A few comments about the Arch Experience.

clpc · 2009-11-21 11:39:10

I found Arch about 5 days ago.
I installed it 5 times. NOT because of any problems, it is my way of learning.
Installed into VirtualBox 3 times, once on my old Acer TravelMate 800 and once on my main PC. I am on my main PC right now.
Intel Core 2 Duo: 2.66GHz. HDD1=80Gb HDD2=500GB. 1920x1200 Monitor. Crappy Mobo, must change it.

I have installed all of the applications I need/use at the moment, and all is working fine. But that will not stop me from messing about in Arch.
I have always thought that the Debian package manager was about as good as it gets, I know 5 days is not long enough to make a real comparison between Pacman and .deb but I do feel that pacman is the best (especially for removing a package and its dependencies intelligently).

The Arch Forum and Wiki are the most tidy and informative documents I have found on any distro, mind you I haven't tried them all, but I have tried about 10 of the most popular. I feel that the deciding feature that pulled me into Arch was pacman.

The really strange thing is that I have not had to ask for help in the forums, not even once.

The 3 installs into VirtualBox were all about finding out what I can and can't do with Arch. I got gnome up and running on the 3rd try.
My old Acer Travelmate 800 has been given a new lease of life. It is too slow to run Ubuntu or Debian but it is pretty good with Arch.

If any newcomers out there are not sure whether or not to install Arch I fully recommend giving Arch a try, even if only in a virtual machine. If you decide not to stay with Arch you will go away feeling you have learned a good few extra things about Linux anyway.

I would just like to say thanks to all at Arch Linux for a fun distro that is very cutting-edge.

Clive

JohannesSM64 · 2009-11-21 13:27:34

Welcome. Report any bugs you may find. You should also check out the excellent ABS and AUR.

japetto · 2009-11-21 15:33:02

Welcome and enjoy

Romanrp · 2009-11-21 16:49:36

Yep same here,found arch a few days ago,installed it on virtual box and then erased ubuntu and installed arch.
It's too awesome.
I prefer arch to slackware since that wouldn't work at all!
I learned a lot from arch, even though my experience is very short.

Aprz · 2009-11-21 22:32:37

Question: What did you guys learn? Maybe you guys should post an unambiguous list of things you guys have learned and experienced because of using Arch Linux. Might be interesting to see for people who are trying to make a decision on whether they should switch or try it.

clpc · 2009-11-23 23:17:21

users and groups: Ubuntu and Debian takes care of all this so I came to Arch with no real understanding of how to administer users and groups.
X: I had no clear idea how the interaction from X through to the desktop environment worked, I now understand that a lot better.

I will not go on because a number of the things I have mastered are small steps that are not worth mentioning on their own but they mean a lot when seen as part of the big picture.

I like a lot of people have only used distros that did it all for you (Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora), Arch Linux forces me to solve the problems myself and if I am solving problems then I must be learning something at the same time.

I am not so sure that this is as unambiguous as you wanted. I installed Arch and realised I needed to maintain it or spend my whole time forever re-installing it, so every thing I do is a lesson learned.

With Ubuntu if you screwed things up it was a lot quicker to reinstall than solve the problem, that is not the case or the way with Arch. So I learned "that" lesson well.

piezoelectric · 2009-11-24 05:48:07

clpc wrote:

With Ubuntu if you screwed things up it was a lot quicker to reinstall than solve the problem, that is not the case or the way with Arch. So I learned "that" lesson well.

I think this is a good point. I feel that Pacman puts my system in a consistent and reproducible state. I can't say I've had that confidence with any other distro (with the exception of Gentoo/emerge - too much time spent compiling though...). I was always torn when a distribution had a new version; do I upgrade or fresh install? I'm certain that the two options left my system in different states - some configs were upgraded, some weren't, etc.

Because pacman uses simple install scripts that are easy to view/modify (and even encouraged for the AUR) I know exactly what is going on with my system. This has lead to a LOT of learning about how packages are installed and interact with each other. I've read a quote to the effect that if you work with a specific distribution, you know that distro, but if you work with Slackware, you know Linux. This applies to Arch as well, and more so because I don't spend all of my time managing my own dependencies.

The only knock I can say about Arch/pacman compared to Gentoo/emerge is that emerge does a much better job of allowing users to maintain different (and even concurrent) package versions as well as the idea that it's perfectly acceptable not to have the latest of EVERY package on the system. (Ex: there is only one nvidia package in Gentoo, not nvidia, nvidia-173xx, and nvidia-96xx - you can simply hold your nvidia package at <174.0.0) ((also, emerge's USE flags are amazing - but I can understand Arch, as a binary distribution, not having something similar. One can easily modify his own PKGBUILD from the ABS to do the same thing))

Arch Linux

#1 2009-11-21 11:39:10

A few comments about the Arch Experience.

#2 2009-11-21 13:27:34

Re: A few comments about the Arch Experience.

#3 2009-11-21 15:33:02

Re: A few comments about the Arch Experience.

#4 2009-11-21 16:49:36

Re: A few comments about the Arch Experience.

#5 2009-11-21 22:32:37

Re: A few comments about the Arch Experience.

#6 2009-11-23 23:17:21

Re: A few comments about the Arch Experience.

#7 2009-11-24 05:48:07

Re: A few comments about the Arch Experience.

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