Yet Another ArchLinux Review

arooaroo · 2005-02-08 09:47:27

Just checked OSNews and spotted this link for a review of AL at Linux Times.

http://www.linuxtimes.net/modules.php?n … le&sid=774

It's another positive review. This reviewer also played with ABS too, which was good to see.

Although, he did say:

One thing to note is that Arch is still at 0.7, which means that all the bugs have not been ironed out from it.

Which is not quite understanding the rolling release nature of AL, IMHO.

Still, it looks as if AL is gaining ever more interest within the Linux community - which is great

Benedict_White · 2005-02-08 11:25:32

I see.

I was a bit mystified by his review. I do not recall spending much time reading the install doc on the wiki. All the conf files have enough notes in them to get you going.

I was also mystified by his idea that you can't unmask unstable. I have never used it, but there is the unstable repository.

I was pleased about recognising the power of ABS. I did sit around and moan about some packages not being here, untill I realised how easy it was to do, and more over, how much you can tweak what is going on and see the result. And if I don't like the stock package, I can just hash the existing PKGBUILD to my needs and move on. I don't need to insist that it be done another way.

Arch seems a very good distribution for those who want a good stable system and those who occasionally like to roll their own.

Algol · 2005-02-08 12:03:28

Although, he did say:
One thing to note is that Arch is still at 0.7, which means that all the bugs have not been ironed out from it.
Which is not quite understanding the rolling release nature of AL, IMHO.

Well, I think it's reasonable to assume that before you hit 1.0 there are a few bugs to be ironed out. I don't know if this is the case with ArchLinux, but generally 1.0 marks the first stable release of a project.

Maybe the 0.x numbering in arch is just a sign of modesty, maybe it just means the 7:th iso, but people will always make assumptions from previous experiences, and maybe, just maybe, arch isn't polished enough for a 1.0 release just yet. It's up to the developers after all.

arooaroo · 2005-02-08 12:58:00

Personally, I see 0.7 (wrt AL) as meaning the 7th release snapshot. Because if you installed 0.1, and pacman -Syu to the present day, you'd have the same system as if you had just installed a fresh 0.7 release.

Of course, I may be wrong as I'm relatively new to AL myself.

If my intepretation of AL release numbers is right, then Algol, I agree that it would appear misleading to AL newbies. This style of numbering is simply traditional, but doesn't really mean much in the case of AL. The only alternative approach that I can think off the top of my head is Gentoo's year.quarter method. This signifies much more clearly that the number associated with that particular release is not so much a incremental improvement of Gentoo, but a snapshot of the current Gentoo packages. Does this make sense?

Sure, there are improvements that will occur within the core AL system, such as pacman, ABS and the installer. But I don't think that they will be in sync with the standard iso releases. So maybe re-thinking the version numbers is something the top bods could consider.

lilsirecho · 2005-02-09 03:24:07

I would say he didn't have an ATI graphics card and KDE with either xorg or xfree86 to contend with!!!

rosh · 2005-02-09 06:07:37

I made this comment directly to the article as well, but it burned me too much when the article's title was, "Arch Linux In Depth" and he did not even glance at HWD!! Saying Arch is as hard (or easy, depending on your expertise) to configure as Slack is ridiculous when hwd is in the picture. Recently, I had to install Slack on a laptop (non i686, otherwise I would have used arch ;-) ). Creating an xorg.conf file looked daunting b/c of the old laptop's lack of documentation: hwd to the rescue! I compiled it in Slack and it generated a working x conf file. Anyway, I am glad the reviewer liked Arch, but hwd is just too amazingly cool to leave out of an "In Depth" article of Arch.

sweiss · 2005-02-09 10:01:13

rosh wrote:

I made this comment directly to the article as well, but it burned me too much when the article's title was, "Arch Linux In Depth" and he did not even glance at HWD!! Saying Arch is as hard (or easy, depending on your expertise) to configure as Slack is ridiculous when hwd is in the picture. Recently, I had to install Slack on a laptop (non i686, otherwise I would have used arch ;-) ). Creating an xorg.conf file looked daunting b/c of the old laptop's lack of documentation: hwd to the rescue! I compiled it in Slack and it generated a working x conf file. Anyway, I am glad the reviewer liked Arch, but hwd is just too amazingly cool to leave out of an "In Depth" article of Arch.

As far as I recall, hwd is not in the base iso, that's probably why it remained undiscovered. Either way, an in depth review can't be made after only a couple of weeks use, in my opinion.

dtw · 2005-02-09 10:14:58

to be fair dude "hwd" is as as much a "part" of arch as kde - officially that is

sweiss · 2005-02-09 19:40:18

I thought hwd was unique to arch, unlike kde.

miqorz · 2005-02-09 19:46:40

extra/hwd 4.1.2-1
Hardware detect for Arch Linux (devfs and udev).

It is.

Arch Linux

#1 2005-02-08 09:47:27

Yet Another ArchLinux Review

#2 2005-02-08 11:25:32

Re: Yet Another ArchLinux Review

#3 2005-02-08 12:03:28

Re: Yet Another ArchLinux Review

#4 2005-02-08 12:58:00

Re: Yet Another ArchLinux Review

#5 2005-02-09 03:24:07

Re: Yet Another ArchLinux Review

#6 2005-02-09 06:07:37

Re: Yet Another ArchLinux Review

#7 2005-02-09 10:01:13

Re: Yet Another ArchLinux Review

#8 2005-02-09 10:14:58

Re: Yet Another ArchLinux Review

#9 2005-02-09 19:40:18

Re: Yet Another ArchLinux Review

#10 2005-02-09 19:46:40

Re: Yet Another ArchLinux Review

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