Anybody uses Arch Linux? I use it and it's awesome! Pacman is amazing, I am a huge fan of rolling release model, and being able to essentially roll my own distro is great. I am currently using KDE as my DE. Who uses Arch and what are you running?
What do you like about Arch? I've been trying a bunch of distro's out but haven't tried arch yet. Just got done with mandriva.
Website: archlinux.org 1. Rolling Release Well, a few things I like about Arch. It's a rolling release model, so you never actually have to reinstall your system, or download the entire distro again to upgrade. For example, want to refresh your repos, check for updates, and then install them? pacman -Syu That one command makes sure your system has all the latest packages. Beautiful in its elegance, right lol? 2. Documentation Link: https://wiki.archlinux.org Have you seen the wiki? The amount of information is staggering! You can find anything and everything there, answering almost all your questions. Of course, for the ones that are not there, you may post in the forums. And lastly, you start from scratch. When you install Arch you install a base system with a few utilities to get you going, but you yourself need to install a DE or WM if you want.
Arch is a fantastic distro in many ways. Pacman, the roll your own philosophy, KISS, minimalistic, rolling, AUR, documention, there's much to like. However, it's just a little too bleeding edge for my tastes and I could never, no matter what, get resume from susend to work, which is a deal breaker for me. If one can get everything working and pays attention to upgrade warnings and is prepared for potential breakage they won't be dissappointed.
How's pacman -Syu different from yum update, for instance. I don't see why this is anything unique or special. Mrk
It's not, but the thing is, if you're using yum I assume you're using Fedora correct? Unless you're using Rawhide then all yum update will do is give you security fixes and possible application upgrades at the discretion of the Fedora maintainers. With Arch Linux, if the program is stable, it gets pushed. There's no such thing as a release. I was trying to point out it's not a difference in syntax but a different in availability of newer packages. There's a trade off though, "bleeding edge" can be a double edged sword, if you one does not subscribe to breakage warnings the system can break, so it's a higher maintenance OS for some. Sorry for making it seem that somehow pacman -Syu is superior, I didn't mean syntax. Though of course, going by your signature, you already know all of this and more, so please point out logical mistakes.
No mistakes at all Just asking because it makes me curious why one thinks this or that is superior. I was referring to CentOS, which I upgraded this week from 6.0 to 6.1 in 15 min. So what makes something unique or special? Mrk
Arch is another distro with a good friendly community. Not a bad distro, but not one I keep around as is not to my personal tastes. The documentation is quite a good introduction to understanding how Linux works under the hood.
It's really the rolling release that I like, pacman is just the package manager. With CentOS, you're restricted with the packages that are available in that release, which tend to be stable, but older packages. Time tested. That's what makes Arch Linux (and other rolling release distros) unique. I guess the main think I like is the KISS philosophy and the documentation/community. There's a wealth of information available that even a newbie can get Arch installed, as long as they follow the Beginner's Guide.
I am using the ArchBang variant of Arch. I like it pretty well, but so far I haven't broken my dependency on Ubuntu. I find it to be fairly difficult to make simple changes in Arch. Maybe I am just lazy. I am proud, however, that I have installed and configured fglrx and systemd. I also have to compile my wireless card driver from source. I also install firefox-nightly, manually, on a daily basis. I am using the OpenBox desktop and I want to learn to do fancier things with it and conky. I will get there, someday. Tim
Using Arch right now. Installing was troublesome, but i did it! And compiled kernel for fun, disabled unnecessary things. Using gnome shell, very stable but somehow gdm opening takes a bit time. I would never think kernel compiling while i was using Ubuntu. Arch is triggering something
Used Arch for a while. Still frequent the forums, as they're well moderated and full of highly knowledgeable people. I've mostly quit using it because I don't like dealing with hundreds of MB of updates per week. I don't think there's anything really special about it, but it's good at being what it is - a rolling, bleeding edge distribution that's less broken than Debian Sid. Also, I must note in Arch's favor that it packages headers along with binaries, instead of separately. That is extremely good if you ever plan to compile anything.
