
Arch Linux – "It is what you make it" - rabelaisian
http://www.h-online.com/open/features/Arch-Linux-It-is-what-you-make-it-1343717.html
======
Adaptive
I switched from Ubuntu to Arch on my servers and linux desktops a while back.

Here's are the key benefits from my perspective:

\- _shallow mental model:_ I know where everything is, I know all the moving
pieces

\- _pacman:_ outstanding package manager.

\- _aif:_ dieter has done a great job making a modular install framework.

\- _AUR:_ compared to PPAs, AUR is simple and easy to contribute to (both
commentary and packages)

It really does take time if you want to understand Arch deeply. Not crazy
amounts of time. Less than vim, I'd say ;) but enough that you shouldn't
expect instant results. The knowledge gained is very rewarding and applicable
to Linux systems in general.

~~~
orblivion
Can you explain to me what's so great about pacman? As of the last time I used
Arch (a few years ago), you can't roll back to an old version unless it
happens to be cached on your system. For a rolling release system it creates a
lot of hassles.

It seems like a very straightforward package manager, what does it have that
apt doesn't have, for instance?

~~~
Adaptive
I think some of the other comments have addressed this, but I'll comment on
the rollback issue.

If you just want to rollback you can download the current package if it's not
in your cache. If you want and rollback to previous version, there's downgrade
and the Arch Rollback Machine
<https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Downgrade#ARM>

Really, though, it's never been an issue for me. I've yet to encounter a
situation where I nuke my cache and don't have rollback packages available. It
boils down to a management issue. If you are nuking your package cache, I
assume you are smart enough to have determined your system is running
correctly first. There are cases where you might still want to rollback after
clearing your package cache, so there is ARM.

Personally, if I ever hit that situation (absolute worst case scenario) I have
backups and can reinstall an Arch system in minutes. Haven't had the need yet.

~~~
lloeki
The only time it backfired at me is when the package you want to rollback to
is not in your cache, and basically the only time it happens is for the
version installed during the install phase: the installer does not copy the
package from the install medium to the target package cache, as it uses it
straight from the medium.

------
tmhedberg
I've been using Arch as my primary OS for about 1.5 years and have no
inclination whatsoever to move away from it. Like many people, I previously
used Ubuntu, but grew fed up with the focus of their development efforts on
areas which I considered to be inconsequential. Seeing the direction that
Ubuntu has taken since then, I'm glad I made that decision when I did.

For me, the best thing about Arch is simply how flexible it is. It feels more
like a toolkit for building your own custom OS than anything else. That's
obviously not for everyone, but it's definitely for me. I've got a trimmed-
down, keyboard-driven, and CLI-focused interface that would not appeal to the
average user, but it was fun to configure and I've learned a ton from the
experience. My computer behaves exactly the way I want it to, with virtually
no compromises, and that was a far easier goal to attain with Arch than with
any other system I've tried.

Also, as a bonus for anyone interested in Haskell, there's a rather large
Haskell community within the Arch community. In fact, there's a vast user-
maintained repository of Haskell packages built for Arch (a large portion of
the packages available from Hackage) which you can enable just by adding a
line to /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist.

For anyone who likes to tweak and tinker, and who loves having full control
over their computing experience, I highly recommend it.

~~~
MatthewPhillips
What interface are you using? I use wmii on my arch boxes.

~~~
w1ntermute
From his comment about Haskell, I'm guessing Xmonad.

~~~
tmhedberg
Yep, that's correct.

My config is here:
<https://github.com/tmhedberg/xmonad.hs/blob/master/xmonad.hs>

------
slowpoke
I've been a GNU/Linux user for a bit over a year now, I think. Started out
with Ubuntu 10.04 dual booted with Windows, then completely ditched Microsoft
in favor of the better operating system some when in January. A bit later,
after getting bugged by a good friend and fellow hacker on IRC for a while, I
finally set out to install Arch, and got hooked.

Arch Linux can, in my experience, best be described as a journey. A journey to
the top of a mountain. It starts steep, sometimes gets hazardous, and I fell
down more then once and had to start climbing from the start. But with every
time, it became easier as I got to know the mountain, and set out with new
knowledge about the steps and stones, as they were aligned perfectly for
climbing once you knew how to climb them.

Then finally, I reached the first peak - a custom, running and stable install
- and just as you might hold your breath at the sight presented to you when
you look down from the top of the mountain you just climbed, I felt kind of
serene - I learned so much about my system during the installation, how it
worked and how elegantly simple it was once you understood it's philosophy, it
was overwhelming.

I knew I arrived at a place where I wanted to stay. Or rather, a place from
where I could climb even higher mountains - because the Arch journey is
probably never at its end. There's always something more to learn about the
system - my system. Something to tweak, somewhere to hack around or some
configuration to customize for my needs.

I won't say I'll stay with it forever, as in the world of GNU/Linux, one might
always discover something new. I will say, however, that installing (and
subsequently running) Arch was (and still is) one of the best and most
rewarding things I've done in my life.

To anyone who is interested in learning new stuff and doing things on his or
her own, I warmly recommend trying out Arch. You shall not be disappointed.

~~~
Levi
This is true to my experiences as well.

I started with Archbang, then CTKArch, and then finally installed my own from
scratch. Archbang and CTKArch are excellent liveCD versions of Arch but in the
end I found I did not like the personal choices made by the creators of those
releases. My system is now truly mine. I am in love with it.

My system is stable, and bleeding edge - an oxymoron.

Intellij is in the damn repositories... MondoDB 2.0 - the day it was released
was in the damned repositores.

Anything else can't compete.

After installing Arch, and failing at least 3 times and being successful 2
other times, I found an appreciation for the way in which Arch did things. My
first version was a Mac OSx clone with some personal touches. It was
beautiful; but I was too ambitious and went with BTRFS which was a mistake. So
I reinstalled and now I'm on XFS and things purr.

I can setup a development environment in less than 10 minutes using pacman and
then keep it updated easily.

To setup the equivalent environment on Ubuntu would take much longer for me.

I am not a linux newb nor a guru, but after using Arch I feel like I can hold
my own.

------
pimeys
A couple of days ago I was given more RAM to my work computer. I had to run
couchdb instances with lots of allocated RAM. The 32bit Ubuntu was not enough
anymore so I needed to install a 64bit OS. Somehow I wanted to try Arch and
the installation from scratch to the everyday tool took a bit over two hours.

I really like this distribution. Pacman (the package manager) is super fast,
the system is much easier to configure from the command line than Ubuntu and
the best thing is Arch's documentation. All the information you need to know
can be found from the Arch wiki. No need to browse blog posts or forums, the
wiki is so good.

My setup is very lightweight. I have only the minimal Arch installation with
Xorg and xmonad, vim, RVM and Firefox. This distro is made for command line
use and there it really shines.

Here's a screenshot how I want my work desktop to look. Nothing fancy, no
distractions and fast usage without mouse.
<http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2402047/screenshot3.png>

~~~
Adaptive
that colorscheme looks familiar... I making my dotfiles public today and I've
got a solarized themed xmonad/xmobar config up at
<https://github.com/altercation/es-etc> .

The only difference with yours will probably be the tabbed decoration theming
and xmobar theming. I'd love to see your xmonad.hs too if it's online
somewhere.

~~~
pimeys
Sorry to disappoint, but I really run xmonad with very minimalistic setup. I
just need the different tiling modes, couple of hotkeys and xmobar for system
information.

The more important part is my vim config, which can be found from github, of
course. <https://github.com/pimeys/dotvim>

------
Legion
I think I am going to have to give Arch a try.

One thing that has kept me on Ubuntu family distros is font rendering.
Ubuntu's patches for freetype, cairo, xft, etc are quite simply requirements
for me for a desktop Linux.

Some distros have these by way of some guy maintaining his own set of patched
packages. I have always been reluctant to rely on these.

I was thrilled when Linux Mint came out with Linux Mint Debian Edition, which
is Debian + these font patches + some other Mint-y friendliness (but still
mostly Debian).

The fact that Arch maintains the *-ubuntu family of patched packages means I
just might consider using it, too.

~~~
Adaptive
It took me a while to get font rendering working the way I wanted in Arch, but
it _is_ possible (that's by way of encouragement... don't let this be a
showstopper for you; I understand why it's important).

Infinality is great but even it requires some massaging to get it to the state
I like (though of course now I have my configs pretty much ready to install
off a repo).

------
LeafStorm
The biggest draw of Arch for me is pacman. The system itself is incredibly
simple (and incredibly fast), but more importantly, it's really easy to design
and compile your own packages for it. To make a Debian package, you have to
edit a bunch of control files, run a bunch of shell scripts, and then it packs
all that up in some obscure cpio-based format.

With Arch, on the other hand, it's one program - makepkg - with only one or
two "control files" (PKGBUILD and maybe an install script), and it generates a
nice, easily-inspectable .pkg.tar.gz file. Plus you can find just about any
package you could want in the AUR, and if not, you can find one that builds
like it and then modify it to work with your package.

~~~
Rusky
Definitely agree. The AUR makes it really easy to manage software not in the
official repositories- without that it becomes difficult to keep track of
what's installed and often impossible to uninstall.

However, it would be nice if pacman used signed packages, especially in light
of the recent kernel.org situation.

~~~
Adaptive
Not done yet, but I think pacman 4.0 has signing support. I also hope the
recent events will spur continued development here.

~~~
zobzu
signing support is the only missing thing IMO

------
pavpanchekha
I use Arch not so much for the extreme customization aspect, but because if
and when something goes wrong, the entire system is simple enough that I can
usually fix it.

------
dragonquest
I've heard this argument multiple times that Arch Linux is what you make of it
and it really teaches you Linux, but I'm getting older and trying out lesser
distro's now. :) However while I admire its passionate community, I'm
genuinely curious, how does it differ from Slackware? In the sense, how
exactly does Arch differ from Slackware in terms of teaching you the guts of
your own system?

~~~
beej71
I used Slackware for something like 13 years, and have been using Arch for
maybe 2. If you'll allow me to post a link to my own stuff, I put together a
blog entry about exactly this question:

<http://beej.us/blog/2009/12/arch-vs-slackware/>

Both Slack and Arch are excellent, but not quite the same in their objectives.
I run Arch on my netbook and desktop (with FVWM) and love it.

~~~
dragonquest
That is quite helpful, thank you. It helped me stick with Slackware for now
since my criteria fits your Slackware objectives and strengths list.

------
MatthewPhillips
For those who've never used it. You know all of the "boilerplate" frameworks
that have been hot recently? HTML5 Boilerplate is one, iOS Boilerplate is
another... well Arch is the Linux Boilerplate if there ever was one. It gives
you only the essentials that you need and leaves the rest up to you.

~~~
jvinet
That's a good analogy - I've never heard that one before.

------
hypersoar
While Arch isn't my primary OS at the moment, I really enjoyed the process of
installing it. It felt like the software equivalent of building your own
computer. It was very satisfying to learn about all the different parts and
assemble those that I wanted,

------
crocowhile
I run arch on all my daily machines: two desktops and a laptop. Two things are
brilliant about arch: 1) how easy it is to improvise a new package if what you
need to install is not available in the repo 2) how you can run the last
version of every software without the system ever breaking.

If you are a linux power user, I cannot think of a better distro than arch.

------
gorm
Sadly it's one of few distro vulnerable to man-in-middle attack so you need to
be careful where from you do your updates.

~~~
tmhedberg
Package signing (via gpg) is being added in the forthcoming Pacman 4.0, so
this won't be the case for much longer. It's already available in the testing
repository, in fact.

------
docgnome
I stopped running Arch when known broken upstream X packages were released
into the mainline and the response from the devs was "RTFM, noobs"

~~~
politai
care to shed more light on the subject?

~~~
docgnome
That's really all there was to it. It was about... 2 years ago? I forget what
exactly was broken about the packages. But the bug was from upstream and was
known to the Arch Devs at the time they OKd the package built upon broken
sources to roll out. It got pulled in by just updating the system. I asked
what was going on and got directed to a message about it that I didn't fully
understand and when I asked, I was told what I said above. As were many other
users confused about the sudden breakage of X.

That wasn't really the first time I'd encountered ultra rude devs. I shortly
after switched to Gentoo which I found to give the deep control that Arch did
but amazingly was a system that worked properly and the community wasn't full
of jerks. Hopefully the Arch community has changed, but I don't really intend
to try and find out.

I do run Debian now though.

~~~
codabrink
If I remember the same incident that you're talking about, it was a single
file that had to be manually removed, and the fix was displayed right on the
home page of <http://archlinux.org> for months..

~~~
xfs
The final solution could often need only minimal effort to carry out, but to
debug and find out the problem, it takes much more time.

And the fix should come in through the right channel, like the package README
or ChangeLog. Not sure if the home page of the whole distribution is the
appropriate place for a fix like this.

~~~
steve___
The message should show up on screen when installing the package. If many
packages are upgraded at once, a user could miss it. The output is also sent
to /var/log/pacman.log

All that said I'd recommend to anyone new to subscribe to the 'Latest News'
RSS feed: <http://www.archlinux.org/feeds/news/>

------
se1sm
Helpful, friendly community. No-nonsense packaging. Easy setup and recovery.
Been on Arch ever since moving up from Slack 10 years ago, now use it every
day in a demanding IT workplace. Maybe it's not the distro for newbies - tis
the distro for me and you <3 :)

------
statenjason
ArchWiki has been among the most helpful guides in me getting an understanding
of Linux. Also, seeing the latest AUR discussions about a package when pulling
it down has been a lifesaver a few times.

------
albertzeyer
I never used Arch but I have used Gentoo for really long. Everything what I
read about Arch sounded a bit primitive to me.

Are there any advantages of Arch over Gentoo?

Or are there good comparisons?

~~~
imrehg
So far the main difference I've seen:

With Gentoo you have to compile everything yourself (as much as I can tell).

With Arch, you _can_ compile everything yourself, but don't have to: official
repos have packages precompiled, but the package source is there if you want
something different.

~~~
albertzeyer
On Gentoo, you can also use binary packages. You can setup some variable to
some host which has all the binary packages for you. There are some public
servers with x86 and amd64, although none are really official.

------
Scaevolus
I stopped using Arch 2-3 years ago because their x86_64 packages were minimal.
Was this improved?

~~~
codabrink
What do you mean by 'minimal'? If you're talking about wine and flash, there
are 32 bit builds available to be installed in 64 bit.. But that's the way it
has always been.

~~~
kazikcz
I recall I had the same impression back at the time. Arch lacked multilib
support if I'm not wrong.

I recently switched from 32bit Arch to 64bit and it works great so far,
multilib included.

~~~
cookiecaper
For the record Arch is one of the only distributions with sensible multiilib
support. Most of the bigger ones require purity and force you to install a
chroot if you want to run 32-bit applications. Fedora is multilib by default
but it sucks because it always installs 32 and 64 bit versions of everything
by default instead of reasoning that you'd be OK to use 64-bit most of the
time by default.

------
darkduck
CTK Arch is a good pre-configured Arch...
[http://linuxblog.darkduck.com/2011/05/ctk-arch-fast-and-
furi...](http://linuxblog.darkduck.com/2011/05/ctk-arch-fast-and-furious.html)

