5 ms·

For me, systemd broke beautiful Arch setup into some monstrosity. That's not what Arch was or at least what it was for me. I do (rarely) install Linux on some

For me, systemd broke beautiful Arch setup into some monstrosity. That's not what Arch was or at least what it was for me. I do (rarely) install Linux on some new PC but I think I stopped installing Arch after this changes. I mean what's the point installing Arch if there is no very elegant and beautiful rc.conf? What is that killer feature that Arch offers, apart from being rolling release?

zokier 12y ago
> What is that killer feature that Arch offers, apart from being rolling release? Like being good solid rolling release distro is not good enough? Frankly I prefer my distros to be free of any "killer features".
- cursork 12y ago
  It's Wiki is pretty killer. That may not sound like much, but it's pretty awesome. I use it as a reference on a few things even when dealing with other Linux distros. e.g. The page on SSH basically starts with how to restrict users who can log in and disabling root. https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Secure_Shell https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Secure_Shell Haven't used Arch in a while - not dealt with a non-company Linux box for a while. But it remains my go-to Linux (for development purposes) for good reasons.
  - mitosis 12y ago
    Seconding this: the killer app of Arch Linux is its community support.
nvarsj 12y ago
For me, systemd on Arch reduced my boot time from 45s or so to pretty-much-instant-on. Which is pretty damn nice for a distro where one tends to reboot a lot. > I mean what's the point installing Arch if there is no very elegant and beautiful rc.conf? rc.conf removal had nothing to do with systemd, I think. And was removed prior. > What is that killer feature that Arch offers, apart from being rolling release? Vanilla upstream packages.
- chronid 12y ago
  rc.conf was removed in Archlinux as a final step of the path to systemd and became obsolete when sysvinit became obsolete, not prior.
  - km3k 12y ago
    The removal of rc.conf was the final step, but they had been dismantling rc.conf piece by piece for years prior, even before systemd was released. When I first used Arch in 2006, rc.conf held a lot of configuration. From what I understand, it held even more configuration options prior to that. Since that time and until the removal of rc.conf, there was a steady removal of features from rc.conf.
- DanBC 12y ago
  It was possible to have < 5 second boot times in 2008 https://lwn.net/Articles/299483/ https://lwn.net/Articles/299483/ I'd be interested to know if the systemd boot process (which can be 2 seconds or quicker) has enough advantages to make the other changes worth it.
  - kbenson 12y ago
    See this prior NH submission [1], and inthe G+ post he mentions fairly early on why it's important to be very quick in the boot process, and how DHCP figures into that. (TL;DR using VM containers that can normally boot within 100 ms, getting the DHCP server to respond within 50 ms means on-demand container spin-up for a specific request is possible) [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7510660 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7510660
pavanky 12y ago
I keep hearing bullshit about how systemd broke archlinux. But for the vast majority of us it did not. I had atleast 3 machines running ArchLinux at that point and had very little trouble porting all of them. Anecdotal evidence can be dismissed by anecdotal evidence -- A variation of Hitches' razor
- binaryapparatus 12y ago
  Then let me try to explain again: Switching to systemd broke _my_ entire Arch _experience_. Before systemd I knew exactly what gets executed, when and why -- which is exact reason why I switched to Arch many years ago. I don't know the same thing after systemd introduction.
  - hellerbarde 12y ago
    I understand what you mean. I had the same awe when I first started on Arch and really got to know all the bits and pieces. When I transitioned to systemd, I had to go through that again. It was actually very similar to what I did the first time around and I suggest you give it a shot too. systemd, while seemingly monolithic is actually a really cool suite of tools. The thing we need to keep in mind is that it's _not_ sysvinit, and it's not trying to be. It's trying to be a project that does more than that and does it transparently on all systems. You might like it :) As a general point for everyone: Just because it's _also_ an init system doesn't mean it's not allowed to provide the binaries for doing a whole lot of other stuff. :)
    - vertex-four 12y ago
      The problem is that it's a suite of tools that are all developed under the same umbrella, by the same people, with the same ideas, and the same gatekeepers. It's rather difficult to fully replace parts of it, especially as the formal API to it is defined by systemd, and we're seeing more and more tools integrate with all that. Why can't we have an independent organisation that defines a spec for all the relevant APIs and tools for managing a system, and systemd just be one implementation of that spec? Actually, it could be a suite of specs, so people could pick and choose which ones solve their problems, and build alternatives for others.
havaze 12y ago
> What is that killer feature that Arch offers, apart from being rolling release? Apart from that its pacman, just sick of the apt-get madness. And generally having far less default crap on you system.
- b6fan 12y ago
  Yeah. pacman is a killer feature. I always install pacapt [1] before dealing packages elsewhere. [1] https://github.com/icy/pacapt https://github.com/icy/pacapt
- anonbanker 12y ago
  Arch's killer feature, in my mind, is the Arch User Repository[1]. If the package isn't included in Arch's binary repos, the "yaourt" command will build the package (often from git) via a user-contributed script. You can set the make options to Gentoo's suggested -march for your CPU, and build really optimized packages. I'm experiencing <5 second boot times, lower RAM usage, and snappier WINE/WineASIO performance. Before installing Arch, I was a die-hard Kubuntu/KXstudio[2] user. Now I have the ability to build all the KXstudio packages from git (Cadence, Carla, and Claudia make JACK the greatest thing ever), without all the Ubuntu/Debian cruft underneath. Another benefit (post-snowden) is that Arch is not an incorporated entity in any of the "Five Eyes" countries. Julian Assange has come out to publicly state knowledge of intentional flaws being added to both Open Source/Free Software projects, and specifically namedrops Debian as compromised. The threat vectors one should analyze are which governments would have access to which corporations. RedHat is a registered corporation in Delaware, USA. Canonical is registered in City of London. If one pays attention to Moxie Marlinspike's convergence demo at DEFCON 19, you can see how it'd be trivial for a government agency such as GCHQ/CCSE/NSA to spoof Canonical's or RedHat's SSL certificates. Gentoo and Arch have no corporate influences, and thus are the only relatively safe Linux distributions left, IMO. So, AUR, Advanced customization, and potentially increased security are bigger reasons, for me, to switch to Arch than pacman. 1. http://aur.archlinux.org http://aur.archlinux.org 2. http://kxstudio.sourceforge.net http://kxstudio.sourceforge.net

zokier 12y ago

> What is that killer feature that Arch offers, apart from being rolling release? Like being good solid rolling release distro is not good enough? Frankly I prefer my distros to be free of any "killer features".

cursork 12y ago
It's Wiki is pretty killer. That may not sound like much, but it's pretty awesome. I use it as a reference on a few things even when dealing with other Linux distros. e.g. The page on SSH basically starts with how to restrict users who can log in and disabling root. https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Secure_Shell https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Secure_Shell Haven't used Arch in a while - not dealt with a non-company Linux box for a while. But it remains my go-to Linux (for development purposes) for good reasons.
- mitosis 12y ago
  Seconding this: the killer app of Arch Linux is its community support.

nvarsj 12y ago

For me, systemd on Arch reduced my boot time from 45s or so to pretty-much-instant-on. Which is pretty damn nice for a distro where one tends to reboot a lot. > I mean what's the point installing Arch if there is no very elegant and beautiful rc.conf? rc.conf removal had nothing to do with systemd, I think. And was removed prior. > What is that killer feature that Arch offers, apart from being rolling release? Vanilla upstream packages.

chronid 12y ago
rc.conf was removed in Archlinux as a final step of the path to systemd and became obsolete when sysvinit became obsolete, not prior.
- km3k 12y ago
  The removal of rc.conf was the final step, but they had been dismantling rc.conf piece by piece for years prior, even before systemd was released. When I first used Arch in 2006, rc.conf held a lot of configuration. From what I understand, it held even more configuration options prior to that. Since that time and until the removal of rc.conf, there was a steady removal of features from rc.conf.
DanBC 12y ago
It was possible to have < 5 second boot times in 2008 https://lwn.net/Articles/299483/ https://lwn.net/Articles/299483/ I'd be interested to know if the systemd boot process (which can be 2 seconds or quicker) has enough advantages to make the other changes worth it.
- kbenson 12y ago
  See this prior NH submission [1], and inthe G+ post he mentions fairly early on why it's important to be very quick in the boot process, and how DHCP figures into that. (TL;DR using VM containers that can normally boot within 100 ms, getting the DHCP server to respond within 50 ms means on-demand container spin-up for a specific request is possible) [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7510660 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7510660

pavanky 12y ago

I keep hearing bullshit about how systemd broke archlinux. But for the vast majority of us it did not. I had atleast 3 machines running ArchLinux at that point and had very little trouble porting all of them. Anecdotal evidence can be dismissed by anecdotal evidence -- A variation of Hitches' razor

binaryapparatus 12y ago
Then let me try to explain again: Switching to systemd broke _my_ entire Arch _experience_. Before systemd I knew exactly what gets executed, when and why -- which is exact reason why I switched to Arch many years ago. I don't know the same thing after systemd introduction.
- hellerbarde 12y ago
  I understand what you mean. I had the same awe when I first started on Arch and really got to know all the bits and pieces. When I transitioned to systemd, I had to go through that again. It was actually very similar to what I did the first time around and I suggest you give it a shot too. systemd, while seemingly monolithic is actually a really cool suite of tools. The thing we need to keep in mind is that it's _not_ sysvinit, and it's not trying to be. It's trying to be a project that does more than that and does it transparently on all systems. You might like it :) As a general point for everyone: Just because it's _also_ an init system doesn't mean it's not allowed to provide the binaries for doing a whole lot of other stuff. :)
  - vertex-four 12y ago
    The problem is that it's a suite of tools that are all developed under the same umbrella, by the same people, with the same ideas, and the same gatekeepers. It's rather difficult to fully replace parts of it, especially as the formal API to it is defined by systemd, and we're seeing more and more tools integrate with all that. Why can't we have an independent organisation that defines a spec for all the relevant APIs and tools for managing a system, and systemd just be one implementation of that spec? Actually, it could be a suite of specs, so people could pick and choose which ones solve their problems, and build alternatives for others.

havaze 12y ago

> What is that killer feature that Arch offers, apart from being rolling release? Apart from that its pacman, just sick of the apt-get madness. And generally having far less default crap on you system.

b6fan 12y ago
Yeah. pacman is a killer feature. I always install pacapt [1] before dealing packages elsewhere. [1] https://github.com/icy/pacapt https://github.com/icy/pacapt
anonbanker 12y ago
Arch's killer feature, in my mind, is the Arch User Repository[1]. If the package isn't included in Arch's binary repos, the "yaourt" command will build the package (often from git) via a user-contributed script. You can set the make options to Gentoo's suggested -march for your CPU, and build really optimized packages. I'm experiencing <5 second boot times, lower RAM usage, and snappier WINE/WineASIO performance. Before installing Arch, I was a die-hard Kubuntu/KXstudio[2] user. Now I have the ability to build all the KXstudio packages from git (Cadence, Carla, and Claudia make JACK the greatest thing ever), without all the Ubuntu/Debian cruft underneath. Another benefit (post-snowden) is that Arch is not an incorporated entity in any of the "Five Eyes" countries. Julian Assange has come out to publicly state knowledge of intentional flaws being added to both Open Source/Free Software projects, and specifically namedrops Debian as compromised. The threat vectors one should analyze are which governments would have access to which corporations. RedHat is a registered corporation in Delaware, USA. Canonical is registered in City of London. If one pays attention to Moxie Marlinspike's convergence demo at DEFCON 19, you can see how it'd be trivial for a government agency such as GCHQ/CCSE/NSA to spoof Canonical's or RedHat's SSL certificates. Gentoo and Arch have no corporate influences, and thus are the only relatively safe Linux distributions left, IMO. So, AUR, Advanced customization, and potentially increased security are bigger reasons, for me, to switch to Arch than pacman. 1. http://aur.archlinux.org http://aur.archlinux.org 2. http://kxstudio.sourceforge.net http://kxstudio.sourceforge.net