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My Arch Linux Setup with Plasma 5

rvdavis 9y ago
Why on God's green Earth would you pollute Arch with KDE?! :)
- kellyjprice 9y ago
  What happened to the time when KDE was respected as a beautiful DE?
  - nice_byte 9y ago
    KDE 4 happened
    - bhrgunatha 9y ago
      To be fair KDE4 _was_ a disaster when it was released but in time it came to be as stable and usable as the much loved KDE3. The path to plasma was also somewhat rocky (but nowhere near as bad as the KDE3 - KDE4 transition). I used to enjoy using KDE but I feel they lost their way and are overly attracted by "shiny new things" like workspaces, activities, or semantic desktop - virtually everything being dependent on strigi then akonadi then nepomuk then baloo or ... The real bugbear is that every time they ditch everything for a new metaphor - so much of the previously working and reliable software is also ditched or obsolete. It doesn't suit my needs to have to keep re-configuring my computer and software and workflow so I stopped using it. I do think it's great and valuable that it's there as an option though.
      - majewsky 9y ago
        Akonadi was the main reason why I ditched KMail for Thunderbird six years ago. I recently went back, and it's marginally better. But it's still pretty outrageous that a service that only gives one user-visible extra feature (mail checking and calendar reminders as a background service) costs 330 megabytes of RAM. Most of that for the MySQL instance that it's using; no idea why they have to use anything else than SQLite for a mailbox with maybe 100 mails. Stopping Akonadi is a thing that I just have to do before launching Minecraft on my notebook. $ free; akonadictl stop; sleep 15; free total used free shared buff/cache available Mem: 3934720 1227872 1296492 253868 1410356 2203068 Swap: 0 0 0 total used free shared buff/cache available Mem: 3934720 897308 1626924 249452 1410488 2538072 Swap: 0 0 0 I'm still sticking with KMail for now, though. The UI is a bit nicer (esp. w.r.t. GPG), and mail checking as a background service is nice.
  - shmerl 9y ago
    It's still the most popular. Check any polls.
- em3rgent0rdr 9y ago
  :) well the nice thing about Arch is that Arch doesn't tell you what you can and can't install on your system...that is pretty much entirely up to the user.
  - lokedhs 9y ago
    For most components, that's true. But trying to use Arch without systemd can be difficult.
- shmerl 9y ago
  KDE is simply the best DE around.
tuxxy 9y ago
When you overwrite the disk, you say you should use dd if=/dev/random, but the reason why this is much slower is because /dev/random blocks. Use /dev/urandom because it doesn't block -- Before you ask, yes this is still secure. Or you can use dm-crypt and create a temporary container with a random key to wipe it. This will be a bit faster than the above. See the Arch wiki for details[1] [1] - https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Dm-crypt/Drive_preparation#dm-crypt_specific_methods https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Dm-crypt/Drive_preparat...
- noinsight 9y ago
  Or, you can use the (S)ATA Secure Erase[1] command which was designed from the start to securely wipe a hard disk and should handle wiping reserve space etc. properly. [1] https://ata.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/ATA_Secure_Erase https://ata.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/ATA_Secure_Erase
  - Nauxuron 9y ago
    Apparently, this is not always implemented correctly on SSDs. It should take quite some time, but if it finishes after a few seconds, it probably didn't really wipe your SSD securely.
    - oxplot 9y ago
      Most SSDs should be encrypted by default and all secure erase would do is to wipe the encryption key and generate a new one which takes no time and does effectively and securely wipe the entire disk.
- brobinson 9y ago
  And don't forget `oflag=direct` if you use dd directly
- SCdF 9y ago
  On the subject, is there any evidence that wiping to anything more complicated than 0s is actually helpful? Are there are practical attacks where you take a zero'd hard drive and derive data from it that you wouldn't have been able to derive were it written over randomly?
roadbeats 9y ago
Arch Linux is so powerful thanks to its amazing community. You got access to over 70k packages with one command (stable: pacman, community: yaourt). Whatever you're looking for, it's there. I run the same setup for almost 7 years without any issues, and it's always fast, always reliable and productive. I prefer Xmonad over pretty stuff like KDE though, just like many Arch users. It's not beautiful and there is a learning curve, but once you got used to it, you can use it for years, just like me and lots of other people. And it'll give you a stability that lasts years. Recently I created a distro based on Arch, to attract more pragmatic developers to use Arch. My distro is called Happy Hacking Linux and unlike Arch, it comes with a ready-to-use desktop. It's a niche distro made just for pragmatic developers, so its installation wizard starts with asking where your dotfiles are located, and sets up a system that you can immediately start building stuff. Last January, I converted my dad's old desktop pc to my personal development workspace within 30 minutes. And that useless machine was running my workspace as fast as a brand new Mac with bloated OSX. If you're curious, check it out; http://kodfabrik.com/happy-hacking-linux http://kodfabrik.com/happy-hacking-linux
- makepanic 9y ago
  If you like yaourt, check out pacaur. There are other alternative aur wrappers that have more features: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/AUR_helpers#Comparison_table https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/AUR_helpers#Comparison_...
  - roadbeats 9y ago
    I'll try it, looks neat. Cower is not building due to PGP errors at this point though.
    - makepanic 9y ago
      you have to import the teams gpg key
paines 9y ago
Almost agree 100%, but why would you encrypt the whole disk? There is no need for that. It's 100% free software availabe for anyone. Encrypt your home directory. And this has Ubuntu figured out quite nicely IMHO.
- mxvzr 9y ago
  Encrypting the home directory ensures the privacy of your data should someone get his hands on your machine. Under the same scenario, full disk encryption would also gives you the guarantee the system hasn't been tampered with.
  - klodolph 9y ago
    That's profoundly incorrect: full disk encryption provides no guarantees that your system has not been tampered with. I don't see how that would even be possible.
    - mxvzr 9y ago
      If the machine is turned off and only the home directory is encrypted, I am at liberty to patch the kernel or binaries, update your package manager or dns settings, or anything in between really. I can do none of that with FDE (assuming I don't already know the key of course). What am I missing here?
      - eikenberry 9y ago
        Once "they" have your machine you have to assume it is compromised. If they have the ability to install kernel patches or custom binaries, they most certainly have the ability to install monitoring hardware and/or modify your bios. That is, no matter what you encrypt your machine is compromised and your only recourse is to recover the encrypted data and move on to a new system. Here "they" is someone who would take your machine, modify it, and get it back to you maybe without your knowing. If you are just concerned with identity thieves and basic asset protection then as long as that stuff is encrypted you are fine, whether that is whole system, home directory, ~/Private directory, or just those specific files.
Hydraulix989 9y ago
Arch is just too much time for me doing sysadmin and keeping up with breaking changes (it's a rolling distro, so all kinds of system configurations are possible, many are untested or just bleeding edge). If you like using an unstable bleeding edge system where you have to configure everything yourself by hand with absolutely zero tolerance for user error, use Arch. If I'm on a tight schedule with doing mission critical projects on my work computer where there are hard deadlines and Murphy's Law involved, forget it. If you're curious, I'm currently using Mint with Cinnamon.
- RealityVoid 9y ago
  I thought the same thing but I set up arch on my main machine a couple of months ago and apart from the setup pain, it has been a much smaller hassle than I anticipated. It's pretty stable, didn't have any breakage until now. I love it! But I do admit the initial setup was pretty intense, I loved the learning experience. I'm also using Cinnamon, on Arch. It's quite clean and nice. :)
  - Zancarius 9y ago
    > I thought the same thing but I set up arch on my main machine a couple of months ago and apart from the setup pain, it has been a much smaller hassle than I anticipated. It's pretty stable, didn't have any breakage until now. I love it! As an Arch user of ~5-6 years, I do have some advice outside the obvious realm of "keep regular (working) backups" that can help minimize future headaches (not necessarily for you since you've likely already encountered these points; mostly for others who may be interested in dabbling with Arch): 1) Update often (at least once every 1-2 months; try not to let it get more than 6 months out of date), and keep a close eye on the news items--or, better yet, subscribe to the arch-announce mailing list. You'll get a heads up on anything that could be a potentially breaking change. When breaking changes come down the turnpike, don't panic--the Arch maintainers post upgrade instructions walking you through the process along with the appropriate news entry and it's usually fairly straightforward. There's also the forums if you get into a bind, and there's tons of great people willing to help (but search first!). 2) Keep your configurations up to date (either with `yaourt -C` or examining the .pacnew files by hand with vimdiff or similar). This isn't really Arch-specific, but because Arch is* a rolling release distribution, sometimes new versions of things come out fast enough that existing configurations can fall out of date and present unique challenges. But it all very much depends on the upgrade policy of upstream packages. Usually this isn't a problem unless. Fortunately, the lion's share of "breaking" changes you'll encounter will be minor. The most recent one you've probably encountered by now may have been the certificate path issue with ca-certificates existing already. I suspect most of the major architectural changes are in the past at this point (mostly due to the disruption caused by systemd), but keeping your system relatively up to date is a great way to inoculate it against unnecessary future effort. It's always possible to upgrade ancient installs if you let them lapse (I should know!), but it's better to avoid that if possible. I hope you continue to enjoy Arch for many years to come!
microwavecamera 9y ago
Question for all the Arch peeps, what's the goal/purpose of Arch? As an outside observer it seems needlessly complicated and most of the complexity being specific to Arch. Why not just run Slack or Debian if you want a barebones full distro? Slack and BSD's are closer to old school UNIX. Arch is after my time, am I missing something?
- viraptor 9y ago
  Debian is not kept as up to date as arch. There's also no AUR equivalent. AUR had Steam for Linux packaged for example about 2h after the official release, with people adding the missed dependencies very shortly. Also not having many prescribed defaults is sometimes nice. I want KDE with that display manager / lockscreen. And I can have it without uninstalling some metapackage which will make updates harder in the future. (like gnome-desktop on Ubuntu) I haven't used slack for over a decade, so can't really comment. Also until recently it was one of the few distros with nicely integrated grsec kernel. :-(
  - Tomte 9y ago
    So Arch community packages are "released" without even cursory testing whether it works (missing dependencies)? And you feel that's a good thing?
    - larschdk 9y ago
      Packages go to the 'testing' repository to allow checking for thing being broken. They usually only stay there for a short time (a week or so, often less).
    - likeclockwork 9y ago
      He's talking about the AUR not the official community repo. It was tested on the AUR and the feedback was integrated to identify the dependencies. It's since graduated from the AUR to the official community repo. The AUR has pretty much everything, community maintained. The arch build system makes it trivial to package something no matter where it comes from. You can use it to repackage a .deb or a .rpm (it'll even download it from its official home and verify checksums), or a project from a git repo, for specific releases, or tracking a branch, or what have you. There's all kinds of software on the AUR and it's all up to date. The official repos also move very fast, compared to other distros. Read about a new feature in a recent version of some software you use? Just update, it's probably already landed in arch. You don't have to wait six months for a release window to install software that's already ready.
vondur 9y ago
I've taken a liking to KDE lately. Looks nice and the file manager is top notch. I cheated and used Antergros to install Arch.
- Zancarius 9y ago
  I have to admit, this is one of the things I miss most whenever I boot to Windows. Explorer lacks an awful lot of the conveniences present in Dolphin. Dolphin can be a bit unstable and has some UI warts, but tabs/tab views, the drag-and-drop copy/move/link dialog, and tree view in the file list pane are some of my favorites. Right-click copy to/move to are also hugely useful.
  - aruggirello 9y ago
    Dolphin rocks! Double panel, tabs, filter, and F4 for the built-in shell which is kept in sync with the current folder... and then there are the additional columns in table view, where you can see image resolution (OK Explorer has it too) or number of lines for text files... BTW there's also the additional information during long file operations (like bandwidth used, etc), and (I believe) it's the only system I know of, where I can pause a file transfer operation, and resume it later...
    - Zancarius 9y ago
      > BTW there's also the additional information during long file operations (like bandwidth used, etc), and (I believe) it's the only system I know of, where I can pause a file transfer operation, and resume it later... I think Explorer does that too (bandwidth; don't remember about pause--I think it has that feature), but Dolphin certainly had it first. The task tray integration for background copying is also quite nice and useful if you're on a different virtual desktop (to me, anyway!). You're absolutely right: Almost everything else is anemic compared to Dolphin!
grumph 9y ago
I used to install Arch by hand, then I discovered ArchFI and ArchDI scripts. They do every basic step of the install wiki, and if you need you can do some things manually from another console. With those, I go from an empty machine to a fully functional system with total control/feedback on what is installed (Arch way) in about one hour (most of the time is waiting for packages to download and install). https://github.com/MatMoul/archfi https://github.com/MatMoul/archfi
SteveBash 9y ago
For me the rolling release model of Arch makes it not the most suitable distro for development, lately I had to fight with the openssl upgrade to 1.1.0 because some rust libs I used no longer worked. Downgrading is not an option for pacman, so I had to resort to compiling on docker containers and that's not the most comfortable dev environment. I'm gonna migrate to NixOS or GuixSD this weekend, the package managers they have are really a breakthrough to package management.

Why on God's green Earth would you pollute Arch with KDE?! :)

kellyjprice 9y ago
What happened to the time when KDE was respected as a beautiful DE?
- nice_byte 9y ago
  KDE 4 happened
  - bhrgunatha 9y ago
    To be fair KDE4 _was_ a disaster when it was released but in time it came to be as stable and usable as the much loved KDE3. The path to plasma was also somewhat rocky (but nowhere near as bad as the KDE3 - KDE4 transition). I used to enjoy using KDE but I feel they lost their way and are overly attracted by "shiny new things" like workspaces, activities, or semantic desktop - virtually everything being dependent on strigi then akonadi then nepomuk then baloo or ... The real bugbear is that every time they ditch everything for a new metaphor - so much of the previously working and reliable software is also ditched or obsolete. It doesn't suit my needs to have to keep re-configuring my computer and software and workflow so I stopped using it. I do think it's great and valuable that it's there as an option though.
    - majewsky 9y ago
      Akonadi was the main reason why I ditched KMail for Thunderbird six years ago. I recently went back, and it's marginally better. But it's still pretty outrageous that a service that only gives one user-visible extra feature (mail checking and calendar reminders as a background service) costs 330 megabytes of RAM. Most of that for the MySQL instance that it's using; no idea why they have to use anything else than SQLite for a mailbox with maybe 100 mails. Stopping Akonadi is a thing that I just have to do before launching Minecraft on my notebook. $ free; akonadictl stop; sleep 15; free total used free shared buff/cache available Mem: 3934720 1227872 1296492 253868 1410356 2203068 Swap: 0 0 0 total used free shared buff/cache available Mem: 3934720 897308 1626924 249452 1410488 2538072 Swap: 0 0 0 I'm still sticking with KMail for now, though. The UI is a bit nicer (esp. w.r.t. GPG), and mail checking as a background service is nice.
- shmerl 9y ago
  It's still the most popular. Check any polls.
em3rgent0rdr 9y ago
:) well the nice thing about Arch is that Arch doesn't tell you what you can and can't install on your system...that is pretty much entirely up to the user.
- lokedhs 9y ago
  For most components, that's true. But trying to use Arch without systemd can be difficult.
shmerl 9y ago
KDE is simply the best DE around.

When you overwrite the disk, you say you should use dd if=/dev/random, but the reason why this is much slower is because /dev/random blocks. Use /dev/urandom because it doesn't block -- Before you ask, yes this is still secure. Or you can use dm-crypt and create a temporary container with a random key to wipe it. This will be a bit faster than the above. See the Arch wiki for details[1] [1] - https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Dm-crypt/Drive_preparation#dm-crypt_specific_methods https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Dm-crypt/Drive_preparat...

noinsight 9y ago
Or, you can use the (S)ATA Secure Erase[1] command which was designed from the start to securely wipe a hard disk and should handle wiping reserve space etc. properly. [1] https://ata.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/ATA_Secure_Erase https://ata.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/ATA_Secure_Erase
- Nauxuron 9y ago
  Apparently, this is not always implemented correctly on SSDs. It should take quite some time, but if it finishes after a few seconds, it probably didn't really wipe your SSD securely.
  - oxplot 9y ago
    Most SSDs should be encrypted by default and all secure erase would do is to wipe the encryption key and generate a new one which takes no time and does effectively and securely wipe the entire disk.
brobinson 9y ago
And don't forget `oflag=direct` if you use dd directly
SCdF 9y ago
On the subject, is there any evidence that wiping to anything more complicated than 0s is actually helpful? Are there are practical attacks where you take a zero'd hard drive and derive data from it that you wouldn't have been able to derive were it written over randomly?

roadbeats 9y ago

Arch Linux is so powerful thanks to its amazing community. You got access to over 70k packages with one command (stable: pacman, community: yaourt). Whatever you're looking for, it's there. I run the same setup for almost 7 years without any issues, and it's always fast, always reliable and productive. I prefer Xmonad over pretty stuff like KDE though, just like many Arch users. It's not beautiful and there is a learning curve, but once you got used to it, you can use it for years, just like me and lots of other people. And it'll give you a stability that lasts years. Recently I created a distro based on Arch, to attract more pragmatic developers to use Arch. My distro is called Happy Hacking Linux and unlike Arch, it comes with a ready-to-use desktop. It's a niche distro made just for pragmatic developers, so its installation wizard starts with asking where your dotfiles are located, and sets up a system that you can immediately start building stuff. Last January, I converted my dad's old desktop pc to my personal development workspace within 30 minutes. And that useless machine was running my workspace as fast as a brand new Mac with bloated OSX. If you're curious, check it out; http://kodfabrik.com/happy-hacking-linux http://kodfabrik.com/happy-hacking-linux

makepanic 9y ago
If you like yaourt, check out pacaur. There are other alternative aur wrappers that have more features: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/AUR_helpers#Comparison_table https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/AUR_helpers#Comparison_...
- roadbeats 9y ago
  I'll try it, looks neat. Cower is not building due to PGP errors at this point though.
  - makepanic 9y ago
    you have to import the teams gpg key

paines 9y ago

Almost agree 100%, but why would you encrypt the whole disk? There is no need for that. It's 100% free software availabe for anyone. Encrypt your home directory. And this has Ubuntu figured out quite nicely IMHO.

mxvzr 9y ago
Encrypting the home directory ensures the privacy of your data should someone get his hands on your machine. Under the same scenario, full disk encryption would also gives you the guarantee the system hasn't been tampered with.
- klodolph 9y ago
  That's profoundly incorrect: full disk encryption provides no guarantees that your system has not been tampered with. I don't see how that would even be possible.
  - mxvzr 9y ago
    If the machine is turned off and only the home directory is encrypted, I am at liberty to patch the kernel or binaries, update your package manager or dns settings, or anything in between really. I can do none of that with FDE (assuming I don't already know the key of course). What am I missing here?
    - eikenberry 9y ago
      Once "they" have your machine you have to assume it is compromised. If they have the ability to install kernel patches or custom binaries, they most certainly have the ability to install monitoring hardware and/or modify your bios. That is, no matter what you encrypt your machine is compromised and your only recourse is to recover the encrypted data and move on to a new system. Here "they" is someone who would take your machine, modify it, and get it back to you maybe without your knowing. If you are just concerned with identity thieves and basic asset protection then as long as that stuff is encrypted you are fine, whether that is whole system, home directory, ~/Private directory, or just those specific files.

Hydraulix989 9y ago

Arch is just too much time for me doing sysadmin and keeping up with breaking changes (it's a rolling distro, so all kinds of system configurations are possible, many are untested or just bleeding edge). If you like using an unstable bleeding edge system where you have to configure everything yourself by hand with absolutely zero tolerance for user error, use Arch. If I'm on a tight schedule with doing mission critical projects on my work computer where there are hard deadlines and Murphy's Law involved, forget it. If you're curious, I'm currently using Mint with Cinnamon.

RealityVoid 9y ago
I thought the same thing but I set up arch on my main machine a couple of months ago and apart from the setup pain, it has been a much smaller hassle than I anticipated. It's pretty stable, didn't have any breakage until now. I love it! But I do admit the initial setup was pretty intense, I loved the learning experience. I'm also using Cinnamon, on Arch. It's quite clean and nice. :)
- Zancarius 9y ago
  > I thought the same thing but I set up arch on my main machine a couple of months ago and apart from the setup pain, it has been a much smaller hassle than I anticipated. It's pretty stable, didn't have any breakage until now. I love it! As an Arch user of ~5-6 years, I do have some advice outside the obvious realm of "keep regular (working) backups" that can help minimize future headaches (not necessarily for you since you've likely already encountered these points; mostly for others who may be interested in dabbling with Arch): 1) Update often (at least once every 1-2 months; try not to let it get more than 6 months out of date), and keep a close eye on the news items--or, better yet, subscribe to the arch-announce mailing list. You'll get a heads up on anything that could be a potentially breaking change. When breaking changes come down the turnpike, don't panic--the Arch maintainers post upgrade instructions walking you through the process along with the appropriate news entry and it's usually fairly straightforward. There's also the forums if you get into a bind, and there's tons of great people willing to help (but search first!). 2) Keep your configurations up to date (either with `yaourt -C` or examining the .pacnew files by hand with vimdiff or similar). This isn't really Arch-specific, but because Arch is* a rolling release distribution, sometimes new versions of things come out fast enough that existing configurations can fall out of date and present unique challenges. But it all very much depends on the upgrade policy of upstream packages. Usually this isn't a problem unless. Fortunately, the lion's share of "breaking" changes you'll encounter will be minor. The most recent one you've probably encountered by now may have been the certificate path issue with ca-certificates existing already. I suspect most of the major architectural changes are in the past at this point (mostly due to the disruption caused by systemd), but keeping your system relatively up to date is a great way to inoculate it against unnecessary future effort. It's always possible to upgrade ancient installs if you let them lapse (I should know!), but it's better to avoid that if possible. I hope you continue to enjoy Arch for many years to come!

microwavecamera 9y ago

Question for all the Arch peeps, what's the goal/purpose of Arch? As an outside observer it seems needlessly complicated and most of the complexity being specific to Arch. Why not just run Slack or Debian if you want a barebones full distro? Slack and BSD's are closer to old school UNIX. Arch is after my time, am I missing something?

viraptor 9y ago
Debian is not kept as up to date as arch. There's also no AUR equivalent. AUR had Steam for Linux packaged for example about 2h after the official release, with people adding the missed dependencies very shortly. Also not having many prescribed defaults is sometimes nice. I want KDE with that display manager / lockscreen. And I can have it without uninstalling some metapackage which will make updates harder in the future. (like gnome-desktop on Ubuntu) I haven't used slack for over a decade, so can't really comment. Also until recently it was one of the few distros with nicely integrated grsec kernel. :-(
- Tomte 9y ago
  So Arch community packages are "released" without even cursory testing whether it works (missing dependencies)? And you feel that's a good thing?
  - larschdk 9y ago
    Packages go to the 'testing' repository to allow checking for thing being broken. They usually only stay there for a short time (a week or so, often less).
  - likeclockwork 9y ago
    He's talking about the AUR not the official community repo. It was tested on the AUR and the feedback was integrated to identify the dependencies. It's since graduated from the AUR to the official community repo. The AUR has pretty much everything, community maintained. The arch build system makes it trivial to package something no matter where it comes from. You can use it to repackage a .deb or a .rpm (it'll even download it from its official home and verify checksums), or a project from a git repo, for specific releases, or tracking a branch, or what have you. There's all kinds of software on the AUR and it's all up to date. The official repos also move very fast, compared to other distros. Read about a new feature in a recent version of some software you use? Just update, it's probably already landed in arch. You don't have to wait six months for a release window to install software that's already ready.

vondur 9y ago

I've taken a liking to KDE lately. Looks nice and the file manager is top notch. I cheated and used Antergros to install Arch.

Zancarius 9y ago
I have to admit, this is one of the things I miss most whenever I boot to Windows. Explorer lacks an awful lot of the conveniences present in Dolphin. Dolphin can be a bit unstable and has some UI warts, but tabs/tab views, the drag-and-drop copy/move/link dialog, and tree view in the file list pane are some of my favorites. Right-click copy to/move to are also hugely useful.
- aruggirello 9y ago
  Dolphin rocks! Double panel, tabs, filter, and F4 for the built-in shell which is kept in sync with the current folder... and then there are the additional columns in table view, where you can see image resolution (OK Explorer has it too) or number of lines for text files... BTW there's also the additional information during long file operations (like bandwidth used, etc), and (I believe) it's the only system I know of, where I can pause a file transfer operation, and resume it later...
  - Zancarius 9y ago
    > BTW there's also the additional information during long file operations (like bandwidth used, etc), and (I believe) it's the only system I know of, where I can pause a file transfer operation, and resume it later... I think Explorer does that too (bandwidth; don't remember about pause--I think it has that feature), but Dolphin certainly had it first. The task tray integration for background copying is also quite nice and useful if you're on a different virtual desktop (to me, anyway!). You're absolutely right: Almost everything else is anemic compared to Dolphin!

grumph 9y ago

I used to install Arch by hand, then I discovered ArchFI and ArchDI scripts. They do every basic step of the install wiki, and if you need you can do some things manually from another console. With those, I go from an empty machine to a fully functional system with total control/feedback on what is installed (Arch way) in about one hour (most of the time is waiting for packages to download and install). https://github.com/MatMoul/archfi https://github.com/MatMoul/archfi

SteveBash 9y ago

For me the rolling release model of Arch makes it not the most suitable distro for development, lately I had to fight with the openssl upgrade to 1.1.0 because some rust libs I used no longer worked. Downgrading is not an option for pacman, so I had to resort to compiling on docker containers and that's not the most comfortable dev environment. I'm gonna migrate to NixOS or GuixSD this weekend, the package managers they have are really a breakthrough to package management.