The Official Unofficial 'Arch is Best' Thread

gazj · 2008-04-14 13:24:17

The first time I ever filed a bug (was on awesome's bug tracker not arch) I felt like I should not be moaning about something that essentially I was using for free that someone else had put a great deal of effort into. To put it bluntly I am too polite and really worry about being rude. Luckily the dev felt the bug was well worth fixing and in the next release was fixed.

So.. In the end I felt like I had made a contribution (even if it was very small) to making a oss project better. It was well worth it.

My suggestion is be polite about it, explain as best you can and give as much information as possible. Don't be scared. I still have to tell myself this sometimes. The devs do want our feedback. I am sure they get a great kick out of seeing there software work as intended. I know I get one when I finish a project at work.

faelar · 2008-04-14 17:19:19

When I'm in front of "something" which doesn't work, my instinct tells me "Google it !". And most of the time, the answer is... on a linux forum ? I can't remember any situation where I was redirected to a bug tracker (not sure it's the right name).
Maybe I'm wrong, but I think it lets the user think that telling there is a problem (bug or not) on a forum is the best way to be helped by someone who know how things work (a dev sometimes).

Another point, you said :

Problem: Oh crap, libjoe.so.1 not found!
Suggestion: Symlink libjoe.so.2 to libjoe.so.1

In this situation, the user don't know how to fix things, and the answer provided is "crap" of course, but we will suppose it works...
What the user will do next time ? He browses a different forum and find exactly the same question he asked for ! He is so happy ! He can help someone else to solve a problem ! What do you suppose he will say ?
And if the soft is not broken anymore for him, do you really think he will fill a bug-report ?

I don't have the solution, but maybe we need to understand more why user don't use bug tracker...

ornitorrincos · 2008-04-14 20:37:25

I think that the basic problem(at least, I have it sometimes) is recognizing what are bugs and what are just silly configuration questions.

kakTuZ · 2008-04-14 21:56:08

faelar wrote:

When I'm in front of "something" which doesn't work, my instinct tells me "Google it !". And most of the time, the answer is... on a linux forum ? I can't remember any situation where I was redirected to a bug tracker (not sure it's the right name).
Maybe I'm wrong, but I think it lets the user think that telling there is a problem (bug or not) on a forum is the best way to be helped by someone who know how things work (a dev sometimes).

Look at it from the other site: Everything filled in a bug tracker got solved, so you never had to bother with.

vuboy · 2008-04-14 23:02:02

ornitorrincos wrote:

I think that the basic problem(at least, I have it sometimes) is recognizing what are bugs and what are just silly configuration questions.

Thats my issue as well.

VB

ConnorBehan · 2008-04-15 14:27:32

Also, sometimes it seems pointless to point out one bug when its already obvious a program is wrought with bugs left and right. For example, I just tried converting one of my Corel Draw drawings that I made in grade 8 into an SVG with Uniconvertor. It didn't work... but is that a specific bug in Uniconvertor that could be easily fixed if reported? I don't think so. Everyone knows reverse engineering a proprietary vector graphics format is a daunting task and I'd be incredibly surprised if converting an arbitrary CDR to an SVG with Uniconvertor DID work.

ornitorrincos · 2008-04-15 20:55:14

in that case they could have been interested in why it didn't work, if you try to reverse engineer something, the more information the better.

louipc · 2008-04-21 15:33:19

iphitus wrote:

I see this a lot. It pisses me off.
File bugs, don't ignore them! That's how bugs perpetuate and last for ages. Or maybe a bug is lingering/unconfirmed and we need more info, you could provide that info. (Cue Uncle Sam?)

I sense a conflict here. You tell us to file bug reports but on the same token it seems that a lot of bug reports are IGNORED by devs. If you want bug reports I've got six hundred and thirty for ya. Why are so many still lingering? There are even a few that were reported in 0.7 Wombat! Come on!

Close them. Follow up. Update the relevant packages. Etc.
If you need help, ask for it. A lot of us are itching to help.

zodmaner · 2008-04-21 15:38:13

louipc wrote:

If you need help, ask for it. A lot of us are itching to help.

That's exactly what I feels. There all a lot of us users who want to (and can) help with bugs and outdated packages.

selket · 2008-04-23 17:11:27

My first contact with linux was when i got from a neigbour Susu 3.4(?) i used it for quite some time but it was not really usable for daily stuff. So i stucked with windows until my system got heavyly infected by virus trojans and so on. I was PISSED so i start to use debian and then Ubuntu.

I must say that ubuntu makes some thinks so much better then debian and i enjoyed the time.

then about 3 weeks ago i buy the eeePC from asus. The Xandros on it is a joke even for me so i gave ubuntu a try again. But due the slow nature of the eee it runned kinda sluggish so i found arch.

after very much issues with the Usb install i finally installed arch (pretty fast) and i was realy positivly surprised from it. My eeePC runs great now and my workmates are jeallous on it (and they have 1200$ thinkpads^^).

after the installation was so fast and easy i switched my desktop also to arch.

Arch is not easy but after initial tweaking and "setuping" i have few to worry and it just works

btw the mirrors are FREAKING FAST!!!

Pro contra

+Very worryfree installation
+build my own system
+Good hardware detection
+FAST
+Clear design
+wiki

-There is no stable version (repository) so far i know
-i still have to cook coffee myself !!!
-no guitool for pacman (so far i know). should be not that hard to implement.

finferflu · 2008-04-23 18:45:03

+ The [core] and [extra] repos are considered stable.
+ Too much coffee is bad for your health.
+ There are people developing pacman GUIs, the most outstanding one, according to public opinion, is called Shaman (don't have the link right now).

Last edited by finferflu (2008-04-23 18:46:11)

ConnorBehan · 2008-04-24 22:32:01

Alright! I registered on the sk1project forum just to post that uniconvertor bug. I don't expect it to be fixed any time soon, but now no one can say it's my fault because I didn't report it .

despairblue · 2008-04-25 14:39:18

Just wanted to follow the good advice by submitting a bug report for compiz fusion.
I couldn't find the bug tracker and asked for it on irc://irc.freenode.net/compiz-fusion. They told me where to find it, but suggestet reading http://wiki.compiz-fusion.org/HowtoSubmitBugReports first.

Just an excerpt:

There are far more people reading the web forum, mailing lists and participating on IRC than there are going over bugs. This is why we urge everyone to discuss their problem before they create a ticket, not because we don't want to help you. Simply put: The chances of getting your problem solved quickly are far greater on the web forum than on the bug tracker.

iphitus · 2008-04-25 15:20:57

I'm not saying don't discuss it, I'm asking people to handle those discussions better.

Take the two examples above. In the first, someone tells someone to use something else, despite there being a _clear_ bug.

The second, again, a _clear_ bug again.

Discussion is great, I just want people to actually file a bug when there's a problem, and not accept some temporary band-aid solution and hope the bug is fixed in 6 months.

Stefan Husmann · 2008-04-25 17:35:38

Some experiences I made not too long ago.

A package I maintain in AUR - vym - did not build any longer due to some GCC 4.3 issue. I wrote a patch and submitted it to the AUR. Afterwards I send the patch to the mailing list. Some minutes later someone sent a link to a debian patch site with nearly exactly the same patchfile.

The developer of vym answered and said, that there is a cvs version of vym, and asked me to test if these patches are needed there, too. They were not, but I found another similar gcc 4.3 related bug in cvs and gave another patch. This got upstream not much later.

So now we have to versions of vym in AUR, a stable one with a "Workaround" patch and a cvs version with no patches needed. I think this is fine.

Some other cases went similar. I think the upstreamers are only waiting for patches coming from the communities, at least in smaller projects.

snafle · 2008-04-26 23:07:32

I'm not usually one for gushing... but I do feel at home on Arch. I have it installed on my server, and it's making me doubt the XP I have installed on this laptop. Arch feels like a steam locomotive- it's clearly a beautiful feat of engineering, it smells and feels right. It wirls away and fills the heart of anyone looking on it with joy. Ubuntu- I tried it. It made me doubt linux- it ate my files and was slow, cumbersome. It was like a diesel locomotive, ugly, pungent.

Even over SSH I enjoy working with Arch. It's a temptation to install it on my desktop, even though Vista has been growing on me (enough ram for it to be happy, a fast dual core to make it more so). But I daren't, for I know if I have a desktop Arch I'll be so engrossed I'll fail my A levels for sure. Alas, such is life. Python and Linux are so much more interesting than Ligands and reptitive Trigononmetry (I'll grant you, a maths problem is an interesting excersise, but repeating them ad nauseum in order to reliably complete in a paper in the time limit gets tiresome).

And of course, I like the arch community. It's small enough not to have all the answers, or any really tiresome individuals, which is excellent because it improves my Internet Sleuthing and keeps me happy, and big and friendly enough to provide interesting ideas and help on the vast majority of problems.

Ghil · 2008-04-29 22:09:52

My story with Linux begins in 2000, when I installed Mandrake Linux 7.1 (Helium if I remember correctly) and fell in love with it. It was so nice, and way better than Windows...I never looked back. But then Mandrake grew, and the more it grew, the more bloated it became, eventually changing it's name and becoming quite a mess. I then distro hoped in the hope of finding something nice and found Debian, wich was really nice, but it quickly became old so I tried Ubuntu...and it reminded me of my Mandriva days. so bloated (easy to use yes, but oh so slow).

I heard many times of Arch, never gave it a shot...I should've. Arch is awesome, and it will be my distro of choice for a long time!

handy · 2008-05-04 03:11:28

As far as the topic of this thread is concerned, I find it to be somewhat elitist (no offense OPP, I know that was not your intention ).

Some respondents in this thread reside in the imho camp, their attitude respects & is also grateful for freedom of choice & taste, giving credence to the unimaginable plethora of possible alternate usage circumstances that other computer users may experience. The opposing position in the extreme is held by those who sincerely believe that their current OS, or Linux distro' of choice is sanctified by the God of computing & is the holiest of holies (note the spelling ). Now there are those that consider Bill & Windows, Steve & Apple, Richard & GNU or Linus & Linux to fill the God & holy whatever? Paradigm. Which is ultimately egotistical, elitist, masturbation. IMHO Which can never be as satisfying as the real thing!

Different OS's & Linux distro's suit different people at different times & for different reasons. We all have different strengths & weaknesses & usually (but not always) are attracted to things that we are capable of achieving. So, I try to always be mindful of the fact that most computer users are not in the slightest bit interested in setting up an OS. They just want to get done what they need to, & get on with something far more important than sitting in front of the damn computer which is stopping them from doing what they really want to be doing!

The general level of computer knowledge is growing, faster in the wealthier nations as they have had more exposure to the technology & generally have more public education systems in place, so literacy & numeracy are expected norms. This situation I think is working against MS, in the developed world at least, as many people (who can afford it & if the applications that they need to use are supported, or they run Windows on their Mac if they need to) are leaving MS, & heading to Apple. This is both good & bad: The good is MS, is loosing customers & monopolies restrict freedom, development & horde wealth. Another good thing when people leave Windows & move to OS X, is that they have usually made their first change in OS; when done from Windows to OS X, people find that they don't have a virus problem anymore, & that they have reliability, they will love or hate the OS X interface, but it is basically simple for the average user to use & they are becoming somewhat familiar albeit at a very superficial level with *nix!
The bad: Apple is even worse than MS, when it comes to vendor lock-in, they are a hardware manufacturer first & foremost, who happens to develop software products which they integrate with their hardware in a fashion that not only compliments it but also ensures maximum profit. Apple's hardware is somewhat overpriced, likely a necessary requisite to pay for their marketing, which presents their often excellent products as a fashion statement for those that like to live on the cool edge of town. If we swapped Apple with MS, the Apple monopoly would be far more limiting on the broader computing worlds freedom of choice. imho.

I don't know what proportion of the computing user population of the world uses *nix on their desktop? If I pull a number out of the air, & say 10%, it demonstrates that I have no idea how many people in China & India are using *nix, I have heard that MS, is using a number of strategies, including the welcoming of piracy of their products in the developing world so as to increase the level of addiction to their products! Apple computers will always be in trouble in the poorer countries, so *nix basically means free Linux/BSD, which hopefully will grow at a faster rate than the MS opposition. Though MS, is always able to afford to make deals at the government level in countries, & push cheap products into the education system where they can create the future addicts that will keep the pusher in funds & power, prolonging the MS monopoly. :-[

Anyway, I can't foresee the computing future of humanity, though it does look good for *nix, as general computing smarts grow, & education/experience regarding DRM also grows, these things in combination with the perpetual & rapid development of Linux/BSD (& we shouldn't forget BeOS either) will continue to see a steadily growing number of computer users participating in the free software experience - by the people for the people - as it should be. So, really statements about my free OS or Linux kernel based distro' being the best is just flag waving coming from the prevalent human weakness for being chauvinistic.

Personally I have an extensive Windows background, as a self employed service tech' for 10 years. I retired from that 2.5 years ago, dumped Windows & went straight to Debian as a complete Linux beginner, quickly thereafter to Ubuntu, have lived on the Ubuntu forums since (where contrary to a post or 2 I've seen here, the trolls are extremely well handled by the great moderating staff, & the community spirit of the Ubuntu forums sets the highest standard I have thus far seen on the net ). I've been a distro' whore, including other free OS's such as PC-BSD, Solaris, Nextenta. Had a failed attempt at installing Arch about 9 months ago, which came immediately after spending 3 days on Gentoo, which would not under any circumstances install X (apparently a possible problem with my motherboards BIOS!?) So, I coudn't be bothered battling it out with Arch that first time after the install failed at the update stage, I went on to install something easy like Ubuntu or Sabayon, I don't recall which.

Arch seems to be put together more simply than any of the other OS's I've experienced, (apart from perhaps the Amiga, which had so much of the OS in ROM anyway) it has taught me a good deal more about Linux than any of the other distro's, probably due to the simplicity of design, which makes it easier for my old brain to grasp, due to this aspect of Arch alone I will use it, as I consider Arch to be the best teaching about Linux, Linux distro' I have experienced. Of course I like all of the other great things about Arch that have already been stated so many times in this thread. So, I expect to be using Arch for quite some time as it will need to be quite a distro' / OS (perhaps BeOS, which is at alpha now) that can satisfy my current computing needs better. The possibility of running both Arch & BeOS on the 2 machines in my office I find quite pleasing.

Currently Arch is running on my PC & on an alu' 24" iMac, the only problems on the iMac are due to ALSA's sound quality still not being as good as it could be, & video problems when playing DVD's that I expect are due to the ATI's proprietary drivers not being up to scratch. Both of these problems will pass, though the video playback quality is bad enough to force me to boot OS X to watch DVD's.

Arch is a great Linux distro', certainly my favorite out of all I have looked at, though none of them are perfect.

Last edited by handy (2008-05-04 07:34:23)

Ghil · 2008-05-04 11:39:52

no! it's ultimate, it can even cure cancer! perfect I say!

WernerL · 2008-05-05 16:43:52

I tried a lot of distro's and arch satisfies me the most.
arch rocks !

Cippa Lippa · 2008-05-05 17:38:04

HELP!!!! I am forgetting the operating system!!!!

how come nothing gets screwed up anymore??? HELP!!!

kobaia · 2008-05-18 09:17:48

freakcode wrote:

iphitus wrote:
I see this a lot. It pisses me off.
File bugs, don't ignore them! That's how bugs perpetuate and last for ages. Or maybe a bug is lingering/unconfirmed and we need more info, you could provide that info. (Cue Uncle Sam?)
...
It's irritating to hear people whinging "this software is so buggy, this bug hasnt been fixed for months". That's your fault because you did nothing about it, and you can only blame yourself. Open Source developers do not have the resources to test on all hardware/configurations.
I guess its because big part of the current userbase comes from proprietary software culture, where people don't have the habit of interacting with the developer, don't fill bug reports, and so on. I would say they even don't "feel" they can improve the software. All they do is download a shareware, if it sucks, they download another and another, or if they buy some software that crashes on their faces, they curse the manufacturer, but keep buying the same crapware because it's "widespread". Software is really a very different type of "product" - the only I know that is released not completly finished neither fail-proof.

I stumbled into this post just now, looking for a solution to a ettercap-lib issue and begun reading and this struck me kind of hard since, yeah, I never thought of it this way but it is absolutely true and I am in great shame. I will instantly begin to keep eyes out for bugs not just to get them fixed or worked around but to report them.

This should be in arch-philosophy-section, or somewhere where it is easily readable. It did really get my eyes open. Going for the bugtracker right now.

shining · 2008-05-18 10:42:46

kobaia wrote:

freakcode wrote:
I guess its because big part of the current userbase comes from proprietary software culture, where people don't have the habit of interacting with the developer, don't fill bug reports, and so on. I would say they even don't "feel" they can improve the software. All they do is download a shareware, if it sucks, they download another and another, or if they buy some software that crashes on their faces, they curse the manufacturer, but keep buying the same crapware because it's "widespread". Software is really a very different type of "product" - the only I know that is released not completly finished neither fail-proof.
I stumbled into this post just now, looking for a solution to a ettercap-lib issue and begun reading and this struck me kind of hard since, yeah, I never thought of it this way but it is absolutely true and I am in great shame. I will instantly begin to keep eyes out for bugs not just to get them fixed or worked around but to report them.
This should be in arch-philosophy-section, or somewhere where it is easily readable. It did really get my eyes open. Going for the bugtracker right now.

It is more general, rather open source philosophy than just archlinux philosophy. So it applies to archlinux itself and its own bug tracker, but also to every open source apps that archlinux uses, and their respective bug trackers.
But even without getting into these details, explaining that philosophy by contrast to proprietary software is still interesting and could be put somewhere.

kobaia · 2008-05-18 11:17:16

shining wrote:

kobaia wrote:
freakcode wrote:
I guess its because big part of the current userbase comes from proprietary software culture, where people don't have the habit of interacting with the developer, don't fill bug reports, and so on. I would say they even don't "feel" they can improve the software. All they do is download a shareware, if it sucks, they download another and another, or if they buy some software that crashes on their faces, they curse the manufacturer, but keep buying the same crapware because it's "widespread". Software is really a very different type of "product" - the only I know that is released not completly finished neither fail-proof.
I stumbled into this post just now, looking for a solution to a ettercap-lib issue and begun reading and this struck me kind of hard since, yeah, I never thought of it this way but it is absolutely true and I am in great shame. I will instantly begin to keep eyes out for bugs not just to get them fixed or worked around but to report them.
This should be in arch-philosophy-section, or somewhere where it is easily readable. It did really get my eyes open. Going for the bugtracker right now.
It is more general, rather open source philosophy than just archlinux philosophy. So it applies to archlinux itself and its own bug tracker, but also to every open source apps that archlinux uses, and their respective bug trackers.
But even without getting into these details, explaining that philosophy by contrast to proprietary software is still interesting and could be put somewhere.

Yeah, thats also true, about several bugtrackers needing reporting of bugs.
But its a bit weird, it never hit me until now the real importance of reporting bugs. I think it was the 'if you do not report it, other people might not report it neither and you settle for a stupid workaround that only semi-works or works half-assed and since noone reports it, it never gets fixed.' that made me go 'uh, oh.'.

I switched to ubuntu about 2 years ago and to arch about 6 months ago and I have looked upon the bugsections like something that I cannot do much about as I am not a programmer, developer but a user and my point of view on bugs was basicly to just wait and it'll get fixed if it needs to get fixed and even though I embraced the open source philosophy as I was presented to it and felt that my opinions towards proprietary software grew from slight distaste to somewhere in anguished tormented hatred as this happened. I still havent thought far enough to actually start reporting bugs on my own, I read licences and ideas on how things should work and I agree that community ruling is the best way to build basicly anything. I just dont feel as if I stumbled upon the idea that even newbies can report bugs, or felt as if i were supposed to do such things; as it belongs to the developers tasks. But im wrong! Its my task to report bugs I find.

imagelife · 2008-05-21 08:50:02

i love arch ............

Arch Linux

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