Arch

evercloserunion

Hi, I'm thinking of moving from Ubuntu to Arch and was looking for advice. Basically I'd like to move to an OS that will help me learn a bit more about how Linux actually works; I've looked at Gentoo and Linux From Scratch and they both seem too advanced for a noob like myself and they also both seem like they'd require a lot of time and effort which I won't be able to give over the next year. Someone on another forum said Arch was also a good way to lean more about Linux though.

Reading through various comparisons, it seems as though Arch is intended to be less out-of-the-box and more DIY-oriented than Ubuntu. That is what I want, but at the same time I want to know if Arch would be very difficult to get working and maintain, for someone with very little knowledge of Linux. Or is it easy enough to handle?

Also, regarding the rolling release, what is the package load like? Are there a lot of package downloads every day, and are they very large? I have an internet connection but it's quite slow and shared with other people so I don't wanna be sucking up too much bandwidth trying to keep my system up to date.

What do you reckon, is a transfer to Arch doable o should I stick with a more beginner-friendly distro?

Cheers for the advice!

dioltas

Very doable man.

I went from ubuntu to Arch a few years back and the beginners installaton guide really holds your hand and guides you through the whole setup.

It's a lot more satisfying as you decide what packages go on etc.

As for the updates, it's as easy as "sudo pacman -Syu", job done. I've very lasy when it comes to updates though, only do it every few weeks.

You'll definitely learn a lot coming from Ubuntu.

Arch is grand to set up. I switched straight from Windows to Arch a couple of months ago with no real issues.

I've since switched to Ubuntu, but that's because I was getting better performance and boot times when I tried it out.

It's possible to get these with Arch of course, but I'm no guru, and Gnome wouldn't install for me with Arch for some reason so I was stuck with KDE.

Good luck though. The package manager's really nice, and it's a rolling release system so it's a breeze to update once you've got everything set up.

evercloserunion

Hmm, small question--is Arch as a distro geared towards 64-bit systems? I knew there was a 64-bit Arch, but reading through the site and wiki they talk a lot about packages optimised for 64-bit architecture and don't mention 32-bit systems at all. Is Arch more for 64-bit processors or can I get a version that will work fine on my 32-bit laptop?

Thanks for the above advice! Though I am concerned to hear that Gnome wouldn't install, is this a common problem? Gnome would be my preferred DE.

dioltas

I don't think it should be a problem tbh. And while there is a 64-bit version I don't think it's geared for 64-bit, a lot more programs for 32-bit.

The forums and IRC channels are fairly good for help too.

evercloserunion

evercloserunion wrote: »

Hmm, small question--is Arch as a distro geared towards 64-bit systems? I knew there was a 64-bit Arch, but reading through the site and wiki they talk a lot about packages optimised for 64-bit architecture and don't mention 32-bit systems at all. Is Arch more for 64-bit processors or can I get a version that will work fine on my 32-bit laptop?

Thanks for the above advice! Though I am concerned to hear that Gnome wouldn't install, is this a common problem? Gnome would be my preferred DE.

Mine was 32-bit Arch. No problems on that front.

As regards your other question, I think the instructive point is that I couldn't get Gnome working. Which means it seems to work for almost everybody else, but I apparently lack whatever luck they're blessed with.

My graphics card has been troublesome on my laptop before, to configure, which is the main reason tbh. The majority of people should be more than fine.

Pygmalion

I never had a problem with it following the beginner's guide, which walks you through from basic installation to setting up Sound/Graphics and other basic stuff.
I never really liked the "Official" install guide though, seems to me just like a condensed beginner's guide that leaves out some important stuff as well as some beginner stuff.

As for the frequency/size of package updates I never seem to get more than a few megabytes a day unless there's a new KDE release.
I think the slight increase in updates you get due to the "rolling release" instead of holding some things back until next major version seems to be cancelled out by the fact you probably have less packages installed than you would in less minimal distros.

Mathiasb

I've been using 64-bit Archlinux for a few years now. Very happy with it, no hickups, and the AUR is great. There are no 32-bit applications in 64-bit Arch (unless you install them yourself, that is), it's all pure 64-bit.

evercloserunion

Another question, is tracking down and installing hardware drivers a pain in Arch? I have a feeling this may be something I have come to take for granted in Ubuntu.

Mathiasb

evercloserunion wrote: »

Another question, is tracking down and installing hardware drivers a pain in Arch? I have a feeling this may be something I have come to take for granted in Ubuntu.

What kind of hardware drivers? They all (almost all free ones anyway) come out of the box with the kernel. You can install the nvidia, fglrx, ndiswrapper etc with the package manager.

evercloserunion

Mathiasb wrote: »

What kind of hardware drivers? They all (almost all free ones anyway) come out of the box with the kernel. You can install the nvidia, fglrx, ndiswrapper etc with the package manager.

Yeah, the free ones should be fine, I've just heard that installing proprietary drivers for (eg) wireless, graphics cards etc can be a pain. But it's generally okay? I'm guessing it all depends on specific hardware.

Mathiasb

evercloserunion wrote: »

Yeah, the free ones should be fine, I've just heard that installing proprietary drivers for (eg) wireless, graphics cards etc can be a pain. But it's generally okay? I'm guessing it all depends on specific hardware.

As you say it's down to the specific HW, but nvidia, ati etc are painless. The wiki ( http://wiki.archlinux.org ) provides pretty good documentation and howtos on the most common topics.

evercloserunion

Thanks!

(The reason I'm continuously asking questions about it instead if just doing it is that I don't have stable internet access at the moment. When that changes I will give it a shot though. And if I really don't like it I can switch back in time for Maveick Meerkat )

ShooterSF

The guide really is fantastic. I just find I have 8 or 9 tabs open with areas I need to work on. Like you I took it on to pick up more about linux and it kind of forces you to by reading up. Also the moment xorg works and your not just on a command line is a nice feeling. I got a great buzz when I installed LXDE and graphical power kicked in!

Last time I tried it I installed KDE but then realised my goal of avoiding all the programmes I never use on Ubuntu was missed with all that comes with KDE.

Maybe next Ill drop back to a window manager...

Naikon

The only drivers you need to worry about are sound and Nvidia blob drivers which aren't in the kernel. Everything else is loaded at runtime or statically compiled into the kernel, no hunting around for basic hardware drivers ala Windows. Pacman -S oss for Open sound, and Pacman -S alsa-utils for ALSA. Pick one only. Some wireless drivers have non free drivers, but Atheros have built in support for example. I prefer OSS for the in kernel mixing but it's your choice. Linux works best if you stick to linux supported hardware.

Mathiasb

Naikon wrote: »

The only drivers you need to worry about are sound and Nvidia blob drivers which aren't in the kernel. Everything else is loaded at runtime or statically compiled into the kernel, no hunting around for basic hardware drivers ala Windows. Pacman -S oss for Open sound, and Pacman -S alsa-utils for ALSA. Pick one only. Some wireless drivers have non free drivers, but Atheros have built in support for example. I prefer OSS for the in kernel mixing but it's your choice. Linux works best if you stick to linux supported hardware.

You have soundcard support OOTB. alsa-utils might be needed as well though, it brings the mixer, andperhapsthe libs.

evercloserunion

Naikon wrote: »

The only drivers you need to worry about are sound and Nvidia blob drivers which aren't in the kernel. Everything else is loaded at runtime or statically compiled into the kernel, no hunting around for basic hardware drivers ala Windows. Pacman -S oss for Open sound, and Pacman -S alsa-utils for ALSA. Pick one only. Some wireless drivers have non free drivers, but Atheros have built in support for example. I prefer OSS for the in kernel mixing but it's your choice. Linux works best if you stick to linux supported hardware.

I copy-pasted your sig into bash to see if it did anything and very nearly suffered (and I quote) "***SEVERE*** filesystem damage"...

dioltas

I don't have sigs turned on, what is it? "rm -rf /"?

evercloserunion

dioltas wrote: »

I don't have sigs turned on, what is it? "rm -rf /"?

No, I'd recognise that.

It was

who | grep -i blonde | talk; cd ~; wine; talk; touch;  unzip; touch; strip; gasp; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; gasp;  umount; make clean; sleep

Naikon

evercloserunion wrote: »

I copy-pasted your sig into bash to see if it did anything and very nearly suffered (and I quote) "***SEVERE*** filesystem damage"...

Ok, I have removed it so people don't blame me for damaging their filesystems. Sorry. You should NEVER fsck a mounted filesystem. That will always stuff your partition. Background fsck is not the default on Linux.

evercloserunion

Naikon wrote: »

Ok, I have removed it so people don't blame me for damaging their filesystems. Sorry. You should NEVER fsck a mounted filesystem. That will always stuff your partition. Background fsck is not the default on Linux.

I wasn't saying you should remove it, just commenting on how stupid I was to copy-paste something without understanding all the commands. One of the standard things that noobs are always told never to do.

Naikon

evercloserunion wrote: »

I wasn't saying you should remove it, just commenting on how stupid I was to copy-paste something without understanding all the commands. One of the standard things that noobs are always told never to do.

Ah sure, I have done it myself on occassion. It's like a right of passage on Unix/Linux, where you are bound to do something like 'rm -rf /etc' instead of 'rm -rf etc/' **Note to users - don't type the first one!*

It's kinda lame anyway, so I might leave it off:) In conclusion, Unix users are bound to make mistakes(sometime grave) as the hand holding ethos of Windows and Mac just doesn't apply here. But once you make the mistakes, you won't make them again, or at least less frequently:pac:

"Unix is user-friendly. It just isn't promiscuous about which users it's friendly with." - So true.

This is worth reading: steve-parker.org/articles/others/stephenson/holehawg.shtml

Eliot Rosewater

Yeah, I once ran 'sudo chmod -R 777 /' instead of 'sudo chmod -R 777 ./'. One full stop and a world of pain between those two commands!

(Like before, don't run the first one!)

Herbal Deity

--preserve-root has been set for rm by default in coreutils since about 2006, so 'rm -rf /' will not do anything, unless you're using some strange distro using a very old coreutils package.


As a matter of interest, what will Arch teach someone that Ubuntu won't? Just less stuff automatically configured so the user will have to do things manually and learn as a result?

Naikon

Herbal Deity wrote: »

--preserve-root has been set for rm by default in coreutils since about 2006, so 'rm -rf /' will not do anything, unless you're using some strange distro using a very old coreutils package.


As a matter of interest, what will Arch teach someone that Ubuntu won't? Just less stuff automatically configured so the user will have to do things manually and learn as a result?

Not too much. Ubuntu is still GNU + Linux at the end of the day. Arch is better if you don't like Gnome and like to configure everything from the ground up. Experienced users tend to use Ubuntu and Arch.
I prefer Arch because I like to use icewm over Gnome, and OSS for sound instead of Alsa. Arch lets you build from the ground up, whereas Ubuntu is more "install; done" once you install the os. Everthing is already in place with Ubuntu. The whole "Arch is better than x" and such is silly because it comes down to user preference. Ok, I might not use Ubuntu/Arch for a server, but I would use them without any question on a desktop. RedHat/Centos use very old packages, so they are very stable, but not great for desktop use.

Pick the right tool for the right job and all that.

tldr; Arch starts with nothing with the command line, so it forces you to learn how to configure stuff. Ubuntu lets you choose.

evercloserunion

As a matter of interest, what will Arch teach someone that Ubuntu won't? Just less stuff automatically configured so the user will have to do things manually and learn as a result?

Well, that's what I've heard. Let's see if it actually results in valuable learning and enlightenment or just frustration and resignation.

Someone said that if I wanted to try Arch I should get used to the "make" command. I realised that I've never actually used it. So I downloaded a few random source files from SourceFourge and tried to compile them, with not a whole lot of success. Very few come with configure scripts and the install text files just tell you to run "make", but doing do invariably returns an error and fails to compile.

But I think the problem is with dependencies, which I can't download right now because I can't get apt to work through the TCD proxy.

Mathiasb

evercloserunion wrote: »

Well, that's what I've heard. Let's see if it actually results in valuable learning and enlightenment or just frustration and resignation.

Someone said that if I wanted to try Arch I should get used to the "make" command. I realised that I've never actually used it. So I downloaded a few random source files from SourceFourge and tried to compile them, with not a whole lot of success. Very few come with configure scripts and the install text files just tell you to run "make", but doing do invariably returns an error and fails to compile.

But I think the problem is with dependencies, which I can't download right now because I can't get apt to work through the TCD proxy.

Eh? That person must have never used Archlinux. You very rarely use the make command, actually, there is no need for it.

You have a package manager, like all the other relevant distros. In Archlinux, it installs binary (precompiled) packages. You don't need to do anything other than pick and choose what you want.

If you want to tune a package to your liking (disable or enable a feature), you can easily do so via ABS (Arch Build System).

evercloserunion

Mathiasb wrote: »

Eh? That person must have never used Archlinux. You very rarely use the make command, actually, there is no need for it.

You have a package manager, like all the other relevant distros. In Archlinux, it installs binary (precompiled) packages. You don't need to do anything other than pick and choose what you want.

If you want to tune a package to your liking (disable or enable a feature), you can easily do so via ABS (Arch Build System).

Ah fair enough. This was on a forum for Ubuntu users so I guess a lot of what I heard was biased.

Mathiasb

evercloserunion wrote: »

Ah fair enough. This was on a forum for Ubuntu users so I guess a lot of what I heard was biased.

Heh, there are a lot of newbies on the Ubuntu forums who bash other distros because... well, really because it's not Ubuntu and doesn't do things like Ubuntu does them. In the end it's a matter of personal preference really

evercloserunion

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evercloserunion

Hello from Arch!

Finally got around to it, just posting from elinks at the moment, waiting for xorg to install. Basic packages installed and ALSA configured fine. Generally has been fine, maybe I shouldn't have waited until the early hours of the morning to install though! Just hope nothing goes wrong now, I hear configuring Xorg can be a pain!

dioltas

The thing about xorg is the seem to change the way it's setup every few months! So once you figure out one way it's deprecated!

It's not too bad though, well done on going for it!