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I agree that desktop on linux is ready, with the main trade-off being: you have to spend more time setting things up, but you can customise your software/hardwa

I agree that desktop on linux is ready, with the main trade-off being: you have to spend more time setting things up, but you can customise your software/hardware to any level you want. ( and just like Y software, there's X hardware that might not work with linux. those damn printers... ) Btw, I also started with Ubuntu but I'm finding Arch a much better and up to date distro.

ekianjo 10y ago
Arch is definitely the way most Linux users go once they get in a comfort zone with their existing distro (Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora, etc...) and want to get something with better hardware support or even better software support (with Arch's fantastic AUR!). Antergos makes it easier than ever to jump into Arch, too.
StavrosK 10y ago
What is it that you like about Arch? Maybe I should give it a shot, although with Ubuntu you know you'll have both the solutions and the software available somewhere.
- rhodysurf 10y ago
  For personal use its the most up to date and because its rolling release i never have to actually upgrade or wait for releases. Also newer kernels for newer hardware.
  - StavrosK 10y ago
    Doesn't that break things too often? I always run across at least one breaking change on each new Ubuntu version, and I'd imagine this happens much more often with a rollling release OS, is that not the case? Also, how is packaging? With Ubuntu, someone always has a PPA for everything.
    - flukus 10y ago
      Not based on arch, but in places where I've worked that have adopted continuous deployment models, there are a lot less breaking changes and those breaks are usually smaller and more manageable. What I'd like is a stable base system with cutting edge apps, but I don't know if any distro offers this.
    - Keats 10y ago
      I've been using Arch for ~2 years now and haven't had anything break, I do a pacman -Syu (updates everything) every week or so. Arch has AUR (http://aur.archlinux.org/ http://aur.archlinux.org/) which has probably way more things than PPA have
      - Accacin 10y ago
        I'm away and not on my main machine at the moment, but I've heard of problems for people who have installed Infinality fonts in the last few days.. So I'm looking forward to fixing tht when I get home.
    - naibafo 10y ago
      The thing with the rolling release is, that you get a few small updates each day/week, so if something breaks, you generally know where, which makes it easier to pinpoint the problem and fix it, then after a full distro upgrade. However, in the one year I have been using Arch as my main distro, I had only two small breakages. The first was a recent upgrade of openvpn, which required you to move some folder from one place to the other. however this was a known breaking change, so it was announced on the Arch-announce mailing list. :) The second happened this weekend. I had been using the infinality-font-bundle, which provides a patched fonts set that is beautifully rendered. However it seems that the developer hadn't been keeping up with the new versions of fontconfig and the had been some new options added, and after an update gdk-bixbuf2 needed one of them to function. (which resultet in missing icons) This was fixed after 5 minutes of googleing. So not something very dramatic. Packaging: The package manager is pacman and the standard repos already have a lot of software. And then there is the AUR, where everybody can upload build-scripts for stuff that is not in the official repositories. Most of the time they work great, there hasn't been any software at all that I had to download from a browser.
- antouank 10y ago
  Almost everything is most up to date, in ubuntu you get versions that can be years old. And no, that doesn't really mean it breaks things. I have antergos for a couple of months now. I have about 1500 packages installed, never got anything broken like I had the `sudo apt -f install` every few weeks in ubuntu. And ubuntu comes a bit bloated out of the box. At least for a "normal" power user that knows how to install the things he/she needs. I'm also impressed from the support in the packages. For example, you need a new fancy editor? latest version? Atom, VS Code? sure, just install it from the package manager. Maybe need the latest of node.js? or vivaldi browser? It has them. It's much more complete than I thought. No need to look for .deb packages on anything. And last, I won't have to change anything in 6-12 months when a new version comes out. There are no scheduled releases from what I understand. You can always be up to date. Personally, I don't see any single reason to install ubuntu again.
  - Accacin 10y ago
    I don't want to sound rude, but Arch and Antergos aren't exactly the same. I think if you intall Arch you'll set yourself up with a much better understanding of your system for when something goes wrong.
    - antouank 10y ago
      From what I've read, it's a "light installer on top of it". For now it works pretty well for what I need. And coming from OSX and ubuntu it's a good step I guess. I'll try just arch on a VM to see what the differences are.
    - JetSetWilly 10y ago
      They are essentially the same, it is the same repos. In fact once you have installed antergos you can remove the antergos repo and you essentially have an arch system. Many arch users often say "you must go through our annoying installation process to understand linux better!" - but that's only true if the person migrating to arch is a linux newbie. Frankly I've been using linux for 20 years and now that I am older and a parent I have much better uses of my very limited time than going through an obnoxious chroot install and configuring some files in /etc. Antergos is great.
flukus 10y ago
> and just like Y software, there's X hardware that might not work with linux. those damn printers... The two biggest issues I've ever had with linux are printer support and modem support. Time solved both issues before developers did, no one uses dial up and I no longer print anything at home.
- Freak_NL 10y ago
  Even printers (and scanners) are fine as long as you pick the hardware based on Linux driver availability. I love how using an ageing Canon USB-scanner just works without any configuration on any new install of Ubuntu, because the driver is supported by the SANE project. No vendor-specific software needed; just open up Simple Scan and… scan.

ekianjo 10y ago

Arch is definitely the way most Linux users go once they get in a comfort zone with their existing distro (Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora, etc...) and want to get something with better hardware support or even better software support (with Arch's fantastic AUR!). Antergos makes it easier than ever to jump into Arch, too.

StavrosK 10y ago

What is it that you like about Arch? Maybe I should give it a shot, although with Ubuntu you know you'll have both the solutions and the software available somewhere.

rhodysurf 10y ago
For personal use its the most up to date and because its rolling release i never have to actually upgrade or wait for releases. Also newer kernels for newer hardware.
- StavrosK 10y ago
  Doesn't that break things too often? I always run across at least one breaking change on each new Ubuntu version, and I'd imagine this happens much more often with a rollling release OS, is that not the case? Also, how is packaging? With Ubuntu, someone always has a PPA for everything.
  - flukus 10y ago
    Not based on arch, but in places where I've worked that have adopted continuous deployment models, there are a lot less breaking changes and those breaks are usually smaller and more manageable. What I'd like is a stable base system with cutting edge apps, but I don't know if any distro offers this.
  - Keats 10y ago
    I've been using Arch for ~2 years now and haven't had anything break, I do a pacman -Syu (updates everything) every week or so. Arch has AUR (http://aur.archlinux.org/ http://aur.archlinux.org/) which has probably way more things than PPA have
    - Accacin 10y ago
      I'm away and not on my main machine at the moment, but I've heard of problems for people who have installed Infinality fonts in the last few days.. So I'm looking forward to fixing tht when I get home.
  - naibafo 10y ago
    The thing with the rolling release is, that you get a few small updates each day/week, so if something breaks, you generally know where, which makes it easier to pinpoint the problem and fix it, then after a full distro upgrade. However, in the one year I have been using Arch as my main distro, I had only two small breakages. The first was a recent upgrade of openvpn, which required you to move some folder from one place to the other. however this was a known breaking change, so it was announced on the Arch-announce mailing list. :) The second happened this weekend. I had been using the infinality-font-bundle, which provides a patched fonts set that is beautifully rendered. However it seems that the developer hadn't been keeping up with the new versions of fontconfig and the had been some new options added, and after an update gdk-bixbuf2 needed one of them to function. (which resultet in missing icons) This was fixed after 5 minutes of googleing. So not something very dramatic. Packaging: The package manager is pacman and the standard repos already have a lot of software. And then there is the AUR, where everybody can upload build-scripts for stuff that is not in the official repositories. Most of the time they work great, there hasn't been any software at all that I had to download from a browser.
antouank 10y ago
Almost everything is most up to date, in ubuntu you get versions that can be years old. And no, that doesn't really mean it breaks things. I have antergos for a couple of months now. I have about 1500 packages installed, never got anything broken like I had the `sudo apt -f install` every few weeks in ubuntu. And ubuntu comes a bit bloated out of the box. At least for a "normal" power user that knows how to install the things he/she needs. I'm also impressed from the support in the packages. For example, you need a new fancy editor? latest version? Atom, VS Code? sure, just install it from the package manager. Maybe need the latest of node.js? or vivaldi browser? It has them. It's much more complete than I thought. No need to look for .deb packages on anything. And last, I won't have to change anything in 6-12 months when a new version comes out. There are no scheduled releases from what I understand. You can always be up to date. Personally, I don't see any single reason to install ubuntu again.
- Accacin 10y ago
  I don't want to sound rude, but Arch and Antergos aren't exactly the same. I think if you intall Arch you'll set yourself up with a much better understanding of your system for when something goes wrong.
  - antouank 10y ago
    From what I've read, it's a "light installer on top of it". For now it works pretty well for what I need. And coming from OSX and ubuntu it's a good step I guess. I'll try just arch on a VM to see what the differences are.
  - JetSetWilly 10y ago
    They are essentially the same, it is the same repos. In fact once you have installed antergos you can remove the antergos repo and you essentially have an arch system. Many arch users often say "you must go through our annoying installation process to understand linux better!" - but that's only true if the person migrating to arch is a linux newbie. Frankly I've been using linux for 20 years and now that I am older and a parent I have much better uses of my very limited time than going through an obnoxious chroot install and configuring some files in /etc. Antergos is great.

flukus 10y ago

> and just like Y software, there's X hardware that might not work with linux. those damn printers... The two biggest issues I've ever had with linux are printer support and modem support. Time solved both issues before developers did, no one uses dial up and I no longer print anything at home.

Freak_NL 10y ago
Even printers (and scanners) are fine as long as you pick the hardware based on Linux driver availability. I love how using an ageing Canon USB-scanner just works without any configuration on any new install of Ubuntu, because the driver is supported by the SANE project. No vendor-specific software needed; just open up Simple Scan and… scan.