Hi all, I remember someone on the list was asking impressions on Arch linux a while back, well I've installed it twice now -- on my laptop and desktop -- and thought I would share a thought or two from my use over the last fortnight.
The install is a simple text based one, if you have installed Slackware you will be very at home. Some highlights; - Manual or automatic (destroy all partitions and use one big /) partitioning - Selecting of mount points and filesystems - Selecting base packages to install - Copying files - Manually editing system config files (with vim or nano) - Installing a boot loader The whole install was very quick and painless but not really designed for a newbie. The base package group contains a very basic system and most things (kde, gnome, postfix, apache, etc) are contained in the extra repository. I used the base ISO (210MB) to install but there is also another ISO (560MB) which I assume contains a snapshot of some of the extra repository. The Arch package manager -- pacman -- is very simple, nice to use, and really fast too. Once I had rebooted into my new system I issued a `pacman -Syu` (-S for sync (fetch and install packages and dependencies), -y for get new package lists and -u for upgrade all things out of date). This brought my system up to the latest and greatest. I then continued with `pacman -S xorg` and `pacman -S kde mplayer amarok` and a few others. The package database isn't huge but it is growing daily and contains all the latest and greatest versions[1]. Arch uses a rolling release like Gentoo and it is suggested to issue a `pacman -Syu` regularly. Anything that you can't find in the repository can be built using ABS, which will build you a pacman package from a PKGBUILD file so you can keep track of everything on your system. This, to me, is an absolute joy to use. I needed dvdauthor which I didn't find in the repository (surprisingly, although there is discussion of it on the forums) and it only took me 5 minutes to knock up a PKGBULD file[2] though it was my second time, my first PKGBUILD was for kmymoney2 from CVS[3] No offense intended to the developers or the userbase but from my limited experience on the Arch forums[4] they seem quite immature and no where near the vast resource of the Gentoo forums. This is quite possibly a reflection of the age of the distro more than anything else. They do have a Wiki[5] which is becoming a valuable resource. I come from Slackware so editing config files manually is what I am used to, but if you are used to GUI tools to configure your system then you will be disappointed. That being said, the system config is extremely simplistic and easy to manage. The main system config revolves around one file /etc/rc.conf[6] and the majority of the rest of the config reminds me a lot of Slackware. I've been using Slackware as my main distro for a few years with a dash of Debian and a small pinch of Gentoo thrown in. Arch seems to me like a mix of the best of these three. The simplicity of Slackware, and the advantage of great package managent systems like apt and portage. I'm sure some people do use it as a server but I can't imagine myself using Arch on a server, it just seems more suited to a desktop application. I'll Stick with Slack and Debian for that. All in all I would recommend Arch if you like a pretty bleeding edge desktop that is simply great to configure and keep update, but only if you have a little experience with linux and are happy to get your hands slightly soiled in the CLI. Hope this was of interest, hads [1]http://nice.net.nz/hads/package_list (A list of packages on my system) [2]http://nice.net.nz/hads/PKGBUILD.dvdauthor [3]http://nice.net.nz/hads/PKGBUILD.kmymoney2-cvs [4]http://bbs.archlinux.org [5]http://wiki.archlinux.org [6]http://nice.net.nz/hads/rc.conf (An rc.conf example) -- What do you call a boomerang that doesn't work? A stick.
