Complaint: Arch not nearly what I expected it to be

Mark_E_Wallace · 2005-02-09 03:24:25

Be patient with me. I'm an Arch newbie and somewhat prone to getting frustrated too early.

I started trying to run Linux in earnest about a year ago. In that time, as many others have, I have progressed (or digressed in some cases) through many distros: MDK 9.2, FC1,2,3, MDK 10.0, various Mepis editions (I still use ProMepis on one box), Slackware 10.0, Ubuntu, and Xandros 3.0 DLX at least.

Along the way, despite the clear strengths of each distro, I have never really been totally happy with any of them. The closest to perfect that I have had so far is ProMepis, which even uses NDISWRAPPER to deal with my embedded Broadcom wireless NIC. Still, somehow I don't feel that I "know" the system and its internals that well.

When I saw Arch 0.7 come out, along with a well-timed favorable OSNEWS review, I figured I'd give it a shot and see if it would finally be 'the one'. So on in I wandered, with more than modest trepidation in knowing that this 'hackers' distro probably wasn't for me, since I'm still definitely a newbie and absolutely no hacker.

Armed with my trusty (Mepis-loaded) Dell notebook at my side, with Install Guide and WIKI in full view, I managed to make it cleanly through the install, including mod'ing the .conf files properly and installing GRUB. I've been here before with a different distro before though, and that first reboot after the GRUB install always scares the tar out of me if I've had to deal with making my own menu. So imagine my surprise when...hell, the darned thing worked.

Okay...beginner's luck. As I was to find out, my ultimate expectations were soon to go down the tubes.

After booting in to a login prompt, I was able to passwd root and add myself as a user. No problem, basic stuff that even I can do. Then, of course, I had to start adding apps in so that this thing would actually be a usable system. This meant moving to 'pacman', of which I had heard so much but, frankly, had an "I'll believe it when I see it" attitude towards. After all, I had already had somewhat less than positive (albeit not horrible) experiences with other package managers in other distros, and I was starting to lose faith in the bunch of them. Nonetheless, I followed WIKI guides to do 'pacman -Syu xorg' and 'pacman -Syu kde' plus a few other things. That worked fine, but that's to be expected, since this was a virgin system. After successfully adding a few other goodies, I went to configure X. Ran xorgconfig, being dead-on sure to answer each question properly. Saved xorg.conf, ran 'startx'.

BLAMMO! Aha! Yep...sure enough, this distro can't even get in to X properly. As soon as I ran startx, my system froze at a completely black screen. I couldn't even CTL-ALT-BKSP out of the X server. Only option was to press my reset button. I did this three times (just to be sure) before throwing up my hands in frustration.

Be patient, Mark. Check WIKI. Nothing. Check forum messages. Nothing. Check forum messages BETTER....oh, look. A message about changing /dev/mouse to /dev/mice. Let's try that. 'vi /etc/X11/xorg.conf' ....Fiddle fiddle fiddle....:wq .....Along the way change .xinitrc to start kde. 'startx', cross fingers.

HOLY SMOKE! That looks like X AND KDE alright. Land's sake....this thing works!

So, that's my complaint. I've used Arch 0.7 for about a week now, sure the whole time that something somewhere was going to crap out or fail to work as expected. And man have this distro and you people not met my expectations. The very few times that something didn't work quite right (rare as that has been), I have found my answer in the docs, WIKI, or here in the message boards. That's a real problem for me, because I'm much more used to frugal docs, 'go find the FAQ' or 'read the man pages' or 'try a different distro'. Granted, that's not true for all distros - in fact, kudos in particular to the Mepis crowd -, but Arch 0.7 so far is the best combination of documentation, community, and actual product functionality that I have seen yet.

As for 'hacker distro', I'll only say this. I'm definitely not a hacker. I hardly know the internals of Linux at all, but so far I have been able to make all of the modifications that I need for a general purpose browsing, emailing, home officing (I know...not a real word) workstation, all with the help of the Arch online resources. If I can do it, darned near anyone can.

Also, being aware of the discussion of Arch being 'pre-release' software at version 0.7...phooey to that. Version numbers mean jack squat. Judd could up the version to 70.0 tomorrow if he wanted. Would that make it ten times better than 0.7? Nah. I could care less if this is Arch 0.1 that I'm running. If it's rock solid at 0.1 and does all that I need it to do, I'll run it at 0.1.

My thanks to the Arch development and support community, and here's to Arch!

Mith · 2005-02-09 04:50:40

LoL

very entertaining post!

my opinion started with reading the post as "oha another blabla this is a nice distro but it sucks monkeytoes for me".. towards the end it seems arch got himself/herself (hmm what gender is Arch??) a new follower :twisted:

I seriously can feel with you even though at the moment arch tends to get "boring" but in a good way since everyting just works and runs so smooth and easy..

well I'm glad I read your whole post and welcome to arch and the community

Mark_E_Wallace · 2005-02-09 05:26:00

Mith wrote:

LoL
very entertaining post!
my opinion started with reading the post as "oha another blabla this is a nice distro but it sucks monkeytoes for me"

Yeah. That was the intent. Figuring that others are just as sick of those messages as I am, I thought I'd start one in that vein and then liven it up a bit. I actually kinda hoped someone would jump in and flame me without reading the whole message.

..since everyting just works and runs so smooth and easy..

So far, it does. 8) Hope it stays that way!

well I'm glad I read your whole post and welcome to arch and the community

Thanks!

sarah31 · 2005-02-09 05:40:35

Great post.

miqorz · 2005-02-09 06:50:24

Very nice post.

cactus · 2005-02-09 09:19:32

8)

Welcome!

murkus · 2005-02-09 09:55:48

Mark_E_Wallace wrote:

I actually kinda hoped someone would jump in and flame me without reading the whole message.

Well, you got me. Almost stopped reading in disbelief. "how somebody has the energy to write this long complaint??" Luckily I'm not a flaming type.

.murkus

dtw · 2005-02-09 09:57:04

:oops: - i nearly blew another gasket then - ah the relief pours forth

phrakture · 2005-02-09 15:20:29

Nice post, and welcome.... and just to let you know... you won, I was all set cracking my knuckles ready to flame you...

Mark_E_Wallace · 2005-02-09 17:42:55

phrakture wrote:

....I was all set cracking my knuckles ready to flame you...

Glad that I was able to rope a few of y'all in.

Thanks for the welcome msg. It's nice to be here.

xerxes2 · 2005-02-09 18:04:13

hello mark,
there is a few wiki pages that describes how to configure xorg and mouse if you have more trouble, I think /dev/input/mice is the right one, maybe /dev/mice is also working,

Mark_E_Wallace · 2005-02-09 18:12:27

xerxes2 wrote:

hello mark,
there is a few wiki pages that describes how to configure xorg and mouse if you have more trouble, I think /dev/input/mice is the right one, maybe /dev/mice is also working,

Xerxes2 - If you read my full post, you'll see that I actually did use the WIKI and several forum posts to get my xorg issue fixed. The entire post was (basically) a fake complaint and a compliment to Arch, its online docs, and the Arch community.

Looks like I crafted my message well enough that at least one person got fed up with it before reading the entire thing. 8)

xerxes2 · 2005-02-09 18:56:13

I read your post Mark, but I don't think you found the right wikipage,
If you take a look at this http://wiki2.archlinux.org/index.php/In … ure%20xorg
you probably wouldn't have to pull the electricity to your box,

Mark_E_Wallace · 2005-02-09 21:25:03

xerxes2 wrote:

I read your post Mark, but I don't think you found the right wikipage,
If you take a look at this http://wiki2.archlinux.org/index.php/In … ure%20xorg
you probably wouldn't have to pull the electricity to your box,

I found that exact solution, but not through the WIKI. I think I found it in a forum post first. Call Arch double-excellent now, since the solution was readily available in two places.

cactus · 2005-02-09 21:40:55

double plus super good!

lucke · 2005-02-09 22:05:42

Let me say this: you're my man, Mark :-) You just made my day, eheh.

Welcome to Arch and have fun, as we do.

thegnu · 2005-02-09 23:11:20

I was thinking, "Oooooh, he's gonna get it," while scanning the post for the part where you pissed me off.

I'm so bad. :twisted:

Mark_E_Wallace · 2005-02-10 19:27:43

thegnu wrote:

I was thinking, "Oooooh, he's gonna get it," while scanning the post for the part where you pissed me off.
I'm so bad. :twisted:

Quite a way to make an entrance to the forum, eh? Lure everyone in, piss `em off, and then play a joke on `em. Nice. :twisted: 8)

Dusty · 2005-02-10 19:42:12

I like people that use their real name as a screenname.

Cotton · 2005-02-10 22:41:00

Welcome to Arch.

Not quite sure why nobody recommended installing hwd:

pacman -S hwd

then

hwd -s to provide a sample xorg.conf

Thats the easiest way, although

xorgcfg -textmode

is better than xorgconfig

Have fun with your new distro (the best around imho)

tomk · 2005-02-11 01:22:42

Great post, Mark, and great entrance.

Dusty wrote:

I like people that use their real name as a screenname.

How do you know it's his real name?!

Regards
Bill Gates

Mark_E_Wallace · 2005-02-11 02:34:19

Cotton wrote:

Welcome to Arch.
Not quite sure why nobody recommended installing hwd:
pacman -S hwd

I probably haven't looked hard enough, but do the install docs or WIKI mention that one?

cmp · 2005-02-11 11:52:01

i think so, because it was the way i configured my xserver, much easier than editing the default file.
it's mentioned here
btw.: i also enjoy the very supporting community very much - as i consider myself a half-noob - but still managed to install arch without great hassle with the help of the community.
the only thing, which really sucks is the change of the path for the packages, as my installation iso does use the old path - that was the reason i spent some houres figuring out, how to get it - till i got the idea to mount my other arch partition and have a look at /etc/pacmand.d/current.

Mark_E_Wallace · 2005-02-11 17:21:17

tomk wrote:

How do you know it's his real name?!

My pen name is actually Jane Doe, but some people know me as Irwin Fletcher.

Cheers,

Harry S. Truman

phrakture · 2005-02-11 17:31:01

Mark_E_Wallace wrote:

My pen name is actually Jane Doe, but some people know me as Irwin Fletcher.
Cheers,
Harry S. Truman

ahahahaha, I was almost in tears at the "Harry S. Truman"

Arch Linux

#1 2005-02-09 03:24:25

Complaint: Arch not nearly what I expected it to be

#2 2005-02-09 04:50:40

Re: Complaint: Arch not nearly what I expected it to be

#3 2005-02-09 05:26:00

Re: Complaint: Arch not nearly what I expected it to be

#4 2005-02-09 05:40:35

Re: Complaint: Arch not nearly what I expected it to be

#5 2005-02-09 06:50:24

Re: Complaint: Arch not nearly what I expected it to be

#6 2005-02-09 09:19:32

Re: Complaint: Arch not nearly what I expected it to be

#7 2005-02-09 09:55:48

Re: Complaint: Arch not nearly what I expected it to be

#8 2005-02-09 09:57:04

Re: Complaint: Arch not nearly what I expected it to be

#9 2005-02-09 15:20:29

Re: Complaint: Arch not nearly what I expected it to be

#10 2005-02-09 17:42:55

Re: Complaint: Arch not nearly what I expected it to be

#11 2005-02-09 18:04:13

Re: Complaint: Arch not nearly what I expected it to be

#12 2005-02-09 18:12:27

Re: Complaint: Arch not nearly what I expected it to be

#13 2005-02-09 18:56:13

Re: Complaint: Arch not nearly what I expected it to be

#14 2005-02-09 21:25:03

Re: Complaint: Arch not nearly what I expected it to be

#15 2005-02-09 21:40:55

Re: Complaint: Arch not nearly what I expected it to be

#16 2005-02-09 22:05:42

Re: Complaint: Arch not nearly what I expected it to be

#17 2005-02-09 23:11:20

Re: Complaint: Arch not nearly what I expected it to be

#18 2005-02-10 19:27:43

Re: Complaint: Arch not nearly what I expected it to be

#19 2005-02-10 19:42:12

Re: Complaint: Arch not nearly what I expected it to be

#20 2005-02-10 22:41:00

Re: Complaint: Arch not nearly what I expected it to be

#21 2005-02-11 01:22:42

Re: Complaint: Arch not nearly what I expected it to be

#22 2005-02-11 02:34:19

Re: Complaint: Arch not nearly what I expected it to be

#23 2005-02-11 11:52:01

Re: Complaint: Arch not nearly what I expected it to be

#24 2005-02-11 17:21:17

Re: Complaint: Arch not nearly what I expected it to be

#25 2005-02-11 17:31:01

Re: Complaint: Arch not nearly what I expected it to be

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