Is Arch Linux for you?

[ratcheer]

I used Arch Linux for a long time. In general, I liked it very much, but I finally gave up on it a couple of months ago for several reasons.

I couldn't get it to handle my multi-device btrfs filesystem, properly. Yes, I followed the wiki instructions to load the btrfs scan hook. But it always failed to mount during boot-up; I would have to mount it manually, then boot would proceed to completion. Neither Ubuntu, Sabayon, nor Debian had this problem.

I don't like systemd. That's all I'm going to say about that.

There were continual upgrade glitches (by continual, I mean something every week or two). You have to read their news before upgrading every day, or you may get into some situation that is hard to work back out of. Other distros seem to handle these things better.

I settled on Siduction Linux, which is based on Debian sid. It is also a rolling release and in many ways is even more leading edge than Arch. It handles btrfs perfectly. Daily upgrades are much smoother. And it still uses SysV init. I'm sure it's not perfect for everyone, but it is the best I have found for me, so far. I have just about quit distro hopping.

Tim

[pkadeel]

nope. definitely not for an End User (not an End Admin) like me.

[Pogeymanz]

Thanks for the prompt reply, this is the exact smb.conf file I use with my Chakra which also has kde-network installed, try as I might, the kde shares don't stick, also my Ubuntu machines can't access the files in Chakra Arch machines although the Chakra can access all shared files in the Ubuntu machines. Do I need to change the permissions of the home folder?

I believe so, yes. I changed my /home/shared folder's permissions to 777 (read+write+execute for everyone).

[Linuxisfast]

I believe so, yes. I changed my /home/shared folder's permissions to 777 (read+write+execute for everyone).

I will give that a try then, thanks.

[mamamia88]

Hi!
I just finally installed Arch Linux... After a year of decisions, I finally did it! After installing it on VM, where all looks gorgeous, a few times, I decided it! I removed Fedora, which I installed this week-end (poor Fedora), and I took 4 hours installing, configuring, doing other stuff and doing homework with it.
It's very nice to see that you can install a system without a graphical interface, and install a DE later (such as XFCE, as I did). But... according to the KISS definition, Arch has nothing. I thought it wasn't a problem, as you can just do pacman -S packagename and install something, like pacman -S firefox. But... Not only happened with applications, of course. I stayed... 2 hours of those 4 to configure the WiFi network and doing odd scripts for systemd, and discovering that neither NetworkManager nor Wicd worked, I saw another problem... The sound, how the hell I configure the sound. And the printer. And the multimedia keys. And all!
It's not a problem if you have a lot of time, and it's very... educational, I probably learnt more this afternoon that in the last month. But I don't have a lot of time, and I can't just... doing configure things all the time, I have work to do!
So, for me, I think it's not for me! I like its KISS philosophy, and specially the rolling release, but I preffer more things out-of-the-box. I like it, and I'll keep it on my sda8 partition (thanks to god I divided a 30GB partition where Fedora was into 2 15GB partitions) and I'll install some other thing in the other. And, of course, I'll keep Ubuntu 12.04 as my main system
What about you? Have you tried Arch? Did you like it?

sound worked out of the box for me. i feel your pain on network manager. i gave up and used netcfg. works great. once you get the hang of it it's really not that difficult. yest it can be time consuming but once you know exactly what you want it's easy. what i did was make a list of everything i needed to install after install. once install was done i typed pacman -S list of items and took my dog on a walk. when i got home it was done. Then after that all i had to do was copy .xinitrc to my home folder and uncomment the xfce line and configure slim then enable slim.service and reboot.

[kevinmchapman]

Linux has been around for over 20 years,one should not have to wrestle for hours to make a Distro install and work. If it takes that then it's simply unacceptable.

A bit like the arguments over Unity, no-one is forcing anyone else. Arch is there for those of us who want the extra control. Others pick Debian or Slackware for similar, but not quite the same, reasons. I believe several pages ago there was a list of those it was not aimed at...

There, I said all that without even mentioning some of the install horror stories I see on this forum

[snowpine]

It takes (average) a couple of hours to install Arch.
Maybe it only takes 20 minutes to install Ubuntu, but then a lot of users spend a couple of hours installing a whole bunch of PPA's to get the latest software that Arch would have given them by default, then troubleshooting malformed entries in their /etc/apt/sources.list (one of the most frequently-asked questions here on these forums).

[Pogeymanz]

It takes (average) a couple of hours to install Arch.
Maybe it only takes 20 minutes to install Ubuntu, but then a lot of users spend a couple of hours installing a whole bunch of PPA's to get the latest software that Arch would have given them by default, then troubleshooting malformed entries in their /etc/apt/sources.list (one of the most frequently-asked questions here on these forums).

True. How many of us really just install an OS and leave it completely default anyway?

It would take me hours to set up a Windows or OSX machine too. I have to install the things I want, uninstall the things I don't want (if I can), change where the dock is in OSX, put words back in the taskbar in Win7, change all the sizes of everything in Windows, put the classic theme back, etc.

There are several videos on youtube of people installing Arch in five minutes. The install time doesn't matter. Unless something goes wrong, it probably takes close to the same amount of time for me to fully set up Arch or Ubuntu.

[mamamia88]

Linux has been around for over 20 years,one should not have to wrestle for hours to make a Distro install and work. If it takes that then it's simply unacceptable.

it took me about 2 hours to get everything up and working and it was super easy because of a well written wiki page. most of that time was downloading packages. how to install arch 1. partition with gparted live. mkdir /mnt/whatever that isn't root partition. mount partitions, pacstrap base system, chroot into system and configure simple files,install bootloader, reboot,pacman -S everything you need (make a list),go take a shower,cp /etc/skel/.xinitrc /home/user,nano /home/user/.xinitrc and uncomment your DE, systemctl enable slim.service,reboot, login and enjoy. sounds complicated but it isn't.

[Bart_D]

.....There are several videos on youtube of people installing Arch in five minutes. The install time doesn't matter. Unless something goes wrong, it probably takes close to the same amount of time for me to fully set up Arch or Ubuntu.

From my experience with installing Arch, once I figured out all the steps/problems, the installation time was not a problem. Installation was a breeze after that because I had memorized the steps from having to re-start the procedure so many times due to numerous errors/problems along the way. But with Ubuntu, I would have been able to do it the first time and get it right the first time...and the time required would have been a fraction of that for Arch. That's the difference.

A bit like the arguments over Unity, no-one is forcing anyone else. Arch is there for those of us who want the extra control.....

Yeah, but with that comes a hefty price in terms of more-frequent breakage. If you are a hobbyist and like fixing things all the time, then the extra control is worth it. If not, then I'm sorry but it just isn't.....and you know it.

This is, quite frankly, what a lot of* Arch users don't get when they say that the high degree of customizability is what makes Arch so great.......it might, for them, but not for the vast majority. Such a shame that this gets lost in the discussion, almost always.

* though not all