I don't want Arch to become popular.

hdo781 · 2005-04-19 10:30:48

When I first discovered Arch, I started telling a lot of people I know about it. I would visit archlinux.org everyday so that it would get a higher ranking on distrowatch.com. Then, I realized my mistake. If Arch becomes popular, it is going to become restricted in terms of multimedia. If you look at the most popular distros, you will find that many of them will not support multimedia very well. Fedora core doesn't have mp3 support. I had to download an extra package from an outside repository. Most popular distros don't have mplayer. In Debian, mplayer requires an outside repository. Same for Slackware. I just read what a nightmare it was to have multimedia working in Suse, which was supposed to be a newbie distro. Maybe being an unknown is a good thing so that the developers' creativity isn't restricted by licensing issues. In addition, the less people that use Arch, the less demands there will be on the hard-working developers who have sacrificed their time to make the best distro.

-hdo781

Moo-Crumpus · 2005-04-19 11:01:09

hdo781 wrote:

When I first discovered Arch, I started telling a lot of people I know about it. I would visit archlinux.org everyday so that it would get a higher ranking on distrowatch.com. Then, I realized my mistake.
-hdo781

So you are to blame! I often wondered who was responsible! It is too late for apologies.

Therefore, you shall be plonked.

dtw · 2005-04-19 11:04:34

i'm generally confused by this threadbut it is worth noting that a lot of big distros do all sorts of tweaking to their pkgs which might screw them up!

InfernalH · 2005-04-19 14:20:16

IMHO, it will be no problem if Arch will not have mp3 support, mplayer or other kind of multimedia program - please solve all these problems by pacman -S xmms-mp3 mplayer

P.S. I've had Fedora for about 1y, and it wasn't a big problem to install these multimedia additions

cactus · 2005-04-19 18:15:58

I would imagine that others secretly feel the way hdo781 does, judging by many of the forum posts.

I don't get it personally, but maybe people have a need to feel elitist, and want to exclude others. Maybe it is a selfish desire to be the only kid with the cool new toy?

Things like this dissapoint me. I thought the Arch community was more altruistic than this.

scarecrow · 2005-04-19 18:21:32

At some distros you just have to download some extras from unofficial repos, but at some other basic modules (e.g. kdemultimedia) are built without support for "evil" things like MP3- so there making them functional is a huge pain in the...
I am STILL promoting Arch as much as I can, and I'm pretty sure it will never become popular- unless someone adjusts kynaptic for pacman, another one ports Mandrake Control Center to Arch, as well as a few other nightmarish visions... Just my imagination, I hope.

stonecrest · 2005-04-19 18:25:31

cactus, I think that those who agree with him are just more vocal. I would personally love for Arch to become more popular. I'm sorry but the amount of excitement and community-ness that a distro like Ubuntu has generated for linux is a great thing, and I would be lying if I said I didn't hope Arch could someday do the same. I honestly think that a lot of people are just afraid of change.. but I welcome it.

Arch is already (around) a "top twenty" distro and is continuing to grow. You can either try to stop it or embrace it.. I'm for the latter.

sweiss · 2005-04-19 19:24:52

Arch seems to constantly grow slow and steady, with a few bumps whenever there's an OSNews article. I see no harm in promoting a distribution, it is only logical that if someone creates a distro he would like others to use it. I got here through OSNews myself, actually, and I am greatful for it.

As long as Arch is kept as modular and as flexible as it currently is, any addition is welcome. Arch really has a great structure.

jerem · 2005-04-19 20:37:00

I think a lot of people also feel that if Arch became popular, the relationship between the devs and the community would not be as good as is is now.

It is also very easy to participate in the development with the recent release of the AUR system, and even before the TURs did their job well for that.

I also fear that Arch may loose its simplicity when people ask for more and more features. I dont want my favorite distro to become bloated.

However, a growing community means more testing, more bugs reported, and thus I hope the number of devs will also grow.

What I would like Arch to improve next(which is only my personal point of view), is the Wiki and Documentation...

lanrat · 2005-04-19 21:29:29

I just got used to growing arch popularity. That's opensource - good designs win bad designs fail.

Sometimes I miss the smaller community times but there are advantages of becoming more popular (like more people writing wiki docs etc.). And the devs are pretty much resistant to overloading arch with gui kind of features so there is not that much to worry about right now.

The Arch is open :-)

PS. BTW the meeting of the secret arch masonic lodge is still as planned, right ?

shadowhand · 2005-04-19 23:09:32

Sigh. I hate when people do this...

Why would NOT want people to use something that is better? It's like people that don't want Linux to be more popular than Windows. Why?! If something is better, everyone should know about it and be able to use it, that's one of the points of Open Source.

darkcoder · 2005-04-19 23:24:12

The only problem with very well known distributions, and specially commercial ones, is that they are the target of companies. Companies check if the distribution has everything legal (no patent infringment) and if not they sue.

Right now Arch developers do not have to worry since (1) it's free and (2) it's not well known on the public.

But sooner or later, changes will have to be done on Arch to avoid possible conflict with companies. One of the problems I noticed are that many non-free packages do not ask for their license agreement. This includes j2re, j2sdk, acrobat reader, macromedia flash plugin, realplayer and maybe others. Some of these companies enforce heavily their license and demands packages to display the license and ask the user for their acceptance or not acceptance before installation. This issue is apparently under work since I read on the forums that developers are working on providing the license on the PKGBUILD.

As for mp3, dvd support and other patent offensive programs, probably one day they will be moved to a "non-official repo" but I hope that never be the case.

TheRaginAsian · 2005-04-19 23:39:19

I believe the easiest soulution would be to just have it done much like the current Nvidia package, something along the lines of "Read the licence [path] and agree or you must uninstall this package!". Flexibility of Pacman allows for making the base not include (already does in fact) any multimedia packages that risk the legality of the distro. KISS will help us win the dreaded licencing issues. And if worse comes to worse, I guess they will have to add another option to pacman that allows you to somehow agree to the licence of a package that you install that has one.

i3839 · 2005-04-19 23:41:35

Archlinux is Canadian, so more or less safe of the worst patent nonsense, I hope.

For the rest: In the worst case Arch stops distributing certain software, no big deal.

fetreney2000 · 2005-04-20 00:32:50

I didn't mind if Arch become popular. In fact it is my dream that someday Arch have a community as big as Gentoo or Ubuntu.
As for the mp3 etc. issue, I didn't have any problem with it because we have so many unofficial repo and in worst case scenario, we can just create our own package for all this thing.

Moo-Crumpus · 2005-04-20 06:15:19

Whenever an os convinced me, I used it, from geoworks to os2, beos and linux. Therefore, I am hardened using systems with small, but familiar communities in their back. Whenever I joined small communities, it was like growing up together. Most ideas and hints and question where of interest for most of the other members. When communities grow up, they tend to split into pieces as there are the newbies asking the same questions again and again, some oldtimers complaining about the newbies, some eleets that go to conquer the world: the Pinkys and the Brains. The warm feeling of a small community will be lost or kept in the subcomunnities, but in the end, this is a normal progress. More users will aks for things I don't want, more will ask for things I would like. But arch is free, I can still decide wether I use parts or not.

So, in the end I don't care much for archs popularity - although I like little, friendly communities more than large ones. I still love to use arch, wether millions of others do that or just a hundred ones. Every user is welcome to enrich the community, add his or her ideas and person.

dtw · 2005-04-20 06:49:18

I got the license agreement to require acceptance in my quake2 PKGBUILD

It would be simple to put them in the install scripts of said pkgs

hdo781 · 2005-04-20 15:24:40

cactus wrote:

I would imagine that others secretly feel the way hdo781 does, judging by many of the forum posts.
I don't get it personally, but maybe people have a need to feel elitist, and want to exclude others. Maybe it is a selfish desire to be the only kid with the cool new toy?
Things like this dissapoint me. I thought the Arch community was more altruistic than this.

cactus,

I don't appreciate your false accusations about my post. In no way do I want Arch to be elitist and I am not a "selfish kid." I would want nothing more than to have an altruistic Arch community, but this is not the natural progression of distros that become popular. As Pink Chick stated, as a distro becomes more popular, there is division amongst the developers and users. In addition, the developers come under greater scrutiny by legal institutions. Just you watch, the friendly and tight community that Arch has now will completely disappear if it ever climbs near the top five on distrowatch.com. Anonymity has its advantages.

On a lighter note, after reading the developers' interview on osnews.com, I believe my concern is premature. The developers don't plan to make any major changes to the installer nor to pacman. It's amazing how some people will run away from a text installer.

-hdo781

johnisevil · 2005-04-20 19:57:26

Who cares if it becomes popular? As long as the quality of the distro keeps up and it doesn't go commercial, I don't have any complaints. A lot of people like a distro like Arch so they can say they use some obscure distro that not many people use. Whether you like it or not, Arch will attract new users and will expand.

MasonM · 2005-04-20 22:06:05

Sorry, Arch just gained another user.

Theoden · 2005-04-21 03:13:54

cactus wrote:

I would imagine that others secretly feel the way hdo781 does, judging by many of the forum posts.

Cactus - I have great respect for you and your calm and level head. And I would agree with you that the forum posts would seem to indicate agreement as you suggested.

However, comments like the following I believe to be just a bit judgmental on your part:

cactus wrote:

I don't get it personally, but maybe people have a need to feel elitist, and want to exclude others. Maybe it is a selfish desire to be the only kid with the cool new toy?

It could just be that people have seen what invariably happens when small and quality distributions like Arch become wildly popular. I for one have been around linux for quite a few years and I have seen it happen repeatedly. People swarm in, pressure is put on the developers to make the distro more n00b friendly, and inevitably - despite the best intentions of all - the distro undergoes a change that at best - corrupts the goodness of the original, and at worst - destroys altogether the qualities that made the distro grow to begin with.

This is not an "elitist" attitude as you suggest. It is fear of losing something that one has come to love and does not want to see corrupted. Neither is it a desire to "exclude others." It is more than anything, protectionist. Nor is it a "selfish desire to be the only kid with the cool new toy." It is perhaps, a desire NOT to be one of a million with an average or piss-poor toy.

cactus wrote:

Things like this dissapoint me. I thought the Arch community was more altruistic than this.

I really don't see why such attitudes should disappoint you - if my analysis is right. Maybe it would due more for you to try and look at it as people loving someing so much they feel protective of it. That's a whole 'nother and I suggest better motivation than the one you posited.

Cactus, Archlinux is really good - and you can hardly blame others for wanting to see it stay that way. Even if you feel their fears are unwarrented, you should still give them the benefit of the doubt as to their motivations.

Fraternally,

--Theoden

Theoden · 2005-04-21 14:42:27

Pink Chick wrote:

When communities grow up, they tend to split into pieces as there are the newbies asking the same questions again and again, some oldtimers complaining about the newbies, some eleets that go to conquer the world: the Pinkys and the Brains. The warm feeling of a small community will be lost or kept in the subcomunnities, but in the end, this is a normal progress.

Pink Chick makes an excellent point here that should not be lost in the shuffle. While change is inevitable, change 'can' be controlled to some extent and channeled to good ends. But only if the size of the thing being controlled is manageable. At the moment - the Archlinux community is warm and inclusive overall, and it is of manageable size. But if Archlinux grows by leaps and bounds, Pink Chick's predictions will become prophetic. The community WILL grow exponentially, it WILL become unmanageable, it WILL experience the inevitable splits of interest and personality, and Archlinux WILL change. But it won't be controlled change, and much that is good and warm and inviting about it and it's community will pass from the scene.

One can hardly blame current users for their concern about that and their desire to prevent such an outcome. And don't be deceived - there are many examples of this having happened to other distros for all of us to examine ... pick a distro and read up on it's history.

--Theoden

i3839 · 2005-04-21 15:34:23

I don't think this is quite true: Perhaps the community will change a lot (it already did btw..), but Arch itself won't change that much.

Theoden · 2005-04-21 15:52:39

i3839 wrote:

I don't think this is quite true: Perhaps the community will change a lot (it already did btw..), but Arch itself won't change that much.

Read both posts ... I wrote earlier:

Theoden wrote:

People swarm in, pressure is put on the developers to make the distro more n00b friendly, and inevitably - despite the best intentions of all - the distro undergoes a change that at best - corrupts the goodness of the original, and at worst - destroys altogether the qualities that made the distro grow to begin with.

What you or I "think" is true is irrelavent. I have seen it happen. Many others have seen it happen too - as I said - "despite the best intentions of all." I'm not against people using Archlinux - but I am one who feels that the truth must be told, and the truth is - There WILL be a price to be paid for enormous popularity and growth! To think otherwise is to fly in the face of linux distro history, and to bury one's head in the sand.

--Theoden

iphitus · 2005-04-21 16:05:18

Its more that some people just like small groups of people rather than big ones.

I went from a small school of about 200 kids where I knew everyone, teachers and kids, to a big one, about 800, where I only know a fraction of my yearlevel, and an even smaller fraction of the teachers. I preferred the small community better.

I kinda agree here too, i like smaller communities better. It' not that im 'elitist' and want to be the only kid on the block with the cool toy, i'd love my friends to be running arch instead of windows and would not hesitate to install it for them. I prefer to know who most people are and not become 'yet another bloody newbie' like most people on linuxquestions.org and other big sites.

Alas though, things change, Arch will grow and theres nothing we can do about it. So we just have to accept thats the way things work, even if begrudgingly.

iphitus

Arch Linux

#1 2005-04-19 10:30:48

I don't want Arch to become popular.

#2 2005-04-19 11:01:09

Re: I don't want Arch to become popular.

#3 2005-04-19 11:04:34

Re: I don't want Arch to become popular.

#4 2005-04-19 14:20:16

Re: I don't want Arch to become popular.

#5 2005-04-19 18:15:58

Re: I don't want Arch to become popular.

#6 2005-04-19 18:21:32

Re: I don't want Arch to become popular.

#7 2005-04-19 18:25:31

Re: I don't want Arch to become popular.

#8 2005-04-19 19:24:52

Re: I don't want Arch to become popular.

#9 2005-04-19 20:37:00

Re: I don't want Arch to become popular.

#10 2005-04-19 21:29:29

Re: I don't want Arch to become popular.

#11 2005-04-19 23:09:32

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#12 2005-04-19 23:24:12

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#13 2005-04-19 23:39:19

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#14 2005-04-19 23:41:35

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#15 2005-04-20 00:32:50

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#16 2005-04-20 06:15:19

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#17 2005-04-20 06:49:18

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#18 2005-04-20 15:24:40

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#19 2005-04-20 19:57:26

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#20 2005-04-20 22:06:05

Re: I don't want Arch to become popular.

#21 2005-04-21 03:13:54

Re: I don't want Arch to become popular.

#22 2005-04-21 14:42:27

Re: I don't want Arch to become popular.

#23 2005-04-21 15:34:23

Re: I don't want Arch to become popular.

#24 2005-04-21 15:52:39

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#25 2005-04-21 16:05:18

Re: I don't want Arch to become popular.

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