntu. I have X up and running, sound going, and Gnome and Fluxbox installed. Later is my try at ntfs3g as I dual boot with windowsXP (a few games and my printer keep me using it somewhat) and it would be nice to easily pass the files back and forth.

The documentation on this site has been great and I love the Wiki. Just a couple things I am unsure of and if I could be pointed the right way that would help a lot. If I should RTFM and I missed the M somewhere just kick me towards it

The first, Pacman (love it!!) and its repositories: Can I have more than one set up? I noticed last night some timeouts I got while using the one I had chosen (the one at Ga Tech) and it made me wonder. I searched a bit and saw a piece in the Wiki about establishing a servers.conf file. Is it worth it, or am I better leaving it as it is for now?

I have been looking a bit around the wiki and the forums and maybe I missed it but how do I set up sudo? I have just been using su for now.

I am very pleased with this distribution and feel as if I found a home. I love the control I have and I really have enjoyed the learning. (That silly rush of victory when my cowsay dragon spewed his fortune when I logged in after editing my .bashrc was fun )

Last edited by jkirchner (2007-09-14 14:55:32)

shen · 2007-09-14 14:57:17

Welcome aboard and glad to hear you had a smooth install. Arch is a wonderful distro and the devs do a great job.

For sudo you just need to install it by typing this: pacman -Sy sudo then read this wiki page for setup.. http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Sudo

As for pacman you can look at /etc/pacman.conf and see what repos are enabled. By default I know extra an current are enabled and I think community as well. As for which repo to use it all depends on what is closer and faster for you. There are several listed in the various files for each repo. Those files can be found in /etc/pacman.d/ they will be titled the name of the repo such as extra,current and community and you will also have testing and unstable. I wouldn't enable the later two till you are more comfy with arch. The basic wiki for pacman is found at http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pacman

Hope that helps and answers your questions. Again welcome aboard and hope you enjoy arch as much as we have.

jkirchner · 2007-09-14 15:05:22

Geez, I feel so stupid, I looked at the table of contents in the wiki but never tried the search. Thanks for the sudo link. I saw the address and thought "D'oh" and then I saw the search box on the wiki page....teaches me to surf at work

Thanks for the links Shen and the welcome.

Last edited by jkirchner (2007-09-14 15:26:17)

shen · 2007-09-14 18:31:40

Anytime bud and no worries it's all about learning, sharing knowledge and helping one another out..:)

mcmillan · 2007-09-14 23:27:25

It's possible to have more than one mirror active for each repository, which is how I was reading your questions about the timeouts. Pacman will just try to connect to the first one listed, if it can't it will move on to the next. By default you should already have multiple mirrors listed.

ssl6 · 2007-09-14 23:56:24

well, i don't really have much input on you're questions as im pretty new to arch as well, and linux in general. but welcome to the forum, and thanks for asking about sudo, i saw your post about it and i kept forgetting to find out how to set it up too as i installed it, but couldn't get it working, ADD kciking in i suppose

Arch Linux

#1 2007-09-14 14:50:44

New User, Great Beginning, Couple questions

#2 2007-09-14 14:57:17

Re: New User, Great Beginning, Couple questions

#3 2007-09-14 15:05:22

Re: New User, Great Beginning, Couple questions

#4 2007-09-14 18:31:40

Re: New User, Great Beginning, Couple questions

#5 2007-09-14 23:27:25

Re: New User, Great Beginning, Couple questions

#6 2007-09-14 23:56:24

Re: New User, Great Beginning, Couple questions

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