Arch Linux Talk

[manmower]

More news from the Arch front.

Forthcoming releases will be numbered by year and month and, more importantly, from now on there will be new ISOs with each kernel upgrade!

[celsofaf]

Originally Posted by manmower More news from the Arch front. Forthcoming releases will be numbered by year and month and, more importantly, from now on there will be new ISOs with each kernel upgrade!

I keep wondering why they took so long to do it. Since bringing new "features" never is in Arch's plans, and since every release is only in fact a current snapshot of -current- (with perhaps improvements in the installer), this is the most obvious thing to do. Great news!!

[darweth]

So after 3 1/3 months of Ubuntu goodness (my first Linux experience), I decided to once again go a little overboard and completely wipe my Ubuntu partition to install Arch! COLD TURKEY, baby! This is what I did from Windows to Ubuntu as well.

Now... first off let me say that I think Arch is great. It was pretty easy to get into once I learned a few pointers. My GNOME Arch is now basically identical to the Ubuntu GNOME and I am mad comfortable. Got all my xchat/amarok scripts, file-roller context menus, software, configurations, etc. I appreciate the snappyness of it, but I think this is a bit exaggerated. It is faster than Ubuntu, for sure, but it is hardly a deal broker. I really like that I installed the base and built upwards so my menus look slim and are filled with only the goodies I want. Nice!

Anyway, it was a great learning experience. I now got a perfect GNOME box for what I do. I even tried kdemod for a bit and it was not bad, but I definitely am not experienced with that DE.

I am a little underwhelmed though. I guess I am just too basic of a user to really appreciate the advantages of Arch. Rolling is a nice benefit, but I guess I strongly overrated this option. Constantly needing the latest is far from a necessity. For your average Joe who just surfs the web, types papers, listens to music and chats... I will continue to HEAVILY recommend Ubuntu. It is fine and dandy. It just works!! The speed of other distros like Arch is greatly overstated (though it is a bit faster).

Maybe my thoughts will change as I use Ubuntu for more than a day. hehe. Don't get me wrong... I am loving it, but I just don't see the point for most users. Only an advanced power user needs the power offered here in this kind of environment. But now that it is configured, I will probably keep Arch on this box for all time as long as packages are maintained and the distro continues receiving great support. I might just stick with Ubuntu on any future boxes though.

[pelle.k]

It is faster than Ubuntu, for sure, but it is hardly a deal broker.

I don't think that has ever been the one selling of arch linux. If you've tried arch linux, and the speed is the only thing that impressed you, i say you've missed what really make arch linux so great.
ABS, makepkg/makeworld, the initscripts/system, pacman, more than one kernel flavour in repos, very nice and competent forum, the AUR, the KISS attitude etc. etc. is.

Then again, if you're not an advanced user, you might not appreciate these things at all.

I like the fact that it's a bit faster than most distros out there though.

[celsofaf]

Originally Posted by pelle.k Then again, if you're not an advanced user, you might not appreciate these things at all.

Well, I don't think myself as an advanced user, yet I do appreciate every feature you described about Arch. Besides, I'm coming to a conclusion: if you want to become an "advanced user", Arch (but not only Arch, of course) suits your needs.

Did I have a hard time configuring/using Arch? No. Why? Everything you need is available on the forum (not only Arch's forum, of course), the wiki, google, mailing lists... Just search, and ask!, and you're fine.

[darweth]

Originally Posted by pelle.k I don't think that has ever been the one selling of arch linux. If you've tried arch linux, and the speed is the only thing that impressed you, i say you've missed what really make arch linux so great. ABS, makepkg/makeworld, the initscripts/system, pacman, more than one kernel flavour in repos, very nice and competent forum, the AUR, the KISS attitude etc. etc. is. Then again, if you're not an advanced user, you might not appreciate these things at all. I like the fact that it's a bit faster than most distros out there though.

Ah. Sorry if I sounded a little harsh. I guess the differences and advantages aren't immediately obvious to someone who has almost-exclusively used Ubuntu or to someone who just wants convenience and immediate function.

I did use the AUR for the first time this morning and it was a pleasure. Also been reading about yaourt which looks to make things even easier. Haven't tried it yet!

But I will continue to use ARCH and hopefully grow with the distro. Then I will look back on my original post in this thread with shock and befuddlement!

[pelle.k]

Then I will look back on my original post in this thread with shock and befuddlement!

Since some time back, i've been running arch most of the time. This does not mean i think ubuntu is a bad distro! If you ride with the defaults most of the time, and don't do any big changes under the hood, ubuntu is great. However, when you want to customize your system from the ground up, you'll do yourself a favour if you choose arch.

There are countless examples, but like back when the ndiswrapper version i got with dapper didn't work with my usb dongle, i could easily build another set (as a package) in arch. I just had to make _one_ change in a PKGBUILD. Hell, i could even rebuild my whole kde without too much effort.

Another nice side effect is you learn what is started in your DAEMONS array in rc.conf, because you _have_ to know what it is you're putting there...
Before i started using arch i didn't know that alsa initscipt was responsible for saving/restoring volume levels at bootup/shutdown. little things like that.

[K.Mandla]

Has anyone run into weird errors with yaourt 0.6.5 and pacman 3? yaourt seems to spit out an error message anytime I try to install something from AUR. I think it's using a flag (a -w flag?) that pacman 3 doesn't handle. I looked on the Arch forums but didn't see anything related.

It doesn't slow me down really, since I just tell yaourt to move everything into /var/abs/local and build it with makepkg. I was just thinking I might be doing something funky that I could fix on my end.

Cheers!

[Rumor]

Huh, what do you know? I had not tried yaourt since upgrading to pacman 3.0. I read your message here and thought I'd give it a try. I tried to install Mozilla's Sunbird from the AUR and got:

==> sunbird dependencies:
 - libstdc++5 (already installed)
 - nss (already installed)
 - libxt (already installed)
 - libgnomeui (already installed)

==>  Edit the PKGBUILD ? [y/N] ("A" to abort)
==>  ----------------------------------------------
==> 
==> Building and installing package
/usr/bin/makepkg: illegal option -- w
makepkg version 3.0.0

Not terribly helpful to you, but at least you now know it is not just you. Yaourt version 0.6.5

[Rumor]

I just upgraded yaourt to version 0.7.5 from this thread: http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=25718&p=3 and Sunbird installed and runs.

==>  Continue installing 'sunbird'? [Y/n] 
==>   ----------------------------------------------
==>
loading package data... done.
checking dependencies... done.
cleaning up... done.
(1/1) installing sunbird           [###################################] 100%
If you like this package, please install aurvote
and vote for its inclusion/keeping in [community]

All I did to install the new yaourt was to replace the yaourt and pacdiffviewer files from the archive into /usr/bin (after renaming the ones that were being replaced)

Maybe it will work for you too?