Arch Linux

Xinix

Member

Registered: 2008-03-14

Posts: 83

What can I expect

Hello, my first. I am a long time user of MEPIS and have recently started to check out other distros. And ended up with Arch. It may sound strange from a MEPIS user, but I really like the control, the minimalistic approach and especially, the rolling release.

The MEPIS and Arch philosophy are seemingly very far apart, but the reason I have always used MEPIS has been the solid base and a reasonable up to date set of packages. Moreover, it has a very friendly and well informed communicty. From what I gather, Arch also strives to have a solid base, and is of course quite cutting edge with its packages. The AUR is a great asset, and the community is very active, as far as I can see in the forums. MEPIS has always had some underground feeling to it, same as Arch. That is why I don't wanna go with Ubuntu, Mandriva, PCLOS. Too smooth. And Debian is either too stale or too risky. As far as desktop distros go, there is not very much left in my opinion. Plenty of names, but some way or another they just do not convince me.

I am absolutely no distro hopper. I just wish to have a distro that I can rely on. I use Linux as my sole OS on 3 machines. One of them is a laptop I use for work. Though I don't mind fixing minor glitches, for me it is imperative that I can rely on my machine to always do what I expect it to do. Nothing fancy, but I always need OpenOffice, VirtualBox, VMWare server, pptp VPN (kvpnc, I am a KDE fan), Firefox, Thunderbird, Java to work. I have been playing with Arch for some weeks, and no problems so far.

But, coming back to the subject of my post: what can I expect? Can I assume that the Arch way does not cause unpleasant surprises like a non-booting machine that requires more than tweaking a config file? Is is possible to downgrade in case of emergency, or does the rolling release model mean an old package is gone forever? Or do I simply hold off on upgrades until the community has filtered out all glitches?

Maybe I am too conservative here. Just tell me in my face. If you think I am not the type of user Arch is directed at, that's fine. And if you can supply me with info to jump in, even better....

Thanks!

skymt

Member

Registered: 2006-11-27

Posts: 443

Re: What can I expect

Can I assume that the Arch way does not cause unpleasant surprises like a non-booting machine that requires more than tweaking a config file?

95% of upgrade problems are caused by an upstream change in the configuration file. For important system packages (the sort that can keep you from booting), these will be mentioned on the front page. The rest are simple to debug.

Is is possible to downgrade in case of emergency, or does the rolling release model mean an old package is gone forever?

Pacman keeps a cache of all the packages it downloads, so if you have the old version in your cache downgrading is simple. If not, you'll need to build the older version from a PKGBUILD Arch CVS, as the mirrors only keep the latest version of each package.

bender02

Member

From: UK

Registered: 2007-02-04

Posts: 1,328

Re: What can I expect

But, coming back to the subject of my post: what can I expect? Can I assume that the Arch way does not cause unpleasant surprises like a non-booting machine that requires more than tweaking a config file? Is is possible to downgrade in case of emergency, or does the rolling release model mean an old package is gone forever? Or do I simply hold off on upgrades until the community has filtered out all glitches?

If you follow frontpage news and forums, no really unpleasant surprises happen. Sometimes there is a problem (even with nonbooting machines lately, b/c of dropping the official support for old ide_legacy modules in kernel I think), but it is *always* a problem with a config file. So, you should not just blindly upgrade without paying attention - but otherwise you should be fine.
You can downgrade, as long as you keep old package files in your local cache (they're gone from the online repos). Holding off upgrades is definitely possible - just check the forums before you upgrade, and you're going to see if there are some common problems.

EDIT: Dang, I must learn to type with all 10. This happens too often

Last edited by bender02 (2008-04-16 19:56:12)

dschauer

Member

Registered: 2008-02-28

Posts: 95

Re: What can I expect

It is possible to downgrade packages, as long as you have not deleted old packages from your package cache.

I've been using arch for 7 weeks. In that time I had to downgrade once, and a second time do a work around.

http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=45420 # compiz broke (required downgrade)
http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=351933 # gstreamer would not upgrade (required temporary work around)

In the amount of time I've been using arch I've never been left with an un-bootable box, although you can't entire rule that out of happening, and have to be prepared to fix that if need be. I do shutdown almost every day, so I would have likely noticed if I could not reboot after some update.

Lately I've been plagued by a copy/paste problem:
http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php? … 89#p353989

That problem is not enough to make we want to switch distros again though (and I was a distro hopper).
http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php? … 62#p339762
http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php? … 44#p353244

finferflu

Forum Fellow

From: Manchester, UK

Registered: 2007-06-21

Posts: 1,899

Website

Re: What can I expect

There are also some mirrors that host outdated packages, check them out. Of course I suggest you to use the one I have set up (the shellpenguin one), even though I still have to improve it.

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tigrmesh

IRC Op

From: Florida, US

Registered: 2007-12-11

Posts: 794

Re: What can I expect

As long as you pay attention to pacman's output, you'll probably be fine. 

Xinix

Member

Registered: 2008-03-14

Posts: 83

Re: What can I expect

Thanks for the comments so far. Yes, I understand some care is due. But then again, that is normal in any distro. I have enabled Debian Lenny and even Sid to add some newer stuff to my MEPIS installation, and it requires a keen eye.

As they say, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, so I guess I'll jump in. The mirrors for older packages and the LVM snapshot idea sound interesting. I never played with LVM before, so maybe it is time I studied it a bit.

Thanks again for the advice!

bender02

Member

From: UK

Registered: 2007-02-04

Posts: 1,328

Re: What can I expect

Best of luck!

RobbeR49

Member

From: Columbus, OH

Registered: 2006-01-17

Posts: 178

Re: What can I expect

It's been a while since I used Mepis but it was probably my favorite distro before I found Arch.

If you're already comfortable with Mepis it shouldn't take long for you to get comfortable with Arch. And I wouldn't be to worried about broken packages wreaking havoc on your machine, it's really a pretty rare occurrence. Really the only thing you need to do is keep your eyes on the forums/front page, if there is any big package change that may cause breakage it's usually announced ahead of time.