Is Arch Linux for you?

[COMECON]

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?

[Tibuda]

I have been an Arch users for years, and yes I feel your pain.

A bare minimal system is not an "advantage" of Arch, as you can do the same thing with ubuntu minimal disk. Their real advantage is the rolling release packages. They are not even too lightweight, as pacman packages are very bloated.

I'd like Arch to have some pre-installed DE's or WM's isos, but they are going the opposite way and dropped AIF! There are some nice projects for a preinstalled Arch like Chakra, ArchBang and Manjaro.

[Chdslv]

I have been an Arch users for years, and yes I feel your pain.

A bare minimal system is not an "advantage" of Arch, as you can do the same thing with ubuntu minimal disk. Their real advantage is the rolling release packages. They are not even too lightweight, as pacman packages are very bloated.

I'd like Arch to have some pre-installed DE's or WM's isos, but they are going the opposite way and dropped AIF! There are some nice projects for a preinstalled Arch like Chakra, ArchBang and Manjaro.

No, Arch is not for me, when there is a mini.iso from Ubuntu. Arch doesn't even have maintainers for their applications, and the majority of them are not supported community ones. Ubuntu also has ppas, but the Luanchpad is owned and maintained by Cannonical, and very rarely a ppa broke.

Archbang's original developer had also left the project. If you need a working distro derived from Archbang, even though that distro's developer won't say it, try Bridge Linux.

Arch is an operating system, not a distribution. It becomes a distribution, when you install the base and work your day and nerves with it.

I have built it from scratch, just to find out how it works, and whether it is that super. it works, but it breaks too. For the last 5 months, the Arch devs had released it five times. There is something definitely wrong with their top guys and repos.

When you can do anything with the Ubuntu mini.iso, why bother with unsure future OSs...

Even, if you take any Oneiric, Precise based Ubuntu-clone, or even further down Natty-based, you can bring it all the way to Raring and have a rolling distro!

Check my other posts.

Good day!

[MadmanRB]

Well if I ever become a computer super coder it might be.
Seriously I think arch is needlessly complex to install, you have to read so much, print so much and learn so much just to install a base system, man if I wanted this kind of complexity I would try linux from scratch.
And at least linux for scratch has an excuse, its purpose is right in the title for petes sake, its a hard coders distribution.
And for those who may say "well you are just too stupid"
No, I am just lazy, I have better things to do then hardcode in hexidecimal just to install just a basic windowed interface.
Heck I did install debian pure more then once, the only reason why I dont use it on a constant basis is again all down to personal laziness.

[Linuxisfast]

Unlike in Ubuntu where Samba is a breeze, a matter of simple right click and tick share, for all my best efforts I can't get Samba work in Arch or its variants Chakra and Manjaro.

[lykwydchykyn]

No, I am just lazy, I have better things to do then hardcode in hexidecimal just to install just a basic windowed interface.

I don't remember having to hardcode in hexadecimal to do anything in arch. Mostly it was just running some pacman commands.

Arch is interesting, I give it a spin every year or so to remind myself why I never switched to it. I guess I never saw that much compelling about it, and I eventually messed up the system to where it couldn't be updated.

[mips]

I reckon Arch is awesome, if you are new to it you are probably gonna struggle a bit and take some time to setup a system. Once you know it setting up a system is pretty fast (well relatively speaking). Their wiki documentation is second to none and I even use it when using other distros (same goes for gentoo).

I no longer use Arch though reason being the frequent updates which eat into my limited data plan.

So along came Manjaro which is Arch but with more stable repos and less frequent updates. They take the Arch stable repos and move them to Manjaro testing repos, only after a while of testing etc do they move their testing to stable. I still however do a netinstall with Manjaro as I prefer building my own system but for those that don't you can download their full distro iso images. Their main focus is on XFCE but they also have Gnome, KDE & LXDE versions.

Arch, Slackware, Gentoo etc is not for everybody, use what works for you and what you are comfortable with

[viper250]

i installed cinnarch on my test machine successfully and its the first version i have had any luck with as far as installation issues
its a lovely os and does everything but dvd playback.
i will investigate it later to get the proper codec info

[ratcheer]

its a lovely os and does everything but dvd playback.
i will investigate it later to get the proper codec info

Most likely, you just need to find and install libdvdcss2.

Tim

[LinuxMan92]

I've never been that impressed with it. It lets you set up everything from scratch but finding drivers can be a pain. To me the trade off between speed/time it takes to set everything up isn't worth it.