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Arch has been pretty reliable and straightforward for me, but I wish it had a set of packages you could install to get a full-featured desktop. A curated set th
by Gracana 12y ago
Arch has been pretty reliable and straightforward for me, but I wish it had a set of packages you could install to get a full-featured desktop. A curated set that included a DE and fonts and programs, or something. I like arch's install process for weird systems where configuring disks and networking would be difficult in most other distros, but once that's done I want to move back to easy street. I don't want to have to customize everything.
Maybe something like that already exists? I can't be the only person who has this "wants custom X but generic Y" problem.
- aaron-lebo 12y agoI think Antergos is a bit like what you are asking for. Such an approach is usually looked down upon in the Arch community. I hate that it is. I love Arch. I love the package system, I love the wiki, I love everything about it. What I don't love is redoing everything each time I have a fresh install. Yeah, it probably takes 10 minutes to get a working system up and a day to get everything as I want it, but I hate just knowing I have to do it all again. I really want a distro based on Arch which gets over those fears. Again, Antergos probably fits and papyros.io looks really interesting, too.
- nextos 12y agoWhy don't you script the Arch install process and save the dot files. Then it's a 2-minute process.
- Gracana 12y ago> Such an approach is usually looked down upon in the Arch community. That's really too bad, because I think a method for sharing curated sets would be great. Maybe the problem isn't so much that sets would be bad, but that it might cause people's expectations of arch to change. Like, if you do everything yourself and it breaks, it's your fault, but if the system does it for you and it breaks, now it's arch's/the maintainer's fault. I don't know if that would happen, but it seems like there might be some danger of a cultural shift. Anyway, Antergos... It looks like it uses Ubiquity to install, so I'm not sure it seems any better than anything else I've tried, but I'm only just starting to check it out so maybe there's more to it. [edit] oh, duh, I see now that Antergos is arch-based. It looks nice. I'll have to see what the text-based installer is like.
- hsitz 12y agoI think Manjaro is actually the most popular distro based on Arch. Has versions with XFCE or KDE pre-installed, and has packages for many others (Cinnamon, Enlightenment, Fluxbox, Gnome, LXDE, LXQT, MATE, etc). Main difference from Arch is that it maintains its own repositories and adds Arch updates only after they're deemed reliable. (Although if you'd prefer to use Arch repositories I think you can install Manjaro and convert it into plain Arch system.) A couple others that I believe use Arch repos and rolling-release updates directly: ArchBang (Open Box wm): http://www.wiki.archbang.org/index.php?title=Main_Page http://www.wiki.archbang.org/index.php?title=Main_Page Bridge Linux (Gnome, KDE, XFCE) http://sourceforge.net/projects/bridgelinux/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/bridgelinux/ There's list of all the Arch-based distros here: http://distrowatch.com/search.php?basedon=Arch http://distrowatch.com/search.php?basedon=Arch
- FusionGaming 12y agoYou can try evo/lution installer. I've used it and it lets you install the basic arch OS and then lets you choose a DE which it configures for you. It also install basic things such as a login manager and network manager. It also gives you a vanilla arch install.
- auxym 12y agoThere's a few distros out there that are based on arch but come with well set up desktops. I've had a good experience with manjaro.