
Arch Linux: Myth and Reality (2015) - type0
http://www.catchlinux.com/arch-linux-myth/
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jkot
I find this post sort of like "I want Arch to turn into Ubuntu".

Arch is easier to use than Gentoo, LFS or Rawhide Fedora.

The Arch Wiki is pretty useful even for non-Arch users. Try to install Linux
on some new or exotic hardware, Arch is very likely to be first at search
results.

And it is elite, since it is more likely to be used by linux or OS developers
(some way as fedora etc)..

Anyway, I think better way to learn Unix is FreeBSD (better documentation).
And my main system is Ubuntu :-)

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snuxoll
> The Arch wiki is pretty useful even for non-Arch users. Try to install Linux
> on some new or exotic hardware, Arch is very likely to be first on search
> result.

Yup, especially on new laptops. When I first got my XPS 13 the arch wiki had a
bunch of useful information on what I needed to do to get the hardware to work
correctly before the next Fedora release supported it. Built a patched kernel
package and off to the races I went.

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digler999
I just gave up today trying to install arch on my new-ish '13 laptop because
of a UEFI debacle. The instructions were _not clear_ about how to install the
bootloader and UEFI partition.

At one point it says make a fat32 partition, but after that it never says what
to do with it, or where to mount it. The instructions don't go in series, each
section is its own novel, with branches at each level.

earlier, it says "pick one of these 3 UEFI bootloaders" but never follows up
with how to make each one work.

I'm in no way whatsoever afraid of the command line (I run ubuntu every day ),
but man I wish it had a graphical or at least curses-based installer. linux
mint installs in under 3 minutes, including UEFI and full-disk encryption.

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Comkid
I definitely agree the articles related to bootloaders can be very hard to
read

If you want to use GRUB and UEFI, my recommendation is follow the headings up
until the end of Installation

[https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GRUB#UEFI_systems](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GRUB#UEFI_systems)

Then you just need to generate the config

[https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GRUB#Generate_the_main_...](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GRUB#Generate_the_main_configuration_file)

The partition you're referring to is explained here

[https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/EFI_System_Partition](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/EFI_System_Partition)

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agumonkey
Every time I try to justify arch as my daily driver I fail to explain it other
than that arch stood the test of time. All other distros got me installing
something else, arch sits at the sweet spot between unmanaged and managed.

Thanks again to the creators and maintainers. Much meant.

~~~
jryan49
Yup. Over the years, compared to other distos, "it just works" for me as well.
Even thought I spend maybe 10 mins a week doing updates, I always feel like
that it was time well spent.

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nextos
Google Cache:

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:A1Qpn8W...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:A1Qpn8WoSEMJ:www.catchlinux.com/arch-
linux-myth/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk&client=firefox-b)

~~~
nextos
As an Arch user, I agree with some of his points regarding the community. In
particular, the attitude of some Arch users annoys me as they think all other
distributions are inferior.

Arch is great. It's a local minima. It's the closest thing to LFS with
binaries done right. I think _minimal_ binaries are a key thing of Arch. They
get rid of a lot of complexity. By avoiding heavy patched packages, I've found
Arch much easier to debug and maintain.

But IMHO NixOS/GuixSD are the future as they tackle a big set of issues most
distros ignore. Namely making sysadmin transactional and reproducible. Perhaps
they're not ready for prime time yet, though.

~~~
lomnakkus
> In particular, the attitude of some Arch users annoys me as they think all
> other distributions are inferior.

Well, they _are_... if you want _rolling releases_ that are _very_ up-to-date.

(That not to say there aren't valid reasons _not_ to want a RR distro.)

> But IMHO NixOS/GuixSD are the future as they tackle a big set of issues most
> distros ignore. Namely making sysadmin transactional and reproducible.
> Perhaps they're not ready for prime time yet, though.

Agreed, but it _really_ depends on whether NixOS/GuixSD can get enough
packagers (people) to get close enough to Arch Linux in terms of
"recentness"... so that people would actually start to adopt these distros.

Ideally, I'd want one of this type of distro, but in practice Arch Linux is
just ridiculously more current for everything I care about. (I know that I
should probably volunteer as a packager, but I just don't have the time or
motiviation to do the "make-work" that most of packager life is.)

~~~
nextos
Last time I checked Nix & Guix repos were really up to date.

It's also much easier to package stuff than in Arch. So easy a user that is
savvy enough to use either distribution can commit missing packages with
minimal work. But they have plenty of stuff.

Admittedly, a problem they have is that it's hard for them to package things
with minimal dependencies, something Arch is particularly good at, but this is
being worked out with multiple package outputs.

~~~
lomnakkus
> It's also much easier to package stuff than in Arch. So easy a user that is
> savvy enough to use either distribution can commit missing packages with
> minimal work. But they have plenty of stuff.

It's not that they don't have plenty of stuff -- it's that _when I last tried_
they didn't have the stuff that _I_ want.

(Incidentally, I think the Nix approach kind of retards adoption of "new
things" because it lets old stuff "just keep working" despite old
dependencies. I'm sure what the security implications are, but I _think_ they
might be quite severe. However, this is just an aside.)

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digi_owl
Frankly as i grow older i am getting more and more tired of the magpie-like
chase of new and shiny in tech. I want my stuff to work tomorrow like it did
today, thank you very much.

Frankly if bridges were built like software/firmware is built, they would be
blown up and rebuilt every 6 months. Good luck getting that past the planning
department, much less the public.

That is basically why people do not update, because they worry that their
workflow will be more disrupted by a changes to the tech they use daily than
some potential security breach.

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drdaeman
Don't see any issue with generally mentioning Arch together with Mint or
Fedora or Debian or CentOS. Heck, they're all in the DistroWatch's TOP10, and
they are all very alike (sure, some pieces are quite different - but, I'd say,
the big image isn't much). Unless the choice is specifically locked down to
"Mint or Fedora", of course.

But if every $distro user author meets, tends to _inappropriately_ put "I use
$distro[1]" in Linux-related conversation, then there's something not right
not exactly with the $distro but with the company the author's in. Don't want
to offend anyone, but that's feels a lot like neophyte-like behavior, when
everything's so new and shiny, and every difference is overwhelming.

[1] Arch's by no means unique or outstanding here.

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jryan49
Around 2000, I used to distro hop every 6 months. Around 2005 I found Arch,
and it stopped my distro hopping to this day. It was a painful road however.
Lots of hours put in figuring out how everything (and I mean everything)
works. In the end, it's the most stable OS I use, even though it's rolling
release. Right now I have 5 machines running it. It basically forces
competency, and I'm totally responsible for everything. Obviously this does
not appeal to most people. I feel that Arch is purely a power user distro.

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cataphract
I have arch on two machines and I must say that I kind of regret it at this
point. Every update it's a coin toss whether there'll be a regression in
_some_ package and pacman seems very limited as a package manager. It
basically gives up on conflicts -- there is no sophisticated automated
conflict resolution like in aptitude and no way to powerful way to do pinning
like with apt_preferences.

~~~
anbotero
Interesting. I liked Arch at home, but I could never really use it. I would
end up going back to Windows for gaming.

Anyways, three-and-half years ago at work I got the chance to install Arch.
Three years later, the _only_ issue I ever had with wildly doing 'pacman -Syu'
was GRUB, which got screwed at some point. I got scared back then, but I had
the Live USB dongle to the rescue and I could access Arch own wiki with my
phone. Anyways, I could quickly solve the problem.

Six months ago I did the install from scratch, and this time I have yet to
face any issues with package installation/upgrade/dependency resolution. Even
AUR packages sometimes if they fail you just have to make small adjustments to
the PKGBUILD file and be done with it.

It’d be nice to know what kind of packages you’ve been having issues with: at
work I deal mostly with Ruby, Erlang, and database engines. As for other
packages, Synaptics input and... probably that’s what. Also, whatever
dependencies Awesome WM and fish shell require.

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veddox
I did a few Arch installs two years ago to try it out. I loved the experience,
it really did teach me tons and gave me a beautifully minimalistic system with
me in control - and yet I ended up going back to Ubuntu. I found that I valued
the community too much to leave, and on the whole I appreciated having a
system that just worked (well, most of the time) rather than having to spend
hours taking care of the OS. I might give Arch another shot some time, maybe
give it a chance and stick with it a bit longer. But for now I'm quite happy
in the Ubuntu universe :-)

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justinsaccount
I kinda want a arch-to-gentoo browser extension.

