5 ms·

This sounds suspiciously to me like "I rewrote my program in <x> new language and it was 20% faster and 200% easier!" in that yes, your new experience may be be

This sounds suspiciously to me like "I rewrote my program in <x> new language and it was 20% faster and 200% easier!" in that yes, your new experience may be better, but that's not necessarily attributable to the new language/operating system, but instead that you just got rid of all the old cruft. It's entirely possible (and sounds to me likely, based on your story) that you could have just reinstalled Arch with the same positive effects. Also, you may have lost features in the process. For example, if you rewrote your C program in Python, the code may be much cleaner, but also much slower. If you didn't need it to be fast in the first place, that might be a good compromise for you. If you did need speed, then making the Python program faster might require complicated work, like C FFI, and you might have been better off staying with the original C. Comparably, Arch's PKGBUILD makes packaging new programs very easy, whereas despite having spent a number of hours trying, I still do not understand Debian's packaging format(s). If you rarely use uncommon programs, that may not be an issue for you.

j7ake 9y ago
Reinstalling arch Linux means that you have to reconfigure everything. Arch does not work right out of the box.
- AsyncAwait 9y ago
  You can also keep your configs in git and just pull.
  - KozmoNau7 9y ago
    Because that's perfectly reasonable to expect. After all, everyone has a git repo, right?
    - styren 9y ago
      Oh okey, dropbox then? Do you mean we can not assume that arch users have a way to store away their config files?
    - jjuhl 9y ago
      Yeah, just do a "git init" and now you have one.
    - OJFord 9y ago
      How many arch users do you imagine don't have any git repos?
      - KozmoNau7 9y ago
        I didn't. I would wager most don't.
- jorgemf 9y ago
  I did a reinstall recently of Arch and the only thing I did was to copy the user folder from my old computer to the new one. Everything worked out of the box.
- fasquoika 9y ago
  You could always install Antergos. It's basically just Arch + sane defaults
KozmoNau7 9y ago
Sure, I could have reinstalled Arch, but 1) that sort of breaks the whole "install once, update forever" ideal many Arch proponents trot out, and 2) that would still require me to install everything manually, set up the base system manually, fiddle around with config files and so on. In comparison, to install Mint, I popped in the USB stick, ran the installer and that was it. The most complicated thing was the partition manager, and only because I have four hard drives and a Windows partition to take into account. And that was it, 20 minutes and I was up and running on a desktop with a browser, with automatic updates, and every driver working correctly. That's what I want from my computer these days. I want it to work for me. I'm not a kernel hacker, I'm not even a developer (aside from some monitoring scripts at work). I want my web browser and my media player and my various little utility apps. I have no desire to be a sysadmin, I've been there and done that, and now I find it a waste of time.
- keenerd 9y ago
  Funny you should mention Mint. For many years they have required that you do a re-install instead of a dist-upgrade. Even just this past year, that was the officially recommended course of action for going from Mint 17 to Mint 18.
majewsky 9y ago
> whereas despite having spent a number of hours trying, I still do not understand Debian's packaging format(s) Debian's package format is really simple and well-designed. However, Debian's packaging process is really tedious and had an almost ceremonial feel to it when I tried it (coming from PKGBUILDs). Shameless plug: If you just want to throw a bunch of files together into a package, you might be interested in my own https://github.com/holocm/holo-build https://github.com/holocm/holo-build .

j7ake 9y ago

Reinstalling arch Linux means that you have to reconfigure everything. Arch does not work right out of the box.

AsyncAwait 9y ago
You can also keep your configs in git and just pull.
- KozmoNau7 9y ago
  Because that's perfectly reasonable to expect. After all, everyone has a git repo, right?
  - styren 9y ago
    Oh okey, dropbox then? Do you mean we can not assume that arch users have a way to store away their config files?
  - jjuhl 9y ago
    Yeah, just do a "git init" and now you have one.
  - OJFord 9y ago
    How many arch users do you imagine don't have any git repos?
    - KozmoNau7 9y ago
      I didn't. I would wager most don't.
jorgemf 9y ago
I did a reinstall recently of Arch and the only thing I did was to copy the user folder from my old computer to the new one. Everything worked out of the box.
fasquoika 9y ago
You could always install Antergos. It's basically just Arch + sane defaults

KozmoNau7 9y ago

Sure, I could have reinstalled Arch, but 1) that sort of breaks the whole "install once, update forever" ideal many Arch proponents trot out, and 2) that would still require me to install everything manually, set up the base system manually, fiddle around with config files and so on. In comparison, to install Mint, I popped in the USB stick, ran the installer and that was it. The most complicated thing was the partition manager, and only because I have four hard drives and a Windows partition to take into account. And that was it, 20 minutes and I was up and running on a desktop with a browser, with automatic updates, and every driver working correctly. That's what I want from my computer these days. I want it to work for me. I'm not a kernel hacker, I'm not even a developer (aside from some monitoring scripts at work). I want my web browser and my media player and my various little utility apps. I have no desire to be a sysadmin, I've been there and done that, and now I find it a waste of time.

keenerd 9y ago
Funny you should mention Mint. For many years they have required that you do a re-install instead of a dist-upgrade. Even just this past year, that was the officially recommended course of action for going from Mint 17 to Mint 18.

majewsky 9y ago

> whereas despite having spent a number of hours trying, I still do not understand Debian's packaging format(s) Debian's package format is really simple and well-designed. However, Debian's packaging process is really tedious and had an almost ceremonial feel to it when I tried it (coming from PKGBUILDs). Shameless plug: If you just want to throw a bunch of files together into a package, you might be interested in my own https://github.com/holocm/holo-build https://github.com/holocm/holo-build .