15 ms·

On switching to Arch Linux

168 points by mcrittenden 15y ago

Ideka 15y ago
First of all, nothing works out of the box. You will have to manually set up the driver for your video card, support for your sound card (which can be a little difficult if you use USB headphones), wifi support, Xorg, your desktop environment and/or window manager of choice, etc. Literally everything mentioned here worked out of the box for me when I installed Arch (except for USB headphones, which I do not own).
- km3k 15y ago
  Out of the box typically means "with no effort after initial install". I'm sure you did a pacman -S gnome or something like that after the initial install. That said, Arch does have very sane defaults, so I'm sure after using pacman to install your DE or graphics drivers, it worked fine.
- mcrittenden 15y ago
  Author here. I think we're talking about two different things. By "nothing works out of the box" I mean that you need to set it up yourself. For example, the Beginner's Guide leads you through setup of your video driver [1], ALSA [2], Xorg [3], and wifi [4]. These are all things that require manual work. Maybe there's a more appropriate term for this than "doesn't work out of the box" (?) but it's the first term that came to mind. [1] https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beginners_Guide#Install_video_driver https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beginners_Guide#Install... [2] https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beginners_Guide#Sound https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beginners_Guide#Sound [3] https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beginners_Guide#Install_X https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beginners_Guide#Install... [4] https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Wireless_Setup https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Wireless_Setup
  - lnteveryday 15y ago
    That's the beautiful thing about arch. While figuring out configurations, tweaks, or problems for yourself may seem daunting Arch has fantastic documentation through the web on tons of issues, ranging from software- to hardware-specific. It is one of the best documented linux distros I've had the pleasure of using.
    - agumonkey 15y ago
      - the arch wiki and community is really solid for bare naked yet simple linux knowledge. (gentoo wiki is my fallback) - The arch way tends to attract users with strong|alternative ideas, IMHO they're a big part in the revival of tiling wm. - Today I switched to nixos though.
      - lnteveryday 15y ago
        You will be missed. Absolutely correct on the wm comment. However, I am an organized, messy person and prefer stacking wm. Currently in favor of openbox, but it may be something else tomorrow.(Note: not archbang, but I am not entirely opposed to archbang as some are. Archbang turned out to be really great for my old laptop that I use primarily as a browser, but nothing beats the real deal when it comes to my everyday-everything machine) That nixos looks interesting, possibly something to consider for one of my personal machines.
        agumonkey 15y ago
        Arch has kinda blossomed into a nano-debian status, people start to build stuff upon it, archbang, archhurd, it's great. The former has filled the 'out of the box' niche sort of, now you have a minimalist yet ready to use system. # note aside, about nixos, I can't tell how it's gonna turn out, but for once it's a linux system with a real paradigm shift. Funny how non-mutable ideas are spreading these days, btrfs, nix, even git. # second note, have you seen this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jULGE0rq8M http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jULGE0rq8M ? makes me wanna say 'tiling' is the only 'management' right now, stacking doesn't do sh*t.
  - shaurz 15y ago
    For wifi it's much easier to install networkmanager, add it to DAEMONS (after dbus) and then configure your network with one of the KDE/GNOME networkmanager applets. It pretty much just works after that. For example I plugged in a USB wifi adaptor and it automatically appeared in the applet and found various SSIDs. For sound, the best solution that worked for me was ALSA + esd. I could never get PulseAudio to work properly.
    - bwat47 15y ago
      I've had a great experience with pulseaudio + gnome 3. Some people consider gnome 3's tight integration with pulse a downside, but so far its given me the best sound experience on linux. On arch after installing gnome 3 my sound just works flawlessly, even my usb headphones. I did have issues with pulse when I used XFCE though.
  - xentac 15y ago
    I think the comment meant that, apart from installing the package, everything else worked fine. I would probably say something like, "isn't available after initial install" and that "you need to install all the packages you want to use". It is one of the Arch philosophies that you don't need any packages on your system that you don't want to use.
kahawe 15y ago
If you enjoy doing that, there is always Slackware or NetBSD or debian-unstable as well.
- g3orge 15y ago
  I've tried Slackware and I like the Arch-feeling better. I also like the "pacman" package manager.
- tete 15y ago
  Frugalware is also nice. Used it for a while. It was an awesome alternative when Arch got really unstable for a while some time ago. I use Arch again, but for everyone out there who has some problem (or simply needs a more stable approach) use Frugalware. It's also nice for people coming from Slackware or BSD. Most things are close to Arch Linux, so it's pretty straight forward to switch between them without having to get used to another distribution again. In short I think it can be a better alternative for people who don't like to hack (so much) on their systems. http://frugalware.org/ http://frugalware.org/
- SomeOtherGuy 15y ago
  NetBSD and debian both customize 3rd party software to fit with the project's desired software policies. That is quite different from arch which just packages everything up as-is.
- gtaylor 15y ago
  Slackware isn't rolling release, though, is it?
  - bff 15y ago
    You can always use the slackware-current packages to run with software that is newer than the last release.
bwarp 15y ago
I like Arch as a whole but I've found that for my purposes it is a time sink compared to Debian for example. Debian has lots of sensible well thought out defaults. Arch has lots of disparate defaults each provided by the package vendor (as they don't customise packages). It's not a criticism, but a difference to bear in mind.
- klodolph 15y ago
  That was my experience too. I switched to Debian from Arch a half year ago or so and I've spent far less time maintaining it; and once I'm used to "the Debian way" I can navigate new packages without having to think about it. And updates don't break my system or fail to deploy, and 'python' isn't a symlink for 'python3.2'. I also reported a major security vulnerability in the default configuration of an Arch package but I had to reopen it because the maintainer said something stupid like "people who install this package should operate on trusted networks". What?
- CJefferson 15y ago
  I agree. Glancing through the instructions, it looks like things might have got better than when I installed arch linux around 6 months ago. At the point I felt like installation involved a lot of carefully designed "busy work", which I couldn't imagine not wanting to do, but which had to be done exactly. The reason I left is because of their incredibly bizarre choice to make /usr/bin/python run python3, and messing headers around so much you couldn't build gcc from source. Between these two features, it made the system basically unusable for me.
- nwj 15y ago
  This is a great comment and the key phrase is "for my purposes..." Many people look at a particular OS, decide that it's not right for what they need or want, and jump straight to "that OS sucks because it doesn't meet my needs." It should be fairly obvious how that is just a silly thing to think. Different OSs meet different needs. We should strive to understand our own needs and to understand our options so we can make the optimal choice for our particular situation. As an arch user myself, I like (and can afford the time) to tweak and fiddle with my setup so that it's just right for my workflow. Another reason I use it, is that it's a great way to learn more about linux. Arch probably is not right for people who need lots of stability or don't have the time to fiddle and tweak the OS. And that's ok. There are many other options they can use. It sounds like Debian is the right fit for you and that's awesome.
ElliotH 15y ago
My favorite thing about running on an Arch system is I know what's going on all the time. If an Ubuntu system breaks I'm generally dealing with a mass of preinstalled things, it's hard to know what's relevant. Similarly for increasing boot speed, I really like knowing exactly what I need to be running at any one time. I appreciate it's not for everyone, but I imagine most coders around here who run a Linux system would benefit a lot by taking the time to set up an install and having it work how they like.
- markokocic 15y ago
  I was running Gentoo before. In Gentoo, you could configure everything up to the smallest details, and you had the system that worked exactly as you want it too. The cost was frequent recompiles and a bunch of time lost playing with the things. After I swithced to Arch, I found it much easier to configure, and it required almost no maintenance. It is a great balance between ease of use and full power.
  - ElliotH 15y ago
    Have you found a difference in freshness of packages since you switched? I really like how in Arch packages tend to be much more up to date than other distros ( a side effect of the rolling release)
    - markokocic 15y ago
      Gentoo had slightly fresher packages (I was running ~x86). But, arch packages are in principle more stable. I haven't had any major breakage with Arch for a few years now, while with Gentoo it was a norm to have breakages every month until I finally switched off.
      - Jach 15y ago
        I was under the impression that the situation was reversed. My Gentoo systems have been very stable because I take many of the masked package guidelines seriously (of course not all). Meanwhile you have Arch that changed the default python version to 3 back in October 2010 that hosed a lot of people's systems. Discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1808840 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1808840 and my favorite quote (there are so many great ones though) from the mess: 20:20 <dash> well that confirms my impression that arch was invented by a bunch of guys who thought gentoo was too stable and easy to use
cgag 15y ago
I'm running arch and home and have a love / hate (mostly love) relationship with it. It's certainly taken up a lot of my time, but I learned more about linux just by installing it than I did in months of using ubuntu. Getting something to work is so satisfying, as it usually involves learning quite a bit about how it works, but there are times when you just want something working and it can be frustrating. Being forced to make all those choices was the best part about it for me. I'm sure it's possible to customize Ubuntu to look like my arch set up, but if I hadn't been forced I likely wouldn't have tried. I'm currently running i3 as my window manager and I love it. I use a macbook pro at work, and It's nice but going back to a non-tiling window manager after getting used to i3 is pretty painful.
- agravier 15y ago
  It's interesting how relative people's experience can be: for me, it was the opposite, as I feel that Arch has let me save a lot of time. I was using Gentoo at the time I decided to switch to Arch, and the relatively deeper understanding of the internals of the OS that is necessary to keep a stable Gentoo system made Arch feel like a very well-designed Lego toy. I guess that LFS people coming to Gentoo would feel the same :) TLDR: I love Arch, I feel that I don't lose time on it because I made the switch from Gentoo.
babarock 15y ago
I find Archbang to be a good compromise. It presents a minimal Arch install with X+openbox (a la Crunchbang, hence the name) pre-configured. It has a live CD too, so really, it' s just like plain old regular Arch except you don't need a 2nd computer during install ^^
victork2 15y ago
I have an ArchLinux installed at home. Well I am unsure on what to think. It can be used to go on the internet, have the latest software but if you are serious on coding stable things well... you're going to cry. Since you always have the latest packets ready your code is going to be often broken by changes in the libraries (damn Boost!). Other problem, if you leave your computer untouched for 1 months you'll have 1 Gb of updates to do. But it's still a very good distribution, just be careful about what to use.
- swasheck 15y ago
  The transition from python 2.7 to python 3 bit me in the butt. Having said that - it was resolved quickly by some friends in the community.
- fam 15y ago
  Agreed. Back when I had Arch installed as my main OS I'd run updates every now and then only to find out after that FireFox or some other program broke. Of course, it's nice to know how your OS works and how to fix things, but considering all the other OSs out there, it's nice to have something that "just works" with as little downtime as possible. In hindsight, the learning phase of having to set everything up taught me a lot about using Linux, bash, etc. Switching to a tiling WM (dwm rocked) was a great experience when I had been using Windows all my life.
alanpeabody 15y ago
As a developer who has been using Linux as a desktop and enjoys tweaking every little thing: I think Arch is fantastic. It took my understanding of the OS and exactly what is going on to the next level. However I work with developers who don't want to tweak every little thing they just want their OS to work and let them be passionate about development. They should stick to OSX, or if they are feeling adventurous try Ubuntu. I also would not suggest Arch if you have not used another more friendly Linux distro for a while and had the "opportunity" to troubleshoot some issues and enjoyed it. To enjoy Arch you really have to be passionate about Linux and tweaking your machine, otherwise you will just be frustrated. For those that are I cannot recommend Arch enough.
chrishenn 15y ago
Arch is great, but my favorite thing about it is that it stays out of the way. It led me to using new tools like XMonad and MPD. I could be perfectly happy with using the same setup on debian-unstable, but never would have got there without Arch. The package manager Arch uses, pacman, recently introduced package signing (albeit with a few bugs to iron out.) I wonder if more people will start to use Arch as a server OS now.
- timdot 15y ago
  Note that package signing is turned off by default so not strictly introduced.
- Adaptive 15y ago
  Linode has been offering it as a server image for a while now. I use it for a personal webserver, etc. Never had a critical upgrade problem, fwiw.
MatthewPhillips 15y ago
Something the article mentions, but bears repeating, it that Arch has an excellent wiki on just about every component you're likely to use. So for those fearful of having to set everything up yourself, the wiki will be your savior.
- sciurus 15y ago
  Although parts of it are specific to Arch, overall I found the Arch wiki very helpful when set up a minimal Debian installation.
pandeiro 15y ago
I've been using Arch for the last 7-8 months and I think my love affair with it has already peaked. Everything written here is true re: learning about Linux, having more control, straightforward architecture, bleeding edge software, etc. But the instability factor eventually will bite you in the ass, and per Murphy's Law, often at the worst possible time. It's happened to me twice in this time span. My solution is to use a separate data partition for all my files and install Arch and a more stable distro (Mint in my case) in different partitions. Both OSs link to the data partition and grab dotfiles and things from a git repo. Arch is my preferred environment, with a tiling WM and everything painstakingly set up for my preferred workflow. But when it crashes, I can still use my workstation to get stuff done, and go about troubleshooting when I have free time.
- riledhel 15y ago
  Isn't this overly complicated? wouldn't you gain more features by using virtual machines instead?
  - pandeiro 15y ago
    Not really. Arch takes about 10 seconds less to boot up than Mint on my machine. Then there would be the question of having to wait for both the host OS and guest (virtual) OS to boot up. It's a one-time expense, too, in terms of time. And there's the added benefit that you learn how to partition, how to mount, link, etc.
- Deinumite 15y ago
  Frankly I'm offended that having a seperate /home partition is not the default on more linux installs. I Arch Linux for my last semester of school and didn't have any problems, I didn't find it unstable at all.
gtaylor 15y ago
I started using Arch about eight months ago, when Ubuntu didn't have the latest ATI and Xorg packaged so I could use EyeFinity + 3 monitors. At the time, I was very sad to leave my comfy Debian/Ubuntu roots. After struggling a little with the initial setup, I got everything in place, and it has just worked since then. Breakage from upgrades has been no worse than Ubuntu, and my Python work hasn't been disturbed at all. For those who don't mind rolling up their sleeves and just RTFM'ing it, this is a great distro.
pnathan 15y ago
I read the article and groaned. My days of "tweak it until it works, just for fun" are pretty much past me (I'm typing this on a Mac, for instance). I like to spend my energy creating things these days. But Arch seems really cool if you want to rebuild Linux systems for fun & knowledge!
- swasheck 15y ago
  I find your definitation of "creating things" narrow and shallow. There's a tremendous amount of creativity that goes into customizing an OS to meet every need you have --- and ONLY those needs.
  - pnathan 15y ago
    Sure. But unless you're deploying custom Linux builds, what does that get you, exactly? I have a number of packages on my computer I don't use, and I am not being hindered by their existence. I instead use my brain cycles for creating new software & systems, not retooling the existing one to no end. edit: Please understand that I'm not saying a fully customizable Linux doesn't have its place. It absolutely does. But when you're trying to crank stuff out, having to stop and tweak/fix your system simply gets in the way. Well, it gets in my way, at least. :-)
    - filam 15y ago
      Just because a system gives you the freedom to customize your environment, it doesn't mean you required to "retool [it] to no end." I have used a simple Arch Linux installation for years and it has never interrupted my work flow.
    - timdot 15y ago
      "But when you're trying to crank stuff out, having to stop and tweak/fix your system simply gets in the way." That's exactly the reason to customise it yourself rather than using a default "one-size-fits-all" OS like Windows/OSX/Ubuntu. You spend a weekend configuring your computer, then you automate everything you did and then you never have to do anything again. Or at least that's the goal. Still, it gives you control over your computer and that's enough for me. OSX telling me that I wasn't allowed to uninstall certain programs (has been a while since I got rid of my Mac but I think iTunes was one of them) - that bothers the hell out of me.
ColdAsIce 15y ago
The community has become quite aggressive and elitist lately, they now remind me of the days of gentoo.
- swasheck 15y ago
  Probably because of comments like what astrodust is spraying everywhere.
- Avshalom 15y ago
  That's a shame, back when I installed it years ago (05ish I think) the community was one of my favorite things about the distro.
  - ColdAsIce 15y ago
    Yeah I remember it back in the beginnings, it was quite friendly. Now I see people get yelled at in #archlinux for having an opinion on x vs y which is opposite of what the majority of #archlinuxers think. The forums are like "not my problem fix it noob, here is half a wiki page"
    - lclarkmichalek 15y ago
      I've never had a good experience with #archlinux, and the forums are generally quite slow. I do recommend the arch-general mailing list however.
- xentac 15y ago
  You should have seen the community 7+ years ago! They've done a lot to make the community more friendly and inclusive.
- cenuij 15y ago
  I agree somewhat, but I tend to find that it's newbies who have managed to migrate away from MyFirstLinux™ that make all the annoying noise coming from the Arch community; so perhaps it's not fair to judge Arch users as a whole. On the other hand, at this rate http://funroll-loops.info/ http://funroll-loops.info/ will need to be re-written for Arch ;)
tibbon 15y ago
It feels like he's describing installing Linux (any distribution) around 1997-1998. A bit complex, lots of manual setup, etc. Not terrible, and it has its benefits for sure, but it feels a tad like a step back.
- astrodust 15y ago
  Distributions like this can't be taken seriously. They're for the outcasts of the neckbeard crowd. Cynically I suppose that the people involved in making this software aren't encouraged to improve ease of use because then they couldn't be "helpful" in the IRC channel used for support. Is something like this the reason so many open-source projects so vehemently opposed to usability?
  - oinksoft 15y ago
    I disagree with that, certainly there's space for a slackware-like distro with a decent package manager. Debian, RHEL, etc. are excellent, but there's no denying that they do some things in their own special ways, for better or worse. But with most sysadmins used to some combination of FreeBSD, Debian, and RHEL, I doubt very many would spring at the idea of something new with no discernible benefits. Like you said, most people using Arch are those who want a great deal of control over their desktop machine, but without the compilation and general cruft of Gentoo. And those will be the ones putting Arch on servers, I believe.
    - jcurbo 15y ago
      Any distribution is going to form it's own 'way' though. It's a natural side effect of having a packaging system in the first place - you have to start standardizing some things. Take filesystem organization for instance - after many distros fought over this for years we got the FHS. But there are still thousands of open source projects out there that each do things their own way and if you install a bunch of them on one system you're going to have a mess unless there is some standardization. Debian has its own way of doing things but it was developed over time, just like Arch is developing ways of doing things now.
  - 15y ago
mberning 15y ago
Sounds like a less stable/predictable version of FreeBSD.
- chimeracoder 15y ago
  Arch is incredibly stable - you just have to rethink your idea of what stability means in an Arch context. In Ubuntu, 'stability' means that you can run apt-get upgrade all (I think that's the command), press 'y' a few times (or, better yet, just pipe 'yes' to it) and then forget about it, knowing that your system may not have the latest version of every package, but the latest version in the Ubuntu repos, which is presumably 'stable' with the rest of the system. With Arch, you have to think before you -Syu. Running pacman -Syu will upgrade all packages to the latest version in the Arch repos, which are usually updated much more quickly, as it's a rolling-release distribution. This means that you may want to check the mailing lists before upgrading important packages, or wait until a later time to upgrade. Or not upgrade at all, which is 'stable' by virtue of the fact that you haven't changed anything. The choice is yours. You can decide what to do on a per-package or system-wide basis, depending on your use case (Personal user & tinkerer? Luddite personal user? Large-scale server? There's no 'one-size-fits-all' approach to keeping a system up-to-date, but Arch is a 'one-size-fits-all' distro in that it allows people to make these decisions for themselves very easily). Rolling release isn't for everyone - I'll agree. But that's the main difference between Arch and other distributions. (That, and it's highly minimalist by default, whereas Ubuntu and Mint are 'everything and the kitchen sink' by default). But I certainly wouldn't say that Arch is any more or less stable than other Linux distributions (I can't compare to BSD), because it's really just as stable as you want it to be, given your definition of 'stable'.
  - CJefferson 15y ago
    > Arch is incredibly stable - you just have to rethink your idea of what stability means in an Arch context. I don't understand what your definition of stable is. Obviously anyone can not upgrade any distribution or software. If I want to upgrade I have to check the mailing lists to see if there are any major issues. That sounds like a source of instability. How can I update Arch, on a semi-regular basis (at least yearly), without having to worry about upgrade issues? If I can't, then I don't think you can call it 'incredibly stable'. Of course, you can accept the trade-offs, but don't try to 'rethink stability'.
jterenzio 15y ago
I recently switched from Ubuntu to Arch for my web server and could not be happier. I prefer the bleeding edge packages and the simplicity. I also learned a ton by having to dive into my config files and launch scripts in more detail. I can imagine for a desktop though it could get overwhelming.
- fingerprinter 15y ago
  Really? To arch for the server? Ubuntu server is probably the thing I'm MOST excited about these days. You see Juju? https://juju.ubuntu.com/ https://juju.ubuntu.com/
agentultra 15y ago
I've been using Arch for about three years now and can't imagine using another distro. The install phase is a pain if you want to get a full-blown plug-and-play ready-to-go desktop experience that rivals Ubuntu, OS X, or Windows. It's actually really easy if you just want a bare-bones system that boots into a shell and doesn't install any packages other than what it needs to do just that. Switch to Arch if you're a minimalist. My rig only runs Stumpwm on Xorg. I only use xterm, emacs, and the usual GNU toolchain. A couple of interpreters. I have installed GTK so I can use Firefox (and so I can hack on Firefox), but nothing else. I don't have a crap load of applications running in the background waiting to notify me of crap I don't care about or services that I never use. I know exactly what runs on my system and it does no more than that and no less. I think Arch fills a very nice niche and I'm so happy it exists.
- oinksoft 15y ago
  > The install phase is a pain if you want to get a full-blown plug-and-play ready-to-go desktop experience that rivals Ubuntu, OS X, or Windows. Just about every Linux distribution offers this, because the distro-makers create none of the window managers, etc. Which other distributions have you tried?
  - agentultra 15y ago
    Mandrake, Redhat, Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, and a few others I'm sure.
- astrodust 15y ago
  Why would you want to be a minimalist? Even a Raspberry Pi system, which costs under $50 kitted out with storage, could handle a moderately full install. The only "minimalist" Linux install I've ever wanted was one so stripped down it would boot off of a 3.5" floppy. It's amazing what you can do with a kernel, a baked in read-only filesystem and a tiny loopback device for storing configuration files.
  - pandeiro 15y ago
    Minimalism means faster boot time, less cruft in $HOME, generally knowing where stuff is, and more time to comb my enormous neckbeard...
shanemhansen 15y ago
Arch is fun to play with. A couple years ago the fact that everything was i686 optimized was a big deal. These days just about everyone is using 64bit. It's a good choice for embedded linux systems and servers (Beyond Oblivion used arch for their servers). Speaking from experience, life is just too short to run arch on a laptop. Heck, I have a hp pavilion dv7 with switching graphics and even that was a pita to get stable on ubuntu.
- bwat47 15y ago
  I run arch on a laptop with no problems at all. I specifically got a laptop with intel graphics and wireless so I have a great experience with any distro :) Arch required almost no setup when it came to graphics/sound/wireless. Just had to install xf86-video-intel and xf86-input-synaptics. IMO its best to stay the hell away from switchable graphics period if you intend to use linux.
pleaseme01 15y ago
I've been a debian user for about three years now. Lately, I got somewhat settled, since most of the things in my distribution were not new anymore, thus I was not learning that much anymore. Arch seemed a good possibility. I installed it in a virtual machine to code really simple 'hello world' kernel modules, and I liked it very much. It is a barebone installation and gives me the feeling to be in control. I think I'd use arch as a server distribution, since I haven't had any problems with the latest packages. Maybe my opinion will change, and maybe I'd prefer something more stable in a server... Anyway, I respect the opinion of the author, but it sounds a bit overdramatic to me. Tough were the days of winmoden + slackware... tears falling
robinduckett 15y ago
Oh wow so this is like 2002 gentoo then?
- LoneWolf 15y ago
  Isnt gentoo still like that? I have been using gentoo since I got into using and learning about linux (cant really remember how long now). And it seems pretty much the same.
- qdog 15y ago
  Alternatively, you could say this like every other linux distro at some level. I started back at about Redhat 5.0, used a lot of distros over the years, currently I use ubuntu because it 'mostly worked' from install, although it didn't really. I've ended up doing make/make install a few times for packages I needed configured like I wanted them. I might go back to Slackware when I get around to it, not really a big fan of Ubuntu at this point for what I do (programming).
- xentac 15y ago
  I feel like the OP misconstrued things like "doesn't work out of the box". What he meant was, "I needed to install the package to get my video driver and sound driver working". Generally Arch doesn't install something until you ask it to.
ff0066mote 15y ago
I've been using Arch on my HP Mini since May 2010. I haven't had any serious stability issues. Once in awhile I have to resolve differences between old and new system configuration files. Arch is easy to set up with the installer. You get a minimal shell system which is good for focusing on code. Most things work out of the box if you just pacman -S the-package-you-need. The hard stuff (wireless) is very well documented on http://wiki.archlinux.org/ http://wiki.archlinux.org/. Failing that, community on #archlinux is very helpful. I'm sure it's not for everybody, but I like to spend my time creating things in code, and not arguing about what's the best environment to create things in.
heyrhett 15y ago
"First of all, nothing works out of the box. You will have to manually set up the driver for your video card, ...Xorg, " I stopped there http://xkcd.com/963/ http://xkcd.com/963/
- loungin 15y ago
  All too true. Both my work and home computers run Arch. At work, dual monitors on a single ati video card with xinerama was a HUGE pain in the ass. I ended up just running without xinerama and the Driver/Screen/Monitor/Server sections, let X choose its defaults, and then use xrandr to get the monitors working proper, although they still don't share the same background image, I can live with it. In Archs defense though, setting up xorg is simply installing the packages which is trivially easy with pacman. I love it to death.
- chimeracoder 15y ago
  Technically true, but misleading. I've installed Arch on four machines of various hardware, and this is actually the easiest part of the installation process. You have to select a driver from a comprehensive list of which drivers work for which cards, and you don't have to make any (non-trivial) changes to xorg.conf, unless you want to set up multiple monitors. (And even then, I was able to avoid that for a long time by using XFCE, which apparently doesn't mind when xorg.conf settings are unspecified/improperly specified). Yes, everything has to be set up manually on an Arch system, but that's a feature - you know where everything on your system is, and you know that there's nothing you didn't add yourself. And with the wiki, setup may take some time (again, by design), but the process is incredibly straightforward.
  - tmhedberg 15y ago
    I have an Arch laptop that I frequently use with a second monitor, and I've never had to tweak my xorg.conf. The now-ubiquitous XRandR extension for X largely obviates the need for xorg.conf completely. These days, it tends to "just work".
- lgeek 15y ago
  I constantly switch between using two external monitors through my docking station, using my TV through HDMI, or just the internal display. I don't even have an xorg.conf file. The defaults are perfectly fine and RandR does the job of changing outputs while X is running. I have a T420 with Intel graphics.
koko775 15y ago
Those downsides were upsides for me. I love that everything must be configured on Arch, because I know that I am doing all the configuring. I've tried to customize Ubuntu's motd, change services to start backgrounded, and install packages from source in a way that integrates with the packaging system. Ubuntu likes to get in the way of this in the name of simplicity and for a casual or even intermediate user, sure, this works. For advanced users too, depending on your priorities. Arch is awesome because it's basically FreeBSD-like packaging and something not unlike FreeBSD's service configuration on a Linux box. Things are in a predictable place, rather than in /usr/local OR /usr/, and installing source packages is something that is very customizable and very easy. It yields the responsibility to be careful about your versions to you, but in doing so gives you an immense amount of power to be the master of your system. For minimal systems, where you know what you're doing, it's fantastic. Running Xorg is a bit of a pain, but I hardly blame Arch, and if something that "just works" were what I was going for, I wouldn't run Arch. I wouldn't use it on my MBP, but it's been running great on my home server for quite some time.
acabal 15y ago
I wanted to try Arch to see what the fuss was about after I got badly burned by the Ubuntu 11.10 upgrade. I'm not a Linux newbie by any stretch and I managed to get it set up in a virtual machine, but when it came time to install the community package installer, I just couldn't do it. I was no doubt doing something stupid. But after fiddling with it for half an hour, I sat back and said to myself, "If I can't even install the installer, what is maintenance going to be like for anything remotely complicated?" And that's when I realized that while it's fun to tweak and fiddle, I have real work to do and doing things like fighting with a package manager and installing drivers is not very high on my to-do list. I ended up rolling back to 11.04, which I'll probably stick with for some time.
- biobot 15y ago
  You should've tried this: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Yaourt https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Yaourt
  - acabal 15y ago
    That's exactly what I was trying to install. I just couldn't get it to work. No doubt some simple step I had overlooked, but not being able to install the installer was extremely frustrating.
    - tadfisher 15y ago
      Download tarball, unpack, run `makepkg`, run `pacman -U <pkg>.tar.gz`. It's all here: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/AUR#Installing_packages https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/AUR#Installing_packages
      - xiongchiamiov 15y ago
        Or the even easier: #> vim /etc/pacman.conf [archlinuxfr] Server = http://repo.archlinux.fr/$arch http://repo.archlinux.fr/$arch #> pacman -Sy yaourt
- 15y ago
lgeek 15y ago
>First of all, nothing works out of the box. You will have to manually set up the driver for your video card, support for your sound card (which can be a little difficult if you use USB headphones), wifi support, Xorg, your desktop environment and/or window manager of choice, etc. I've been using Arch for a number of years and I don't see why the author thinks it's so difficult to set up. During installation I only set up partitioning and /etc/rc.conf which is the main configuration file. I'd set up partitions and change some default settings (like keymap, locale, etc) on any computer, so it's not a problem. I also make sure wicd is installed for painless Wifi configuration. After the first boot, I install most of the stuff I use with a one-liner, something like this: pacman -S xorg xfce4 chromium-browser pidgin gdm thunderbird mc skype htop vim gcc ruby and that's my base system. Plus, being a rolling release distro means that you don't have to do major upgrades (which tend to break things more often than not). The installation I'm currently using on my main computer is about 20 months old and I've even changed my machine since then. My video card works after installing xorg, sound works out of the box, wifi works out of the box, etc.
Reltair 15y ago
Thanks for the tips, I was recently thinking of installing Linux on my secondary desktop and Arch seems like a good choice. I played around with Slackware a few years ago and it was a good learning experience doing things like trying to get wifi to work and configuring xmonad. Arch does appear to have more extensive/organized documentation compared to Slackware though, which would make the learning process go smoother.
cbo 15y ago
If you want to learn the entire Linux ecosystem, I can't recommend Arch enough. From personal experience, don't try to install Arch on your machine unless you have another internet-capable device in hand. You're going to reach for ArchWiki several times. Of course, ArchWiki is an incredible resource with great examples, so as long as you have it, the process is mostly painless. Arch is kind of an intermediate Linux in terms of how much it will rely on your configuration. Not quite Gentoo, but far, far, far away from Ubuntu.
- Adaptive 15y ago
  There's also a local installable mirror of the arch wiki. I don't know how often it's updated but if I didn't have multiple machines laying around I'd put this on my arch laptop: http://www.archlinux.org/packages/community/any/arch-wiki-docs/ http://www.archlinux.org/packages/community/any/arch-wiki-do...
navs 15y ago
I've been using Arch on my little Samsung N150 for a while now. Initial setup was tedious but not altogether difficult thanks to their brilliant wiki. I'm no guru and I'm sure If I looked hard enough I could find excellent documentation on Ubuntu. I don't have to look far for Arch, a simple google nets me their wiki page as a top result and it's almost always able to fix any current problem.
denysonique 15y ago
After 4 years of Gentoo I've switched recently to ArchLinux. Fantastic community, very rich wiki. The simplest Linux distro I have ever used. Everything works as you want -- zero debia/ubunto-nism. Rolling release just like Gentoo. Also it has a very rich Arch Linux User-community Repository (AUR) + some AUR PKGBUILDs even install from Ubuntu's PPAs Writing new PKGBUILDs is also very straightforward.
drunkenmasta 15y ago
Arch was the very first distro I tried. I had no idea that there was "another" way to do it. Having to pay attention to the manual install helped me later when I was trying to figure stuff out. Highly recommended to jump in the hard way before getting pampered with something easy as hell like Mint.
dave_sullivan 15y ago
I recently got a system w/ a gtx580 that would be running the gpu 24/7. Was excited to try arch as I had heard a lot of good things about it and thought I liked the cut of their jib. 4 hours into install, I realized how much Ubuntu had spoiled me and remembered installing Linux for the first time as a kid and how confusing setting up X had been. I also remembered I had stuff to do so I installed Debian and called it a day. Cuda and nvidia drivers are frustrating enough, figured I'd pick my battles. I suppose I liked the idea of arch much more than the practice.
siphr 15y ago
I suppose, at the end of the day. It is all about an individual's preference. The gift of Linux is Choice. Having said that I've used Arch for the past 4 years or so and I have to admit that, for me at least, it is a beautiful thing. I've never had any issues with it what so ever. The box stays up for months on end without problems, except for the times when there is no power :). Pacman, is by far the most straight forward package manager I've come across. The control it lets you have on what you install on the system (the minimalist approach) is just wonderful. The blog makes it sound a bit intimidating when it really isn't. I would highly recommend it to anyone.

168 points by mcrittenden 15y ago

Ideka 15y ago

First of all, nothing works out of the box. You will have to manually set up the driver for your video card, support for your sound card (which can be a little difficult if you use USB headphones), wifi support, Xorg, your desktop environment and/or window manager of choice, etc. Literally everything mentioned here worked out of the box for me when I installed Arch (except for USB headphones, which I do not own).

km3k 15y ago
Out of the box typically means "with no effort after initial install". I'm sure you did a pacman -S gnome or something like that after the initial install. That said, Arch does have very sane defaults, so I'm sure after using pacman to install your DE or graphics drivers, it worked fine.
mcrittenden 15y ago
Author here. I think we're talking about two different things. By "nothing works out of the box" I mean that you need to set it up yourself. For example, the Beginner's Guide leads you through setup of your video driver [1], ALSA [2], Xorg [3], and wifi [4]. These are all things that require manual work. Maybe there's a more appropriate term for this than "doesn't work out of the box" (?) but it's the first term that came to mind. [1] https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beginners_Guide#Install_video_driver https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beginners_Guide#Install... [2] https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beginners_Guide#Sound https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beginners_Guide#Sound [3] https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beginners_Guide#Install_X https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beginners_Guide#Install... [4] https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Wireless_Setup https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Wireless_Setup
- lnteveryday 15y ago
  That's the beautiful thing about arch. While figuring out configurations, tweaks, or problems for yourself may seem daunting Arch has fantastic documentation through the web on tons of issues, ranging from software- to hardware-specific. It is one of the best documented linux distros I've had the pleasure of using.
  - agumonkey 15y ago
    - the arch wiki and community is really solid for bare naked yet simple linux knowledge. (gentoo wiki is my fallback) - The arch way tends to attract users with strong|alternative ideas, IMHO they're a big part in the revival of tiling wm. - Today I switched to nixos though.
    - lnteveryday 15y ago
      You will be missed. Absolutely correct on the wm comment. However, I am an organized, messy person and prefer stacking wm. Currently in favor of openbox, but it may be something else tomorrow.(Note: not archbang, but I am not entirely opposed to archbang as some are. Archbang turned out to be really great for my old laptop that I use primarily as a browser, but nothing beats the real deal when it comes to my everyday-everything machine) That nixos looks interesting, possibly something to consider for one of my personal machines.
      - agumonkey 15y ago
        Arch has kinda blossomed into a nano-debian status, people start to build stuff upon it, archbang, archhurd, it's great. The former has filled the 'out of the box' niche sort of, now you have a minimalist yet ready to use system. # note aside, about nixos, I can't tell how it's gonna turn out, but for once it's a linux system with a real paradigm shift. Funny how non-mutable ideas are spreading these days, btrfs, nix, even git. # second note, have you seen this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jULGE0rq8M http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jULGE0rq8M ? makes me wanna say 'tiling' is the only 'management' right now, stacking doesn't do sh*t.
- shaurz 15y ago
  For wifi it's much easier to install networkmanager, add it to DAEMONS (after dbus) and then configure your network with one of the KDE/GNOME networkmanager applets. It pretty much just works after that. For example I plugged in a USB wifi adaptor and it automatically appeared in the applet and found various SSIDs. For sound, the best solution that worked for me was ALSA + esd. I could never get PulseAudio to work properly.
  - bwat47 15y ago
    I've had a great experience with pulseaudio + gnome 3. Some people consider gnome 3's tight integration with pulse a downside, but so far its given me the best sound experience on linux. On arch after installing gnome 3 my sound just works flawlessly, even my usb headphones. I did have issues with pulse when I used XFCE though.
- xentac 15y ago
  I think the comment meant that, apart from installing the package, everything else worked fine. I would probably say something like, "isn't available after initial install" and that "you need to install all the packages you want to use". It is one of the Arch philosophies that you don't need any packages on your system that you don't want to use.

kahawe 15y ago

If you enjoy doing that, there is always Slackware or NetBSD or debian-unstable as well.

g3orge 15y ago
I've tried Slackware and I like the Arch-feeling better. I also like the "pacman" package manager.
tete 15y ago
Frugalware is also nice. Used it for a while. It was an awesome alternative when Arch got really unstable for a while some time ago. I use Arch again, but for everyone out there who has some problem (or simply needs a more stable approach) use Frugalware. It's also nice for people coming from Slackware or BSD. Most things are close to Arch Linux, so it's pretty straight forward to switch between them without having to get used to another distribution again. In short I think it can be a better alternative for people who don't like to hack (so much) on their systems. http://frugalware.org/ http://frugalware.org/
SomeOtherGuy 15y ago
NetBSD and debian both customize 3rd party software to fit with the project's desired software policies. That is quite different from arch which just packages everything up as-is.
gtaylor 15y ago
Slackware isn't rolling release, though, is it?
- bff 15y ago
  You can always use the slackware-current packages to run with software that is newer than the last release.

bwarp 15y ago

I like Arch as a whole but I've found that for my purposes it is a time sink compared to Debian for example. Debian has lots of sensible well thought out defaults. Arch has lots of disparate defaults each provided by the package vendor (as they don't customise packages). It's not a criticism, but a difference to bear in mind.

klodolph 15y ago
That was my experience too. I switched to Debian from Arch a half year ago or so and I've spent far less time maintaining it; and once I'm used to "the Debian way" I can navigate new packages without having to think about it. And updates don't break my system or fail to deploy, and 'python' isn't a symlink for 'python3.2'. I also reported a major security vulnerability in the default configuration of an Arch package but I had to reopen it because the maintainer said something stupid like "people who install this package should operate on trusted networks". What?
CJefferson 15y ago
I agree. Glancing through the instructions, it looks like things might have got better than when I installed arch linux around 6 months ago. At the point I felt like installation involved a lot of carefully designed "busy work", which I couldn't imagine not wanting to do, but which had to be done exactly. The reason I left is because of their incredibly bizarre choice to make /usr/bin/python run python3, and messing headers around so much you couldn't build gcc from source. Between these two features, it made the system basically unusable for me.
nwj 15y ago
This is a great comment and the key phrase is "for my purposes..." Many people look at a particular OS, decide that it's not right for what they need or want, and jump straight to "that OS sucks because it doesn't meet my needs." It should be fairly obvious how that is just a silly thing to think. Different OSs meet different needs. We should strive to understand our own needs and to understand our options so we can make the optimal choice for our particular situation. As an arch user myself, I like (and can afford the time) to tweak and fiddle with my setup so that it's just right for my workflow. Another reason I use it, is that it's a great way to learn more about linux. Arch probably is not right for people who need lots of stability or don't have the time to fiddle and tweak the OS. And that's ok. There are many other options they can use. It sounds like Debian is the right fit for you and that's awesome.

ElliotH 15y ago

My favorite thing about running on an Arch system is I know what's going on all the time. If an Ubuntu system breaks I'm generally dealing with a mass of preinstalled things, it's hard to know what's relevant. Similarly for increasing boot speed, I really like knowing exactly what I need to be running at any one time. I appreciate it's not for everyone, but I imagine most coders around here who run a Linux system would benefit a lot by taking the time to set up an install and having it work how they like.

markokocic 15y ago
I was running Gentoo before. In Gentoo, you could configure everything up to the smallest details, and you had the system that worked exactly as you want it too. The cost was frequent recompiles and a bunch of time lost playing with the things. After I swithced to Arch, I found it much easier to configure, and it required almost no maintenance. It is a great balance between ease of use and full power.
- ElliotH 15y ago
  Have you found a difference in freshness of packages since you switched? I really like how in Arch packages tend to be much more up to date than other distros ( a side effect of the rolling release)
  - markokocic 15y ago
    Gentoo had slightly fresher packages (I was running ~x86). But, arch packages are in principle more stable. I haven't had any major breakage with Arch for a few years now, while with Gentoo it was a norm to have breakages every month until I finally switched off.
    - Jach 15y ago
      I was under the impression that the situation was reversed. My Gentoo systems have been very stable because I take many of the masked package guidelines seriously (of course not all). Meanwhile you have Arch that changed the default python version to 3 back in October 2010 that hosed a lot of people's systems. Discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1808840 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1808840 and my favorite quote (there are so many great ones though) from the mess: 20:20 <dash> well that confirms my impression that arch was invented by a bunch of guys who thought gentoo was too stable and easy to use

cgag 15y ago

I'm running arch and home and have a love / hate (mostly love) relationship with it. It's certainly taken up a lot of my time, but I learned more about linux just by installing it than I did in months of using ubuntu. Getting something to work is so satisfying, as it usually involves learning quite a bit about how it works, but there are times when you just want something working and it can be frustrating. Being forced to make all those choices was the best part about it for me. I'm sure it's possible to customize Ubuntu to look like my arch set up, but if I hadn't been forced I likely wouldn't have tried. I'm currently running i3 as my window manager and I love it. I use a macbook pro at work, and It's nice but going back to a non-tiling window manager after getting used to i3 is pretty painful.

agravier 15y ago
It's interesting how relative people's experience can be: for me, it was the opposite, as I feel that Arch has let me save a lot of time. I was using Gentoo at the time I decided to switch to Arch, and the relatively deeper understanding of the internals of the OS that is necessary to keep a stable Gentoo system made Arch feel like a very well-designed Lego toy. I guess that LFS people coming to Gentoo would feel the same :) TLDR: I love Arch, I feel that I don't lose time on it because I made the switch from Gentoo.

babarock 15y ago

I find Archbang to be a good compromise. It presents a minimal Arch install with X+openbox (a la Crunchbang, hence the name) pre-configured. It has a live CD too, so really, it' s just like plain old regular Arch except you don't need a 2nd computer during install ^^

victork2 15y ago

I have an ArchLinux installed at home. Well I am unsure on what to think. It can be used to go on the internet, have the latest software but if you are serious on coding stable things well... you're going to cry. Since you always have the latest packets ready your code is going to be often broken by changes in the libraries (damn Boost!). Other problem, if you leave your computer untouched for 1 months you'll have 1 Gb of updates to do. But it's still a very good distribution, just be careful about what to use.

swasheck 15y ago
The transition from python 2.7 to python 3 bit me in the butt. Having said that - it was resolved quickly by some friends in the community.
fam 15y ago
Agreed. Back when I had Arch installed as my main OS I'd run updates every now and then only to find out after that FireFox or some other program broke. Of course, it's nice to know how your OS works and how to fix things, but considering all the other OSs out there, it's nice to have something that "just works" with as little downtime as possible. In hindsight, the learning phase of having to set everything up taught me a lot about using Linux, bash, etc. Switching to a tiling WM (dwm rocked) was a great experience when I had been using Windows all my life.

alanpeabody 15y ago

As a developer who has been using Linux as a desktop and enjoys tweaking every little thing: I think Arch is fantastic. It took my understanding of the OS and exactly what is going on to the next level. However I work with developers who don't want to tweak every little thing they just want their OS to work and let them be passionate about development. They should stick to OSX, or if they are feeling adventurous try Ubuntu. I also would not suggest Arch if you have not used another more friendly Linux distro for a while and had the "opportunity" to troubleshoot some issues and enjoyed it. To enjoy Arch you really have to be passionate about Linux and tweaking your machine, otherwise you will just be frustrated. For those that are I cannot recommend Arch enough.

chrishenn 15y ago

Arch is great, but my favorite thing about it is that it stays out of the way. It led me to using new tools like XMonad and MPD. I could be perfectly happy with using the same setup on debian-unstable, but never would have got there without Arch. The package manager Arch uses, pacman, recently introduced package signing (albeit with a few bugs to iron out.) I wonder if more people will start to use Arch as a server OS now.

timdot 15y ago
Note that package signing is turned off by default so not strictly introduced.
Adaptive 15y ago
Linode has been offering it as a server image for a while now. I use it for a personal webserver, etc. Never had a critical upgrade problem, fwiw.

MatthewPhillips 15y ago

Something the article mentions, but bears repeating, it that Arch has an excellent wiki on just about every component you're likely to use. So for those fearful of having to set everything up yourself, the wiki will be your savior.

sciurus 15y ago
Although parts of it are specific to Arch, overall I found the Arch wiki very helpful when set up a minimal Debian installation.

pandeiro 15y ago

I've been using Arch for the last 7-8 months and I think my love affair with it has already peaked. Everything written here is true re: learning about Linux, having more control, straightforward architecture, bleeding edge software, etc. But the instability factor eventually will bite you in the ass, and per Murphy's Law, often at the worst possible time. It's happened to me twice in this time span. My solution is to use a separate data partition for all my files and install Arch and a more stable distro (Mint in my case) in different partitions. Both OSs link to the data partition and grab dotfiles and things from a git repo. Arch is my preferred environment, with a tiling WM and everything painstakingly set up for my preferred workflow. But when it crashes, I can still use my workstation to get stuff done, and go about troubleshooting when I have free time.

riledhel 15y ago
Isn't this overly complicated? wouldn't you gain more features by using virtual machines instead?
- pandeiro 15y ago
  Not really. Arch takes about 10 seconds less to boot up than Mint on my machine. Then there would be the question of having to wait for both the host OS and guest (virtual) OS to boot up. It's a one-time expense, too, in terms of time. And there's the added benefit that you learn how to partition, how to mount, link, etc.
Deinumite 15y ago
Frankly I'm offended that having a seperate /home partition is not the default on more linux installs. I Arch Linux for my last semester of school and didn't have any problems, I didn't find it unstable at all.

gtaylor 15y ago

I started using Arch about eight months ago, when Ubuntu didn't have the latest ATI and Xorg packaged so I could use EyeFinity + 3 monitors. At the time, I was very sad to leave my comfy Debian/Ubuntu roots. After struggling a little with the initial setup, I got everything in place, and it has just worked since then. Breakage from upgrades has been no worse than Ubuntu, and my Python work hasn't been disturbed at all. For those who don't mind rolling up their sleeves and just RTFM'ing it, this is a great distro.

pnathan 15y ago

I read the article and groaned. My days of "tweak it until it works, just for fun" are pretty much past me (I'm typing this on a Mac, for instance). I like to spend my energy creating things these days. But Arch seems really cool if you want to rebuild Linux systems for fun & knowledge!

swasheck 15y ago
I find your definitation of "creating things" narrow and shallow. There's a tremendous amount of creativity that goes into customizing an OS to meet every need you have --- and ONLY those needs.
- pnathan 15y ago
  Sure. But unless you're deploying custom Linux builds, what does that get you, exactly? I have a number of packages on my computer I don't use, and I am not being hindered by their existence. I instead use my brain cycles for creating new software & systems, not retooling the existing one to no end. edit: Please understand that I'm not saying a fully customizable Linux doesn't have its place. It absolutely does. But when you're trying to crank stuff out, having to stop and tweak/fix your system simply gets in the way. Well, it gets in my way, at least. :-)
  - filam 15y ago
    Just because a system gives you the freedom to customize your environment, it doesn't mean you required to "retool [it] to no end." I have used a simple Arch Linux installation for years and it has never interrupted my work flow.
  - timdot 15y ago
    "But when you're trying to crank stuff out, having to stop and tweak/fix your system simply gets in the way." That's exactly the reason to customise it yourself rather than using a default "one-size-fits-all" OS like Windows/OSX/Ubuntu. You spend a weekend configuring your computer, then you automate everything you did and then you never have to do anything again. Or at least that's the goal. Still, it gives you control over your computer and that's enough for me. OSX telling me that I wasn't allowed to uninstall certain programs (has been a while since I got rid of my Mac but I think iTunes was one of them) - that bothers the hell out of me.

ColdAsIce 15y ago

The community has become quite aggressive and elitist lately, they now remind me of the days of gentoo.

swasheck 15y ago
Probably because of comments like what astrodust is spraying everywhere.
Avshalom 15y ago
That's a shame, back when I installed it years ago (05ish I think) the community was one of my favorite things about the distro.
- ColdAsIce 15y ago
  Yeah I remember it back in the beginnings, it was quite friendly. Now I see people get yelled at in #archlinux for having an opinion on x vs y which is opposite of what the majority of #archlinuxers think. The forums are like "not my problem fix it noob, here is half a wiki page"
  - lclarkmichalek 15y ago
    I've never had a good experience with #archlinux, and the forums are generally quite slow. I do recommend the arch-general mailing list however.
xentac 15y ago
You should have seen the community 7+ years ago! They've done a lot to make the community more friendly and inclusive.
cenuij 15y ago
I agree somewhat, but I tend to find that it's newbies who have managed to migrate away from MyFirstLinux™ that make all the annoying noise coming from the Arch community; so perhaps it's not fair to judge Arch users as a whole. On the other hand, at this rate http://funroll-loops.info/ http://funroll-loops.info/ will need to be re-written for Arch ;)

tibbon 15y ago

It feels like he's describing installing Linux (any distribution) around 1997-1998. A bit complex, lots of manual setup, etc. Not terrible, and it has its benefits for sure, but it feels a tad like a step back.

astrodust 15y ago
Distributions like this can't be taken seriously. They're for the outcasts of the neckbeard crowd. Cynically I suppose that the people involved in making this software aren't encouraged to improve ease of use because then they couldn't be "helpful" in the IRC channel used for support. Is something like this the reason so many open-source projects so vehemently opposed to usability?
- oinksoft 15y ago
  I disagree with that, certainly there's space for a slackware-like distro with a decent package manager. Debian, RHEL, etc. are excellent, but there's no denying that they do some things in their own special ways, for better or worse. But with most sysadmins used to some combination of FreeBSD, Debian, and RHEL, I doubt very many would spring at the idea of something new with no discernible benefits. Like you said, most people using Arch are those who want a great deal of control over their desktop machine, but without the compilation and general cruft of Gentoo. And those will be the ones putting Arch on servers, I believe.
  - jcurbo 15y ago
    Any distribution is going to form it's own 'way' though. It's a natural side effect of having a packaging system in the first place - you have to start standardizing some things. Take filesystem organization for instance - after many distros fought over this for years we got the FHS. But there are still thousands of open source projects out there that each do things their own way and if you install a bunch of them on one system you're going to have a mess unless there is some standardization. Debian has its own way of doing things but it was developed over time, just like Arch is developing ways of doing things now.
- 15y ago

mberning 15y ago

Sounds like a less stable/predictable version of FreeBSD.

chimeracoder 15y ago
Arch is incredibly stable - you just have to rethink your idea of what stability means in an Arch context. In Ubuntu, 'stability' means that you can run apt-get upgrade all (I think that's the command), press 'y' a few times (or, better yet, just pipe 'yes' to it) and then forget about it, knowing that your system may not have the latest version of every package, but the latest version in the Ubuntu repos, which is presumably 'stable' with the rest of the system. With Arch, you have to think before you -Syu. Running pacman -Syu will upgrade all packages to the latest version in the Arch repos, which are usually updated much more quickly, as it's a rolling-release distribution. This means that you may want to check the mailing lists before upgrading important packages, or wait until a later time to upgrade. Or not upgrade at all, which is 'stable' by virtue of the fact that you haven't changed anything. The choice is yours. You can decide what to do on a per-package or system-wide basis, depending on your use case (Personal user & tinkerer? Luddite personal user? Large-scale server? There's no 'one-size-fits-all' approach to keeping a system up-to-date, but Arch is a 'one-size-fits-all' distro in that it allows people to make these decisions for themselves very easily). Rolling release isn't for everyone - I'll agree. But that's the main difference between Arch and other distributions. (That, and it's highly minimalist by default, whereas Ubuntu and Mint are 'everything and the kitchen sink' by default). But I certainly wouldn't say that Arch is any more or less stable than other Linux distributions (I can't compare to BSD), because it's really just as stable as you want it to be, given your definition of 'stable'.
- CJefferson 15y ago
  > Arch is incredibly stable - you just have to rethink your idea of what stability means in an Arch context. I don't understand what your definition of stable is. Obviously anyone can not upgrade any distribution or software. If I want to upgrade I have to check the mailing lists to see if there are any major issues. That sounds like a source of instability. How can I update Arch, on a semi-regular basis (at least yearly), without having to worry about upgrade issues? If I can't, then I don't think you can call it 'incredibly stable'. Of course, you can accept the trade-offs, but don't try to 'rethink stability'.

jterenzio 15y ago

I recently switched from Ubuntu to Arch for my web server and could not be happier. I prefer the bleeding edge packages and the simplicity. I also learned a ton by having to dive into my config files and launch scripts in more detail. I can imagine for a desktop though it could get overwhelming.

fingerprinter 15y ago
Really? To arch for the server? Ubuntu server is probably the thing I'm MOST excited about these days. You see Juju? https://juju.ubuntu.com/ https://juju.ubuntu.com/

agentultra 15y ago

I've been using Arch for about three years now and can't imagine using another distro. The install phase is a pain if you want to get a full-blown plug-and-play ready-to-go desktop experience that rivals Ubuntu, OS X, or Windows. It's actually really easy if you just want a bare-bones system that boots into a shell and doesn't install any packages other than what it needs to do just that. Switch to Arch if you're a minimalist. My rig only runs Stumpwm on Xorg. I only use xterm, emacs, and the usual GNU toolchain. A couple of interpreters. I have installed GTK so I can use Firefox (and so I can hack on Firefox), but nothing else. I don't have a crap load of applications running in the background waiting to notify me of crap I don't care about or services that I never use. I know exactly what runs on my system and it does no more than that and no less. I think Arch fills a very nice niche and I'm so happy it exists.

oinksoft 15y ago
> The install phase is a pain if you want to get a full-blown plug-and-play ready-to-go desktop experience that rivals Ubuntu, OS X, or Windows. Just about every Linux distribution offers this, because the distro-makers create none of the window managers, etc. Which other distributions have you tried?
- agentultra 15y ago
  Mandrake, Redhat, Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, and a few others I'm sure.
astrodust 15y ago
Why would you want to be a minimalist? Even a Raspberry Pi system, which costs under $50 kitted out with storage, could handle a moderately full install. The only "minimalist" Linux install I've ever wanted was one so stripped down it would boot off of a 3.5" floppy. It's amazing what you can do with a kernel, a baked in read-only filesystem and a tiny loopback device for storing configuration files.
- pandeiro 15y ago
  Minimalism means faster boot time, less cruft in $HOME, generally knowing where stuff is, and more time to comb my enormous neckbeard...

shanemhansen 15y ago

Arch is fun to play with. A couple years ago the fact that everything was i686 optimized was a big deal. These days just about everyone is using 64bit. It's a good choice for embedded linux systems and servers (Beyond Oblivion used arch for their servers). Speaking from experience, life is just too short to run arch on a laptop. Heck, I have a hp pavilion dv7 with switching graphics and even that was a pita to get stable on ubuntu.

bwat47 15y ago
I run arch on a laptop with no problems at all. I specifically got a laptop with intel graphics and wireless so I have a great experience with any distro :) Arch required almost no setup when it came to graphics/sound/wireless. Just had to install xf86-video-intel and xf86-input-synaptics. IMO its best to stay the hell away from switchable graphics period if you intend to use linux.

pleaseme01 15y ago

I've been a debian user for about three years now. Lately, I got somewhat settled, since most of the things in my distribution were not new anymore, thus I was not learning that much anymore. Arch seemed a good possibility. I installed it in a virtual machine to code really simple 'hello world' kernel modules, and I liked it very much. It is a barebone installation and gives me the feeling to be in control. I think I'd use arch as a server distribution, since I haven't had any problems with the latest packages. Maybe my opinion will change, and maybe I'd prefer something more stable in a server... Anyway, I respect the opinion of the author, but it sounds a bit overdramatic to me. Tough were the days of winmoden + slackware... tears falling

robinduckett 15y ago

Oh wow so this is like 2002 gentoo then?

LoneWolf 15y ago
Isnt gentoo still like that? I have been using gentoo since I got into using and learning about linux (cant really remember how long now). And it seems pretty much the same.
qdog 15y ago
Alternatively, you could say this like every other linux distro at some level. I started back at about Redhat 5.0, used a lot of distros over the years, currently I use ubuntu because it 'mostly worked' from install, although it didn't really. I've ended up doing make/make install a few times for packages I needed configured like I wanted them. I might go back to Slackware when I get around to it, not really a big fan of Ubuntu at this point for what I do (programming).
xentac 15y ago
I feel like the OP misconstrued things like "doesn't work out of the box". What he meant was, "I needed to install the package to get my video driver and sound driver working". Generally Arch doesn't install something until you ask it to.

ff0066mote 15y ago

I've been using Arch on my HP Mini since May 2010. I haven't had any serious stability issues. Once in awhile I have to resolve differences between old and new system configuration files. Arch is easy to set up with the installer. You get a minimal shell system which is good for focusing on code. Most things work out of the box if you just pacman -S the-package-you-need. The hard stuff (wireless) is very well documented on http://wiki.archlinux.org/ http://wiki.archlinux.org/. Failing that, community on #archlinux is very helpful. I'm sure it's not for everybody, but I like to spend my time creating things in code, and not arguing about what's the best environment to create things in.

heyrhett 15y ago

"First of all, nothing works out of the box. You will have to manually set up the driver for your video card, ...Xorg, " I stopped there http://xkcd.com/963/ http://xkcd.com/963/

loungin 15y ago
All too true. Both my work and home computers run Arch. At work, dual monitors on a single ati video card with xinerama was a HUGE pain in the ass. I ended up just running without xinerama and the Driver/Screen/Monitor/Server sections, let X choose its defaults, and then use xrandr to get the monitors working proper, although they still don't share the same background image, I can live with it. In Archs defense though, setting up xorg is simply installing the packages which is trivially easy with pacman. I love it to death.
chimeracoder 15y ago
Technically true, but misleading. I've installed Arch on four machines of various hardware, and this is actually the easiest part of the installation process. You have to select a driver from a comprehensive list of which drivers work for which cards, and you don't have to make any (non-trivial) changes to xorg.conf, unless you want to set up multiple monitors. (And even then, I was able to avoid that for a long time by using XFCE, which apparently doesn't mind when xorg.conf settings are unspecified/improperly specified). Yes, everything has to be set up manually on an Arch system, but that's a feature - you know where everything on your system is, and you know that there's nothing you didn't add yourself. And with the wiki, setup may take some time (again, by design), but the process is incredibly straightforward.
- tmhedberg 15y ago
  I have an Arch laptop that I frequently use with a second monitor, and I've never had to tweak my xorg.conf. The now-ubiquitous XRandR extension for X largely obviates the need for xorg.conf completely. These days, it tends to "just work".
lgeek 15y ago
I constantly switch between using two external monitors through my docking station, using my TV through HDMI, or just the internal display. I don't even have an xorg.conf file. The defaults are perfectly fine and RandR does the job of changing outputs while X is running. I have a T420 with Intel graphics.

koko775 15y ago

Those downsides were upsides for me. I love that everything must be configured on Arch, because I know that I am doing all the configuring. I've tried to customize Ubuntu's motd, change services to start backgrounded, and install packages from source in a way that integrates with the packaging system. Ubuntu likes to get in the way of this in the name of simplicity and for a casual or even intermediate user, sure, this works. For advanced users too, depending on your priorities. Arch is awesome because it's basically FreeBSD-like packaging and something not unlike FreeBSD's service configuration on a Linux box. Things are in a predictable place, rather than in /usr/local OR /usr/, and installing source packages is something that is very customizable and very easy. It yields the responsibility to be careful about your versions to you, but in doing so gives you an immense amount of power to be the master of your system. For minimal systems, where you know what you're doing, it's fantastic. Running Xorg is a bit of a pain, but I hardly blame Arch, and if something that "just works" were what I was going for, I wouldn't run Arch. I wouldn't use it on my MBP, but it's been running great on my home server for quite some time.

acabal 15y ago

I wanted to try Arch to see what the fuss was about after I got badly burned by the Ubuntu 11.10 upgrade. I'm not a Linux newbie by any stretch and I managed to get it set up in a virtual machine, but when it came time to install the community package installer, I just couldn't do it. I was no doubt doing something stupid. But after fiddling with it for half an hour, I sat back and said to myself, "If I can't even install the installer, what is maintenance going to be like for anything remotely complicated?" And that's when I realized that while it's fun to tweak and fiddle, I have real work to do and doing things like fighting with a package manager and installing drivers is not very high on my to-do list. I ended up rolling back to 11.04, which I'll probably stick with for some time.

biobot 15y ago
You should've tried this: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Yaourt https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Yaourt
- acabal 15y ago
  That's exactly what I was trying to install. I just couldn't get it to work. No doubt some simple step I had overlooked, but not being able to install the installer was extremely frustrating.
  - tadfisher 15y ago
    Download tarball, unpack, run `makepkg`, run `pacman -U <pkg>.tar.gz`. It's all here: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/AUR#Installing_packages https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/AUR#Installing_packages
    - xiongchiamiov 15y ago
      Or the even easier: #> vim /etc/pacman.conf [archlinuxfr] Server = http://repo.archlinux.fr/$arch http://repo.archlinux.fr/$arch #> pacman -Sy yaourt
15y ago

lgeek 15y ago

>First of all, nothing works out of the box. You will have to manually set up the driver for your video card, support for your sound card (which can be a little difficult if you use USB headphones), wifi support, Xorg, your desktop environment and/or window manager of choice, etc. I've been using Arch for a number of years and I don't see why the author thinks it's so difficult to set up. During installation I only set up partitioning and /etc/rc.conf which is the main configuration file. I'd set up partitions and change some default settings (like keymap, locale, etc) on any computer, so it's not a problem. I also make sure wicd is installed for painless Wifi configuration. After the first boot, I install most of the stuff I use with a one-liner, something like this: pacman -S xorg xfce4 chromium-browser pidgin gdm thunderbird mc skype htop vim gcc ruby and that's my base system. Plus, being a rolling release distro means that you don't have to do major upgrades (which tend to break things more often than not). The installation I'm currently using on my main computer is about 20 months old and I've even changed my machine since then. My video card works after installing xorg, sound works out of the box, wifi works out of the box, etc.

Reltair 15y ago

Thanks for the tips, I was recently thinking of installing Linux on my secondary desktop and Arch seems like a good choice. I played around with Slackware a few years ago and it was a good learning experience doing things like trying to get wifi to work and configuring xmonad. Arch does appear to have more extensive/organized documentation compared to Slackware though, which would make the learning process go smoother.

cbo 15y ago

If you want to learn the entire Linux ecosystem, I can't recommend Arch enough. From personal experience, don't try to install Arch on your machine unless you have another internet-capable device in hand. You're going to reach for ArchWiki several times. Of course, ArchWiki is an incredible resource with great examples, so as long as you have it, the process is mostly painless. Arch is kind of an intermediate Linux in terms of how much it will rely on your configuration. Not quite Gentoo, but far, far, far away from Ubuntu.

Adaptive 15y ago
There's also a local installable mirror of the arch wiki. I don't know how often it's updated but if I didn't have multiple machines laying around I'd put this on my arch laptop: http://www.archlinux.org/packages/community/any/arch-wiki-docs/ http://www.archlinux.org/packages/community/any/arch-wiki-do...

navs 15y ago

I've been using Arch on my little Samsung N150 for a while now. Initial setup was tedious but not altogether difficult thanks to their brilliant wiki. I'm no guru and I'm sure If I looked hard enough I could find excellent documentation on Ubuntu. I don't have to look far for Arch, a simple google nets me their wiki page as a top result and it's almost always able to fix any current problem.

denysonique 15y ago

After 4 years of Gentoo I've switched recently to ArchLinux. Fantastic community, very rich wiki. The simplest Linux distro I have ever used. Everything works as you want -- zero debia/ubunto-nism. Rolling release just like Gentoo. Also it has a very rich Arch Linux User-community Repository (AUR) + some AUR PKGBUILDs even install from Ubuntu's PPAs Writing new PKGBUILDs is also very straightforward.

drunkenmasta 15y ago

Arch was the very first distro I tried. I had no idea that there was "another" way to do it. Having to pay attention to the manual install helped me later when I was trying to figure stuff out. Highly recommended to jump in the hard way before getting pampered with something easy as hell like Mint.

dave_sullivan 15y ago

I recently got a system w/ a gtx580 that would be running the gpu 24/7. Was excited to try arch as I had heard a lot of good things about it and thought I liked the cut of their jib. 4 hours into install, I realized how much Ubuntu had spoiled me and remembered installing Linux for the first time as a kid and how confusing setting up X had been. I also remembered I had stuff to do so I installed Debian and called it a day. Cuda and nvidia drivers are frustrating enough, figured I'd pick my battles. I suppose I liked the idea of arch much more than the practice.

siphr 15y ago

I suppose, at the end of the day. It is all about an individual's preference. The gift of Linux is Choice. Having said that I've used Arch for the past 4 years or so and I have to admit that, for me at least, it is a beautiful thing. I've never had any issues with it what so ever. The box stays up for months on end without problems, except for the times when there is no power :). Pacman, is by far the most straight forward package manager I've come across. The control it lets you have on what you install on the system (the minimalist approach) is just wonderful. The blog makes it sound a bit intimidating when it really isn't. I would highly recommend it to anyone.