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exploder
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Antergos

Post by exploder »

A couple of days ago I installed Antergos with Gnome on my desktop. I had been trying Sabayon but updates destroyed it! Antergos is pretty much Arch made easy and has a nice graphical installer much like Ubuntu's. I installed the new system with no problems at all. :D The installer allowed me to install various things for multimedia playback, Libre Office and enable AUR, etc.

I did do a little package swapping out to make things the way I like them, the end result was very nice to say the least. I did search the forum to learn how to install pepper flash in Chromium but the information was easily available. I asked a couple of questions in the form too because I am not familiar with Arch. My questions were answered pretty quick!

The developers participate on the forum and are very nice and helpful, this really impressed me! :D I have always read good things about Arch and the Antergos team sure makes getting started very easy. My main goal is to have the current stable version of Gnome Shell and so far Antergos has made this easy to accomplish.

Shuld you find yourself wanting to try Arch but are having a hard time installing it, this is an easy way to get the job done. There are other desktop environments available from the Antergos Live CD and of course you can look it over before you do the actual install. Arch seems a lot less prone to breakage than Sabayon was in my opinion and I have really been enjoying it!

There is a graphical package manager included by default and it does take a little bit of getting used to. A little bit of reading in the wiki and the forum goes a long way! I have always wanted to try Arch and so far I see why so many people like it. :D
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killer de bug

Re: Antergos

Post by killer de bug »

You are currently in a distro hopper mood :lol:
It was previously known under the name of Cinnarch right? What are the advantage of this distro compare to Manjaro? Antergos uses true arch repo?
exploder
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Re: Antergos

Post by exploder »

It was previously known under the name of Cinnarch right?
Yes
What are the advantage of this distro compare to Manjaro?
Manjaro releases update packs, Antergos uses the Arch repos.

The distro hopping was necessary because Sabayon completely went up in smoke after updating it and I could find no way to recover the system... The GDM would no longer appear, keymap errors and resolution problems. The last straw was GDM failing. The whole idea was I wanted a rolling release with Gnome Shell and Antergos seems to hold up well as far as updates go.
killer de bug

Re: Antergos

Post by killer de bug »

exploder wrote: Manjaro releases update packs, Antergos uses the Arch repos.
Ok thank you or this information.
exploder wrote:The distro hopping was necessary because Sabayon completely went up in smoke after updating it and I could find no way to recover the system... The GDM would no longer appear, keymap errors and resolution problems. The last straw was GDM failing. The whole idea was I wanted a rolling release with Gnome Shell and Antergos seems to hold up well as far as updates go.
That's often the problem with this kind of bleeding edge distro. It can break pretty badly when you upgrade it :lol:

The other problem I can see is the amount of upgrade you have to perform every week. I had Manjaro installed in a VB. I had to download 300MB every weeks... That's huge. For now I have a very limited access to Internet for several months. This kind of distro will definitely break next time I will try to upgrade it :lol:

Please keep us informed of how it goes in the next few weeks. Hope it will not break this time :)
js3915

Re: Antergos

Post by js3915 »

I liked Antegros.. It is definitely the ubuntu of Arch. They provide a nice package gui utility as well... They have their own repo even though all the base packages come from the arch repo so its pure arch underneath still...


I still prefer default arch i can set up an archbox faster than an ubuntu install.. Ive timed it under 10 minutes :D Bit longer if you add in a KDE or GNOME desktop but the Cinnamon desktop can get up and running fast!
exploder
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Re: Antergos

Post by exploder »

So far updates have been great, no real problems. I tried installing actual Arch but kept getting errors trying to partition the hard drive. Antergos went right on using the graphical installer. I have had to some configuring to get things the way I like them but a little learning did not hurt me. :) I changed the default fonts so I could see them better and they look cooler too! Normally, I leave the default fonts alone in most distros so it was a good experience for me.

Even with the Ubuntu font fix included some text looked kind of gray, I see the same thing in Ubuntu Gnome so it is not an Arch specific problem. In the Arch wiki it says that you get packages the way the developers intended and they are rarely patched, ideally not at all. Chromium was a good example, in Ubuntu completely different fonts are used.

Arch had great looking fonts for Chromium out of the box! So nice in fact that I used the same font set for the system. The package manager does a good job of taking care of orphaned packages too. The package manager may look simple but it has some powerful features!
Previous1

Re: Antergos

Post by Previous1 »

I've used i3wm on Arch, but trying GNOME 3 again. Antergos/Manjaro etc. are not for me - it's easier to solve problems on a system you've built from the ground up.

And FYI, Arch has an (official) installer: Archboot.
js3915

Re: Antergos

Post by js3915 »

exploder wrote: I tried installing actual Arch but kept getting errors trying to partition the hard drive.
partitioning can be tricky with pure arch but the beginners wiki is pretty good if followed... now there might be some odd partitioning schemes people want so that takes bit more research antegros does it nicely and would recommend it for people to use to give a good out of the box experience and the installer is real easy how an installer should be.
scryan

Re: Antergos

Post by scryan »

js3915 wrote:
exploder wrote: I tried installing actual Arch but kept getting errors trying to partition the hard drive.
partitioning can be tricky with pure arch but the beginners wiki is pretty good if followed... now there might be some odd partitioning schemes people want so that takes bit more research antegros does it nicely and would recommend it for people to use to give a good out of the box experience and the installer is real easy how an installer should be.
I have to admit, with the three computers I have running arch, and the few different installs I have done onto usb's or external drives just testing things out I have always setup partitioning with gparted ahead of time. I dunno, just seems easy/safe.

Otherwise I find even standard arch pretty easy to install.
I REALLY like arch. And honestly, its been the EASIEST distro I have used, by far. Its like an old chevy truck vs a new luxury car... If your afraid of doing any work on your own, don't want to know how anything works the truck is just going to seem difficult, but with basic tools and willingness you can do most things you ever may need to... Good luck trying to do your own work on that new luxury car :P

Arch has been more stable and more up to date then any distro I have ran... While being noticeably faster too.

If your afraid of command line and don't want to have to learn things probably stay away... But if you don't mind some reasonable command line work, and WANT to learn more about your system ARCH is hard to beat.

I guess it will always be personal choice, but I find they automate JUST enough (utilities like wifi-menu and arch-chroot for install to help simplify) with out taking over.

Their documentation is AMAZING follow it very carefully and it will basically work. YMMV.
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xenopeek
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Re: Antergos

Post by xenopeek »

Arch Linux is not for those that don't read instructions. I'm now 3.5 months on my Arch install, and haven't had a breakage despite even running with testing enabled for a while. Rock solid stable. Read the Arch Linux news before your update; update at least once a week; refresh your mirrors once every few weeks; read the output of the update and follow up on the actions it notes for you to take (like .pacnew configuration files being placed in /etc). It's simple enough, probably like maintaining an old truck :wink:
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xenopeek
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Re: Antergos

Post by xenopeek »

@exploder, a Gnome Shell extension you might want to try: Simple Dock. Recommend to use it with Panel OSD. Simple Dock puts the activities side-bar (with your favorite applications & running applications) on the bottom as an intelli-hide dock. It works surprisingly well. Only issue being shell notifications are also there; Panel OSD moves them elsewhere on your screen (by default to the top). Not a perfect solution, but for those that favor docks this is nicely done.
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daspicer

Re: Antergos

Post by daspicer »

Antergos is great! But if you're already familiar with Arch Linux and you just want a quick and easy way to install it, nothing beats Evo/Lution:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67j9Bb3bWes
exploder
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Re: Antergos

Post by exploder »

Thanks daspicer! That looks like a quick and easy way to get a more vanilla gnome desktop. :D Thanks!

Edit: I plugged in a spare hard drive and am going to give this a try. :D I have all my data backed up and my desktop has another operating system on a larger hard drive that I will leave alone. :) I will post back and let you know how things worked out. :D

I have a 5 and 9 year old boys and it is impossible to concentrate to do a regular Arch install, this looks like an ideal answer to my situation! Thanks again for posting this, very greatly appreciated!
daspicer

Re: Antergos

Post by daspicer »

Glad to help and it really works great. I like Cinnamon and I used it to install 2.2 until Mint 17 was released.
He also has a QT ISO available for those that wish to install KDE.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/evolutionlinux/files/
exploder
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Re: Antergos

Post by exploder »

I installed Gnome Shell, it worked great! Now to go read the Wiki again... :D
exploder
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Re: Antergos

Post by exploder »

daspicer, this install really worked out well! I ended up with a pure Arch system with a completely current version of Gnome Shell. Also, I really thought that I would be bombarded with updates but that has not been the case. In the last couple of days I have got one update.

Everything looks great, the system is fast and reliable and everything works! I still have Ubuntu Gnome 14.04 installed on another hard drive and on my laptop just in case something goes wrong. I am done distro hopping now and plan to leave things alone for the foreseeable future.

I am checking the Arch main page daily before updating so things should be fine. I keep reading the wiki too so I do not make mistakes. :D
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