Arch is boooo-ring!

sultanoswing · 2008-07-31 07:04:26

Dear Arch Developers,

As a new Arch user, I wish to register a complaint. Since setting up my 32-bit install a couple of weeks ago, it's been trouble-free and everything has 'worked as advertised' in the wiki (or at least once I got my AGP NVIDIA card working, but that was a BIOS issue).

As a user who prefers to tinker with my system as much as use it, I find this level of useability and flawless upgrading to be, frankly, boring. I'd much rather have to constantly solve problems, compile from source, and deal with out-of-date packages, extra bloat and obscure, hidden settings - just as I have done with other popular distributions.

I hope that the Arch developers will see their way to amending these annoying design oversights and come to grips with what the average user's expectations are. I therefore request that they abandon this outlandish philosophy of The Arch Way - which seems to me to be an excuse to "keep it simple not stupid", in defiance of established OS norms.

Regards,
sultanoswing

dhave · 2008-07-31 07:39:48

One solution to this problem which I've seen recommended on this forum is to write a script which would, at each boot, randomly delete a single package without telling the user what has been deleted.

That way, your system will eventually start behaving strangely or even crash entirely, and you can enjoy tracking down the cause and trying to fix it.

This is not recommended for production machines or critical servers.

Last edited by dhave (2008-07-31 07:40:02)

neotuli · 2008-07-31 07:52:16

I can also recommend this windows emulation program, which kills processes at random to simulate the instability we're accostomed to.
http://www.kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=19198

Oh and sultanoswing, I'm liking this, we should team up sometime and write some good threads.

shining · 2008-07-31 08:28:47

neotuli wrote:

Oh and sultanoswing, I'm liking this, we should team up sometime and write some good threads.

Ahah that's true, I definitely felt your good old style in that thread, so sounds like a winner team.

shining · 2008-07-31 08:35:24

dhave wrote:

One solution to this problem which I've seen recommended on this forum is to write a script which would, at each boot, randomly delete a single package without telling the user what has been deleted.

Oh you see, my signature is so helpful. Just a slight alternative of it, and its done :

pacman -Rc $(pacman -Qq | LANG=C sort -R | head -n 1)

I suggest to add this to /etc/rc.local, and add the --noconfirm pacman flag for automating it.

Barrucadu · 2008-07-31 09:54:01

You could try replacing all of your programs with Windows equivalents through WINE - that should drive you mad after a while

Heller_Barde · 2008-07-31 11:41:57

better idea yet! use pacman -Ql to list the contents of a random package and rm -rf all of it

cheers Heller Barde

chimeric · 2008-07-31 12:50:02

sultanoswing wrote:

As a user who prefers to tinker with my system as much as use it, I find this level of useability and flawless upgrading to be, frankly, boring. I'd much rather have to constantly solve problems, compile from source, and deal with out-of-date packages, extra bloat and obscure, hidden settings - just as I have done with other popular distributions.

Exactly! And that's why I've kept and haven't fixed the only real glitch which occurred to me in my time using Arch since a month (X freezing after login through SLim). It gives me the "something is broken" feeling at least for the two minutes I log into my machine and have to kill and restart X. I know the answer to this is somewhere here in the forums, but without that, my computer experience would be perfect, and I am not sure I am ready for this.

dyscoria · 2008-07-31 13:11:47

I think the arch community is boring.

Perhaps replacing KDE4.1 in the repos with the latest subversion snapshot from KDE trunk would spice things up a little. That has the added bonus of giving you a plethora of bugs to sort out, alongside the hell that breaks loose in the forum and the all to common barrage of threats to leave arch that we've become so accustomed to (oh good god no! what will we do without you!).

Oh and equally effective would be not releasing a new ISO every 2 weeks or of course leaving the absolutely vital and completely unchangeable bootup message as 'Core Dump'. I've heard it slows down boot time by 3 seconds!

anykey · 2008-07-31 13:36:37

Well, in the past I have enjoyed running a VirtualBox with Windows 2000 in it.... every once in a while I would fire it up, use it a little, and enjoy that it wasn't my real OS....

chimeric · 2008-07-31 13:41:26

Another possibility to create the experience of a wonky system every once in a while without uninstalling packages and a probably very high "surprise" factor would be to add the following in your roots $SHELLrc (forgetting about it ASAP is mandatory and will increase the mystery factor in the long term):

[[ $RANDOM%2 -eq 0 ]] && chmod 1775 /tmp
[[ $RANDOM%2 -eq 1 ]] && chmod 1777 /tmp

Edit: increased mystery factor ...

Last edited by chimeric (2008-07-31 15:23:31)

XFire · 2008-07-31 15:00:25

It is boring, I have had a few non critical annoyances, but that's it. What fun is computing if there is nothing to fiddle with to make it work, its just dull.

esters · 2008-07-31 15:01:42

Dude, Spare ~480euros and buy a Samsung R20+ laptop, Freezes / Lock-ups guaranteed 100%

Last edited by esters (2008-07-31 15:02:05)

skottish · 2008-07-31 15:40:49

Welcome to the forums sultanoswing. You'll fit in nicely here.

rok3 · 2008-07-31 21:59:49

Well you could write your own tiling window manager using a programming language of your own design. There definitely are not enough of either out there already.

KM3K · 2008-07-31 23:25:28

I must agree. Arch just works. I've been using Arch for a year and a half, and this is my first post. Unlike other distributions I've tried (Ubuntu, I'm looking at you), Arch just makes sense and the instructions on the wiki work right so I haven't needed to ask questions.

I probably wouldn't have even posted this, but I figured I've been using this distro too long without getting involved in the community in some way.

I'll have to try some of the suggestions here to spice things up! :-D

Themaister · 2008-07-31 23:50:58

Well. You could always install Win ME for your tinkering needs

I'd rather prefer tweaking my desktop than cutting off extra fat in other distributions.^^

Last edited by Themaister (2008-07-31 23:51:45)

B-Con · 2008-08-01 02:47:45

Erase /etc and try to rebuild it from scratch.

iphitus · 2008-08-01 05:54:01

neotuli wrote:

I can also recommend this windows emulation program, which kills processes at random to simulate the instability we're accostomed to.
http://www.kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=19198
Oh and sultanoswing, I'm liking this, we should team up sometime and write some good threads.

My windows box has actually started doing that recently.

Every night, it appears to kill, 2-5 different random processes. It got firefox for the first time last night. Flight sim the other night.

11010010110 · 2008-08-01 09:08:50

Actually

Add testing and unstable sources and add a cron that downloads and compiles new kde 4.2 builds each night (what a waste of electricity though)

To me the solution is using it on old hardware. You allways have to tweak it (wth do cron and syslog do on my system ?) or figure out why you have no network (the switch you found a week ago in the junk died tonight)

And bringing KDE 3.5.9 to be superior to 4.1 in useability and look is not bad too

eNTi · 2008-08-01 12:37:40

my brother hl-1430 drives me crazy about every few weeks or so... maybe you should get some not-so-well-supported hardware and try to work around issues. that just might do the trick.

Allan · 2008-08-01 12:44:01

My advice is go to the bug tracker, pick a bug, install the relevant package, and revel in the joy of trying to fix that bug and submitting the fix to the bug tracker. That way, we all win.

iggyst00ge · 2008-08-01 16:59:15

I'll bet you drive a mid-70's MGB or Triumph, too.

sultanoswing wrote:

Dear Arch Developers,
As a new Arch user, I wish to register a complaint. Since setting up my 32-bit install a couple of weeks ago, it's been trouble-free and everything has 'worked as advertised' in the wiki (or at least once I got my AGP NVIDIA card working, but that was a BIOS issue).
As a user who prefers to tinker with my system as much as use it, I find this level of useability and flawless upgrading to be, frankly, boring. I'd much rather have to constantly solve problems, compile from source, and deal with out-of-date packages, extra bloat and obscure, hidden settings - just as I have done with other popular distributions.
I hope that the Arch developers will see their way to amending these annoying design oversights and come to grips with what the average user's expectations are. I therefore request that they abandon this outlandish philosophy of The Arch Way - which seems to me to be an excuse to "keep it simple not stupid", in defiance of established OS norms.
Regards,
sultanoswing

karoshi · 2008-08-03 01:58:26

Puuuuuh!

Last days werent boring at all. Its not an OS, its a movement!

chunfy · 2008-08-22 12:36:14

Winner of "Best thread 2008":lol:

Arch Linux

#1 2008-07-31 07:04:26

Arch is boooo-ring!

#2 2008-07-31 07:39:48

Re: Arch is boooo-ring!

#3 2008-07-31 07:52:16

Re: Arch is boooo-ring!

#4 2008-07-31 08:28:47

Re: Arch is boooo-ring!

#5 2008-07-31 08:35:24

Re: Arch is boooo-ring!

#6 2008-07-31 09:54:01

Re: Arch is boooo-ring!

#7 2008-07-31 11:41:57

Re: Arch is boooo-ring!

#8 2008-07-31 12:50:02

Re: Arch is boooo-ring!

#9 2008-07-31 13:11:47

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#10 2008-07-31 13:36:37

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#11 2008-07-31 13:41:26

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#12 2008-07-31 15:00:25

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#13 2008-07-31 15:01:42

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#14 2008-07-31 15:40:49

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#24 2008-08-03 01:58:26

Re: Arch is boooo-ring!

#25 2008-08-22 12:36:14

Re: Arch is boooo-ring!

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