Should I go with the latest RC or the one from 2007? *First timer*

CheesyBeef · 2008-06-04 23:59:24

Hi, I am just about to download Arch Linux and install it for the first time. I see there is either the 2007-8 version on the main page and there is also an April RC in the repos.

Which should I download? I heard it is hard to have kernel updates with Arch (manually configured), so would it be a bad idea to get a release candidate - probably having many kernel updates?

Extra note: I probably won't be configuring the kernel myself for a while - unless that is needed? So I'm not sure if kernel updates would even bother me at the moment.

Thank you,
Brian

Last edited by CheesyBeef (2008-06-05 00:00:45)

Pudge · 2008-06-05 00:11:11

I would go with the 2008.04-rc. I have used it a couple of times with no problem. There have been too many changes in the way Arch works since the 2007 ISOs and you would have to work your way through those changes. Not being familiar with Arch, that would be difficult at best. The release candidate would eliminate that.

Pudge

Last edited by Pudge (2008-06-05 00:13:13)

ozar · 2008-06-05 00:14:19

I'd agree with Pudge and go with the rc release.

bender02 · 2008-06-05 00:16:49

Latest RC. You can run into some (relatively small, but still) problems with older cds.

dyscoria · 2008-06-05 00:17:01

CheesyBeef wrote:

Extra note: I probably won't be configuring the kernel myself for a while - unless that is needed? So I'm not sure if kernel updates would even bother me at the moment.

Don't worry, there's no kernel configuring required.
Kernel updates should be fine (well, it's never broken my system anyway).

Oh and welcome to arch!

Last edited by dyscoria (2008-06-05 00:17:47)

CheesyBeef · 2008-06-05 00:55:18

Thanks for the help, you guys have made my experience start out great!

I appreciate the advice.

Thanks,
Brian

kevmille · 2008-06-05 01:58:37

I installed the latest RC this week. It went very well. Please read the Beginner's Guide even if you have some experience with distros such as Gentoo or FreeBSD. I ran into some problems with my first install because of that (hitting myself on the head). It is an excellent guide.

My only issue was that there were triple entries in /etc/fstab for all my partitions. Check it out before your reboot and delete the extra entries. Also, swap was not set during either of my two installs. Make sure swap is working. I did fdisk -l /dev/sda to double check which partition was swap, in my case: /dev/sda2. Then I did swapoff /dev/sda2 for safe measures, then mkswap /dev/sda2 && swapon /dev/sda2.

Other than that, I had no major issues. I am on day 4 of using Arch now and loving it. It is a keeper for me on my desktop :-)

Good luck.

Sjoden · 2008-06-05 16:47:03

I like using the 2008.03 RC3. I have no problems with it at all. The 2007.08 iso is officially "don't use this" because it has some bugs. Slicehost only offers Arch in the 2007.08, and when I pacman -Syu from a clean install, I have to remove gpm, then do it again, and install gpm seperately, although, a server doesn't really need it anyways.

-Zack

_Marco_ · 2008-06-05 16:48:02

I used the latest RC and all worked fine, give it a try

Arch Linux

#1 2008-06-04 23:59:24