[SOLVED] Reviewing distro's. Request Opinions and experiences

dcbdbis · 2010-12-27 20:05:28

Good Morning Arch Community,

I am asking for usability experiences and opinions on my usages mentioned below.

I am now retired due to health issues. I've had a few small strokes. I am/was a C++ developer.

Linux Experience: Gentoo Stage #1 installs.

Why not Gentoo now? Since Daniel Robbins left the project, I found in my personal experience that Gentoo breaks a lot, and the quality of ebuilds are not what they used to be. If anyone reading this thinks that Gentoo has regained their quality control since the meltdown of their website, I'd appreciate the feedback.

I used Arch back in the pre 1.0 release days, and sometime things broke badly.

Now since I am no longer in the workforce, I have removed Windows from my system. It's a preference issue, not a bombastic statement. I don't need it. VMWare runs the one Windows Flight Simulator (RealFlight) I like flawlessly.

I am looking for a rolling release distro, that is new, kept fresh, and relatively stable. I understand that it is not possible for any distro to claim perfection. I'd just not like it to break frequently. And when it does break, I'd like it to at least boot to a command line so I can take remedial action(a).

Currently (while the permanent distro selection process was underway) using Ubuntu. I wish to be more mainstream, lowered bloat, and less tweaks. If Debian was more current, I'd use it. Debian Sid may be more breakage than I want.

For my needs, I need current software releases, so Debian Squeeze (even though not released yet) is already too old.

Usages:

VMWare Workstation (For the flight sim)
Blender3D
BluRay usage/mastering for 3d content. (Arista and command line usage of GStreamer and FFMpeg also fits my needs)

Platform: AMD_64 (Intel core2 Quad Extreme, 8gb ram)
Storage: 5 TB
System Disk: Solid State Drive, other disks all rotating media.

Known Issues:

Since the strokes, I have lost much hearing. In Ubuntu, there is a plugin for the PulseAudio sound system that allows a system wide equalizer. I can then tweak this sound equalizer to compensate for my hearing loss.

I will need help from the community to make this happen in ARCH. This means the setup, care and feeding of a PulseAudio sound server and the Equalizer plugin which is available in several formats on the web. Frankly, I've lost some of my tech savvy in the strokes.

Your opinions on my proposed application of Arch will be appreciated.

Sincerely and respectfully,

Dave

Last edited by dcbdbis (2010-12-27 22:44:44)

Cyrusm · 2010-12-27 21:21:14

dcbdbis wrote:

Good Morning Arch Community,

I am looking for a rolling release distro, that is new, kept fresh, and relatively stable. I understand that it is not possible for any distro to claim perfection. I'd just not like it to break frequently. And when it does break, I'd like it to at least boot to a command line so I can take remedial action(a).

You found it!

dcbdbis wrote:

I wish to be more mainstream, lowered bloat, and less tweaks.

I'm not really sure what you mean by 'mainstream' honestly. but the main repository packages contain little bloat, and there are a lot of different options available for most programs from full featured multi-function gui apps to more lightweight and streamlined options.

dcbdbis wrote:

For my needs, I need current software releases

The developers and maintainers of the community to a good job keeping all of the programs "hot off the presses" if a program does end up getting flagged out of date, it is not long before the maintainer updates it to the newest version.
also many of the packages available in the main repositories have newer versions in the testing repository, or development versions available through the AUR. And there is nothing stopping you from visiting the sites of these programs, and packaging and installing them yourself. the pacman, and makepkg utilities make this task relatively simple.

dcbdbis wrote:

Usages:
VMWare Workstation (For the flight sim)
Blender3D
BluRay usage/mastering for 3d content. (Arista and command line usage of GStreamer and FFMpeg also fits my needs)

Blender3D GStreamer, and FFMpeg are availible through the extra repository, Arista is available through the AUR,
and it looks like open-vm is in extra and vmware is in the aur. so that should cover most of your bases.

dcbdbis wrote:

I will need help from the community to make this happen in ARCH. This means the setup, care and feeding of a PulseAudio sound server and the Equalizer plugin which is available in several formats on the web. Frankly, I've lost some of my tech savvy in the strokes.

Luckily, Arch has a very intelligent and helpful community who are willing to help wherever needed. help is available through the forums, and on IRC. From what you have written you seem like an already knowledgeable user, so I wouldn't expect you to run into anything you can't handle hopefully my input is of some worth to you. and welcome to the Arch community!

dcbdbis · 2010-12-27 21:41:33

Thank you for the reply. I appreciate it.

Yep...I've been around for a while. I'm comfy with a command line. I'm comfy with shell scripting. But to be brutally honest, as an old fart now, I'd rather spend most of my time using my PC, not maintaining/repairing it. To date myself, I got excited when the first 300 baud acoustically coupled modems came out so I could interact with the Eniac at the University. That was a 2x increase over the old 150 baud modem I was using. Those were the days when you could actually beat a computer at chess, and it was played on old teletype terminals/printers.

In using the term "Mainstream", let me clarify. The folks at Canonical and some other larger distro's dink with the source code excessively. Example: Gnome in the Ubuntu world, is not vanilla Gnome. It is extensively modified. With using the term mainstream, I am suggesting that the source code be dinked with as little as possible. I've personally found, that the more a package's source code is tweaked from the original author's intent....often unintended negative bugs can creep in. I know, because I'm guilty of this myself in my own code writing.

And the reason I posted the "Usability" question, is that in the early days, Arch broke often, often catastrophically. I'm referring to the pre-1.0 days.

So I'm going to ask this with a polite professional tone in my voice, no flame-bait intended......does Arch break as often as it used to? And when it does break, how often are those breakages to the point where it will not boot?

Another Scenario: I typically compile my own kernels from vanilla sources at kernel.org. And forgive my old style, I compile monoliths. They are a hassle, but the result is that they are fast as hell. And doing 3D modeling, or video transcoding/packaging....I want as many CPU clock cycles going toward my tasks at hand, and not burned on a bunch of stuff I don't need.

I have timed some of my CPU intensive tasks and found that monoliths are more efficient than modular. Probably due to the ring level or something like that. Things that can be measured in minutes over a long render, not seconds. That's not a flame, it's my personal experience. Some of my renders are measured in days, not hours/minutes.

So the question is: How tolerant is Arch of customized kernels these days?

Again, the information and user experiences are greatly appreciated......Thank you!

Sincerely and respectfully,

Dave

PS: What's Judd up to these days now that he's graduated?

Last edited by dcbdbis (2010-12-27 21:59:00)

Inxsible · 2010-12-27 22:08:34

For every custom built package make sure that you add it to the IgnorePkg in pacman.conf. This will prevent your custom built kernel to be overwritten by the updates that the vanilla kernel may get. The only downside to this is that some other packages that may depend on the new features of the updated kernel might break for you unless you re-compile your kernel again. So you will have to keep track of those kinds of changes.

As for things breaking, yes there are times when things break, but again its not that calamatic as it used to be. A few changes here and there should get you up and running again.

With "mainstream", Arch keeps everything as the original devs intended. There are custom built components/patches to many many software, but they all exist in AUR. So you can choose to install those if you so wish, but the packages in the official repos are mostly vanilla software (vanilla = as is from upstream)

Army · 2010-12-27 22:28:15

In my experience Arch doesn't break often. When I started using it that happened from time to time, but that was caused by my lack of experience. Nowadays it's totally simple to maintain Arch. Since you seem to be much more advanced than I am, there's nothing to worry. All in all you only have to be careful with what infos pacman shows, such as *.pacnew and *.pacsave files. If you pay attention and always read the news for possible breakage before update, you are absolutely safe.

I even recommend using [testing], because it gets very much attention by the devs and I've NEVER experienced any problem with this. Of course you have to follow the mailing list arch-dev-public, because sometimes, when critical packages get updates, you might get into trouble. If that happens, you better wait for newer versions. But ever since the [staging] repo was introduced ([staging] is used for mass rebuilds, if e.g. libpng gets an update which requires every package depending on libpng to be updated, after that happened, these packages are being moved to [testing]) [testing] is VERY stable. But of course you don't have to be so bleeding edge, but reading what you wrote, that's what you really like

Last edited by Army (2010-12-27 22:28:46)

dcbdbis · 2010-12-27 22:44:20

Thank you Army,

As far as current packages...I really need the current packages for generating 3D content, which has not fully matured as a technology under linux at this point in time (IMHO). BluRay, the so-called "achilles heel", is doable, with a few hoops to jump through. That's really the only need for 'cutting edge packages'...is for functionality that didn't exist in earlier package versions.

What I am hearing, if I were to distill it down....is that Arch remains as fast as it was in the early days, but with less of a tendency to go belly up. Maintenance I am quite able and willing to do. Mail-lists and paying attention to config files are a given.....

But what I am hearing, is that Arch has really evolved as a distribution and really matured. To the point that occasional breakage may happen (as it will with any newer package sets and lib/dependency 'hell', but not to the point of 'death'. If I do kill my system by doing something stupid because I didn't read a post, mail, or anything else before committing something major to my system.....I deserve to reload it from scratch. My own stupidity be on my own head.

I've been haunting/reading other posts in the forums, and it appears that many have had their arch installation for years, plural intentional, with only occasional maintenance needed when something goes askew.

I am downloading it as we speak. I'm going to put it in a VM to make sure I have the installation section down before going live. I've also got a small netbook with Debian Sid up and running so I can review documentation on the 'web should I hose something up when I go live.

I'm going to mark the post as solved, because I have the 'warm and fuzzy' I was after before committing......

Again, sincerest thanks to all who responded......

Sincerely and respectfully,

Dave

Army · 2010-12-28 00:11:51

dcbdbis wrote:

BluRay, the so-called "achilles heel", is doable, with a few hoops to jump through. That's really the only need for 'cutting edge packages'...is for functionality that didn't exist in earlier package versions.

Well, if you want to burn BluRay discs, you'll need to build cdrtools from the AUR. We can't have cdrtools in the repos due to license problems.

You'll love Arch, welcome on board, nice to have you!

dolby · 2010-12-28 09:16:29

dcbdbis wrote:

I'd rather spend most of my time using my PC, not maintaining/repairing it.

I'd say this has been a goal for Arch in recent times, after a certain amount of stability was gained.
As long as you are able to configure the applications you are using & keep their configuration in a working state, everything should just work.
The catch is that not all applications you might need are officially supported, so you may end maintaining some on your own or use the AUR where hopefully someone else will be maintaining them.
Using the AUR too much does increase both maintainance cost & changes of insttability.

Last edited by dolby (2010-12-28 09:18:52)

Schily · 2010-12-30 22:28:33

Army wrote:

dcbdbis wrote:
BluRay, the so-called "achilles heel", is doable, with a few hoops to jump through. That's really the only need for 'cutting edge packages'...is for functionality that didn't exist in earlier package versions.
Well, if you want to burn BluRay discs, you'll need to build cdrtools from the AUR. We can't have cdrtools in the repos due to license problems.
You'll love Arch, welcome on board, nice to have you!

The correct answer would be: it is not possible to have cdrkit in the repos because of the license problems in cdrkit.

Cdrtools on the other side is completely legal and of course can be freely redistributed.

.:B:. · 2010-12-30 22:58:44

As for your concern with stability, I have been running [testing] on my laptop (my main computer) for quite a while now, and I really can't complain about critical things breaking (or non-critical ones, for that matter, usually it's just a quick rebuild of an app depending on perl/python).

cesura · 2010-12-31 00:32:44

dcbdbis wrote:

PS: What's Judd up to these days now that he's graduated?

Well, I don't quite know to tell you the truth. Judd left a while ago and was succeeded by Aaron Griffin (phrakture).

Allan · 2010-12-31 00:54:21

Schily wrote:

Army wrote:
dcbdbis wrote:
BluRay, the so-called "achilles heel", is doable, with a few hoops to jump through. That's really the only need for 'cutting edge packages'...is for functionality that didn't exist in earlier package versions.
Well, if you want to burn BluRay discs, you'll need to build cdrtools from the AUR. We can't have cdrtools in the repos due to license problems.
You'll love Arch, welcome on board, nice to have you!
The correct answer would be: it is not possible to have cdrkit in the repos because of the license problems in cdrkit.
Cdrtools on the other side is completely legal and of course can be freely redistributed.

Do you just search the internet looking for new posts about this to "correct"?

ngoonee · 2010-12-31 02:59:26

Allan wrote:

Schily wrote:
Army wrote:
Well, if you want to burn BluRay discs, you'll need to build cdrtools from the AUR. We can't have cdrtools in the repos due to license problems.
You'll love Arch, welcome on board, nice to have you!
The correct answer would be: it is not possible to have cdrkit in the repos because of the license problems in cdrkit.
Cdrtools on the other side is completely legal and of course can be freely redistributed.
Do you just search the internet looking for new posts about this to "correct"?

I wonder about that as well.

Schily · 2011-01-01 12:23:08

Allan wrote:

Schily wrote:
Army wrote:
Well, if you want to burn BluRay discs, you'll need to build cdrtools from the AUR. We can't have cdrtools in the repos due to license problems.
You'll love Arch, welcome on board, nice to have you!
The correct answer would be: it is not possible to have cdrkit in the repos because of the license problems in cdrkit.
Cdrtools on the other side is completely legal and of course can be freely redistributed.
Do you just search the internet looking for new posts about this to "correct"?

You seem to be confused - probably from searching the internet......

There is unfortunately a lot of incorrect claims in the net, but all of them are initiated by a single person that started to attack the cdrtools project in May 2004.

This person (Eduard Bloch) started to attack the project after he discovered that he is unable to force the project to include a buggy patch that claimed to introduce UTF-8 support. Around April 2005, he started to turn his attacks into something based on alleged license problems. This is interesting as a month before, a book from FSF friendly lawyers (the lawyers that support Harald Welte) was published and explained why the claim made a month later from Eduard Bloch is wrong.

Bloch later started to ignore the rules from GPL and Copyright law and created a fork that cannot be legally distributed.

I hope this helps.....

It is a sad truth, that the claims spread by Bloch have not been checked by several Linux distributions. Distributions that asked their legal department on the other side publish the original cdrtools only.

litemotiv · 2011-01-01 12:31:59

itsbrad212 wrote:

dcbdbis wrote:
PS: What's Judd up to these days now that he's graduated?
Well, I don't quite know to tell you the truth. Judd left a while ago and was succeeded by Aaron Griffin (phrakture).

So the new question is: What's Aaron up to these days now that he's graduated?

Allan · 2011-01-01 12:36:28

Schily wrote:

You seem to be confused - probably from searching the internet......

No... I am not confused. And we have argued about this before.

I will continue to believe the only actual published analysis of the situation that I have seen (by Eben Moglen: http://mailman.archlinux.org/pipermail/ … 0989.html). Your claims that various laywers say it is OK are backed by nothing...

dolby · 2011-01-01 12:55:59

Schily wrote:

You seem to be confused - probably from searching the internet......
There is unfortunately a lot of incorrect claims in the net

Unfortunately the claims about your personality seem to be accurate.

Schily · 2011-01-01 15:24:58

Allan wrote:

Schily wrote:
You seem to be confused - probably from searching the internet......

No... I am not confused. And we have argued about this before.
I will continue to believe the only actual published analysis of the situation that I have seen (by Eben Moglen: http://mailman.archlinux.org/pipermail/ … 0989.html). Your claims that various laywers say it is OK are backed by nothing...

OK, so you like to confirm that you are not interested in the truth :-(

http://www.osscc.net/en/gplger.html
http://www.rosenlaw.com/Rosen_Ch06.pdf
http://www.osscc.net/pdf/QualipsoA1D113.pdf
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~tlavian/pub … 060403.pdf

There are various lawyers that explain in detail where Debian is in conflict with the law with their interpretations.

The claims from Debian are however indeed backed up by nothing.

You have to decide whether you believe well quoted explanations from lawyers or whether you believe claims from hostile laymen speking for Debian.

.:B:. · 2011-01-01 15:55:41

Gentlemen I'll point you to Forum Etiquette #19.

Knock it off with the legal discussion. All of you. You're not helping the topic starter.

Allan · 2011-01-02 00:53:58

Schily wrote:

Allan wrote:
Schily wrote:
You seem to be confused - probably from searching the internet......

No... I am not confused. And we have argued about this before.
I will continue to believe the only actual published analysis of the situation that I have seen (by Eben Moglen: http://mailman.archlinux.org/pipermail/ … 0989.html). Your claims that various laywers say it is OK are backed by nothing...
OK, so you like to confirm that you are not interested in the truth :-(
http://www.osscc.net/en/gplger.html
http://www.rosenlaw.com/Rosen_Ch06.pdf
http://www.osscc.net/pdf/QualipsoA1D113.pdf
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~tlavian/pub … 060403.pdf
There are various lawyers that explain in detail where Debian is in conflict with the law with their interpretations.
The claims from Debian are however indeed backed up by nothing.
You have to decide whether you believe well quoted explanations from lawyers or whether you believe claims from hostile laymen speking for Debian.

And these mention cdrkit/cdrtools where?

jasonwryan · 2011-01-02 01:06:16

...and we're done.

Closing

Arch Linux

#1 2010-12-27 20:05:28

[SOLVED] Reviewing distro's. Request Opinions and experiences

#2 2010-12-27 21:21:14

Re: [SOLVED] Reviewing distro's. Request Opinions and experiences

#3 2010-12-27 21:41:33

Re: [SOLVED] Reviewing distro's. Request Opinions and experiences

#4 2010-12-27 22:08:34

Re: [SOLVED] Reviewing distro's. Request Opinions and experiences

#5 2010-12-27 22:28:15

Re: [SOLVED] Reviewing distro's. Request Opinions and experiences

#6 2010-12-27 22:44:20

Re: [SOLVED] Reviewing distro's. Request Opinions and experiences

#7 2010-12-28 00:11:51

Re: [SOLVED] Reviewing distro's. Request Opinions and experiences

#8 2010-12-28 09:16:29

Re: [SOLVED] Reviewing distro's. Request Opinions and experiences

#9 2010-12-30 22:28:33

Re: [SOLVED] Reviewing distro's. Request Opinions and experiences

#10 2010-12-30 22:58:44

Re: [SOLVED] Reviewing distro's. Request Opinions and experiences

#11 2010-12-31 00:32:44

Re: [SOLVED] Reviewing distro's. Request Opinions and experiences

#12 2010-12-31 00:54:21

Re: [SOLVED] Reviewing distro's. Request Opinions and experiences

#13 2010-12-31 02:59:26

Re: [SOLVED] Reviewing distro's. Request Opinions and experiences

#14 2011-01-01 12:23:08

Re: [SOLVED] Reviewing distro's. Request Opinions and experiences

#15 2011-01-01 12:31:59

Re: [SOLVED] Reviewing distro's. Request Opinions and experiences

#16 2011-01-01 12:36:28

Re: [SOLVED] Reviewing distro's. Request Opinions and experiences

#17 2011-01-01 12:55:59

Re: [SOLVED] Reviewing distro's. Request Opinions and experiences

#18 2011-01-01 15:24:58

Re: [SOLVED] Reviewing distro's. Request Opinions and experiences

#19 2011-01-01 15:55:41

Re: [SOLVED] Reviewing distro's. Request Opinions and experiences

#20 2011-01-02 00:53:58

Re: [SOLVED] Reviewing distro's. Request Opinions and experiences

#21 2011-01-02 01:06:16

Re: [SOLVED] Reviewing distro's. Request Opinions and experiences

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