The Official Unofficial 'Arch is Best' Thread

pany · 2009-08-11 17:05:00

With Ubuntu you can set your grandmother free from windows and doors, in a day.....
With Arch you can transform her into a geek and greatly improve her memory, within... a few days.
But maybe this is just an unlucky metaphor.

To me Arch gives you the ability to end up with maybe the "cleanest" OS out there, with the least of effort. Arch is much more than simple. It's '"clean". There goes all my appreciation.

Keep it up........
'Cause it's running.......fast........and......clean.........

akurashy · 2009-08-15 18:26:49

Arch is the best teaching distro, ever. What do I mean? Wiki is concise, clean. Pacman is too awesome, the boot for me is faster than any other distro.

I've been a linux supporter for years, started with ubuntu back in 2004 and ran it for quite a while. Then hopped to openSUSE, kubuntu, ZenWalk (I liked it at first.. but since it was starting it was quite... a mess when installing packages, too many illegal instructions), redhat, can't recall any other. I didn't hop much anyway.

And to be honest, joining arch made me realize that even with a GUI there was still tons to learn. So yea, I've learned with arch more than I've ever had with ubuntu (burn their wiki, please) and any other distro.

The day I leave Arch, it'll be the hardest one giving up on such a simple and minimalistic distro.

timm · 2009-09-04 17:46:21

I have an older machine that has been running as my office fileserver since 2002. I used redhat on it then, as it was what was recommended, and used that for a couple years until they killed that distro and went to fedora. I transferred to arch on it until I took it offline a couple weeks ago.

I decided I'd put fedora on it to sell it, as more people appear to be familiar with that. Now, not to say I haven't had my share of problems installing arch on machines over the years, but, aaaaggggghhhhhh! An attempted install of Fedora 11 ended up with a current Arch install. The fedora graphic installer (default) took forever to come up on the machine; it was so slow I rebooted once just thinking the darn thing had hung somehow. Then it complained about my old serverworks hardware, then it complained about something else, and then it got rebooted and the Arch installer CD made its way into the tray. Again, it runs fine.

toasty_ghosty · 2009-09-07 06:40:00

I have used many distros out there. Never quite happy. After getting Arch working on my Thinkpad I relized how much room other distros have for improvement.

If any distro is raising the bar, its Arch.

-Ghosty

syn · 2009-09-08 03:56:46

DeniZen wrote:

Pacman is a real rival to Apt - possibly even better.

DeniZen wrote:

possibly even better.

DeniZen wrote:

possibly

OH, YOU.

Janarto · 2009-09-10 21:06:38

i tried to install arch in feb 2008 but i messed up so i gave up for sometimes
i'm a macintosh user since the classic but when i started looking at free oses, i also tried pc bsd witch was very easy but rather limited as a desktop.
then i tried ubuntu for a while but i wasn't very happy with the performances, the responsiveness and overall feeling so i came back to leopard.
Then with 2009.8 i tried arch again, it's was hard at the beginning but a pleasure to learn, and i just have to say : it's the better os i ever used.

some of the reasons are :

- you have to learn how the systems works, and that can be a pain to start with but it's brilliant in the end
- it's very very nimble (i use xfce 4 because i'm not used to more minimalist wm for the moment)
- it's really stable (and i was quite amazed because the package in core and extra are certainly the most up to date of any linux system i found, maybe except sidux)
- i have to thank you for the quality of the wiki and the forum which is really useful to beginners
- all my needed software are accessible thru the main repositories and i don't have looked at AUR yet !

so officially, to me, arch is best
i will eventualy try to learn about lfs if i'm brave enought, in order to go on learning

chender · 2009-09-11 04:07:19

Two key areas Arch excels are the wiki, and Pacman. While I had my challenges, I have been able to migrate from xfce when I began with Arch in July (Ubuntu before), through to lxde which is fast and lean, now to Xmonad. Xmonad took me a while to sort out over a 2 week period, but now I have it running with dmenu and my Thinkpad X60s just soars.

What I have noticed with Arch is that I now have a much clearer understanding of my filesystem and what goes where.

History:

Windows ... to 2007
Ubuntu 2007 - 2009
Arch 2009

Main apps:
firefox
Go-office (improved openoffice)
zim (desktop wiki for notes)
jungledisk (S3) (backup)
lxrandr (external monitor control)
lxterminal (fast but functional terminal)
pcmanfm (super fast file manager)
rdesktop (remote access to our banking app on Win 2000)
git (our application - I only get to edit text)
wicd (rock solid network management)
DE: x windows and Xmonad (50MB footprint)

Anonymo · 2009-09-11 15:55:49

he he
I started something:
http://www.tuxmachines.org/node/39475#comment-11286

ninjaprawn · 2009-09-11 22:52:42

i just love arch!! no other distro comes close. But i need 2 try a version of slack and gentoo at sum point!!

after runnin arch 4 nearly 2 years, i got bored n tried fedora 11. only lasted a day!! came straight back 2 arch, but just set it up completely different 2 the last setup!! i was running compiz-fusion as a standalone wm on my moniter with ob on my tv, but htis time round gone with kde4 on my moniter and ob on the tv again! for ease of setup, install and usability, kde is amazing!!! just a lil heavy wit only 512mb ram n a 1.8GHz celeron!! but still faster than any other disto i have tried with any other software combination!!

Anonymo · 2009-09-13 21:59:18

One more person that thinks Arch is best:
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1451509

minhso · 2009-09-14 08:01:31

I just moved to Arch, been around with Slackware for 6 months. Slack was great for learning, but after some time I began to think of using Linux more seriously, something small, simple, stable, easy to config and runs fast.

I originally wanted to do Zenwalk first, as it's based on Slack, and I liked the name better (silly me, I know ), but then one day Arch release a new Live CD - August 2009, I thought "oh, what the hell..."

Then I realized that Arch also has eyecandy, and is very very up to date ( I didnt know the term "rolling release" before).

Now my Arch is really working exactly the way I want it, I can't help but keep staring at the screen every 15 minutes ^___^

Thank you, Arch team.

PS : some tasks I failed in Slackware (due to my clumsiness of course) : Wireless, Wicd, xvnkb, kde4, launchy, power managerment, function keys, virtualbox,...

Last edited by minhso (2009-09-14 08:07:14)

Anonymo · 2009-09-14 13:38:04

http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue … 14#feature

q1jack · 2009-09-20 11:34:39

I converted to Ubuntu around a month ago (was a winblows user up until then), Yet I could not help but feel it was "the vista of linux distro's" if you will, So i decided to give Arch a try, (without the amazing beginners wiki this would never have been possible) And i really could not be more pleased with my current setup, Despite me still severely lacking knowledge, I'm eager to learn and I dont think there is a better learning platform for me than Arch. Fluxbox + pcmanfm is blisteringly fast on my average system (e6600, 4gb ocz gold, 8800gt, F1 1tb). Enough with my blabbering, Arch is the perfect distro for my personal needs without a shadow of doubt. I think the guys who sorted out the wiki page deserve to be knighted! I can confidently say i will be staying with Arch on my desktop until i no longer use a desktop computer. (:

Last edited by q1jack (2009-09-20 11:35:34)

blackrain · 2009-09-20 13:35:07

q1jack wrote:

on my average system (e6600, 4gb ocz gold, 8800gt, F1 1tb)

Yeah, quite average

q1jack · 2009-09-20 19:21:50

blackrain wrote:

q1jack wrote:
on my average system (e6600, 4gb ocz gold, 8800gt, F1 1tb)
Yeah, quite average

heh, I used to game a lot hence the need for some beefy hw, But the system is actually quite old now, still runs fast enough for me As i was saying to a freind earlier, I've never had my computer running as fast as it does now im with Arch+Fluxbox

DEBIAN SOCIAL CONTRACT · 2009-09-25 03:32:28

Where do I report bugs for [community]?

Allan · 2009-09-25 03:44:45

The community project in the bugtracker ...

kgas · 2009-09-25 13:18:00

IMO, the number of times, manual patches/work around applied to arch system (5 laptops) is minimum to nil. Thanks to arch developers. In certain cases user can find what is missing by starting the application from terminal. For starters sometimes there is a reservation to report a problem, where the solution is before hand, as a bug. For eg alsconf creates a file without .conf extension. Osmo installs fine but requires gtkspell as dependency to start the application. In this community bugs are reported after a due discussions in the forum, a healthy trend.

mjheagle8 · 2009-10-04 16:05:30

arch is the best because last night, my huge updates download averaged ~2mb/s, and peaked at 7.9 mb/s.
ridiculously awesome.

Vamp898 · 2009-10-08 03:00:38

im_ka wrote:

cactus wrote:
I dont know if any distro can be the "ultimate distro". I certainly like arch, otherwise I wouldn't be here..using it.
But I think saying it solves all problems for all people (which is implied by the word "ultimate"), is being a bit disengenuous..
i don't say that. i say that it solves my problems. lightweight, customizable, and not that hard to configure.
i've used debian and co extensively, and pacman beats apt-get imho. eg. recursive removal of packages

And Portage beats Pacman in every way^^

Just beceause Debian is bad that does not mean that Arch is ultimate

But for Desktops Arch is still my first use. KISS is just ...... KISS

You have a simple lightweight system and all works with recent software.

bobland · 2009-10-10 19:35:13

I came from the Ubuntu world. After 3 years with it I got frustrated as updates kept breaking things. I used Firefox 3.0+ and 3.5. Both would not open or close without coaxing. OpenOffice took forever to do anything. Many programs required reinstalling numerous times. It began to feel like Windows again.

There are a number of Arch fan boys at Ubuntuforums. That's where I found out about Arch. I decided to try it and here I am.

My sister expressed some interest in linux so I began hunting for a distro for the impossibly confused. I decided to send her Linux Mint since it was a very easy install and everything seemed to work out of the box.

I liked it so much that I toyed with the idea of switching to it. That idea came to an abrupt end when I updated it. I was supposed to download 183 files but at a max 30k? I kept aborting the download. That ended up crashing the system so it now sits along side of Ubuntu in the dead OS yard.

I like trying out distros, seeing what works and what doesn't. In the end, I think they all will do something usefull. The beauty of linux is the customization. Now, if we could do this with our genes...

Burt

Runiq · 2009-10-10 19:40:37

bobland wrote:

Now, if we could do this with our genes...
Burt

Well… We could. It's pretty easy, actually. The problem is finding the combinations that don't kill you outright.

Carlwill · 2009-10-12 00:02:53

I have only been using Arch Linux for one month on a x64 server and have found out a few things I love and few things I hate...

Things I love:

1. The Wiki - Great layout is nice and organized. It's easy to follow and looks to be updated frequently.
2. Having the latest toys - I love being able to use 2.6.30 kernel where others are still using older versions.
3. Pacman - it's a great tool. Feels as mature and functional as Apt or Yum.
4. The forums - very helpful users.
5. Minimal - I can't stress enough how much I love how minimal of an install I can get on Arch.
6. Netinst - Why would you install any other way?!?!

Things I hate:

1. Dependencies - Why does Arch force me to install useless dependencies like LDAP / MySQL libraries when all I want is the Postfix MTA installed. I don't need these!!!
2. Software RAID - simply impossible to configure this. The Wiki is vague and outdated with info. I could never figure this out. Someone could add a RAID config option to the installer...for the love...
3. Missing packages from Pacman - I find it strange some widely useful packages are still in AUR and not 'Community'. Amavisd-new...really?!?!
4. Dependencies - It's so annoying, I will add this twice. For a distro that uses 'minimal' to describe itself, I find many packages are bloated with not essential dependents.

All in all I love this system but it's taking some time to get use to. Thanks to all who make Arch what it is.

Last edited by Carlwill (2009-10-12 00:08:17)

BenBooth · 2009-10-12 14:45:55

I've been a Linux user for nigh on ten years, and this is the best distro I have ever used!
I am a huge fan of Debian, inparticular modern derivatives such as Ubuntu or Mint, which in all fairness I would still recommend to anyone, but if you want to feel part of Linux and feel you are genuinely part of the revolution Arch is where it's at!

The entire Open Source philsophy is here! Openess, a great community spirit, and that feeling of being a bit of a hacker!

Archlinux is utterly fantastic!

deviant · 2009-10-29 19:03:48

Arch is great! LOVE the "rolling release" model.

Arch Linux

#376 2009-08-11 17:05:00

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#377 2009-08-15 18:26:49

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#378 2009-09-04 17:46:21

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#380 2009-09-08 03:56:46

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#382 2009-09-11 04:07:19

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#385 2009-09-13 21:59:18

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#386 2009-09-14 08:01:31

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#387 2009-09-14 13:38:04

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#388 2009-09-20 11:34:39

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#389 2009-09-20 13:35:07

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#390 2009-09-20 19:21:50

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#395 2009-10-08 03:00:38

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