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I'll look into Arch Linux. My biggest frustration is with drivers. I made the switch from WinXP to Ubuntu last year but I couldn't get bluetooth audio to work.

by Ennis 17y ago

I'll look into Arch Linux. My biggest frustration is with drivers. I made the switch from WinXP to Ubuntu last year but I couldn't get bluetooth audio to work. I loved Ubuntu but it wasn't usable for daily workflow. I had to go back to Win7. After increasing crashes I'm going to try out BSD. I'm pessimistic about driver support but i hope it's up to par with Ubuntu at least. I really like the philosophy behind the OS. Haven't looked at the code yet but they won me over with the "build from scratch" no-binary way!

eru 17y ago
If you like building from scratch, you might also like the linux distribution Gentoo.
- uggedal 17y ago
  I used Gentoo as my main desktop OS for a year. The system will not get much faster because of the CFLAGS one uses (this is especially true for x86_64), but you can customize the packages you build to contain exactly the functionality you need (through the use of USE flags). In the end, I switched over to Arch Linux (got tired of waiting for compiles), then switched to Debian testing (needed loads of LaTeX packages not found in Arch Linux), before I switched back to Arch a couple of weeks ago.
torpor 17y ago
I've been using Linux since the day Linus posted to minix-list about it.. Yggdrasil was my first non-hand-built Linux config, then Debian, and now .. Ubuntu. Which, on my particular hardware, I am finding is very, very stable, very useful, and 100% supported - including Bluetooth Audio, as well as Firewire-based Audio (I'm a musician) and other nifty tricks like that. I haven't dived into Arch Linux yet - haven't really found the need, and I guess I'm pretty much settled on the Debian way of doing things .. but one thing I have been thinking about lately is that it would be nice to have a stable-as-Ubuntu Linux system that has 100%, without fail, FULL SOURCE on-board, with everything configured so that if I find and fix something, it can easily go back into the sources as a patch or something. Is Arch Linux going to provide that sort of configuration - full source onboard, easy to submit patches from whatever source I edit, etc? I might dedicate some time to checking out Arch in the future, and if it means I can configure my system to be 100% full source-onboard, I might do it sooner rather than later. Of course, the idea of doing my own distribution based entirely on onboard-sources and instant patch contribution to a common public pool has also crossed my mind .. maybe BSD delivers in that regard? I really want my system to become a programmers paradise ..
- uggedal 17y ago
  Arch Linux provides a hierarchy of build scripts that were used to build the binary packages you download using the standard package manager (pacman). Like BSD ports, the actual source is not contained, but each build script instead points to the source tarbal upstream. You can of course apply your own patches or change the sources the builds scripts uses.
dazzawazza 17y ago
I'm a FreeBSD user and I've deployed it in many high load situations on servers. Drivers are not a strong point in the BSD world and it's best to check the supported hardware thoroughly before upgrading. What is there generally works very very well but more esoteric hardware is often not important to the BSD community.

by Ennis 17y ago

eru 17y ago

If you like building from scratch, you might also like the linux distribution Gentoo.

uggedal 17y ago
I used Gentoo as my main desktop OS for a year. The system will not get much faster because of the CFLAGS one uses (this is especially true for x86_64), but you can customize the packages you build to contain exactly the functionality you need (through the use of USE flags). In the end, I switched over to Arch Linux (got tired of waiting for compiles), then switched to Debian testing (needed loads of LaTeX packages not found in Arch Linux), before I switched back to Arch a couple of weeks ago.

torpor 17y ago

I've been using Linux since the day Linus posted to minix-list about it.. Yggdrasil was my first non-hand-built Linux config, then Debian, and now .. Ubuntu. Which, on my particular hardware, I am finding is very, very stable, very useful, and 100% supported - including Bluetooth Audio, as well as Firewire-based Audio (I'm a musician) and other nifty tricks like that. I haven't dived into Arch Linux yet - haven't really found the need, and I guess I'm pretty much settled on the Debian way of doing things .. but one thing I have been thinking about lately is that it would be nice to have a stable-as-Ubuntu Linux system that has 100%, without fail, FULL SOURCE on-board, with everything configured so that if I find and fix something, it can easily go back into the sources as a patch or something. Is Arch Linux going to provide that sort of configuration - full source onboard, easy to submit patches from whatever source I edit, etc? I might dedicate some time to checking out Arch in the future, and if it means I can configure my system to be 100% full source-onboard, I might do it sooner rather than later. Of course, the idea of doing my own distribution based entirely on onboard-sources and instant patch contribution to a common public pool has also crossed my mind .. maybe BSD delivers in that regard? I really want my system to become a programmers paradise ..

uggedal 17y ago
Arch Linux provides a hierarchy of build scripts that were used to build the binary packages you download using the standard package manager (pacman). Like BSD ports, the actual source is not contained, but each build script instead points to the source tarbal upstream. You can of course apply your own patches or change the sources the builds scripts uses.

dazzawazza 17y ago

I'm a FreeBSD user and I've deployed it in many high load situations on servers. Drivers are not a strong point in the BSD world and it's best to check the supported hardware thoroughly before upgrading. What is there generally works very very well but more esoteric hardware is often not important to the BSD community.