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Arch Linux – "It is what you make it"

200 points by rabelaisian 15y ago

docgnome 15y ago
I stopped running Arch when known broken upstream X packages were released into the mainline and the response from the devs was "RTFM, noobs"
- politai 15y ago
  care to shed more light on the subject?
  - docgnome 15y ago
    That's really all there was to it. It was about... 2 years ago? I forget what exactly was broken about the packages. But the bug was from upstream and was known to the Arch Devs at the time they OKd the package built upon broken sources to roll out. It got pulled in by just updating the system. I asked what was going on and got directed to a message about it that I didn't fully understand and when I asked, I was told what I said above. As were many other users confused about the sudden breakage of X. That wasn't really the first time I'd encountered ultra rude devs. I shortly after switched to Gentoo which I found to give the deep control that Arch did but amazingly was a system that worked properly and the community wasn't full of jerks. Hopefully the Arch community has changed, but I don't really intend to try and find out. I do run Debian now though.
    - codabrink 15y ago
      If I remember the same incident that you're talking about, it was a single file that had to be manually removed, and the fix was displayed right on the home page of http://archlinux.org http://archlinux.org for months..
      - xfs 15y ago
        The final solution could often need only minimal effort to carry out, but to debug and find out the problem, it takes much more time. And the fix should come in through the right channel, like the package README or ChangeLog. Not sure if the home page of the whole distribution is the appropriate place for a fix like this.
        steve___ 15y ago
        The message should show up on screen when installing the package. If many packages are upgraded at once, a user could miss it. The output is also sent to /var/log/pacman.log All that said I'd recommend to anyone new to subscribe to the 'Latest News' RSS feed: http://www.archlinux.org/feeds/news/ http://www.archlinux.org/feeds/news/
- Tautology 15y ago
  You asked a question they couldn't answer, and they didn't want to say "I don't know." That said Arch does have lots of documentation the answer is probably somewhere in the massive Arch docs.
pavpanchekha 15y ago
I use Arch not so much for the extreme customization aspect, but because if and when something goes wrong, the entire system is simple enough that I can usually fix it.
Adaptive 15y ago
I switched from Ubuntu to Arch on my servers and linux desktops a while back. Here's are the key benefits from my perspective: - shallow mental model: I know where everything is, I know all the moving pieces - pacman: outstanding package manager. - aif: dieter has done a great job making a modular install framework. - AUR: compared to PPAs, AUR is simple and easy to contribute to (both commentary and packages) It really does take time if you want to understand Arch deeply. Not crazy amounts of time. Less than vim, I'd say ;) but enough that you shouldn't expect instant results. The knowledge gained is very rewarding and applicable to Linux systems in general.
- alexis-d 15y ago
  AUR is definitely one of the best thing for me, along with the rolling release scheme, the simplicity and the wiki. But you say you use it on your servers? I'm not sure I would do it because Arch doesn't focus on stablity like Debian does, and sometimes update to core packages can break other packages, so... Not a big deal on your own computer but on a server? I would be happy to know if you have good reasons to use it on server :)
  - Adaptive 15y ago
    I had precisely the same concerns. I first set up a basic webserver on Linode since they had images for Arch. I was skeptical particularly because I've screwed stuff up on Arch systems during an "aggressive" update. It's been rock solid and I deal with updates through a basic test methodology. I keep a mirror of the system on a VM and update that first. I am also very conservative about what packages I update. I'm only running nginx and a couple basic services along with Haskell related packages to update my static website, so I can't speak to anything more complex than that, but I've been very happy so far. The big advantage for me is the single mental model between my personal and server systems.
    - dorian-graph 15y ago
      I just checked out ArchServer and it looks like the project is winding down. http://www.archserver.org/ http://www.archserver.org/
Scaevolus 15y ago
I stopped using Arch 2-3 years ago because their x86_64 packages were minimal. Was this improved?
- codabrink 15y ago
  What do you mean by 'minimal'? If you're talking about wine and flash, there are 32 bit builds available to be installed in 64 bit.. But that's the way it has always been.
  - kazikcz 15y ago
    I recall I had the same impression back at the time. Arch lacked multilib support if I'm not wrong. I recently switched from 32bit Arch to 64bit and it works great so far, multilib included.
    - cookiecaper 15y ago
      For the record Arch is one of the only distributions with sensible multiilib support. Most of the bigger ones require purity and force you to install a chroot if you want to run 32-bit applications. Fedora is multilib by default but it sucks because it always installs 32 and 64 bit versions of everything by default instead of reasoning that you'd be OK to use 64-bit most of the time by default.
- rnicholson 15y ago
  I've been running Arch x86_64 for well over a year now, and I haven't ran into a package yet that that I needed that didn't have a x86_64 version.
- alderz 15y ago
  I have been using Arch for a long time and I can assure you it has improved. Give it a try.
- cookiecaper 15y ago
  I've been using Arch for four or five years now. My current install has been around for three years, x86_64. In my experience, any software carried on i686 that built on x64 has always been in x64, though it's true that i686 used to get new builds first -- that has changed now and x64 usually gets new packages before i686. Honestly I wouldn't be surprised to see i686 dropped completely in the next 1-2 years.
hypersoar 15y ago
While Arch isn't my primary OS at the moment, I really enjoyed the process of installing it. It felt like the software equivalent of building your own computer. It was very satisfying to learn about all the different parts and assemble those that I wanted,
pimeys 15y ago
A couple of days ago I was given more RAM to my work computer. I had to run couchdb instances with lots of allocated RAM. The 32bit Ubuntu was not enough anymore so I needed to install a 64bit OS. Somehow I wanted to try Arch and the installation from scratch to the everyday tool took a bit over two hours. I really like this distribution. Pacman (the package manager) is super fast, the system is much easier to configure from the command line than Ubuntu and the best thing is Arch's documentation. All the information you need to know can be found from the Arch wiki. No need to browse blog posts or forums, the wiki is so good. My setup is very lightweight. I have only the minimal Arch installation with Xorg and xmonad, vim, RVM and Firefox. This distro is made for command line use and there it really shines. Here's a screenshot how I want my work desktop to look. Nothing fancy, no distractions and fast usage without mouse. http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2402047/screenshot3.png http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2402047/screenshot3.png
- Adaptive 15y ago
  that colorscheme looks familiar... I making my dotfiles public today and I've got a solarized themed xmonad/xmobar config up at https://github.com/altercation/es-etc https://github.com/altercation/es-etc . The only difference with yours will probably be the tabbed decoration theming and xmobar theming. I'd love to see your xmonad.hs too if it's online somewhere.
  - pmr_ 15y ago
    I have a very similar setup, although zenburn styled: https://github.com/bo0ts/dotconfig https://github.com/bo0ts/dotconfig
  - pimeys 15y ago
    Sorry to disappoint, but I really run xmonad with very minimalistic setup. I just need the different tiling modes, couple of hotkeys and xmobar for system information. The more important part is my vim config, which can be found from github, of course. https://github.com/pimeys/dotvim https://github.com/pimeys/dotvim
tmhedberg 15y ago
I've been using Arch as my primary OS for about 1.5 years and have no inclination whatsoever to move away from it. Like many people, I previously used Ubuntu, but grew fed up with the focus of their development efforts on areas which I considered to be inconsequential. Seeing the direction that Ubuntu has taken since then, I'm glad I made that decision when I did. For me, the best thing about Arch is simply how flexible it is. It feels more like a toolkit for building your own custom OS than anything else. That's obviously not for everyone, but it's definitely for me. I've got a trimmed-down, keyboard-driven, and CLI-focused interface that would not appeal to the average user, but it was fun to configure and I've learned a ton from the experience. My computer behaves exactly the way I want it to, with virtually no compromises, and that was a far easier goal to attain with Arch than with any other system I've tried. Also, as a bonus for anyone interested in Haskell, there's a rather large Haskell community within the Arch community. In fact, there's a vast user-maintained repository of Haskell packages built for Arch (a large portion of the packages available from Hackage) which you can enable just by adding a line to /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist. For anyone who likes to tweak and tinker, and who loves having full control over their computing experience, I highly recommend it.
- MatthewPhillips 15y ago
  What interface are you using? I use wmii on my arch boxes.
  - w1ntermute 15y ago
    From his comment about Haskell, I'm guessing Xmonad.
    - tmhedberg 15y ago
      Yep, that's correct. My config is here: https://github.com/tmhedberg/xmonad.hs/blob/master/xmonad.hs https://github.com/tmhedberg/xmonad.hs/blob/master/xmonad.hs
- deleted 15y ago
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dragonquest 15y ago
I've heard this argument multiple times that Arch Linux is what you make of it and it really teaches you Linux, but I'm getting older and trying out lesser distro's now. :) However while I admire its passionate community, I'm genuinely curious, how does it differ from Slackware? In the sense, how exactly does Arch differ from Slackware in terms of teaching you the guts of your own system?
- ineedtosleep 15y ago
  Coming from someone who's specifically used both Slackware and Arch for a similar amount of time, I can say that Arch is more forgiving than Slackware, especially because of Pacman and their wiki. That said, though, if you /really/ know what you're doing in both Arch and Slackware, the experience should not be too different...aside from maybe the non-support of GNOME on Slackware.
- jodoherty 15y ago
  As a former Slackware user myself, I was mostly impressed by ArchLinux's package management and the user-maintained wiki. As far as learning the guts of the system goes, I'd say that ArchWiki has become one of the best searchable references out there and is the main thing that separates Arch from Slackware.
- beej71 15y ago
  I used Slackware for something like 13 years, and have been using Arch for maybe 2. If you'll allow me to post a link to my own stuff, I put together a blog entry about exactly this question: http://beej.us/blog/2009/12/arch-vs-slackware/ http://beej.us/blog/2009/12/arch-vs-slackware/ Both Slack and Arch are excellent, but not quite the same in their objectives. I run Arch on my netbook and desktop (with FVWM) and love it.
  - dragonquest 15y ago
    That is quite helpful, thank you. It helped me stick with Slackware for now since my criteria fits your Slackware objectives and strengths list.
gorm 15y ago
Sadly it's one of few distro vulnerable to man-in-middle attack so you need to be careful where from you do your updates.
- tmhedberg 15y ago
  Package signing (via gpg) is being added in the forthcoming Pacman 4.0, so this won't be the case for much longer. It's already available in the testing repository, in fact.
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  - gorm 15y ago
    Cool! That's great news.
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slowpoke 15y ago
I've been a GNU/Linux user for a bit over a year now, I think. Started out with Ubuntu 10.04 dual booted with Windows, then completely ditched Microsoft in favor of the better operating system some when in January. A bit later, after getting bugged by a good friend and fellow hacker on IRC for a while, I finally set out to install Arch, and got hooked. Arch Linux can, in my experience, best be described as a journey. A journey to the top of a mountain. It starts steep, sometimes gets hazardous, and I fell down more then once and had to start climbing from the start. But with every time, it became easier as I got to know the mountain, and set out with new knowledge about the steps and stones, as they were aligned perfectly for climbing once you knew how to climb them. Then finally, I reached the first peak - a custom, running and stable install - and just as you might hold your breath at the sight presented to you when you look down from the top of the mountain you just climbed, I felt kind of serene - I learned so much about my system during the installation, how it worked and how elegantly simple it was once you understood it's philosophy, it was overwhelming. I knew I arrived at a place where I wanted to stay. Or rather, a place from where I could climb even higher mountains - because the Arch journey is probably never at its end. There's always something more to learn about the system - my system. Something to tweak, somewhere to hack around or some configuration to customize for my needs. I won't say I'll stay with it forever, as in the world of GNU/Linux, one might always discover something new. I will say, however, that installing (and subsequently running) Arch was (and still is) one of the best and most rewarding things I've done in my life. To anyone who is interested in learning new stuff and doing things on his or her own, I warmly recommend trying out Arch. You shall not be disappointed.
- Levi 15y ago
  This is true to my experiences as well. I started with Archbang, then CTKArch, and then finally installed my own from scratch. Archbang and CTKArch are excellent liveCD versions of Arch but in the end I found I did not like the personal choices made by the creators of those releases. My system is now truly mine. I am in love with it. My system is stable, and bleeding edge - an oxymoron. Intellij is in the damn repositories... MondoDB 2.0 - the day it was released was in the damned repositores. Anything else can't compete. After installing Arch, and failing at least 3 times and being successful 2 other times, I found an appreciation for the way in which Arch did things. My first version was a Mac OSx clone with some personal touches. It was beautiful; but I was too ambitious and went with BTRFS which was a mistake. So I reinstalled and now I'm on XFS and things purr. I can setup a development environment in less than 10 minutes using pacman and then keep it updated easily. To setup the equivalent environment on Ubuntu would take much longer for me. I am not a linux newb nor a guru, but after using Arch I feel like I can hold my own.
Legion 15y ago
I think I am going to have to give Arch a try. One thing that has kept me on Ubuntu family distros is font rendering. Ubuntu's patches for freetype, cairo, xft, etc are quite simply requirements for me for a desktop Linux. Some distros have these by way of some guy maintaining his own set of patched packages. I have always been reluctant to rely on these. I was thrilled when Linux Mint came out with Linux Mint Debian Edition, which is Debian + these font patches + some other Mint-y friendliness (but still mostly Debian). The fact that Arch maintains the *-ubuntu family of patched packages means I just might consider using it, too.
- jodoherty 15y ago
  I always had the opposite experience with font rendering. I always have to disable all hinting and turn on subpixel rendering to get results I like, since I prefer thicker glyphs that have more consistent forms, kerning and spacing at all sizes, even in print (ala Mac OS X) rather than having glyphs that have been forced into pixel boundaries and smushed closer together at smaller sizes for maximum glyph readability (ala Windows). To me, the spacing and kerning of the fonts matter much more than the clarity of the individual glyphs. Seeing letters smashed together or with wide gaps between letters drives me insane...
  - windsurfer 15y ago
    May I ask how subpixel smoothing is not a form of hinting?
    - deleted 15y ago
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    - jodoherty 15y ago
      How do you see it as a form of hinting unless we have different definitions of what hinting is? As I would define it, hinting is the modification of the appearance of the font at smaller sizes, usually away from the actual outline design of the font and the original spacing, in order to make it fit into pixel boundaries for the purpose of clarity and readability. Used with subpixel rendering, you can get sharp, punchy text that is even more readable, but I wouldn't consider subpixel rendering by itself to be hinting. If anything, unhinted subpixel rendering (where any auto-hinting has been disabled and all font hints are ignored) allows the font to look more like the intended outline design in spite of being rendered at a small size on a low resolution screen by boosting the horizontal resolution and interpolating the values between points where the outline crosses partial pixel boundaries. That is, it allows all the glyph metrics to remain intact at smaller sizes while improving readability, whereas the very notion of hinting implies that those properties have been intentionally modified for the purpose of readability.
albertzeyer 15y ago
I never used Arch but I have used Gentoo for really long. Everything what I read about Arch sounded a bit primitive to me. Are there any advantages of Arch over Gentoo? Or are there good comparisons?
- Jach 15y ago
  I have a friend who uses Arch, she likes it a lot. I've been a Gentoo user for a number of years. From my outside perspective, Arch is similar to Gentoo in terms of configurability and power but without the beefy install process and it has a mirror of pre-built binaries for packages (you can compile from source if you want) where Gentoo typically only keeps binaries around for big things like OpenOffice, browsers, and proprietary drivers. Arch definitely seems more Linuxy though in the heritage of Debian, whereas Gentoo seems to take a bunch of ideas from the BSD folk. One thing I love about Portage over pacman is the masking. Arch seems to take bleeding-edge a little less seriously.
- imrehg 15y ago
  So far the main difference I've seen: With Gentoo you have to compile everything yourself (as much as I can tell). With Arch, you _can_ compile everything yourself, but don't have to: official repos have packages precompiled, but the package source is there if you want something different.
  - albertzeyer 15y ago
    On Gentoo, you can also use binary packages. You can setup some variable to some host which has all the binary packages for you. There are some public servers with x86 and amd64, although none are really official.
- zeekay 15y ago
  I'm not about to remove Gentoo from my older servers, but I'm probably never going to install it again. Not having to compile everything is a huge win. The Arch build system is fantastic. It's easier to create/maintain your own packages. Arch's packages seem to be of higher quality, and more frequently updated. I've found the last few months of using Arch to be completely delightful.
LeafStorm 15y ago
The biggest draw of Arch for me is pacman. The system itself is incredibly simple (and incredibly fast), but more importantly, it's really easy to design and compile your own packages for it. To make a Debian package, you have to edit a bunch of control files, run a bunch of shell scripts, and then it packs all that up in some obscure cpio-based format. With Arch, on the other hand, it's one program - makepkg - with only one or two "control files" (PKGBUILD and maybe an install script), and it generates a nice, easily-inspectable .pkg.tar.gz file. Plus you can find just about any package you could want in the AUR, and if not, you can find one that builds like it and then modify it to work with your package.
- Rusky 15y ago
  Definitely agree. The AUR makes it really easy to manage software not in the official repositories- without that it becomes difficult to keep track of what's installed and often impossible to uninstall. However, it would be nice if pacman used signed packages, especially in light of the recent kernel.org situation.
  - Adaptive 15y ago
    Not done yet, but I think pacman 4.0 has signing support. I also hope the recent events will spur continued development here.
    - zobzu 15y ago
      signing support is the only missing thing IMO
  - hwkns 15y ago
    Package signing is in the works: http://allanmcrae.com/2011/08/pacman-package-signing-3-pacman/ http://allanmcrae.com/2011/08/pacman-package-signing-3-pacma...
- lmz 15y ago
  Nitpicking here, but it's RPM that uses the CPIO based format. Debian .debs are ar archives with control and data tarballs. The data.tar.gz is pretty easily inspectable.
MatthewPhillips 15y ago
For those who've never used it. You know all of the "boilerplate" frameworks that have been hot recently? HTML5 Boilerplate is one, iOS Boilerplate is another... well Arch is the Linux Boilerplate if there ever was one. It gives you only the essentials that you need and leaves the rest up to you.
- jvinet 15y ago
  That's a good analogy - I've never heard that one before.
crocowhile 15y ago
I run arch on all my daily machines: two desktops and a laptop. Two things are brilliant about arch: 1) how easy it is to improvise a new package if what you need to install is not available in the repo 2) how you can run the last version of every software without the system ever breaking. If you are a linux power user, I cannot think of a better distro than arch.
se1sm 15y ago
Helpful, friendly community. No-nonsense packaging. Easy setup and recovery. Been on Arch ever since moving up from Slack 10 years ago, now use it every day in a demanding IT workplace. Maybe it's not the distro for newbies - tis the distro for me and you <3 :)
statenjason 15y ago
ArchWiki has been among the most helpful guides in me getting an understanding of Linux. Also, seeing the latest AUR discussions about a package when pulling it down has been a lifesaver a few times.
darkduck 15y ago
CTK Arch is a good pre-configured Arch... http://linuxblog.darkduck.com/2011/05/ctk-arch-fast-and-furious.html http://linuxblog.darkduck.com/2011/05/ctk-arch-fast-and-furi...

200 points by rabelaisian 15y ago

I stopped running Arch when known broken upstream X packages were released into the mainline and the response from the devs was "RTFM, noobs"

politai 15y ago
care to shed more light on the subject?
- docgnome 15y ago
  That's really all there was to it. It was about... 2 years ago? I forget what exactly was broken about the packages. But the bug was from upstream and was known to the Arch Devs at the time they OKd the package built upon broken sources to roll out. It got pulled in by just updating the system. I asked what was going on and got directed to a message about it that I didn't fully understand and when I asked, I was told what I said above. As were many other users confused about the sudden breakage of X. That wasn't really the first time I'd encountered ultra rude devs. I shortly after switched to Gentoo which I found to give the deep control that Arch did but amazingly was a system that worked properly and the community wasn't full of jerks. Hopefully the Arch community has changed, but I don't really intend to try and find out. I do run Debian now though.
  - codabrink 15y ago
    If I remember the same incident that you're talking about, it was a single file that had to be manually removed, and the fix was displayed right on the home page of http://archlinux.org http://archlinux.org for months..
    - xfs 15y ago
      The final solution could often need only minimal effort to carry out, but to debug and find out the problem, it takes much more time. And the fix should come in through the right channel, like the package README or ChangeLog. Not sure if the home page of the whole distribution is the appropriate place for a fix like this.
      - steve___ 15y ago
        The message should show up on screen when installing the package. If many packages are upgraded at once, a user could miss it. The output is also sent to /var/log/pacman.log All that said I'd recommend to anyone new to subscribe to the 'Latest News' RSS feed: http://www.archlinux.org/feeds/news/ http://www.archlinux.org/feeds/news/
Tautology 15y ago
You asked a question they couldn't answer, and they didn't want to say "I don't know." That said Arch does have lots of documentation the answer is probably somewhere in the massive Arch docs.

pavpanchekha 15y ago

I use Arch not so much for the extreme customization aspect, but because if and when something goes wrong, the entire system is simple enough that I can usually fix it.

Adaptive 15y ago

I switched from Ubuntu to Arch on my servers and linux desktops a while back. Here's are the key benefits from my perspective: - shallow mental model: I know where everything is, I know all the moving pieces - pacman: outstanding package manager. - aif: dieter has done a great job making a modular install framework. - AUR: compared to PPAs, AUR is simple and easy to contribute to (both commentary and packages) It really does take time if you want to understand Arch deeply. Not crazy amounts of time. Less than vim, I'd say ;) but enough that you shouldn't expect instant results. The knowledge gained is very rewarding and applicable to Linux systems in general.

alexis-d 15y ago
AUR is definitely one of the best thing for me, along with the rolling release scheme, the simplicity and the wiki. But you say you use it on your servers? I'm not sure I would do it because Arch doesn't focus on stablity like Debian does, and sometimes update to core packages can break other packages, so... Not a big deal on your own computer but on a server? I would be happy to know if you have good reasons to use it on server :)
- Adaptive 15y ago
  I had precisely the same concerns. I first set up a basic webserver on Linode since they had images for Arch. I was skeptical particularly because I've screwed stuff up on Arch systems during an "aggressive" update. It's been rock solid and I deal with updates through a basic test methodology. I keep a mirror of the system on a VM and update that first. I am also very conservative about what packages I update. I'm only running nginx and a couple basic services along with Haskell related packages to update my static website, so I can't speak to anything more complex than that, but I've been very happy so far. The big advantage for me is the single mental model between my personal and server systems.
  - dorian-graph 15y ago
    I just checked out ArchServer and it looks like the project is winding down. http://www.archserver.org/ http://www.archserver.org/

Scaevolus 15y ago

I stopped using Arch 2-3 years ago because their x86_64 packages were minimal. Was this improved?

codabrink 15y ago
What do you mean by 'minimal'? If you're talking about wine and flash, there are 32 bit builds available to be installed in 64 bit.. But that's the way it has always been.
- kazikcz 15y ago
  I recall I had the same impression back at the time. Arch lacked multilib support if I'm not wrong. I recently switched from 32bit Arch to 64bit and it works great so far, multilib included.
  - cookiecaper 15y ago
    For the record Arch is one of the only distributions with sensible multiilib support. Most of the bigger ones require purity and force you to install a chroot if you want to run 32-bit applications. Fedora is multilib by default but it sucks because it always installs 32 and 64 bit versions of everything by default instead of reasoning that you'd be OK to use 64-bit most of the time by default.
rnicholson 15y ago
I've been running Arch x86_64 for well over a year now, and I haven't ran into a package yet that that I needed that didn't have a x86_64 version.
alderz 15y ago
I have been using Arch for a long time and I can assure you it has improved. Give it a try.
cookiecaper 15y ago
I've been using Arch for four or five years now. My current install has been around for three years, x86_64. In my experience, any software carried on i686 that built on x64 has always been in x64, though it's true that i686 used to get new builds first -- that has changed now and x64 usually gets new packages before i686. Honestly I wouldn't be surprised to see i686 dropped completely in the next 1-2 years.

hypersoar 15y ago

While Arch isn't my primary OS at the moment, I really enjoyed the process of installing it. It felt like the software equivalent of building your own computer. It was very satisfying to learn about all the different parts and assemble those that I wanted,

pimeys 15y ago

A couple of days ago I was given more RAM to my work computer. I had to run couchdb instances with lots of allocated RAM. The 32bit Ubuntu was not enough anymore so I needed to install a 64bit OS. Somehow I wanted to try Arch and the installation from scratch to the everyday tool took a bit over two hours. I really like this distribution. Pacman (the package manager) is super fast, the system is much easier to configure from the command line than Ubuntu and the best thing is Arch's documentation. All the information you need to know can be found from the Arch wiki. No need to browse blog posts or forums, the wiki is so good. My setup is very lightweight. I have only the minimal Arch installation with Xorg and xmonad, vim, RVM and Firefox. This distro is made for command line use and there it really shines. Here's a screenshot how I want my work desktop to look. Nothing fancy, no distractions and fast usage without mouse. http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2402047/screenshot3.png http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2402047/screenshot3.png

Adaptive 15y ago
that colorscheme looks familiar... I making my dotfiles public today and I've got a solarized themed xmonad/xmobar config up at https://github.com/altercation/es-etc https://github.com/altercation/es-etc . The only difference with yours will probably be the tabbed decoration theming and xmobar theming. I'd love to see your xmonad.hs too if it's online somewhere.
- pmr_ 15y ago
  I have a very similar setup, although zenburn styled: https://github.com/bo0ts/dotconfig https://github.com/bo0ts/dotconfig
- pimeys 15y ago
  Sorry to disappoint, but I really run xmonad with very minimalistic setup. I just need the different tiling modes, couple of hotkeys and xmobar for system information. The more important part is my vim config, which can be found from github, of course. https://github.com/pimeys/dotvim https://github.com/pimeys/dotvim

tmhedberg 15y ago

I've been using Arch as my primary OS for about 1.5 years and have no inclination whatsoever to move away from it. Like many people, I previously used Ubuntu, but grew fed up with the focus of their development efforts on areas which I considered to be inconsequential. Seeing the direction that Ubuntu has taken since then, I'm glad I made that decision when I did. For me, the best thing about Arch is simply how flexible it is. It feels more like a toolkit for building your own custom OS than anything else. That's obviously not for everyone, but it's definitely for me. I've got a trimmed-down, keyboard-driven, and CLI-focused interface that would not appeal to the average user, but it was fun to configure and I've learned a ton from the experience. My computer behaves exactly the way I want it to, with virtually no compromises, and that was a far easier goal to attain with Arch than with any other system I've tried. Also, as a bonus for anyone interested in Haskell, there's a rather large Haskell community within the Arch community. In fact, there's a vast user-maintained repository of Haskell packages built for Arch (a large portion of the packages available from Hackage) which you can enable just by adding a line to /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist. For anyone who likes to tweak and tinker, and who loves having full control over their computing experience, I highly recommend it.

MatthewPhillips 15y ago
What interface are you using? I use wmii on my arch boxes.
- w1ntermute 15y ago
  From his comment about Haskell, I'm guessing Xmonad.
  - tmhedberg 15y ago
    Yep, that's correct. My config is here: https://github.com/tmhedberg/xmonad.hs/blob/master/xmonad.hs https://github.com/tmhedberg/xmonad.hs/blob/master/xmonad.hs
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dragonquest 15y ago

I've heard this argument multiple times that Arch Linux is what you make of it and it really teaches you Linux, but I'm getting older and trying out lesser distro's now. :) However while I admire its passionate community, I'm genuinely curious, how does it differ from Slackware? In the sense, how exactly does Arch differ from Slackware in terms of teaching you the guts of your own system?

ineedtosleep 15y ago
Coming from someone who's specifically used both Slackware and Arch for a similar amount of time, I can say that Arch is more forgiving than Slackware, especially because of Pacman and their wiki. That said, though, if you /really/ know what you're doing in both Arch and Slackware, the experience should not be too different...aside from maybe the non-support of GNOME on Slackware.
jodoherty 15y ago
As a former Slackware user myself, I was mostly impressed by ArchLinux's package management and the user-maintained wiki. As far as learning the guts of the system goes, I'd say that ArchWiki has become one of the best searchable references out there and is the main thing that separates Arch from Slackware.
beej71 15y ago
I used Slackware for something like 13 years, and have been using Arch for maybe 2. If you'll allow me to post a link to my own stuff, I put together a blog entry about exactly this question: http://beej.us/blog/2009/12/arch-vs-slackware/ http://beej.us/blog/2009/12/arch-vs-slackware/ Both Slack and Arch are excellent, but not quite the same in their objectives. I run Arch on my netbook and desktop (with FVWM) and love it.
- dragonquest 15y ago
  That is quite helpful, thank you. It helped me stick with Slackware for now since my criteria fits your Slackware objectives and strengths list.

gorm 15y ago

Sadly it's one of few distro vulnerable to man-in-middle attack so you need to be careful where from you do your updates.

tmhedberg 15y ago
Package signing (via gpg) is being added in the forthcoming Pacman 4.0, so this won't be the case for much longer. It's already available in the testing repository, in fact.
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- gorm 15y ago
  Cool! That's great news.
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slowpoke 15y ago

I've been a GNU/Linux user for a bit over a year now, I think. Started out with Ubuntu 10.04 dual booted with Windows, then completely ditched Microsoft in favor of the better operating system some when in January. A bit later, after getting bugged by a good friend and fellow hacker on IRC for a while, I finally set out to install Arch, and got hooked. Arch Linux can, in my experience, best be described as a journey. A journey to the top of a mountain. It starts steep, sometimes gets hazardous, and I fell down more then once and had to start climbing from the start. But with every time, it became easier as I got to know the mountain, and set out with new knowledge about the steps and stones, as they were aligned perfectly for climbing once you knew how to climb them. Then finally, I reached the first peak - a custom, running and stable install - and just as you might hold your breath at the sight presented to you when you look down from the top of the mountain you just climbed, I felt kind of serene - I learned so much about my system during the installation, how it worked and how elegantly simple it was once you understood it's philosophy, it was overwhelming. I knew I arrived at a place where I wanted to stay. Or rather, a place from where I could climb even higher mountains - because the Arch journey is probably never at its end. There's always something more to learn about the system - my system. Something to tweak, somewhere to hack around or some configuration to customize for my needs. I won't say I'll stay with it forever, as in the world of GNU/Linux, one might always discover something new. I will say, however, that installing (and subsequently running) Arch was (and still is) one of the best and most rewarding things I've done in my life. To anyone who is interested in learning new stuff and doing things on his or her own, I warmly recommend trying out Arch. You shall not be disappointed.

Levi 15y ago
This is true to my experiences as well. I started with Archbang, then CTKArch, and then finally installed my own from scratch. Archbang and CTKArch are excellent liveCD versions of Arch but in the end I found I did not like the personal choices made by the creators of those releases. My system is now truly mine. I am in love with it. My system is stable, and bleeding edge - an oxymoron. Intellij is in the damn repositories... MondoDB 2.0 - the day it was released was in the damned repositores. Anything else can't compete. After installing Arch, and failing at least 3 times and being successful 2 other times, I found an appreciation for the way in which Arch did things. My first version was a Mac OSx clone with some personal touches. It was beautiful; but I was too ambitious and went with BTRFS which was a mistake. So I reinstalled and now I'm on XFS and things purr. I can setup a development environment in less than 10 minutes using pacman and then keep it updated easily. To setup the equivalent environment on Ubuntu would take much longer for me. I am not a linux newb nor a guru, but after using Arch I feel like I can hold my own.

Legion 15y ago

I think I am going to have to give Arch a try. One thing that has kept me on Ubuntu family distros is font rendering. Ubuntu's patches for freetype, cairo, xft, etc are quite simply requirements for me for a desktop Linux. Some distros have these by way of some guy maintaining his own set of patched packages. I have always been reluctant to rely on these. I was thrilled when Linux Mint came out with Linux Mint Debian Edition, which is Debian + these font patches + some other Mint-y friendliness (but still mostly Debian). The fact that Arch maintains the *-ubuntu family of patched packages means I just might consider using it, too.

jodoherty 15y ago
I always had the opposite experience with font rendering. I always have to disable all hinting and turn on subpixel rendering to get results I like, since I prefer thicker glyphs that have more consistent forms, kerning and spacing at all sizes, even in print (ala Mac OS X) rather than having glyphs that have been forced into pixel boundaries and smushed closer together at smaller sizes for maximum glyph readability (ala Windows). To me, the spacing and kerning of the fonts matter much more than the clarity of the individual glyphs. Seeing letters smashed together or with wide gaps between letters drives me insane...
- windsurfer 15y ago
  May I ask how subpixel smoothing is not a form of hinting?
  - deleted 15y ago
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  - jodoherty 15y ago
    How do you see it as a form of hinting unless we have different definitions of what hinting is? As I would define it, hinting is the modification of the appearance of the font at smaller sizes, usually away from the actual outline design of the font and the original spacing, in order to make it fit into pixel boundaries for the purpose of clarity and readability. Used with subpixel rendering, you can get sharp, punchy text that is even more readable, but I wouldn't consider subpixel rendering by itself to be hinting. If anything, unhinted subpixel rendering (where any auto-hinting has been disabled and all font hints are ignored) allows the font to look more like the intended outline design in spite of being rendered at a small size on a low resolution screen by boosting the horizontal resolution and interpolating the values between points where the outline crosses partial pixel boundaries. That is, it allows all the glyph metrics to remain intact at smaller sizes while improving readability, whereas the very notion of hinting implies that those properties have been intentionally modified for the purpose of readability.

albertzeyer 15y ago

I never used Arch but I have used Gentoo for really long. Everything what I read about Arch sounded a bit primitive to me. Are there any advantages of Arch over Gentoo? Or are there good comparisons?

Jach 15y ago
I have a friend who uses Arch, she likes it a lot. I've been a Gentoo user for a number of years. From my outside perspective, Arch is similar to Gentoo in terms of configurability and power but without the beefy install process and it has a mirror of pre-built binaries for packages (you can compile from source if you want) where Gentoo typically only keeps binaries around for big things like OpenOffice, browsers, and proprietary drivers. Arch definitely seems more Linuxy though in the heritage of Debian, whereas Gentoo seems to take a bunch of ideas from the BSD folk. One thing I love about Portage over pacman is the masking. Arch seems to take bleeding-edge a little less seriously.
imrehg 15y ago
So far the main difference I've seen: With Gentoo you have to compile everything yourself (as much as I can tell). With Arch, you _can_ compile everything yourself, but don't have to: official repos have packages precompiled, but the package source is there if you want something different.
- albertzeyer 15y ago
  On Gentoo, you can also use binary packages. You can setup some variable to some host which has all the binary packages for you. There are some public servers with x86 and amd64, although none are really official.
zeekay 15y ago
I'm not about to remove Gentoo from my older servers, but I'm probably never going to install it again. Not having to compile everything is a huge win. The Arch build system is fantastic. It's easier to create/maintain your own packages. Arch's packages seem to be of higher quality, and more frequently updated. I've found the last few months of using Arch to be completely delightful.

LeafStorm 15y ago

The biggest draw of Arch for me is pacman. The system itself is incredibly simple (and incredibly fast), but more importantly, it's really easy to design and compile your own packages for it. To make a Debian package, you have to edit a bunch of control files, run a bunch of shell scripts, and then it packs all that up in some obscure cpio-based format. With Arch, on the other hand, it's one program - makepkg - with only one or two "control files" (PKGBUILD and maybe an install script), and it generates a nice, easily-inspectable .pkg.tar.gz file. Plus you can find just about any package you could want in the AUR, and if not, you can find one that builds like it and then modify it to work with your package.

Rusky 15y ago
Definitely agree. The AUR makes it really easy to manage software not in the official repositories- without that it becomes difficult to keep track of what's installed and often impossible to uninstall. However, it would be nice if pacman used signed packages, especially in light of the recent kernel.org situation.
- Adaptive 15y ago
  Not done yet, but I think pacman 4.0 has signing support. I also hope the recent events will spur continued development here.
  - zobzu 15y ago
    signing support is the only missing thing IMO
- hwkns 15y ago
  Package signing is in the works: http://allanmcrae.com/2011/08/pacman-package-signing-3-pacman/ http://allanmcrae.com/2011/08/pacman-package-signing-3-pacma...
lmz 15y ago
Nitpicking here, but it's RPM that uses the CPIO based format. Debian .debs are ar archives with control and data tarballs. The data.tar.gz is pretty easily inspectable.

MatthewPhillips 15y ago

For those who've never used it. You know all of the "boilerplate" frameworks that have been hot recently? HTML5 Boilerplate is one, iOS Boilerplate is another... well Arch is the Linux Boilerplate if there ever was one. It gives you only the essentials that you need and leaves the rest up to you.

jvinet 15y ago
That's a good analogy - I've never heard that one before.

crocowhile 15y ago

I run arch on all my daily machines: two desktops and a laptop. Two things are brilliant about arch: 1) how easy it is to improvise a new package if what you need to install is not available in the repo 2) how you can run the last version of every software without the system ever breaking. If you are a linux power user, I cannot think of a better distro than arch.

se1sm 15y ago

Helpful, friendly community. No-nonsense packaging. Easy setup and recovery. Been on Arch ever since moving up from Slack 10 years ago, now use it every day in a demanding IT workplace. Maybe it's not the distro for newbies - tis the distro for me and you <3 :)

statenjason 15y ago

ArchWiki has been among the most helpful guides in me getting an understanding of Linux. Also, seeing the latest AUR discussions about a package when pulling it down has been a lifesaver a few times.

darkduck 15y ago

CTK Arch is a good pre-configured Arch... http://linuxblog.darkduck.com/2011/05/ctk-arch-fast-and-furious.html http://linuxblog.darkduck.com/2011/05/ctk-arch-fast-and-furi...