when will the live arch system be released?

thatwouldbeme · 2008-05-07 06:14:15

Hi, I couldn't find anything on it, so there may not be a set date, but I'm waiting on the Live CD to give Arch a try. I don't want to start with the RC. You may think highly of the RC, but I'm going to wait. I'm just wondering when I should check back.

Thanks

Sigi · 2008-05-07 07:08:45

You should start to think highly of the RC too.
Why don't you give it a try?

Allan · 2008-05-07 07:15:01

The usual schedule is after the next kernel version moves from testing into core. I think that may happen reasonably soon...

wuischke · 2008-05-07 07:27:12

Hello,

there is no "Arch" you can give a try. What I want to say is, that Arch is what you make and not a ready-made package like Ubuntu or Fedora. There are some spinoffs from Arch like FaunOS you could give a try, but it's only something made on the base of Arch and not "Arch".

Confused? Allow me to explain a bit better. When you install Arch you start with a minimalistic base system without a graphical user interface - only a text shell. From this point on you install just what you want. Someone likes KDE? He'll install KDE and set up his system for a KDE desktop. You are like me and prefer a window manager? Install xmonad,... and you have a very lightweight system. You are hardcore and don't want a GUI at all? Then don't install a X server and use the many command line applications in the Arch repositories.

As you see, there's no "Arch" you could test drive.

Oh and another remark: Arch is rolling release. This means that it is never "stable" or better: that there's never a stable release (the cds are only installers, nothing else) and packages are updated when a new version is released.
Kernel 2.6.25 is released? After a while in testing it will be in Arch - no need to wait for the next release in october. A new version of the intel xorg driver is released - will be soon in Arch. It is important that you upgrade your system regularly to avoid problems, it's a part of the Arch philosophy to use recent versions of all packages.

If you are not satisfied with my small explanations, please read the wiki for many more information about Arch. You'll have to learn a lot in order to use Arch, - but I believe it is worth it.

ninian · 2008-05-07 10:07:28

Very nice overview, wuischke!

phrakture · 2008-05-07 16:47:31

I think he's actually talking about archiso-based images, to be used for future installers and ISO images.

thatwouldbeme · 2008-05-08 03:23:16

I was asking about the Live CD announced here: http://www.archlinux.org/news/389/

However, I don't think I realized how minimal the base installation might be, so a LiveCD of base Arch might not be as useful as I was expecting, but that's still the version of installer that I would pick, since you've already got it working. It should make a nice rescue CD too.

So, is the release version of "arch-core-install-2008.04-rc-i686.iso" coming in less than a month? I'm not in a hurry to jump distros, so I am inclined to wait for release. The date of the release (or a ballpark estimate) what really what I was looking for with this thread.

wuischke: Thanks for the overview. I do have a lot of Linux experience, but no experience with a rolling release distro. From your description, now I'm worrying about package selection. I recall selecting all of my packages for a development desktop in Mandrake 6, and it took a looong time to sort through (although I probably selected a lot of stuff I didn't need). There are a lot more packages now then there were then, so I can imagine the install process being a marathon if I'm going to install a full gnome desktop. In the end I can save my package list, and it will be simple to reinstall on a new computer, but do you Arch guys have some shortcuts for assembling my Arch the first time, package by package?

Thanks for the info. I look forward to joining you shortly.

Allan · 2008-05-08 03:41:44

To get a full gnome desktop working:
Install, update (pacman -Syu), install X (pacman -S xorg), configure X (X --configure), install gnome (pacman -S gnome). Done.

Also, you don't really have to wait for new install media with a rolling release distro. Just install then update. Just avoid the ftp install on the older (2007-08) install isos.

wuischke · 2008-05-08 06:46:11

I would advice you to install in a Virtual machine like qemu or vmware. This way you can test Arch and see how you like it. The installation experience won't differ between the rc image and the final installation image, you'll only see more recent versions of the included packages and possibly bug fixes.

Regarding package installation: pacman is a very fast package manager and has a very good dependency handling as well as package groups. As you can see in Allan's example, it's very simple to get a system up and running - have you ever tried to uninstall all the packages you don't need in another distro?

thatwouldbeme · 2008-05-08 08:43:40

OK, you've convinced me. If I want to share a CD, I can get the release CD later. If I hit a bug that would have been fixed before release. I can deal with it.

Hmmm, I have 1466 packages installed in Ubuntu Hardy. If I only use half of that in Arch, I'll need to select 733 packages, or maybe only a hundred if the majority are automatically selected as dependencies to something else. Of course, I don't know how many packages are core + GDM, so maybe this will faster than I'm guessing. And "package groups" sounds promising. I have an empty partition, so I don't have to finish in one day. I'll just dual boot until it can replace everything I use that other distro for.

Thanks to all.

alex_anthony · 2008-05-08 17:25:14

If you're going down the gnome route, there are two groups, gnome and gnome-extra, which basically pull in everything in a default vanilla gnome install (not necessarily ubuntu though). Wiki = very useful

Raccoon1400 · 2008-05-08 22:28:18

thatwouldbeme wrote:

OK, you've convinced me. If I want to share a CD, I can get the release CD later. If I hit a bug that would have been fixed before release. I can deal with it.
Hmmm, I have 1466 packages installed in Ubuntu Hardy. If I only use half of that in Arch, I'll need to select 733 packages, or maybe only a hundred if the majority are automatically selected as dependencies to something else. Of course, I don't know how many packages are core + GDM, so maybe this will faster than I'm guessing. And "package groups" sounds promising. I have an empty partition, so I don't have to finish in one day. I'll just dual boot until it can replace everything I use that other distro for.
Thanks to all.

That's what I did. I had a ubuntu/vista dual boot(hate vista, want to do option 2 in my signature)
I added Arch, and then removed ubuntu when everything worked.

One note:
If Arch is on, for example, sda2, and ubuntu is sda1, when you delete ubuntu, arch will become sda 1. You will have to reinstall grub and fix menu.lst and fstab.
This should take 10 minutes. Unfortunately, took me 1.5 hours because I didn't realize the arch partition was now sda6 instead of sda7.

thatwouldbeme · 2008-05-09 20:32:02

Hahahahaha... I was not expecting that. I hadn't configured an ip address during installation, and dhclient wasn't available, so I had set ip address, default gateway, and DNS server manually, just to use pacman. It was like a quiz. Once I set that, I was able to run the pacman commands that Allan suggested. I tried gnome-extras too, but I think that wasn't recognized. pacman -Ss has been a great help, since then.

I'm surprised, core has even less installed than NetBSD, although at least there's bash. It's like LFS with a package manager. I think I'll have lots of fun, but I won't recommend it to any of my friends, because they wouldn't appreciate it. As for myself, apart from the entertainment and educational aspects of it, if I ever get my system to where it does everything I want, I would need to be able to install it again from scratch without it taking more than a day. What I liked so much about Ubuntu was the time I saved getting everything working. I have already done that, and now I want something that works. If I know I can easily recreate my Arch install on a new machine, then I could feel like this is my distro.

Thanks again. I have lots of questions, but I haven't read as much as I should yet, and I'm not really stuck right now anyway.

wuischke · 2008-05-09 21:25:42

If I'm not mistaken there's dhcpcd available which will take care of dhcp, but knowing how to set these things manually is of course very important (and particularly how to make it permanent).

I want to compliment you on your attitude - it's a very rewarding experience to see someone take things in his own hands after a little encouragement. Thanks for that.

BTW: An installation of Arch takes usually less than an hour for me (depending on my net connection speed) although I will install some programs later when I need them the first time. Keeping a backup copy of important files (in my case xmonad.hs and xorg.conf with my particular dual screen setup) will save you some work and speed the process up even further. Most things are faster to rewrite, though.

Last edited by wuischke (2008-05-09 21:26:05)

Arch Linux

#1 2008-05-07 06:14:15

when will the live arch system be released?

#2 2008-05-07 07:08:45

Re: when will the live arch system be released?

#3 2008-05-07 07:15:01

Re: when will the live arch system be released?

#4 2008-05-07 07:27:12

Re: when will the live arch system be released?

#5 2008-05-07 10:07:28

Re: when will the live arch system be released?

#6 2008-05-07 16:47:31

Re: when will the live arch system be released?

#7 2008-05-08 03:23:16

Re: when will the live arch system be released?

#8 2008-05-08 03:41:44

Re: when will the live arch system be released?

#9 2008-05-08 06:46:11

Re: when will the live arch system be released?

#10 2008-05-08 08:43:40

Re: when will the live arch system be released?

#11 2008-05-08 17:25:14

Re: when will the live arch system be released?

#12 2008-05-08 22:28:18

Re: when will the live arch system be released?

#13 2008-05-09 20:32:02

Re: when will the live arch system be released?

#14 2008-05-09 21:25:42

Re: when will the live arch system be released?

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