No.552706
By Igor Ljubuncic
Among billions of emails that I receive daily, a frequently recurring theme is that of my willingness, or rather, lack thereof, to test and review Arch Linux. Not a derivative with a nice and fancy GUI but the stock vanilla distro. Which made me write this article.
So, without sounding high and mighty, I'd like to discuss the more philosophical question of how and why and when certain distros get to enjoy my grace, and why Arch Linux in its naked, pure form has never gotten its due review. Not only will you get an answer to your question, but you may also learn something new extra in the process. Shall we?
To tinker or not to tinker
A popular community perception is that Arch be one of them distros what needs tough love. In other words, to be able to actually use the system you first need to invest a whole lot of time, energy, patience, precision, command line fury, and reading. All these before you even get to enjoy one iota of the final product. That is the mission statement, and this is the baseline premise for the discussion. If you disagree, you are more than welcome to navigate away right now, and save yourself a handful of frustrating minutes. As we know, reading comprehension isn't the strongest force in the community, so there.
With the mandatory 30 minutes to four hour ordeal of configuring Arch to be a home system, it's earned a reputation of being a tinkerer's distro. And then of course, so much effort can't go without glory, ergo terms like power users and experts also come into play. Except I find this approach to be completely wrong.
Tinkering is not about turning nuts and bolts
There is undeniable learning curve to setting up your own system from scratch, be it LFS, Gentoo or Arch or any which one. And it is an exercise that definitely should be done, provided your goal is to understand the underlying bits and pieces of the system. But then your system is not a means to an end, i.e. an abstraction layer for applications, it is a goal unto itself. That completely changes the rules of the game.
Which means that if I were to review Arch - I would need to look at it more than just a tool to achieving things like entertainment and productivity - and that goes against everything my reviews stand for. Linux distributions, in fact, any operating system, are there for the sole purpose of helping users enjoy themselves: watch movies, listen to music, play games, type an odd document or two. I find no purpose in maintaining systems for their own sake. It is almost a biological thing when pretty much all of the invested energy goes into feeding the self. Nope. I'm not here to nurture cyborgs.
But there's more to it. I also believe that Arch does not deserve any special place for being a tinkerer's distro, despite the aura and glamor created by its users. After all, those who have committed themselves so deeply will have no other way of thinking. As far as tinkering goes, any which one Linux is good or bad, equally.
No.552707
>>552706 (cont.)
Now it becomes interesting
So let's focus on the power user mystery for a moment, shall we? Following a text wizard slowly, carefully may be an exercise in discipline, and you will learn a little more on how things work beneath the hood, but ultimately, at the end of the day, you will still have only configured your own system. That doesn't make you a wizard.
For that matter, if you understand core concepts of networking, disk management, and then maybe kernel optimization, it does not really matter what distro you use. The only thing that will change is the specific user-space syntax to get the right commands.
In fact, if you want to learn Linux, then you need to abstractize the user space stuff, which makes Arch irrelevant. Or any other distribution for that matter. If you do want to play that game, then you should focus on industry recognized, standards driven, enterprise quality systems like RHEL and SLES, because they are used on millions upon millions of high-end, mission-critical systems in a range of production scenarios, and that's where interesting things really happen. Configuring Wireless from the command line may be cool once, but if you can fine tune the performance of a large SQL cluster, that's probably more valuable, both to your understanding of the system as well as the overall impact on the world. Plus, you may end up actually making money, and there's nothing more fun than making money out of your hobby and passion.
Let's notch it up further
If you ask me, pretty much all of the system administration stuff is really boring. It's a necessary step to achieve productivity. I don't want to do anything by hand. Manual labor is pointless. I want everything to be automated, self-configured, smart, intelligent, predictive, analytical,with healing properties, etc.
I want to spend as little time being aware of the fact my programs run on top of some code, and I don't care what that code does unless someone pays me to look at it, and then optimize it. I don't want to think about my system, I don't want it to get in my way, it's my slave, and it's doing what I demand. Never the other way around.
True Linux, and Linux being a kernel after all, is all that happens under /proc and /sys, and even that's just an abstractization of all the cool stuff and black magic. But it comes down to scheduling and memory management. It has nothing to do with whatever command you feel like running, and nothing to do with how the operating system was set up. For all I care, it suddenly poofed into existence in front of me, and now I'm hammering and burrowing into its nerdy heart.
Disk partitioning? Yes, you should know how to do it, but you can learn about that on Ubuntu just as well as you can on Arch or Slackware. Wireless config? Not difficult. Just boring. Desktop packages? What, now I need to do all this hard work of figuring out all the dependencies myself? Why? I'm not the developer, it's not my job. You don't go to a coffee shop and then grind coffee yourself, do you? Someone else gives you the product, and you use it blithely, and it does not matter how it happened. That's the beauty of it.
No.552709
>>552707 (cont.)
Back to tinkering
What is the objective? Becoming better at Linux? Then, the choice of the distro is, I repeat, completely irrelevant. And if anyone thinks you can't do all of what you can on Arch on Ubuntu, they need proper reeducation. Becoming a better system admin? There are certifications for that, and again, enterprise flavors lead the way. No one in the industry cares what distro you may have at home. If anything, CentOS is something people might actually care! Becoming more proficient in the system installation setup? Okay, but why? You should ideally do this once every four or five years. Then, what do you really learn if it's all about following guides from the online wiki? How does that make anyone a power user? Being able to follow text written by someone else makes you into a very good robot really. Long commands and hard labor do not translate into wisdom or respect.
Conclusion
I have nothing against Arch. But that's exactly the whole point. There's nothing about it that makes it special or worth taking for an extra spin, especially considering the amount of time and effort needed to get it running. It goes against my belief of how technology is done and mastered, and that makes it unsuitable for home use. And it misses the point what Linux is all about.
Manjaro, Netrunner Rolling, KaOS, and others all base off of Arch, and they do it to varying degrees of success, providing the same baseline, the same final product, just without all the middle bits and pieces. That shows you the middle step of the journey is really optional. Unnecessary. Potentially good for your ego, but ultimately not conducive to any industry-standard expertise or knowledge. Besides, I believe in learning new things all the time. Once you've done an Arch install, repeating it would be a mistake. It means you stay put, you spin around in place, and you're not making progress. Which means the whole focus of what many value as the defining Arch quality isn't really one. It's just one potential step to becoming better at Linux. Maybe. But if you want to do it by the book, there are better, more standardized, more widely accepted methods and tools. And so, for all these reasons, you will probably never see Dedoimedo review stock Arch. Unless it comes fully automated and elegant, of course.
P.S. 95% of people reading this article will completely miss its point and come to the inevitable conclusion that a) Dedoimedo hates Arch and its community b) Dedoimedo is a noob and is venting his frustration c) wonder if I wrote this article in a VM or on physical hardware d) douche e) kid go back to Windows. I hope I got all the right responses.
Cheers.
No.552713
No.552744
>>552706
He's right. Arch is a useless distro. The only point of tinkering is getting more power out of it, which is why people use gentoo.
No.552762
>>552709
>There's nothing about it that makes it special or worth taking for an extra spin, especially considering the amount of time and effort needed to get it running.
Bingo. The only plus to Arch I can think of, is as a rolling-release distro, it takes far less time to set up than, say, Gentoo - especially if you don't know what you're doing. Even a slight error while installing Gentoo can set you back hours.
and while there are methods of replacing systemd with another init in Arch, it's far more trouble than its worth. Gentoo thankfully doesn't use it by default, but I hate its mere presence in the repos.
No.552766
>predictable article by worthless fedorafag
into the trash it goes.
No.552772
>>552766
I bet you also think the AUR isn't mediocre crap :^)
No.552775
>>552713
Read the conclusion. Basically, the problem with arch is that the distro is an end unto itself rather than a platform with which to run applications, which defeats the whole point of an OS.
No.552780
>>552713
"There's no point in manually configuring everything because automatically generated defaults are good enough." more or less
No.552787
>Manjaro, Netrunner Rolling, KaOS, and others all base off of Arch, and they do it to varying degrees of success, providing the same baseline, the same final product, just without all the middle bits and pieces
>manjaro
>the distro that let their SSL certificate expire, and suggested that users set their clocks back as a workaround
>intothetrash.jpg
>Netrunner rolling
>manjaro based
>intothetrash.jpg
>KaOS
the KaOS site claims that it's not based on Arch, although it does use Arch's package manager
No.552812
>>552706
>>552707
>>552709
Out of curiousity, what do you think about Gentoo from a developer perspective?
No.552845
>>552706
>>552707
>>552709
tl;dr I would rather spend more time sitting around complaining that I have to learn something rather than spend that time learning something.
No.552850
The whole article is a criticism around using Arch as a general work desktop and whether that's a good use of time.
For a work machine, neither Arch, Gentoo, Fedora make any sense to recommend to anyone, and never have.
Meanwhile Arch excels and blows everything out of the water as a VM guest, for Live CDs and ARM boards.
No.552934
>>552812
I'm not the author of the article. I just thought I would share it because it provides an interesting perspective and it triggers archfags. I have no idea what he thinks about Gentoo.
>>552845
www.dedoimedo.com/faq.html
Yes, I'm sure this guy has no idea what he's doing and no credentials whatsoever. :^)
No.552943
No.552948
guy in op's post missed the whole fucking point. People use arch because they actually enjoy the distro. If i ever have to install debian i install it without a desktop first. That's because i want to actually do shit instead of being spoonfed by the distro.
No.552976
>>552948
More or less this. Everyone you see using Arch got there after they got tired of the bloat in Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, etc. People just get sick of bloat.
No.553020
Arch is one of the easiest distros to deal with for me.
>takes maybe 20 minutes to get up and running
>can specify cryptsetup hash algorithm and iteration count at install time while most default to SHA1 and 1 second
>grsec kernel and pax userspace tools available in default repo
>extremely straightforward installation of nvidia/bumblebee for optimus laptops
>pacman is much faster than apt and dnf
>pacaur is much faster than manually building packages
>no stallman-esque autism about keeping out proprietary software, so I can install media codecs and listen to music without having to enable extra repos
>no distracting bloat to clutter the system, only install the packages I need for work
>rolling release, no need to ever do a version upgrade or reinstall periodically
>actually more stable and reliable in my experience than "production" desktop distros like ubuntu
Gentoo is nice too, but I'd rather not spend so much time compiling.
No.553072
>listening to some standardization fag on why a distro that lets the user customize almost everything is bad
No.553074
>>552976
Most of the "bloat" of those distros is a shitty de like unity or gnome. Install xfce or something more minimal and you eliminate most of the annoyances.
No.553076
>>553020
>spend so much time compiling
This meme needs to die. Modern CPUs can compile most programs in less than a minute, unless it's bloated monstrosity coded in C++, like KDE, in which case it will take a few minutes.
The automated customization that compile flags allow is well worth a few minutes once ina blue moon.
No.553081
>>553076
I knew some gentoo autist would sperg out over that comment.
No.553083
>>553074
I'll agree with this, out of laziness I've been using Ubuntu Studio (Ardour without paying and with compiling a chain of shit). It comes with XFCE.
Originally I was only going to use it when I needed Ardour, and keep using my autism distros 90% of the time, but it has worked so well that it took over and I no longer have an aversion to Ubuntu. Didn't expect that
No.553086
>>553074
A default install of debian or fedora has 2000+ packages.
Arch with gnome and a few useful programs is well under 1000.
The bloat runs much deeper than just the DE.
No.553087
No.553104
>>552943
No, it's Dedomeido. Nowhere near as terrible as
Fagioli
but still a massive faggot.
>>552934
>cloud engineer
What excellent credentials :^)
No.553107
>>552976
How is Arch less bloated than a minimal install of Debian?
Debian is probably significantly less bloated, because it likes to split packages up so you don't get development libraries when you just have a runtime dependency.
No.553117
Arch isn't even tinkering beyond the main install unless you want to. Only in certain circumstances will you have to "fix" your machine but its in response to upstream making breaking changes.
Most distros freeze an upstream against breaking changes and back port patches to a program that already has a shitload of patches leading to a release being stagnant and even then you usually experience the same breakage when upgrading, most of the time its either patched to hell and back to fix the "breakage," really a fix, is exposed to the user.
So its not about tinkering really, unless you are incompetent and don't know how to troubleshoot for the occasional breakage in some software every half a year, if even.
No.553119
>>553117
Also, seeing as I used Fedora for 4+ years, I can say that arch requires less overall maintenance especially recently. Previously I had to reinstall before the fedup tool became available, and had to do so even after it became available because my system still fucking broke and I was expecting the tool to wipe my ass.
Choice of distro is just personal preference, but pretending that Arch is time consuming to set up or time consuming to maintain if you aren't incompetent is just a lie. That'd be like dismissing someone who knows how to do their own oil change, or change their tires, as a tinkerer. No, they are just competent enough to take care of their vehicle. If you don't have the time, it'd be excusable, but dismissing it as just some tinkerer's fascination is just wrong. Its just bare minimum self sustaining.
No.553121
>>553107
Unless you choose no install recommends Debian will be bloated as fuck, and even then it still bundles some shit as dependencies that clearly aren't vital dependencies, but required for some obscure feature in the program.
No.553124
>>553119
Also in think the point is that its much easier to track down breakage when it happens and easily remedy it witha rolling release, specific to a project, than have a package be frozen and experience the breakage eight months down the line when everyone has forgotten about it.
No.553126
Jesus, Arch babies are cancer.
They'll constantly proclaim their distro is 'minimalisht' while having no idea of what that means. Arch uses Systemd, it doesn't split packages into devel and runtime, and any merits of its package manager go out the window when you realise that most useful software requires using the AUR. The only minimal thing about it is the interface when you first install it, which itself isn't any great feat because everything is generated for you, it's just tedious after the first time.
No.553129
>>553126
>They'll constantly proclaim [it's minimalist]
That hasn't happened for a while now.
Arch is simple, not minimalist.
>most useful software requires using the AUR
Bullshit.
Experimental stuff that's used by 3 persons is AUR only, but the community repo has pretty much anything that has any traction.
Void is minimalist, Arch is not and nobody in their right mind ever claimed it was since it got rid of rc.conf which was a long fucking time ago.
If you're going to bait, at least try not to have arguments that aren't full on lies.
No.553138
>>553129
There's nothing simple about it either, unless they've invented some new definition for the word.
No.553150
>>553138
Don't pretend that Fedora or Debian, which have hundreds of more bundled moving parts that some maintainer insists is required for a workable Linux desktop, is simpler than Arch just because they have GUI installers which tend to fail in the most bizarre ways across hardware, shoehorn you into how they believe the system should be installed, and have dozens of patches to software just to tailor it to their autistic distro specifications. Arch is simple because it just gives you upstream, Debian is complex because they have a specific vision that every piece of software has to be tailored to.
No.553206
>>553086
debian is easily under a 1000 packages
No.553215
>>553107
from an arch install:
>~# pacstrap /mnt base base-devel
It's already separate.
No.553218
>>553107
>>553126
from an arch install:
>~# pacstrap /mnt base base-devel
It's already separate.
No.553220
>>553215
>>553218
KIKEWHEEELS FIX YOUR SHIT
No.553223
>>553220
🍀✖✌ 👉💀 ♿🚽 😂
No.553226
Arch Linux has been depricated by Gentoo.
No.553227
No.553228
>>553223
"8chan is dead, cripplekike in loo, top kek"
Did I get that right?
No.553229
No.553239
The issue the reviewer has here seems silly, and is the same in reference to Gentoo.
>Have to type stuff to install Arch
>Therefore Arch just isn't easy enough to use
>Arch is thusly is a waste of time
>Better off installing RHEL because its used by proper businesses faggot
>Arch has no place in Linux universe because its too complicated and I want my linux to be made for babby
No.553275
>>553226
I use both, and Gentoo can be quite old (fucking LLVM 3.5.0 in stable). Still, USE flags are cool.
No.553315
meh
Arch is actually a great distro and one of my faves. Though the AUR+official builds is not as much as SUSE's or *buntu's or debian's Arch brings a neat experience for ARM devices (ALARM - arch linux arm).
>tinkerer meme
Wew, UNLESS you're using a common desktop hardware you wouldn't feel the pain of installing a GUI distro and not having your bluetooth, audio and other several pheriperals to work because "New 2016 laptop I bought requires kernel 4.5 for some stuff to work" or "patches for certain hardware driver only available on the latest version and your distro won't because stable" and there's not a single fucking solution about it.
Arch solved several problems of both old and new devices and arch wiki is the living proof.
Pacman is nice but if the distro lacks "some" official package builds doesn't mean that it's bad because anyone can build packages on their own since FOSS is FOSS, even octopi can build it for you hassle free...
Yaourt and pacman is very simple and in fact it is the simplest combined with octopi which is so far the best GUI system updater.
>b-but I'm can't into cli too scared
It's really not that complicated. Even some 8 year old boy named raphael can fucking do it easily then why can't you? It's not rocket science at all. Even japanese kids build PSPs, smartphones, and Gameboys on their elem grade!
And finally Arch (incl gentoo) has a very decent wiki as opposed to ubuntu's terrible forums.
>>552709
f) a kid who cried and experienced a traumatic nightmare for not being able to download the wifi drivers over the wifi network of starbucks
>>552787
>insecure manjaro
>anything ever based on manjaro
>KaOS
used to be based on arch,
KaOS has potential tho but seems to me as an NSA interdicted distro, first distro to also properly implement kwin wayland very well
No.553910
arch is a fucking waste of time
by the time you set it up you can already use KVM in ubuntu or Xen in Deadian
No.553954
>>553910
It takes less than 30 minutes, if that, on a typical desktop if you already have in mind what you want your software selection to be. Less time than it takes to install Ubuntu on spinnan rust.
No.554509
>>553239
After using Arch's version of rolling release, I quite like Gentoo having a slow main channel with per-package control for when that's not good enough.
No.554627
>>553275
Maybe I was not doing it right, but USE flags were just a massive pain in the ass for me.
Gentoo's docs are really unhelpful too.
No.554727
>>553223
The upside of being part of Chromium botnet are the beautiful emojis.
No.554733
>>554727
Works for me in Firefox.
I might have installed emoji font-set separately
No.554738
>>554727
>>554733
Emoji are replaced by images by the board software. Right click them.
No.554746
>>553020
this
i've only had issues with other distros because of the shit they preinstall
No.554758
No.557852
>>552706
He's absolutely right. There's no reason to use arch when projects like Manjaro and Antergos take the Arch base and make it so much better.
No.557946
This thread is cancer, and proves archbabies are all cancer, too. None of you have refuted anything, just spewed buzzwords like "simple" and "minimal"
No.557976
>>552780
Which is funny because as long as you want a system that actually fucking works and does basic fucking functions correctly or at all, you have to configure the shit out of it and by the time you're finished you'll probably feel like it would've been easier to just make your own distro.
No.558188
>>552934
>www.dedoimedo.com/faq.html
>I'm more or less 37 of age, married with no known offspring
>no known offspring
>known
This guy fucks.
No.558244
>>553076
How long does it take you to compile Firefox?
No.558252
>>552787
>>manjaro
>>the distro that let their SSL certificate expire, and suggested that users set their clocks back as a workaround
And what does their site have to do with their distro? Don't bother, I'll answer that for you: nothing. But who'd expect intelligence from Arch fags anyway? They just copy paste commands and config files from the internet to their PC. Any monkey could do that.
No.558450
> ARCH hate thread #4561234
Keep cryin' bitch nigga'
No.558689
>>558450
>I have no reasonable response to these legitimate criticisms so HATERS GONNA HATE ECKSDEEE
No.558699
>>558689
Nigger why does anyone have to defend the flavor of distro they use?
No one gives a shit. I've been burned plenty of times by frozen release cycle Debian-packaged garbage. I've been burned plenty of times by the out of the box configuration shipped with Debian.
Arch isn't about "tinkering." It's just a vessel to give you upstream in the simplest way possible. This isn't 2011, I used to hate Arch fags because the userbase consisted solely of worthless ricers, a package manager that didn't bother with signed packages, and massive instability with graphical environments that also bled over into the "easy" distros when you did a release cycle upgrade.
Years later all of those problems are fixed: the userbase is much more mellow, much less autistic, the packages are signed, and Xorg uses autoconfiguration and is pretty much impossible to break, provided you have the correct drivers installed and don't have a weird use case that requires falling back to plain old config files.
No one cares. Distro flamewars are autistic. It's like arguing over flavors of ice cream at this point because they're all basically the same thing, only differentiated by release cycles and what/the way they package.
No.558715
>>558244
Not him, but about 15-20m on my average quad core. And it's not like you have to sit there staring at it (although it is kind of relaxing, like watching a fire).
No.559569
thinking about switching to Parabola.
Any advice?
No.559645
>>558715
retard question, why does FF take so long?
No.559872
>>552706
>every OS exists soley for entertainment and nothing else
Dropped.
No.559874
>>552787
>look mommy i posed the funny manjaro ssl maymay again!
No.559877
>>559645
Because it was never cleaned up, so the source is an enormous mess that makes Xorg looks neat and cozy. Chromium is even worse.
No.559882
>>552706
I use my OS to work, so I need at least kind of a stability that Arch will never have. But 3/10, I answered.
No.559903
>>552744
anon got it right
No.559914
>>552850
I use Gentoo on my work laptop. As a junior sysadmin I hate the fact that we run ubuntu lts on all of our 200+ Linux-VMs. Well tbh ubuntu ain't that bad and the lts stuff is really convenient (ubuntu patches old versions of e.g. openssl when there is a breach) but I'd use portage anyday everywhere.
on my GF's oldass laptop I installed mint a year ago, not that it matters (she doesn't use it often since her tablet performs way faster) but I'd install gentoo on it as well because mint broke twice while updating within the regular repos (incompatible kernel, missing drivers in newer kernel builds which were present in older ones)
No.559915
>>553076
webkit, libreoffice, firefox still take up to an hour (-j6 on 3rd Gen i7...-j6 because I want to be able to get other work done while compiling....-j8 is not much faster 33% actually)
No.559917
>>553121
when
>the program
has been compiled with
>some obscure feature
then it clearly is a
>vital dependency
No.559920
No.559921
>>554627
If you read the base article on USE-Flags in the handbook it should be pretty clear from there. Basically you don't set useflags globally at all (only in rare cases where it is really something you want to use systemwide like if you want to use pulseaudio you should add it to /etc/portage/make.conf). When portage needs you to set specific useflags on per package basis you usually just comply with "dispatch-conf". That's it. Enjoy your minimalism
No.559923
>>559645
>>559877
basically this
>it does have it's own rendering engine (gecko)
>it bundles a shitload of libraries
>it has so many unwanted features
No.562754
I don't use arch because it has too much instability just by updating regularly.
No.562766
I don't use arch because it has too much instability just by updating regularly.
No.562814
>>552706
>Why not arch?
Because stability, reliability, and performance is my requirement. Arch isn't up to snuff. Xubuntu, Debian, and CentOS are.
No.562824
>>553020
This is pretty much how it goes for me too
Including the bit about Gentoo. A slim system doesn't mean jack shit when you're compiling all day erry day because important updates come along at the same rate you can compile them
No.562827
>>558715
It takes an age on my duo core. If it didn't I'd consider moving from Slackware.
No.562853
He's correct on everything.
Archfags, please stop doing all this mental gymnastics here. We all know your distro is a meme distro.
No.562869
>>562814
add Void to that list as well.
No.562881
>>562853
The only mental gymnastics are from people who took the memes from years ago seriously. Arch isn't unstable, and packages frozen at a point in time don't equal stability.
Let's take Ubuntu and Fedora, and the most recent fiasco where they froze KDE at a point in time where it buggy unstable shit. That's just one example.
With arch, you had a choice, with those distros you didn't have a choice and were stuck with the shit they gave you for the most part.
Also, arch doesn't have to be a distro for tinkerers. I've done less maintenance on my arch install than I had to do on a Fedora install in the same time period, just based on package selection and what's in the AUR alone. In the same time frame, I had to write three spec files and package everything. All of this was available in community or the AUR in the mean time.
No.562888
>>562881
And maintenance in general? I have to upgrade every several days and watch the news feed to see if they're breaking anything major. Wow, that maintenance sure is hard.
Getting set up? Wow, (re)partition a disk and pacstrap into it. Then install grub. It's not gentoo, it doesn't take 7+ hours to install a full DE and browsers, it takes 30 minutes at most if you follow the Beginner's Guide.
Trying to reignite the Arch hate that was on /g/ all those years ago is pointless, because it's not the same at all. All the memes are a snapshot in time of unbearable faggotry coming from ricers ande the fact that Xorg didn't have autoconfiguration at the time.
I remember the threads well when the kernel.org fiasco happened and the only distro vulnerable was Arch. That was fun to grill Archfags for months over, especially because many defended signing as "bloat."
But it's not 2011 anymore, and the trippfagging autists like Marisa Kirisame and others have moved on to other minimalism circlejerks, especially in response to the systemd switch.
No.562895
>>562869
Not >>562814 but just want to say Void is okay. I really want to like it, but the lack of documentation really bothers me. It also seems to have an even more cancerous than Arch from my interactions with it. It looks super cool, but I'm going to have to wait until it's more mature myself.
>>562888
Yeah, you have to upgrade every several days and watch the news feed. Most people don't have to and don't want to, especially if they have shit internet. Arch will never be a serious person's distro because it requires too much maintenance in and of itself and yes, it does break. If I want to actually get things done, Arch is the last place I'm going. Arch is nothing more than a toy for a whole bunch of unwitting beta-testers.
No.562904
>>562895
>and watch the news feed
There's nothing hard about watching the news feed, new entries only come up like every month, usually only announcing major software releases or deprecation of major software like KDE 4. The only thing they're really responsible for breaking is Pacman, everything else is just thanks to upstream breaking something.
And while an ALPM change is pretty rare, the most it will rarely do is keep AUR package management on its toes.
My maintenance for a year and a half has literally been pacman -Syu every 4-7 days.
Nothing has broken. Not vagrant, which is the most unstable thing I use to work, not my DE, not Xorg, not anything, certainly not my text editor or mail client.
Although that's anecdotal, implying that Arch has some super special maintenance burden, when you'd probably get an even bigger burden from botched distro upgrades in the same time period, is just an exaggeration.
I've been burned too many times by shitty maintenance of out of date packages, or lack of the packages I need. That's the only reason I use Arch. Not that I really care, but the myth is just disingenuous at best.
No.562915
No.562925
>>562881
You can say whatever you want archfag. I used Arch for half a year. I know how stable (or rather unstable) it is. I don't think there was a single month in which I wouldn't have to fix broken shit after updates - and no, half the stuff that would break wasn't even listed in the news feeds.
>Let's take Ubuntu and Fedora, and the most recent fiasco where they froze KDE at a point in time where it buggy unstable shit.
No idea what you're trying to say here. Ubuntu and Fedora have nothing to do with Arch being shit. You can install any KDE version you want from unofficial sources - just like in Arch.
>With arch, you had a choice, with those distros you didn't have a choice and were stuck with the shit they gave you for the most part.
You have the same choice with any distro. AUR is an unofficial piece of shit with no secure oversight of the packages, every single distro has unofficial shit, so I fail to see what's special about AUR. It's laughable how every Arch discussion has a lot of discussion about something that's not even an official part of Arch.
But hey, good job reaffirming how Arch users are special snowflakes with everything in Arch being special, except that it's nothing special.
No.562931
>>562925
What broke, in particular?
>Ubuntu and Fedora have nothing to do with Arch being shit.
What you're talking about is a rolling release vs fixed release. Any criticisms of Arch's "stability", aside from ALPM breakage, would also be in any other rolling release. That's the nature of the beast.
>You have the same choice with any distro.
No, you don't. Good luck installing an "unofficial" version of something as large as KDE from a PPA or a COPR, probably only maintained by one person, versus the several or more that will be maintaining something as large as KDE in Ubuntu or Fedora.
At best, it will be less stable than the heavily unstable version that they froze, in which stability is the one thing you were trying to remedy and the distro didn't provide it because of their fixed release and shit maintenance of it.
>except that it's nothing special.
I actually find it kind of hilarious that I'm defending Arch after all these years, especially considering how hard I used to grill Archfags.
But that's the point: Arch is nothing special without its community. It's just a vessel for upstream at best, and it's the biggest rolling release so I have more suckers who can maintain shit for me.
But what's hilarious about this thread is that retards like you are considering Void (or even Gentoo), as if it's any different. The very nature of BLEEDING EDGE is that you're probably going to cut yourself. The very nature of the dull edge is that it while you won't cut yourself, sometimes it sucks at cutting (because of frozen shit that was only chosen due to their release cycles.)
Arch isn't special, it's just the most convenient distro out of them all for those who are tired by fixed schedules which somehow still manage to ship unstable shit.
Better to get burned by the rare upstream fuckup than have to deal with the same bugs that the maintainers refuse to fix until they rebase next dist release.
No.562934
>>562931
And what I was referring to was the lack of choice. KDE4 wasn't packaged or maintained in Ubuntu, or Fedora, KDE5 was your only option at that point. Your best bet was going to the PPA (an unofficial Fedora COPR didn't exist for KDE, at least not one with the full DE) and installing the Kubuntu testing of the next release, but that would've probably had been more unstable since they're targetting things that Ubuntu upstream are going to break in the next release.
So it's classic "you're fucked both ways, choose how you want to be fucked." Fixed releases inevitably break during a dist upgrade, despite the best efforts of many people to pre-empt that breakage. They also can be broken during the whole release cycle if the maintenance sucks dick.
No.562950
>>562931
>But what's hilarious about this thread is that retards like you are considering Void (or even Gentoo), as if it's any different. The very nature of BLEEDING EDGE is that you're probably going to cut yourself.
What's hilarious is that you think Arch == Gentoo. If you need a super lean system that's relatively easy to upkeep, you can easily achieve it with Gentoo not with Arch.
And your reasons for using Arch because "bleeding edge" and occasional "broken fixed schedules of other distros" are retarded. Arch is not the only bleeding edge rolling release, there are many far more stable and secure ones around.
>>562934
So what you're saying is all distros are shit, best to choose Arch? I don't get why you would go for a bleeding edge untested package release distro if you're so mad when things break.
No.562956
>>562917
>Doxing Fagioli
This is almost as cringy as the time /mu/ doxed Mr.DeathGrip's grandpa
No.562958
>>562950
>Arch == Gentoo
No, it's not.
>If you need a super lean system
That's afflicted by the same breakage that you're railing against. Gentoo is a metadistribution in which stable is worse than Debian testing with many packages, and with testing you can choose to spend hours and hours to compile a large package only to find out that it's broken.
>because "bleeding edge"
Well, yeah, sure. More like it's the most convenient distro.
>there are many far more stable
Can you please tell me which bleeding edge distro magically fixes the problems with upstream breaking shit? You're telling me that there's a distro out there that has very tight releases, for example, that magically identifies any breakage that even upstream didn't see in these tight releases, and applies and maintains those patches?
You're just being disingenuous at this point.
>So what you're saying is all distros are shit, best to choose Arch?
No distro is best. Distro flamewars are for aspies, fam. All depends on your needs. The difference is that the Arch "instability" myth is disingenuous.
>untested package release distro
Arch has a testing repository.
You still haven't named what software was magically breaking on a monthly basis. I'll take that as "I am full of shit and repeat the maymays from 2011."
No.562983
>>562824
That certainly isn't my experience. Most stuff compiles relatively quickly. And even then you can do other stuff while that's going on, most big packages don't upgrade too often. The worst ones in this respect are browsers, but you can just install firefox-bin. And I'm saying this as someone who's running Gentoo on mobile 1.9GHz dual core, if you have something decent, it should not be an issue at all.
No.562985
No.563501
>>562931
>No, you don't.
Well, technically, Linux is Linux. So, you can do whatever you want and rip out the old KDE and install it manually; package manager be damned.
Of course, at that point, you'd just be a retard who should've installed a different distro to begin with.
No.563507
>>563501
>install KDE manually
This is possible in theory, sure, but who the fuck wants to install thousands of packages by hand? 99.99999999999999% of people will never do it because it's infinitely more inconvenient than dealing with the bugs of older versions.
No.563521
>>552762
Void takes much less time to setup than Arch does, just install it from the disc image and make a username.
No.563637
>>563521
Void is a great idea poorly executed.
>hey, let's take the best parts of Arch and BSD, but with none of the documentation!
No.563790
Because Windows has better software.
No.564460
>>558244
Help a non-believer out please
Does "having to compile FF" also mean that Gentoo software have to be recompiled after EVERY update? Like instead of the pacman -Syu meme I have to sit there for days waiting and then I have to go grab a knife to slit my throat because updating takes so long that new updates come out?
No.564632
>>553087
read your post and wondering what's fagloli, how could a loli be fag? and after a while i realize it's fagioli. wtf i am thinking.
>>553076
>>Modern CPUs can compile most programs in less than a minute, unless it's bloated monstrosity coded in C++
don't know what specs your computer have now, but anyway, let's compile linux kernel first.
and still, there's no "best distro". there's only "the distro(s) fits your need". i see no reason for any of us arguing for all this shit, sounds more like a jihad.
No.565535
>>552948
>>552976
>>553020
To add on, most distros have really shitty defaults that don't suit my needs. It is easier to configure Arch because you build from the ground up instead of needing to tear down the existing config.
No.566044
I went from Debian to Gentoo to Arch. I also used RHEL/CentOS a lot at work (got my RHCSA doing it).
I use Arch because the Arch bits (pacman, et al) are small and convenient to ignore. Netctl bugged me, but I'm on Network Manager now and nm-applet, and (God help me) enjoying it.
One downside: the performance of 32-bit Arch has degraded considerably. I had an old VAIO for the occasional remoting and the performance steadily degraded. Either a new maintainer changed something or a decision was made to use the safest flags, or perhaps they simply don't care about older hardware.
No.566061
>>564460
You only compile the software you update. And you don't have to compile FF, you can install firefox-bin instead... there are binary versions of few other packages that take relatively long time to compile. And as the other anon said, most of it compiles quickly. Weekly update will usually take under an hour and that's giving it a generous reserve even for dual core CPUs.
No.566063
Can Arch do PIC 1 on PIC 2?
No? Thought so.
No.567494
>>553086
>>553206
amount of packages is a terrible measurement scale, but even then debian comes with multiple hundred packages preinstalled (minimal), whereas arch comes with 57 in the base group. sure, that's not a usable system for most, but even with Xorg, a window manager, GTK, midori and a few other programs I'm currently at ~450 packages. a minimal fedora install even comes with PulseAudio preinstalled.
anyways, it's a horrible thing to measure.
No.569260
Honest question here: Can someone explain to me why people use Arch to begin with? Honestly, I just use Mint for web surfing, chatting, dwarf fortress, tux guitar (even though it kinda sucks), downloading and other basic usages. I've literally never had a problem with updating and things breaking.
What compels someone to use Arch over something more 'babby' like Mint or Ubuntu when you're using modern hardware? I'm genuinely interested.
No.569357
>>569260
>What compels someone to use Arch over something more 'babby' like Mint or Ubuntu when you're using modern hardware? I'm genuinely interested.
To attention whore and act like manchildren. I'm dead serious, look at 90% of the people in SHOW UR LE DESKTOP or /r/unixporn.
The old reason was "muh minimalism" because it had bsd-style init and was pretty bare. Nowadays it has SYSTEMXDDD and is so bloated it blows that reason out. They act like it's for "powerusers", meanwhile they've never compiled their own custom kernel in their lives.
No.569697
>>569357
Thank you for your perspective.
I don't really look down on anyone using any distro for reasons they enjoy. I'm not quite sure if Arch breaks as often as people say--I should probably check it out myself to have a balanced opinion on that.
I have to ask though: apart from supposed bloat in other distros like Mint and Ubuntu (and apparently Arch as you say), is there really a reason to worry about it? I guess if you don't want anything running on your system that you don't know about but I don't think I accept it bogs down a machine running on modern hardware. Am I wrong?
No.571799
tl;dr
i am too afraid of learning new things, yet wanted to give arch linux a review even though ive never tried it and never will because i assume its bad
No.571832
>>569357
I've had far more upgrade breakage from ubuntu/mint/fedora than I have from 5 years on arch.
Its the only distro that I've tried balances the feeling of control and simplicity
No.571993
>>571832
This is interesting as I've never had breakages happen in Ubuntu and its derivatives. What do you think makes the difference? Could it be our different hardware set ups? I run "sudo apt-get update/upgrade/dist-upgrade" when I update my machine--do you do things differently?
No.572160
No.572233
He's right though, I have been using arch for a couple of years. The install process just gives the user an idea about the essential packages needed to setup a working distro. You won't learn a whole lot as you won't be installing it on the daily. The selling point for me though, is the wiki thats very well written and was my to go to resource even when using non arch based distros. The aur is also a great addition since you won't have to worry about compiling shit thats not in other distros repos and worry about updates and so on. Other than that it doesn't excel over any other linux distro in any way. Their community is a bunch of edgy elitists who think they invented hot water because they have the arch logo in their terminals.
No.572261
I wouldn't review Arch if I reviewed distros.
Ubuntu, Debian, etc are like packet cake mixes.
Each tastes slightly different, has different ingredients and has different cooking instructions, but typically comes out to a fairly standard end product.
Arch is like a bag of plain flour.
It doesn't really have a standard anything. How it ends up depends on how you make it. You don't even need to make cakes with it, you might try something else.
That makes it really tricky to review. You wouldn't review a Betty Crocker Mud Cake Mix and a bag of flour in the same category. It wouldn't work.
No.572310
>>572261
Unless perhaps you're comparing the typical end results of both the cake mix and the bag of flour. For instance, I can say it takes me less ingredients to get the same mixed-packet cake taste (and I do like the flavor of it!) but takes a lot longer than just buying a cake packet and doing it in 5 minutes.
I hope that made sense. This is now a cake making thread :P
No.572311
>>572261
>>572261
Unless perhaps you're comparing the typical end results of both the cake mix and the bag of flour. For instance, I can say it takes me less ingredients to get the same mixed-packet cake taste (and I do like the flavor of it!) but takes a lot longer than just buying a cake packet and doing it in 5 minutes.
I hope that made sense. This is now a cake making thread :P
No.572315
>>572261
>>572261
Unless perhaps you're comparing the typical end results of both the cake mix and the bag of flour. For instance, I can say it takes me less ingredients to get the same mixed-packet cake taste (and I do like the flavor of it!) but doing it manually takes a lot longer than just buying a cake packet and doing it in 5 minutes.
You can review both of them within the context of a typical "end result". Obviously a master baker is going to make a cake that blows the pre-mixed bullshit out of the water; but, that's not the point, is it?
I hope that made sense. This is now a cake making thread :P
No.572317
>>572261
Unless perhaps you're comparing the typical end results of both the cake mix and the bag of flour. For instance, I can say it takes me less ingredients to get the same mixed-packet cake taste (and I do like the flavor of it!) but doing it manually takes a lot longer than just buying a cake packet and doing it in 5 minutes.
You can review both of them within the context of a typical "end result". Obviously a master baker is going to make a cake that blows the pre-mixed bullshit out of the water; but, that's not the point, is it?
I hope that made sense. This is now a cake making thread :P
No.572376
>>572261
chefs demand the best ingredients to make the best meals. Different brands of flour have different qualities, just as DIY linux or gentoo have differences from Arch.
A review for Arch would have to be not a sum of software, but how it compares to other distros that have the build-it-yourself style.
No.572378
>>572310
>>572311
>>572315
>>572317
did you forget your ADHD pills this morning
No.572635
>>572378
Hey I'm the dude that posted those. I'm sorry... it kept giving me a posting error but I was retarded and retried like 4 times... fuck. My bad.
No.574006
>>554727
Firefox handles them superior because you can click on the emoji and it selects it. In chrome, you can't select it at all except by selecting the surrounding text. So, that means if there's 3 emojis with no whitespace between, it is impossible in chrome to select the middle emoji. In firefox, you can.
No.574007
Also
>arch
>systemd
into the fucking trash
is there a decent non systemcuck fork?
No.574501
>>574007
The closest thing would probably be Manjaro's openRC edition.
No.574884
No.575021
>>553081
Oh look, here's the Arch normie!