
On switching to Arch Linux - mcrittenden
http://mikethecoder.com/post/16562751962/on-switching-to-arch-linux
======
agentultra
I've been using Arch for about three years now and can't imagine using another
distro.

The install phase is a pain if you want to get a full-blown plug-and-play
ready-to-go desktop experience that rivals Ubuntu, OS X, or Windows.

It's actually really easy if you just want a bare-bones system that boots into
a shell and doesn't install any packages other than what it needs to do just
that.

Switch to Arch if you're a minimalist.

My rig only runs Stumpwm on Xorg. I only use xterm, emacs, and the usual GNU
toolchain. A couple of interpreters. I have installed GTK so I can use Firefox
(and so I can hack on Firefox), but nothing else. I don't have a crap load of
applications running in the background waiting to notify me of crap I don't
care about or services that I never use. I know exactly what runs on my system
and it does no more than that and no less.

I think Arch fills a very nice niche and I'm so happy it exists.

~~~
SkyMarshal
I appreciate the minimalist philosophy, and Arch is on my todo list (it's even
got a vm allocated). However, I seemed to have evolved into a more dual-
pronged strategy - Full featured Ubuntu desktop, with relatively stripped down
Ubuntu/Cent/OpenSUSE servers running in VMs.

For my desktop, I still value 'just works' over minimalism. Things like
Spotify just work out of the box. And any software I may want to play with in
the future that has to choose which distro to target will most likely target
Ubuntu and Fedora first.

Also, the Debian repo is extensive, and the Ubuntu PPA system almost always
compensates for when the Debian package is too outdated.

I also like where Ubuntu is going with the UI/UX. At first I hated the idea of
the sidebar, but after trying it and realizing it autohides and stays out of
your way most of the time, I switched my opinion. And I'm really looking
forward to HUD in 12.04. I've been wanting an integrated Gnome-Do/Synapse for
a long time now.

Finally, I get my minimalism fix where it's most important - on the servers. I
can set up a local dev environment using vm's that mirrors production -
database server on one vm, app server on another vm, and Nginx running on the
desktop and pointing to the app server vm.

It does annoy me to start up htop on the desktop, and compare the plethora of
stuff I see there with what htop on the servers displays. But I just accept it
for now.

Compared to that best-of-both-worlds setup, Arch seems like it would require
more compromises than is worth the time and effort to deal with it. I still
intend to learn it, just because I value things that will help me learn Linux
(or any of my primary tools) better. But I don't see fully making the switch
to Arch.

Thoughts?

~~~
re_todd
Yeah, that's kind of what I do. I run Mint or Ubunutu, then run lightweight
distros via VirtualBox(Lubuntu, Crunchbang, etc.)

~~~
TwinEngine
I'm curious how you enjoy working with virtual machines instead of all native?

This is admittedly my first day of not being just a lurker here, so forgive me
if I shouldn't ask this here, but what is your setup and environment like?

I've considered running VMs for each client I work on, but am unsure if it'd
just be a hassle or not.

~~~
SkyMarshal
As long as your hardware can handle it, it's more than worth it. A few points:

1\. I have a rule - never install server software on my base machine. Servers
and server frameworks (like Rails, Jetty, PostgreSQL, etc.) are only allowed
on server OS's (Ubuntu Server) running in a virtual machine. That keeps a lot
of cruft and extraneous processes out of my base install, while also
quarantining them into easily clonable virtual machines, should I want to
recreate the vm for something. I only break that rule with one thing - I run
Nginx on my host OS, and just point it at different vm appservers.

2\. It helps separate your work for multiple clients. So you could setup three
vm's for client 1 and three for client 2 like so - client1-webserver.vdi,
client1-appserver.vdi, client1-dbserver.vdi; client2-webserver.vdi,
client2-appserver.vdi, client2-dbserver.vdi.

3\. It lets you more accurately simulate the production environment of an
n-tier application locally, so your dev environment will be closer to prod
than if you ran all these server apps directly on your base machine.

Only caveat is you need the hardware to support this. Enough disk space for
multiple ~10GB vm's, enough RAM to hold them in memory, and a CPU with VT-x
(and VT-d if possible) and lots of cores. I particularly like Intel's Sandy
Bridge chips for this, since every core is hyperthreaded, making it appear to
the OS to have twice as many cores as it actually does. Each vm can be
assigned one more more core.

That's about it. Try it with Virtual Box and see what you think.

~~~
TwinEngine
Hm. Interesting. So do you deploy your code to the VM? Or do you edit your
work over an SSH connection and terminal editor?

------
pnathan
I read the article and groaned. My days of "tweak it until it works, just for
fun" are pretty much past me (I'm typing this on a Mac, for instance). I like
to spend my energy creating things these days.

But Arch seems really cool if you want to rebuild Linux systems for fun &
knowledge!

~~~
shaurz
Once you have Arch set up, there is very little tweaking that needs to be
done. It "just works", well unless you have an AMD or NVIDIA graphics card and
a new kernel or xorg comes out which isn't supported yet...

~~~
xentac
I think this is a little disingenuous. The Arch developers do their best to
make sure that nvidia and amd drivers work with new kernels.

Sometimes updated drivers are needed, but not released for months, and the
developers have to make the choice between holding back the kernel update for
that small minority or releasing it to the benefit of everyone not using that
driver.

------
ElliotH
My favorite thing about running on an Arch system is I know what's going on
all the time. If an Ubuntu system breaks I'm generally dealing with a mass of
preinstalled things, it's hard to know what's relevant.

Similarly for increasing boot speed, I really like knowing exactly what I need
to be running at any one time.

I appreciate it's not for everyone, but I imagine most coders around here who
run a Linux system would benefit a lot by taking the time to set up an install
and having it work how they like.

~~~
markokocic
I was running Gentoo before. In Gentoo, you could configure everything up to
the smallest details, and you had the system that worked exactly as you want
it too. The cost was frequent recompiles and a bunch of time lost playing with
the things.

After I swithced to Arch, I found it much easier to configure, and it required
almost no maintenance. It is a great balance between ease of use and full
power.

~~~
ElliotH
Have you found a difference in freshness of packages since you switched? I
really like how in Arch packages tend to be much more up to date than other
distros ( a side effect of the rolling release)

~~~
markokocic
Gentoo had slightly fresher packages (I was running ~x86). But, arch packages
are in principle more stable. I haven't had any major breakage with Arch for a
few years now, while with Gentoo it was a norm to have breakages every month
until I finally switched off.

~~~
Jach
I was under the impression that the situation was reversed. My Gentoo systems
have been very stable because I take many of the masked package guidelines
seriously (of course not all). Meanwhile you have Arch that changed the
default python version to 3 back in October 2010 that hosed a lot of people's
systems. Discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1808840> and my
favorite quote (there are so many great ones though) from the mess:

20:20 <dash> well that confirms my impression that arch was invented by a
bunch of guys who thought gentoo was too stable and easy to use

------
acabal
I wanted to try Arch to see what the fuss was about after I got badly burned
by the Ubuntu 11.10 upgrade. I'm not a Linux newbie by any stretch and I
managed to get it set up in a virtual machine, but when it came time to
install the community package installer, I just couldn't do it. I was no doubt
doing something stupid. But after fiddling with it for half an hour, I sat
back and said to myself, "If I can't even install the installer, what is
maintenance going to be like for anything remotely complicated?"

And that's when I realized that while it's fun to tweak and fiddle, I have
real work to do and doing things like fighting with a package manager and
installing drivers is not very high on my to-do list. I ended up rolling back
to 11.04, which I'll probably stick with for some time.

~~~
elasticdog
I'm curious what you mean by "community package installer"? If you're
referring to Yaourt, that is an unofficial, third-party wrapper script that is
unsupported by the Arch Linux developers and isn't required by any means. It
does add some convenience for building packages from the AUR (Arch User
Repository), but it's much safer to actually examine those PKGBUILDs to make
sure they're sane. You also shouldn't need it for regular community repository
packages, as those can be installed via pacman just fine.

If you do want something from the AUR, are customizing one of the official
packages, or are trying your hand at packaging something else, editing
PKGBUILD files and using makepkg manually is pretty straight forward once
you've done it once or twice.

The community is very helpful and responsive...on the forums, mailing list,
and on IRC. Feel free to stop by if you ever want to give it another shot and
get stuck.

~~~
throwaway64
Just a note, yaourt asks you if you want to examine and edit PKGBUILDs builds
every time it builds a package, I really fail to see what the advantage of
doing all the steps manually is.

~~~
donteflon
Use --noconfirm.

------
bwarp
I like Arch as a whole but I've found that for my purposes it is a time sink
compared to Debian for example.

Debian has lots of sensible well thought out defaults. Arch has lots of
disparate defaults each provided by the package vendor (as they don't
customise packages).

It's not a criticism, but a difference to bear in mind.

~~~
klodolph
That was my experience too. I switched to Debian from Arch a half year ago or
so and I've spent far less time maintaining it; and once I'm used to "the
Debian way" I can navigate new packages without having to think about it. And
updates don't break my system or fail to deploy, and 'python' isn't a symlink
for 'python3.2'.

I also reported a major security vulnerability in the default configuration of
an Arch package but I had to reopen it because the maintainer said something
stupid like "people who install this package should operate on trusted
networks". What?

------
koko775
Those downsides were upsides for me. I _love_ that everything must be
configured on Arch, because I know that _I_ am doing all the configuring. I've
tried to customize Ubuntu's motd, change services to start backgrounded, and
install packages from source in a way that integrates with the packaging
system. Ubuntu likes to get in the way of this in the name of simplicity and
for a casual or even intermediate user, sure, this works. For advanced users
too, depending on your priorities.

Arch is awesome because it's basically FreeBSD-like packaging and something
not unlike FreeBSD's service configuration on a Linux box. Things are in a
predictable place, rather than in /usr/local OR /usr/, and installing source
packages is something that is very customizable and very easy. It yields the
responsibility to be careful about your versions to you, but in doing so gives
you an immense amount of power to be the master of your system.

For minimal systems, where you know what you're doing, it's fantastic. Running
Xorg is a bit of a pain, but I hardly blame Arch, and if something that "just
works" were what I was going for, I wouldn't run Arch. I wouldn't use it on my
MBP, but it's been running great on my home server for quite some time.

------
tibbon
It feels like he's describing installing Linux (any distribution) around
1997-1998. A bit complex, lots of manual setup, etc. Not terrible, and it has
its benefits for sure, but it feels a tad like a step back.

~~~
astrodust
Distributions like this can't be taken seriously. They're for the outcasts of
the neckbeard crowd.

Cynically I suppose that the people involved in making this software aren't
encouraged to improve ease of use because then they couldn't be "helpful" in
the IRC channel used for support.

Is something like this the reason so many open-source projects so vehemently
opposed to usability?

~~~
tammer
Disclaimer: I've been an incredibly happy Arch user for two years now (have it
on all my home systems) which may indicate my bias.

Whether I'm an "outcast" or a "neckbeard" is entirely for others to decide.
What I can tell you is that based on your comment, you simply have never
experienced the joy of building something from scratch.

Rather than defend Arch explicitly, I'd like to use an example.

I like bicycles. I cycle 20 miles daily on my work commute and use my bike as
my only form of transportation for running errands and getting around town.

The most "usable" route of transitioning to a car-free lifestyle would have to
be going to a bike shop and buying one that fits. Now of course there's
nothing wrong with this approach.

However, using this approach, when something goes wrong (as inevitably will
happen with all machines, mechanical or digital) my reaction would most likely
be be to look down at the problem, scratch my head, then walk my ass to the
bike shop.

The approach I prefer is to build my bike from scratch. Acquire the perfect
frame, the ideal wheelset, a rack that saves me some extra grams over what
comes default on most transpo bikes.

Then all the tools.

When something goes wrong with my bike, I know exactly what's wrong. I know
what shortcuts I took, what configuration I chose, and most importantly, I've
got _all the tools necessary to fix the problem._

Further, I know my bike is as fast and efficient as possible (given all
necessary trade offs) because I was able to choose the ideal components.

tl;dr: I use Arch because time spent tinkering is time spent learning and
optimizing. For more info I suggest anyone interested read The Arch Way:
<https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/The_Arch_Way>

~~~
anigbrowl
_However, using this approach, when something goes wrong (as inevitably will
happen with all machines, mechanical or digital) my reaction would most likely
be be to look down at the problem, scratch my head, then walk my ass to the
bike shop._

You could just learn to maintain/repair the store bike, which has after all
been designed to work by someone, and probably does most of the time. I've
ridden bikes for years and only replaced things as they wear. Not that there's
anything wrong with building your bike from scratch, but it's not an automatic
guarantee of superiority.

~~~
haha_rioja__
_You could just learn to maintain/repair the store bike_

Personally, I find Ubuntu like a store-bought bike that uses a bunch of non-
standard parts. You may have a complete tool kit, but you don't have the right
tool for _this_ bike.

Or: when I troubleshoot Ubuntu, I learn Ubuntu. When I troubleshoot Arch, I
learn Linux.

------
pandeiro
I've been using Arch for the last 7-8 months and I think my love affair with
it has already peaked.

Everything written here is true re: learning about Linux, having more control,
straightforward architecture, bleeding edge software, etc.

But the instability factor eventually will bite you in the ass, and per
Murphy's Law, often at the worst possible time. It's happened to me twice in
this time span.

My solution is to use a separate data partition for all my files and install
Arch and a more stable distro (Mint in my case) in different partitions. Both
OSs link to the data partition and grab dotfiles and things from a git repo.

Arch is my preferred environment, with a tiling WM and everything
painstakingly set up for my preferred workflow. But when it crashes, I can
still use my workstation to get stuff done, and go about troubleshooting when
I have free time.

~~~
riledhel
Isn't this overly complicated? wouldn't you gain more features by using
virtual machines instead?

~~~
pandeiro
Not really. Arch takes about 10 seconds less to boot up than Mint on my
machine. Then there would be the question of having to wait for both the host
OS and guest (virtual) OS to boot up.

It's a one-time expense, too, in terms of time. And there's the added benefit
that you learn how to partition, how to mount, link, etc.

------
shanemhansen
Arch is fun to play with. A couple years ago the fact that everything was i686
optimized was a big deal. These days just about everyone is using 64bit. It's
a good choice for embedded linux systems and servers (Beyond Oblivion used
arch for their servers).

Speaking from experience, life is just too short to run arch on a laptop.
Heck, I have a hp pavilion dv7 with switching graphics and even that was a
pita to get stable on ubuntu.

~~~
bwat47
I run arch on a laptop with no problems at all. I specifically got a laptop
with intel graphics and wireless so I have a great experience with any distro
:) Arch required almost no setup when it came to graphics/sound/wireless. Just
had to install xf86-video-intel and xf86-input-synaptics.

IMO its best to stay the hell away from switchable graphics period if you
intend to use linux.

------
alanpeabody
As a developer who has been using Linux as a desktop and enjoys tweaking every
little thing: I think Arch is fantastic. It took my understanding of the OS
and exactly what is going on to the next level.

However I work with developers who don't want to tweak every little thing they
just want their OS to work and let them be passionate about development. They
should stick to OSX, or if they are feeling adventurous try Ubuntu. I also
would not suggest Arch if you have not used another more friendly Linux distro
for a while and had the "opportunity" to troubleshoot some issues and enjoyed
it.

To enjoy Arch you really have to be passionate about Linux and tweaking your
machine, otherwise you will just be frustrated. For those that are I cannot
recommend Arch enough.

------
chrishenn
Arch is great, but my favorite thing about it is that it stays out of the way.
It led me to using new tools like XMonad and MPD. I could be perfectly happy
with using the same setup on debian-unstable, but never would have got there
without Arch.

The package manager Arch uses, pacman, recently introduced package signing
(albeit with a few bugs to iron out.) I wonder if more people will start to
use Arch as a server OS now.

~~~
Adaptive
Linode has been offering it as a server image for a while now. I use it for a
personal webserver, etc. Never had a critical upgrade problem, fwiw.

------
babarock
I find Archbang to be a good compromise. It presents a minimal Arch install
with X+openbox (a la Crunchbang, hence the name) pre-configured. It has a live
CD too, so really, it' s just like plain old regular Arch except you don't
need a 2nd computer during install ^^

------
mberning
Sounds like a less stable/predictable version of FreeBSD.

~~~
chimeracoder
Arch is incredibly stable - you just have to rethink your idea of what
stability means in an Arch context.

In Ubuntu, 'stability' means that you can run apt-get upgrade all (I think
that's the command), press 'y' a few times (or, better yet, just pipe 'yes' to
it) and then forget about it, knowing that your system may not have the latest
version of every package, but the latest version in the Ubuntu repos, which is
presumably 'stable' with the rest of the system.

With Arch, you have to think before you -Syu. Running pacman -Syu will upgrade
_all_ packages to the latest version in the Arch repos, which are usually
updated much more quickly, as it's a rolling-release distribution. This means
that you may want to check the mailing lists before upgrading important
packages, or wait until a later time to upgrade. Or not upgrade at all, which
is 'stable' by virtue of the fact that you haven't changed anything. The
choice is yours. You can decide what to do on a per-package or system-wide
basis, depending on your use case (Personal user & tinkerer? Luddite personal
user? Large-scale server? There's no 'one-size-fits-all' approach to keeping a
system up-to-date, but Arch is a 'one-size-fits-all' distro in that it allows
people to make these decisions for themselves very easily).

Rolling release isn't for everyone - I'll agree. But that's the main
difference between Arch and other distributions. (That, and it's highly
minimalist by default, whereas Ubuntu and Mint are 'everything and the kitchen
sink' by default). But I certainly wouldn't say that Arch is any more or less
stable than other Linux distributions (I can't compare to BSD), because it's
really just as stable as you want it to be, given your definition of 'stable'.

~~~
CJefferson

        > Arch is incredibly stable - you just have to rethink your idea of what stability means in an Arch context.
    

I don't understand what your definition of stable is. Obviously anyone can not
upgrade any distribution or software. If I want to upgrade I have to check the
mailing lists to see if there are any major issues. That sounds like a source
of instability.

How can I update Arch, on a semi-regular basis (at least yearly), without
having to worry about upgrade issues? If I can't, then I don't think you can
call it 'incredibly stable'. Of course, you can accept the trade-offs, but
don't try to 'rethink stability'.

~~~
chimeracoder
> How can I update Arch, on a semi-regular basis (at least yearly)

You can - in fact, it's best to do it more often than yearly.

> without having to worry about upgrade issues?

Compared to someone who's coming from Ubuntu, Arch isn't a distro that you can
just upgrade all in one go, without thinking twice, and then forget about it.
Or, to quote the Arch Wiki, pacman is not a 'fire and forget' package manager.

If your definition of 'stability' is 'I can run a full system upgrade as often
as I want, without thinking about what I'm doing', then no, Arch isn't
'stable'.

If your definition of 'stability' is 'My system will run with minimal errors
and above-average security as long as I carefully consider each package before
I update it', then Arch is incredibly stable.

The concept of stability, in the context of a personal user, comes with an
implicit assumption of how much choice will be presented to the user, which
affects how much mental effort the user will have to provide. Ubuntu will make
a set of choices on behalf of the user, which can result in bloated software
packages, serious security concerns and bugs that persist for the six-month
release cycle or longer. Arch will require the user to make some of those
choices for himself or herself, which ends up by providing the user with a
more modular set of packages, a much faster upgrade cycle, and a more (easily)
configurable system.

For example, there was a bug in X that affected pretty much every distro a few
weeks ago, allowing the screen lock to be bypassed trivially. If I remember
correctly, Arch had that fixed within a few hours (the advantages of rolling-
release). I'm not sure when (or even if) Ubuntu fixed that bug, but it ends up
taking much longer, because they have to provide official support for those
packages, and something as widespread as X needs to be tested against a
variety of configurations before releasing a patch. With Arch, I can decide if
the patch is important enough to update now, or if I should wait, and I can
make a reasonable judgement as to whether it s compatible with my system --
something Ubuntu users will have a harder time doing, because they didn't go
through the process of building their operating system from scratch when they
installed it, so they may not understand it under the surface as well.

To put it another way, using a rolling-release system like Arch is no less
stable than a fixed-release cycle, because nobody is forcing you to upgrade a
package when it comes out.

(The other difference is that Arch provides community support, whereas Ubuntu
provides corporate support, but at that point you're starting to compare
apples and oranges).

------
gtaylor
I started using Arch about eight months ago, when Ubuntu didn't have the
latest ATI and Xorg packaged so I could use EyeFinity + 3 monitors. At the
time, I was very sad to leave my comfy Debian/Ubuntu roots.

After struggling a little with the initial setup, I got everything in place,
and it has just worked since then. Breakage from upgrades has been no worse
than Ubuntu, and my Python work hasn't been disturbed at all.

For those who don't mind rolling up their sleeves and just RTFM'ing it, this
is a great distro.

------
victork2
I have an ArchLinux installed at home. Well I am unsure on what to think. It
can be used to go on the internet, have the latest software but if you are
serious on coding stable things well... you're going to cry.

Since you always have the latest packets ready your code is going to be often
broken by changes in the libraries (damn Boost!). Other problem, if you leave
your computer untouched for 1 months you'll have 1 Gb of updates to do.

But it's still a very good distribution, just be careful about what to use.

~~~
fam
Agreed. Back when I had Arch installed as my main OS I'd run updates every now
and then only to find out after that FireFox or some other program broke. Of
course, it's nice to know how your OS works and how to fix things, but
considering all the other OSs out there, it's nice to have something that
"just works" with as little downtime as possible.

In hindsight, the learning phase of having to set everything up taught me a
lot about using Linux, bash, etc. Switching to a tiling WM (dwm rocked) was a
great experience when I had been using Windows all my life.

------
lgeek
>First of all, nothing works out of the box. You will have to manually set up
the driver for your video card, support for your sound card (which can be a
little difficult if you use USB headphones), wifi support, Xorg, your desktop
environment and/or window manager of choice, etc.

I've been using Arch for a number of years and I don't see why the author
thinks it's so difficult to set up.

During installation I only set up partitioning and /etc/rc.conf which is the
main configuration file. I'd set up partitions and change some default
settings (like keymap, locale, etc) on any computer, so it's not a problem. I
also make sure wicd is installed for painless Wifi configuration.

After the first boot, I install most of the stuff I use with a one-liner,
something like this:

    
    
        pacman -S xorg xfce4 chromium-browser pidgin gdm thunderbird mc skype htop vim gcc ruby
    

and that's my base system.

Plus, being a rolling release distro means that you don't have to do major
upgrades (which tend to break things more often than not). The installation
I'm currently using on my main computer is about 20 months old and I've even
changed my machine since then.

My video card works after installing xorg, sound works out of the box, wifi
works out of the box, etc.

------
MatthewPhillips
Something the article mentions, but bears repeating, it that Arch has an
excellent wiki on just about every component you're likely to use. So for
those fearful of having to set everything up yourself, the wiki will be your
savior.

~~~
sciurus
Although parts of it are specific to Arch, overall I found the Arch wiki very
helpful when set up a minimal Debian installation.

------
Ideka
_First of all, nothing works out of the box. You will have to manually set up
the driver for your video card, support for your sound card (which can be a
little difficult if you use USB headphones), wifi support, Xorg, your desktop
environment and/or window manager of choice, etc._

Literally everything mentioned here worked out of the box for me when I
installed Arch (except for USB headphones, which I do not own).

~~~
mcrittenden
Author here. I think we're talking about two different things. By "nothing
works out of the box" I mean that you need to set it up yourself. For example,
the Beginner's Guide leads you through setup of your video driver [1], ALSA
[2], Xorg [3], and wifi [4]. These are all things that require manual work.
Maybe there's a more appropriate term for this than "doesn't work out of the
box" (?) but it's the first term that came to mind.

[1]
[https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beginners_Guide#Install...](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beginners_Guide#Install_video_driver)

[2] <https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beginners_Guide#Sound>

[3]
[https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beginners_Guide#Install...](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beginners_Guide#Install_X)

[4] <https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Wireless_Setup>

~~~
lnteveryday
That's the beautiful thing about arch. While figuring out configurations,
tweaks, or problems for yourself may seem daunting Arch has fantastic
documentation through the web on tons of issues, ranging from software- to
hardware-specific. It is one of the best documented linux distros I've had the
pleasure of using.

~~~
agumonkey
\- the arch wiki and community is really solid for bare naked yet simple linux
knowledge. (gentoo wiki is my fallback)

\- The arch way tends to attract users with strong|alternative ideas, IMHO
they're a big part in the revival of tiling wm.

\- Today I switched to nixos though.

~~~
lnteveryday
You will be missed.

Absolutely correct on the wm comment. However, I am an organized, messy person
and prefer stacking wm. Currently in favor of openbox, but it may be something
else tomorrow.(Note: not archbang, but I am not entirely opposed to archbang
as some are. Archbang turned out to be really great for my old laptop that I
use primarily as a browser, but nothing beats the real deal when it comes to
my everyday-everything machine)

That nixos looks interesting, possibly something to consider for one of my
personal machines.

~~~
agumonkey
Arch has kinda blossomed into a nano-debian status, people start to build
stuff upon it, archbang, archhurd, it's great.

The former has filled the 'out of the box' niche sort of, now you have a
minimalist yet ready to use system.

# note aside, about nixos, I can't tell how it's gonna turn out, but for once
it's a linux system with a real paradigm shift. Funny how non-mutable ideas
are spreading these days, btrfs, nix, even git.

# second note, have you seen this <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jULGE0rq8M>
? makes me wanna say 'tiling' is the only 'management' right now, stacking
doesn't do sh*t.

~~~
lnteveryday
You may be right. I have only recently made the switch to wm, mostly because
of the problems with gnome 3. Originally gnome was the only de that I liked,
absolutely hated KDE for no real reason other than something about it bothered
me. Then gnome 3 just ruined it.

Then I discovered wms. I'm probably more attracted to openbox because the
stacking is closer to the sort of window management that you would get in any
de.

However, I so very rarely have a bunch of windows open at once that I need to
see all at once. And I can also easily open, close, move, resize, switch
screens, etc. with the keyboard. I'll give it a try before I say that it's not
for me though. Who knows, maybe I'll use one for when I'm working on projects.

Which tiling one do you use? awesome?

~~~
agumonkey
Xmonad mainly, look at the video you'll see some usages where tiling shines (
chat , monitor ), only drawback, it requires haskell which is a large bundle.
When space is limited , dwm6, less fancy tile modes but super tiny.

I found those peaceful to use, you just forget they're here even though they
lay things for you.

Should start a Tiling WM thread :D

------
heyrhett
"First of all, nothing works out of the box. You will have to manually set up
the driver for your video card, ...Xorg, "

I stopped there <http://xkcd.com/963/>

~~~
chimeracoder
Technically true, but misleading. I've installed Arch on four machines of
various hardware, and this is actually the easiest part of the installation
process.

You have to select a driver from a comprehensive list of which drivers work
for which cards, and you don't _have_ to make any (non-trivial) changes to
xorg.conf, unless you want to set up multiple monitors. (And even then, I was
able to avoid that for a long time by using XFCE, which apparently doesn't
mind when xorg.conf settings are unspecified/improperly specified).

Yes, everything has to be set up manually on an Arch system, but that's a
_feature_ \- you know where everything on your system is, and you know that
there's nothing you didn't add yourself.

And with the wiki, setup may take some time (again, by design), but the
process is incredibly straightforward.

~~~
tmhedberg
I have an Arch laptop that I frequently use with a second monitor, and I've
never had to tweak my xorg.conf. The now-ubiquitous XRandR extension for X
largely obviates the need for xorg.conf completely. These days, it tends to
"just work".

------
cgag
I'm running arch and home and have a love / hate (mostly love) relationship
with it. It's certainly taken up a lot of my time, but I learned more about
linux just by installing it than I did in months of using ubuntu. Getting
something to work is so satisfying, as it usually involves learning quite a
bit about how it works, but there are times when you just want something
working and it can be frustrating.

Being forced to make all those choices was the best part about it for me. I'm
sure it's possible to customize Ubuntu to look like my arch set up, but if I
hadn't been forced I likely wouldn't have tried. I'm currently running i3 as
my window manager and I love it. I use a macbook pro at work, and It's nice
but going back to a non-tiling window manager after getting used to i3 is
pretty painful.

~~~
agravier
It's interesting how relative people's experience can be: for me, it was the
opposite, as I feel that Arch has let me save a lot of time. I was using
Gentoo at the time I decided to switch to Arch, and the relatively deeper
understanding of the internals of the OS that is necessary to keep a stable
Gentoo system made Arch feel like a very well-designed Lego toy. I guess that
LFS people coming to Gentoo would feel the same :)

TLDR: I love Arch, I feel that I don't lose time on it because I made the
switch from Gentoo.

------
pleaseme01
I've been a debian user for about three years now. Lately, I got somewhat
settled, since most of the things in my distribution were not new anymore,
thus I was not learning that much anymore. Arch seemed a good possibility. I
installed it in a virtual machine to code really simple 'hello world' kernel
modules, and I liked it very much. It is a barebone installation and gives me
the feeling to be in control. I think I'd use arch as a server distribution,
since I haven't had any problems with the latest packages. Maybe my opinion
will change, and maybe I'd prefer something more stable in a server... Anyway,
I respect the opinion of the author, but it sounds a bit overdramatic to me.
Tough were the days of winmoden + slackware... _tears falling_

------
siphr
I suppose, at the end of the day. It is all about an individual's preference.
The gift of Linux is Choice. Having said that I've used Arch for the past 4
years or so and I have to admit that, for me at least, it is a beautiful
thing. I've never had any issues with it what so ever. The box stays up for
months on end without problems, except for the times when there is no power
:). Pacman, is by far the most straight forward package manager I've come
across. The control it lets you have on what you install on the system (the
minimalist approach) is just wonderful. The blog makes it sound a bit
intimidating when it really isn't. I would highly recommend it to anyone.

------
ff0066mote
I've been using Arch on my HP Mini since May 2010. I haven't had any serious
stability issues. Once in awhile I have to resolve differences between old and
new system configuration files.

Arch is easy to set up with the installer. You get a minimal shell system
which is good for focusing on code. Most things work out of the box if you
just pacman -S the-package-you-need.

The hard stuff (wireless) is very well documented on
<http://wiki.archlinux.org/>. Failing that, community on #archlinux is very
helpful.

I'm sure it's not for everybody, but I like to spend my time creating things
in code, and not arguing about what's the best environment to create things
in.

------
cbo
If you want to learn the entire Linux ecosystem, I can't recommend Arch
enough.

From personal experience, don't try to install Arch on your machine unless you
have another internet-capable device in hand. You're going to reach for
ArchWiki several times.

Of course, ArchWiki is an incredible resource with great examples, so as long
as you have it, the process is mostly painless.

Arch is kind of an intermediate Linux in terms of how much it will rely on
your configuration. Not quite Gentoo, but far, far, far away from Ubuntu.

~~~
Adaptive
There's also a local installable mirror of the arch wiki. I don't know how
often it's updated but if I didn't have multiple machines laying around I'd
put this on my arch laptop:

[http://www.archlinux.org/packages/community/any/arch-wiki-
do...](http://www.archlinux.org/packages/community/any/arch-wiki-docs/)

------
Reltair
Thanks for the tips, I was recently thinking of installing Linux on my
secondary desktop and Arch seems like a good choice.

I played around with Slackware a few years ago and it was a good learning
experience doing things like trying to get wifi to work and configuring
xmonad. Arch does appear to have more extensive/organized documentation
compared to Slackware though, which would make the learning process go
smoother.

------
denysonique
After 4 years of Gentoo I've switched recently to ArchLinux. Fantastic
community, very rich wiki. The simplest Linux distro I have ever used.
Everything works as you want -- zero debia/ubunto-nism. Rolling release just
like Gentoo.

Also it has a very rich Arch Linux User-community Repository (AUR) + some AUR
PKGBUILDs even install from Ubuntu's PPAs

Writing new PKGBUILDs is also very straightforward.

------
drunkenmasta
Arch was the very first distro I tried. I had no idea that there was "another"
way to do it. Having to pay attention to the manual install helped me later
when I was trying to figure stuff out. Highly recommended to jump in the hard
way before getting pampered with something easy as hell like Mint.

------
jterenzio
I recently switched from Ubuntu to Arch for my web server and could not be
happier. I prefer the bleeding edge packages and the simplicity. I also
learned a ton by having to dive into my config files and launch scripts in
more detail. I can imagine for a desktop though it could get overwhelming.

~~~
fingerprinter
Really? To arch for the server? Ubuntu server is probably the thing I'm MOST
excited about these days. You see Juju? <https://juju.ubuntu.com/>

------
dave_sullivan
I recently got a system w/ a gtx580 that would be running the gpu 24/7. Was
excited to try arch as I had heard a lot of good things about it and thought I
liked the cut of their jib.

4 hours into install, I realized how much Ubuntu had spoiled me and remembered
installing Linux for the first time as a kid and how confusing setting up X
had been. I also remembered I had stuff to do so I installed Debian and called
it a day. Cuda and nvidia drivers are frustrating enough, figured I'd pick my
battles.

I suppose I liked the idea of arch much more than the practice.

------
navs
I've been using Arch on my little Samsung N150 for a while now. Initial setup
was tedious but not altogether difficult thanks to their brilliant wiki. I'm
no guru and I'm sure If I looked hard enough I could find excellent
documentation on Ubuntu. I don't have to look far for Arch, a simple google
nets me their wiki page as a top result and it's almost always able to fix any
current problem.

------
robinduckett
Oh wow so this is like 2002 gentoo then?

~~~
xentac
I feel like the OP misconstrued things like "doesn't work out of the box".
What he meant was, "I needed to install the package to get my video driver and
sound driver working".

Generally Arch doesn't install something until you ask it to.

------
ColdAsIce
The community has become quite aggressive and elitist lately, they now remind
me of the days of gentoo.

~~~
Avshalom
That's a shame, back when I installed it years ago (05ish I think) the
community was one of my favorite things about the distro.

~~~
ColdAsIce
Yeah I remember it back in the beginnings, it was quite friendly. Now I see
people get yelled at in #archlinux for having an opinion on x vs y which is
opposite of what the majority of #archlinuxers think. The forums are like "not
my problem fix it noob, here is half a wiki page"

~~~
lclarkmichalek
I've never had a good experience with #archlinux, and the forums are generally
quite slow. I do recommend the arch-general mailing list however.

------
kahawe
If you enjoy doing that, there is always Slackware or NetBSD or debian-
unstable as well.

~~~
gtaylor
Slackware isn't rolling release, though, is it?

~~~
bff
You can always use the slackware-current packages to run with software that is
newer than the last release.

