5 ms·

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

by 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.
        lnteveryday 15y ago
        You may be right. I have only recently made the switch to wm, mostly because of the problems with gnome 3. Originally gnome was the only de that I liked, absolutely hated KDE for no real reason other than something about it bothered me. Then gnome 3 just ruined it. Then I discovered wms. I'm probably more attracted to openbox because the stacking is closer to the sort of window management that you would get in any de. However, I so very rarely have a bunch of windows open at once that I need to see all at once. And I can also easily open, close, move, resize, switch screens, etc. with the keyboard. I'll give it a try before I say that it's not for me though. Who knows, maybe I'll use one for when I'm working on projects. Which tiling one do you use? awesome?
- 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.

by Ideka 15y ago

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.
      - lnteveryday 15y ago
        You may be right. I have only recently made the switch to wm, mostly because of the problems with gnome 3. Originally gnome was the only de that I liked, absolutely hated KDE for no real reason other than something about it bothered me. Then gnome 3 just ruined it. Then I discovered wms. I'm probably more attracted to openbox because the stacking is closer to the sort of window management that you would get in any de. However, I so very rarely have a bunch of windows open at once that I need to see all at once. And I can also easily open, close, move, resize, switch screens, etc. with the keyboard. I'll give it a try before I say that it's not for me though. Who knows, maybe I'll use one for when I'm working on projects. Which tiling one do you use? awesome?
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.