4 ms·

(I wrote all this then realized I've gotten off the point, this isn't really addressed at your comment. I recognize that the typical computer user couldn't give

(I wrote all this then realized I've gotten off the point, this isn't really addressed at your comment. I recognize that the typical computer user couldn't give a damn about customizing their system and certainly wouldn't bother with setting up Arch, which makes it a poor gaming platform. I'm just tired of constantly hearing about how hard Arch is. It isn't hard, it just takes a bit of effort). I'd say Arch is pretty simple, just not easy [0]. Easy would be inserting the install cd, walking away, coming back and being able to hit the internet. Which is fine, if that's all you want to do. Arch installation isn't easy, it's simple, and more importantly it works. When I install windows from scratch you know what it comes with? Nothing. No drivers, no programs, nothing. Not even an ethernet driver for me to get the other drivers. Arch comes with all of it out of the box, you just need to go through the tutorial so you can choose which things in the box you actually want. Arch is simple in that if I go to any scary looking file in /etc and open it up I won't be completely baffled by what's in it. I can randomly shut down any service running on my machine and I know my box will keep chugging and I can recover from it. There's no weird services that I don't know what they do, no scripts that run on startup that I can't understand let alone find. There aren't inter-dependencies that I don't know about. When I run ps aux I can account for every single thing running. And even then, the package management is simple AND easy. I have never had a problem installing something with pacman, not once. There's this oft-repeated line about upgrades breaking systems, but I've never seen it. If an upgrade fails I look at the front page of archlinux.org and see that some manual commands are needed, copy-paste them and voila things work. I've used arch on three computers now, two laptops and a very old desktop, and have never had any problems. I know there's going to be some horror stories, but I can counter any of them with a quick search for the same in windows. Problems upgrading happen, but they're not common, and not something that's inherent to Arch like I've seen people suggest. [0] http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy

recursive 14y ago
Every time I've installed Windows, it's come with basic drivers and programs.
- eitland 14y ago
  Short history lesson here then: Until recently installing Windows (except OEM) meant running driver CDs at least for stuff like network drivers (so you could connect to internet to download the updated drivers).
  - jholman 14y ago
    Short history lesson: I have successfully gotten my Windows installs onto the internet without using driver CDs since at least Windows 98SE. I dunno what I'm doing that's so magical; I just install the dang thing.
    - danbee 14y ago
      This totally depends on the network card chipset. A fresh Windows 7 install on my PC requires external NIC drivers before I get on the net.
      - fceccon 14y ago
        Same here, I installed Windows 7 on a PC with a fairly recent Asus MB and I had to install the drivers from the CD.
wickedchicken 14y ago
I'm a systems developer, not a distro maintainer. When I boot off of that iso, I want a menu that asks me this: [ ] Desktop [ ] Server [ ] Embedded [ ] Custom This ultimately comes down to a user interface issue, but it's different than the kind of user interface often associated with the HN crowd. It's more like an API user interface, be that a web or programming library API. A crucial feature of good APIs is 'graceful degradation' in terms of easiness/control. Take a look at the libcURL library[1]. cURL has 3 levels of access: "easy," "share," and "multi." If you don't care about a lot of features and just want to download a webpage, the easy interface will get you what you want in a few lines of code. If you have something more complicated, you can go all the way down to the multi interface to access many of the raw functions of the API. They key takeaway is giving the user control of her complexity level. If I'm a sysadmin compiling an image meant to be deployed on thousands of servers, then something like Arch would be pretty great -- I can fine-tune things how I want. If I'm just a random developer, then I would like to stick to 'sane defaults,' with the option to revisit those defaults later if needed. I really don't care what cron I have, don't force me to pick one against my will. [1] http://curl.haxx.se/libcurl/c/ http://curl.haxx.se/libcurl/c/

recursive 14y ago

Every time I've installed Windows, it's come with basic drivers and programs.

eitland 14y ago
Short history lesson here then: Until recently installing Windows (except OEM) meant running driver CDs at least for stuff like network drivers (so you could connect to internet to download the updated drivers).
- jholman 14y ago
  Short history lesson: I have successfully gotten my Windows installs onto the internet without using driver CDs since at least Windows 98SE. I dunno what I'm doing that's so magical; I just install the dang thing.
  - danbee 14y ago
    This totally depends on the network card chipset. A fresh Windows 7 install on my PC requires external NIC drivers before I get on the net.
    - fceccon 14y ago
      Same here, I installed Windows 7 on a PC with a fairly recent Asus MB and I had to install the drivers from the CD.

wickedchicken 14y ago

I'm a systems developer, not a distro maintainer. When I boot off of that iso, I want a menu that asks me this: [ ] Desktop [ ] Server [ ] Embedded [ ] Custom This ultimately comes down to a user interface issue, but it's different than the kind of user interface often associated with the HN crowd. It's more like an API user interface, be that a web or programming library API. A crucial feature of good APIs is 'graceful degradation' in terms of easiness/control. Take a look at the libcURL library[1]. cURL has 3 levels of access: "easy," "share," and "multi." If you don't care about a lot of features and just want to download a webpage, the easy interface will get you what you want in a few lines of code. If you have something more complicated, you can go all the way down to the multi interface to access many of the raw functions of the API. They key takeaway is giving the user control of her complexity level. If I'm a sysadmin compiling an image meant to be deployed on thousands of servers, then something like Arch would be pretty great -- I can fine-tune things how I want. If I'm just a random developer, then I would like to stick to 'sane defaults,' with the option to revisit those defaults later if needed. I really don't care what cron I have, don't force me to pick one against my will. [1] http://curl.haxx.se/libcurl/c/ http://curl.haxx.se/libcurl/c/