What do you think of Arch Linux

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Do you like Arch Linux

Yes
25
30%
No
10
12%
Never used Arch Linux
47
57%
 
Total votes: 82

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badbodh
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Location: India

Re: What do you think of Arch Linux

Post by badbodh »

Flemur wrote: I got the same effect with Debian net-install, the main differences being that the Debian install was easier and more reliable (updates don't break system as happened with Arch a few times)
Yuck ! Debian uses software versions of medieval ages. The original developers are probably dead or on life support. Broadcom wireless drivers refuse to work .
But really tough to crash it though.

Does linux mint have a net-install iso? That would be awesome !
Windows assumes I'm stupid but Linux proves it.
lmintnewb2

Re: What do you think of Arch Linux

Post by lmintnewb2 »

Necrobump ... +1 Flemur.

Every couple years I play around with Arch and it's a very good gnu/Nix OS imo. The community, perhaps not so much. In fact recently got banned from the Arch forum for no real reason. Someone had asked about opinions on xyz-topic, shared my experiences and it was all downhill from there. :)

Not that I overly care, it's just a part of the mystique assoc with Arch. Never had an Arch install break, not more so than any others and the cause of said borkage was always user-error/Pebcak in origin anyway ... with all of them. Chroot the sucker from live session and fix it ... with all of them. Personally fond of Arch, not fond of all elements involved. It's a pita and uber time consuming to set up many things that are basic config's. With or w/o the tech skills needed. Though once setup and reasonably maintained it'd be perpetual smooth sailing.

Pretty much read the docs and do your homework and you're golden with Arch ( or any gnu/Nix). But am back on Debian and planning on eventually overwriting the Arch install. Simply because I prefer Debian anyway and am lazy. So upkeep'ing an OS I really don't plan to use often seems pointless. Imo ... tech should make people's lives easier. Not a thing wrong with encouraging people to do their research, to hone their skillset and to be self sufficient. However jmo, Arch takes pains, to be a pain in my butt and that's not appreciated. Perfectly reasonable in a lot of ways, though still not appreciated.

That said, still like Arch fine and all's fair in luv, war and gnu/linux. :)
Crewp

Re: What do you think of Arch Linux

Post by Crewp »

I used Manjaro for awhile, a bit of a learning curve, I prefer Debian, for the effort, I like the stability.
wong

Re: What do you think of Arch Linux

Post by wong »

Arch was the distro that got me to switch to using Linux pretty much full time at home. I've been running it on my RPi, laptop and desktop for the past few years. I like it. In years past I'd installed several linux distros as a trial, ended up fighting with audio issues and given up, with Arch I installed alsa, configured it as per the wiki and it just worked.....looking back it seems I was likely fighting with early versions of pulseaudio. The building block nature and rolling release appeals to me, also the ease of managing binary and compiled from source packages. Updates do feel like a bit of a gamble as one should really only be installing software alongside an update to avoid breakage and breakage could occur on updates but I do tend to get an email if anything dramatic is coming.

I switched the desktop over to Mint last month for a change of scenery and a want for something shiny that works out of the box, it does what it says on the tin. I switched the laptop over to Void Linux last week as it has a cool name, very similar to Arch but with an installer and runit instead of systemd. Plugging in my Raspberry Pi model B for the first time in months, a quick pacman update, reboot and everything is good to go.
The Dark Side

Re: What do you think of Arch Linux

Post by The Dark Side »

I never got to use Arch Linux yet. But using multiple derived from Arch and generally I liked. Use or tried: Manjaro Linux (excellent), Chakra, KaOS (a very beautiful Plasma 5), Bridge Linux, Antergos and ApricityOS.
GreyGeek

Re: What do you think of Arch Linux

Post by GreyGeek »

I tested Arch with KDE on VirtualBox to see if it would be part of my list of possible go to distros.

The install was normal and almost indistinguishable from other distros that feature KDE. Arch was fast, and the plasma 5 desktop was also fast, stable and easy to use, but I'm not in love with the look & feel of the Plasma 5 desktop. I didn't like their command line or pacman repository interface so I installed the Octopii GUI. I don't like having to know the exact name of a package before I can download and install it. The main reason I didn't add it to my list is because I noticed that many apps sources that were not in the repository did not include an Arch package. It reminded me of the RPM hunt at the RPMbones website to find apps and upgrades for SuSE.

Finally, Arch is not a distro I would recommend to noobs.
openmind

Re: What do you think of Arch Linux

Post by openmind »

Subjectively, if I look at different Linux distros and their characteristics and (dis)advantages, Arch for me is somewhere in the middle, some sort of compromise which I personally don't know where or why to use.

Sometimes you want a distro which 'just works', which you can install and use right away, out of the box. If that's the case I'd go with Mint, Suse or Fedora etc depending on personal preferences.
Now if I want to really have the choice about every part of my OS, if I want to make sure that I'm in charge of control over my system and I don't want to rely on the decisions of package maintainers and distro developers, then I'd go with some distro that actually provides that features to me more than other distros, like Gentoo.

Arch does not do that.
Apart from the blank installation and the fact that you find almost any available desktop environment packaged in the official repository, Arch in no way is a distro which cares about giving choices and control to the user rather than the maintainers.
In
no
way
Not even slightly. The packaging and handling of dependencies 100% is not done with any of that promoted 'Arch way' in mind.
In fact if you do a minimal Debian install and continue to get your software with the --no-install-recommends flag it clearly is way more minimalist than Arch Linux.
A regular installation on Arch with pacman -S pulls in about everything which somehow can be pulled in.
And there isn't any switch to change that.
Actually Arch might be one of the distros where the choice is more on the side of the devs than anywhere else.
Almost any package has almost any available additional, optional features enabled, there's no way to change that.
Not even the core of Arch linux is about minimalism.

There is no communication between devs and users, no surveys like in other distros, no broad discussions etc.

I also miss some sort of policy regarding ... well regarding basically everything.
There isn't any policy regarding open source, in terms of repositories you find all sort of proprietary software in the official repos and don't really have control over that.
Also the perspective on their own repositories isn't really consistent. They clearly state that the AUR is NOT officially supported, don't offer AUR wrappers in the official repos etc.
On the other hand the Arch wiki (only documentation of Arch) constantly points towards AUR packages, solutions for problems posted in the forums constantly handle installing AUR packages as the most normal thing on earth, a lot of options for software is only available in the AUR.
The official repos only contain around 13000 packages, not even 50% of Ubuntu's.


The advantage of being a rolling release isn't that significant in 2016 in my opinion. Distros like Suse and Fedora officially support upgrades to the next release. Mint is working on it.
LTS editions offer support for years. I mean it's a nice feature but nothing that makes me want to use the distro because of that.

Looking at what I wrote above, I'm not sure what Arch wants to be. It's definitely not the thing which is described as 'The Arch way' on their website, imho.
It's also not a 'just works' distro. I can't really use it to play around with my system (or there are better alternatives), but I also wouldn't necessarily put it on a productive machine.

I also can't really stand the attitude of a lot of arch users or even devs. This entire elitism and Arch users are experts bullshit isn't only stupid and unnecessary, it's also inappropriate.
It's not like Arch devs would contribute a lot to upstream components, or constantly are working on new software which then is used by the rest of the Linux world.
Quite the opposite the heavily rely on work done by other distros' developers.

So all in all a meh from me.
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xenopeek
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Re: What do you think of Arch Linux

Post by xenopeek »

openmind wrote:A regular installation on Arch with pacman -S pulls in about everything which somehow can be pulled in.
And there isn't any switch to change that.
[...]
Almost any package has almost any available additional, optional features enabled, there's no way to change that.
Not even the core of Arch linux is about minimalism.
Can you give some examples of that? For example here are the dependencies for gedit-plugins on Debian 8.1:

Code: Select all

Depends: libatk1.0-0 (>= 1.12.4), libc6 (>= 2.4), libcairo-gobject2 (>= 1.10.0), libcairo2 (>= 1.2.4), libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0 (>= 2.22.0), libgirepository-1.0-1 (>= 0.9.2), libglib2.0-0 (>= 2.37.3), libgtk-3-0 (>= 3.9.0), libgtksourceview-3.0-1 (>= 3.14.0), libpango-1.0-0 (>= 1.14.0), libpangocairo-1.0-0 (>= 1.14.0), libpeas-1.0-0 (>= 1.0.0), libzeitgeist-2.0-0 (>= 0.9.9), dconf-gsettings-backend | gsettings-backend, python3 (<< 3.5), python3 (>= 3.4~), python3.4, gedit (>= 3.14), gedit (<< 3.15), gir1.2-git2-glib-1.0, gir1.2-glib-2.0, gir1.2-gtk-3.0, gir1.2-gtksource-3.0, gir1.2-gucharmap-2.90, gir1.2-pango-1.0, gir1.2-peas-1.0, gir1.2-vte-2.91, gir1.2-zeitgeist-2.0, python3-gi, python3-gi-cairo, python3-cairo, python3-dbus
Suggests: zeitgeist-datahub
And here on Arch Linux:

Code: Select all

Depends On     : gedit  python-dbus  python-cairo
Optional Deps  : gucharmap: for charmap plugin [installed]
                 vte3: for embedded terminal [installed]
                 libgit2-glib: for git plugin [installed]
                 zeitgeist: for dashboard plugin [installed]
Between the two, gedit-plugins is as far as dependencies and optional features go more "minimal" on Arch Linux. None of the optional dependencies get installed automatically on Arch Linux—ever.

If you need different compile time options set for a package from the repositories, you can use the Arch Build System for that: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Arch_Build_System
openmind wrote:There is no communication between devs and users, no surveys like in other distros, no broad discussions etc.
There isn't? Then what are all those developers doing on the forums, IRC, and mailinglists. Anyway, what topics would you like them to survey—additional software to include in the repositories? That's what AUR voting is for. Packages popular enough from AUR can move to the repositories and be officially supported.
openmind wrote:There isn't any policy regarding open source, in terms of repositories you find all sort of proprietary software in the official repos and don't really have control over that.
Every package, either from the repositories or from the AUR, clearly states the licenses the software is distributed under. You just have to look if you care about that. If you can't be bothered to look, you can use the derivative distribution Parabola Linux which is FSF approved: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ar ... inux-libre
openmind wrote:Also the perspective on their own repositories isn't really consistent. They clearly state that the AUR is NOT officially supported, don't offer AUR wrappers in the official repos etc.
On the other hand the Arch wiki (only documentation of Arch) constantly points towards AUR packages, solutions for problems posted in the forums constantly handle installing AUR packages as the most normal thing on earth, a lot of options for software is only available in the AUR.
The AUR is not supported by the Arch Linux developers. The AUR is supported by Arch Linux users. I don't recognize that for problems in the forums the solution "constantly" is to use some AUR package. As for the wiki, it contains as much information as Arch Linux users put in it. So yes users also cover options from the AUR on it, which is made clear to the reader. Like the unofficially supported desktop environments that you can get from the AUR (if you want to): https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/de ... _supported.

You can use Arch Linux just fine without the AUR.
openmind wrote:It's not like Arch devs would contribute a lot to upstream components, or constantly are working on new software which then is used by the rest of the Linux world.
Quite the opposite the heavily rely on work done by other distros' developers.
The minimalistic approach of the Arch Linux developers—modifying upstream sources as little as possible—and the rolling release characteristic means that Arch Linux users are in a better place to contribute to upstream projects and in fact they are encouraged to do so. They're using the latest stable release from upstream, not some X years old one, and unlike on other distros the upstream developers are safe to assume their software was used with no modifications. Bug reports are for software versions the upstream developers are supporting, instead of what you have with Debian and the like where the distribution maintainers have to handle bugs because they use versions no longer supported by upstream developers. Bugs found by Arch Linux users quickly flow upstream to the benefit of all users of the software.

As always, use whatever works best for you :wink:
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openmind

Re: What do you think of Arch Linux

Post by openmind »

xenopeek wrote: Can you give some examples of that? For example here are the dependencies for gedit-plugins on Debian 8.1:

Code: Select all

Depends: libatk1.0-0 (>= 1.12.4), libc6 (>= 2.4), libcairo-gobject2 (>= 1.10.0), libcairo2 (>= 1.2.4), libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0 (>= 2.22.0), libgirepository-1.0-1 (>= 0.9.2), libglib2.0-0 (>= 2.37.3), libgtk-3-0 (>= 3.9.0), libgtksourceview-3.0-1 (>= 3.14.0), libpango-1.0-0 (>= 1.14.0), libpangocairo-1.0-0 (>= 1.14.0), libpeas-1.0-0 (>= 1.0.0), libzeitgeist-2.0-0 (>= 0.9.9), dconf-gsettings-backend | gsettings-backend, python3 (<< 3.5), python3 (>= 3.4~), python3.4, gedit (>= 3.14), gedit (<< 3.15), gir1.2-git2-glib-1.0, gir1.2-glib-2.0, gir1.2-gtk-3.0, gir1.2-gtksource-3.0, gir1.2-gucharmap-2.90, gir1.2-pango-1.0, gir1.2-peas-1.0, gir1.2-vte-2.91, gir1.2-zeitgeist-2.0, python3-gi, python3-gi-cairo, python3-cairo, python3-dbus
Suggests: zeitgeist-datahub
And here on Arch Linux:

Code: Select all

Depends On     : gedit  python-dbus  python-cairo
Optional Deps  : gucharmap: for charmap plugin [installed]
                 vte3: for embedded terminal [installed]
                 libgit2-glib: for git plugin [installed]
                 zeitgeist: for dashboard plugin [installed]
Between the two, gedit-plugins is as far as dependencies and optional features go more "minimal" on Arch Linux.
Without saying that it's this or that way in your particular example, that's exactly how you can not look at this. If you look at the list of packages in Debian, you won't even find most of them in the Arch repos.
Because Debian splits packages way more than Arch does - which can be beneficial for a minimalist approach.
To give an example Yes I see that Debian pulls in dconf-gsettings-backend.
Why isn't that listed in pacman? Because Arch is more minimalist?
No because gedit on Arch already depends on the entire dconf package.
It doesn't on debian.
If you install gedit-plugins on debian it pulls in more single split packages. Arch already pulled in the entire stuff which isn't even split when installing gedit.
Debian lists libcairo packages, Arch doesn't.
Because Arch is more minimalist?
Arch's python-gobject package is required by gedit, and already pulls in Arch's entire cairo package.
I think you get my point. That's what I mean when I say that the approach of Debian is more minimalist and that packaging in Arch definitely isn't done with the mentality which is described as the Arch way by themselves. Or at least Debian follows the Arch way more than Arch.
I won't search for examples where this is actually beneficial because that would be a lot of work and I use neither of them.
openmind wrote:There is no communication between devs and users, no surveys like in other distros, no broad discussions etc.
There isn't? Then what are all those developers doing on the forums, IRC, and mailinglists.
Yeah devs hang out in forums and chats, that's great but not what I was talking about, and it doesn't prove that they care about user choices in any way.
Other distros have actual surveys which results are actually put into action.
Anyway, what topics would you like them to survey
Do you know how many meetings and public discussions debian had before they switched their init system to systemd?
Where the software developers of systemd were invited to present their ideas as well as all contributors and interested users to have a discussion.
A lot of users still felt it was decided too fast (even though debian kept sysvinit around).
Arch did a radical change, throwing alternatives out, and the equivalent were a few devs reading in IRCs and forums and decided on themselves either way? hm that's the distro which gives all the choice and freedom to the user?

Most distros also have their real life events, Fedora for example have their FUDCon, a meeting between devs, maintainers and users, with talks, presentations and exchange.
You can connect really easy to the devs if you want to. Is there anything official like that in Arch Linux?

—additional software to include in the repositories? That's what AUR voting is for. Packages popular enough from AUR can move to the repositories and be officially supported.
Yeah but I would never use the AUR, the same way I'd never use PPAs. Like anybody else who's concerned about security and doesn't have the time to check source code by himself.
That also comes back to what I wrote above about the policy regarding repos.
The AUR is in no way supported, it's a user repo where anybody can upload package builds, linking to source code wherever he wants etc at the same time it's the official voting system.
what the heck.
openmind wrote:There isn't any policy regarding open source, in terms of repositories you find all sort of proprietary software in the official repos and don't really have control over that.
Every package, either from the repositories or from the AUR, clearly states the licenses the software is distributed under. You just have to look if you care about that.
Well obviously the have to declare the correct licenses, otherwise the would be in legal trouble, that's not what I meant. Other distros only include free software by default and you have to enable extra repositories and/or actively agree to licence agreements if you want to install non-free software. For me that's a more clear policy than throwing everything in one repo.

The AUR is not supported by the Arch Linux developers. The AUR is supported by Arch Linux users.
See a few paragraphs above. Yet it's used as an official voting system. It's inconsistent.
I don't say it's a huge problem or evil or something, but it is not consistent.
I don't recognize that for problems in the forums the solution "constantly" is to use some AUR package. As for the wiki, it contains as much information as Arch Linux users put in it. So yes users also cover options from the AUR on it
Yeah the wiki is community driven, you're right that's a fact.
It's also a fact that there isn't any other, more 'official' documentation of Arch Linux.
So the most official documentation of Arch Linux constantly points to packages, not officially supported by Arch Linux.
Again I'm not saying it's the end of the world but I don't like it. The view on the AUR isn't clear enough for me.


The minimalistic approach of the Arch Linux developers—modifying upstream sources as little as possible—and the rolling release characteristic means that Arch Linux users are in a better place to contribute to upstream projects and in fact they are encouraged to do so. They're using the latest stable release from upstream, not some X years old one, and unlike on other distros the upstream developers are safe to assume their software was used with no modifications. Bug reports are for software versions the upstream developers are supporting, instead of what you have with Debian and the like where the distribution maintainers have to handle bugs because they use versions no longer supported by upstream developers. Bugs found by Arch Linux users quickly flow upstream to the benefit of all users of the software.
I was talking about something else there. However that's highly subjective and I don't really want to expend on it too much. Arch users and even devs often act as if the world should thank them and as if they were some sort of pioneers because of the bleeding edge nature of Arch etc.
The reality is a lot of developers from other distros actively contribute to upstream components, init systems, the kernel, desktop environments etc.
Not in the sense of filling bug reports but contributing code, looking at their distro and contributing code to fix problems or add new features.
Fedora developers were one of the top contributors to the Linux kernel for some time. Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Suse devs contributed to systemd.
Arch devs basically copy unmodified software into their repos and for some reason behave as if the invented Linux.
As always, use whatever works best for you :wink:
Sure, I was just describing what I like or dislike about Arch. The Thread asked What do you THINK about Arch right? ;)
I'm not saying anything I wrote above is objectively bad or wrong.
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xenopeek
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Re: What do you think of Arch Linux

Post by xenopeek »

You're right, Arch Linux generally doesn't split upstream software into multiple packages in the repositories. No -common, -dbg, -dev, -doc, and whatever else packages Debian splits upstream software into. If by minimalism you mean counting bytes, then yes with less coverage of upstream software installed you can have a more minimal install with Debian (at the price of more hassle if you need to compile something from outside the repos). I prefer simplicity over that kind of minimalism, but then I regularly compile stuff.

As for surveys, Debian with its constitution stands apart from how other distros make decisions. The argument you bring up against Arch Linux here can be brought up against almost any other distro that isn't Debian. As for systemd as default init system being a "radical change and throwing alternatives out", there has always been only one default and officially supported init system (it took more than 2 years for systemd to be accepted as default). Alternative init systems are available (OpenRC and SysV for example). Anyway, Arch Linux will likely always switch to new Linux technology way before Debian does but that's just the nature of both distros.

Arch Linux doesn't have its own conferences, though its developers and users do attend general Linux conferences. Lots of distros don't have the corporate funding to organize their own conferences or to reimburse developers for their travel costs.

As for the AUR; it's "by the users, for the users." You don't need to use it if you don't want to. I read the PKGBUILD file and if software is pulled from the official project website I don't see why I should be distrusting the convenience another user is giving me.
openmind wrote:Arch users and even devs often act as if the world should thank them and as if they were some sort of pioneers because of the bleeding edge nature of Arch etc.
I don't see any of the Arch Linux users or developers act as you say, except the odd user playing fanboy or fangirl—which happens for any distro (we have our share of fanboys and fangirls on Linux Mint as well).
openmind wrote:The reality is a lot of developers from other distros actively contribute to upstream components, init systems, the kernel, desktop environments etc.
Not in the sense of filling bug reports but contributing code, looking at their distro and contributing code to fix problems or add new features.
Fedora developers were one of the top contributors to the Linux kernel for some time. Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Suse devs contributed to systemd.
Arch devs basically copy unmodified software into their repos and for some reason behave as if the invented Linux.
Now you're just making stuff up. If you don't like Arch Linux, just say so. There's no reason to discredit them by fabricating stuff. Most of the Arch Linux developers and TUs can be found on github, where you can see a lot of them (those that are software developers) contributing to the Linux kernel, to systemd, and to all kinds of other system software and user programs. But sure, Fedora, Ubuntu, and SUSE developers are in a position to contribute more—seeing as many of them are full time employed to work on Linux. Arch Linux developers are all volunteers.
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openmind

Re: What do you think of Arch Linux

Post by openmind »

xenopeek wrote: Now you're just making stuff up. If you don't like Arch Linux, just say so. There's no reason to discredit them by fabricating stuff.But sure, Fedora, Ubuntu, and SUSE developers are in a position to contribute more—seeing as many of them are full time employed to work on Linux. Arch Linux developers are all volunteers.
First you say I make stuff up to discredit them, then you approve it and give an explanation (the right explanation) for the fact I stated.
It's a fact that there are way more contributors to upstream projects which are Fedora, Ubuntu or Suse devs than Arch devs.
The contributions from Arch devs compared to those are almost negligible.
It's as you said yourself: The difference between full time developers who get paid by Red Hat or Suse and some hobby contributors, it makes perfectly sense.
Now there is nothing wrong with that, it's not an accusation.
But based on that fact there is no base for a behavior as if Arch devs and/or users would be THE "experts" or pioneers in the Linux community.
If you didn't encounter such a behavior - well then that's your experience and your opinion.
If I did, it's my experience. But not necessarily my fault. I get along with Gentoo guys, with Fedora devs, always liked the Ubuntu community. I didn't get along with Arch guys.
Just my observation.
And again the thread is do YOU like Arch Linux, so obviously that's just my observation.

To most of your other points:
We can debate all day long if this or that is bad or good or in the nature of a distro etc et pp
My personal observation is: When visiting their homepage Arch promotes itself with certain attributes.
Not even saying if those are important to me, good, bad, whatever, I look at them and my personal opinion is:
This attributes actually seem to have higher priority in other distros than in Arch.
When I read the Arch way and how users describe Arch it's simply not what I'm seeing, independent from good or bad.
And that's my opinion
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xenopeek
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Re: What do you think of Arch Linux

Post by xenopeek »

openmind wrote:But based on that fact there is no base for a behavior as if Arch devs and/or users would be THE "experts" or pioneers in the Linux community.
The only one I see (repeatedly) alleging this is you. You also keep reiterating that contributions from Arch Linux to upstream are negligible. Right. Because the Arch Linux folks contributing to systemd and the Linux kernel—on both projects at least one of them having commit access and ranking in the top 3 by lines of code—are negligible...

As you expressed in the second part of your comment, you had expectations of Arch Linux that you couldn't find it to meet. Fine, that is what you think of Arch Linux and let's leave it at that.
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MartyMint
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Re: What do you think of Arch Linux

Post by MartyMint »

xenopeek wrote:Fine, that is what you think of Arch Linux and let's leave it at that.

Darn it.

I had my pitchfork sharpened and my torches lit for nothing then...
:shock:
lmintnewb2

Re: What do you think of Arch Linux

Post by lmintnewb2 »

Gotta sound off and thank u both. Learned things from the discourse you've shared. Much respect to Openmind, when first saw your post thought omg here it comes, wasn't going to read it but gladly did and found myself nodding along with what I'd also experienced firsthand and/or learning things from insights you offered.

Much respect also to Xenopeek, judging from your user level and having seen the contribs you've made. You've given a massive amount to this community and gnu/Nix in general. However you're an Arch user and thus biased. It's normal imo to feel distro loyalty and to strike out at any offender that appears to criticize. Even if they're right and to me, Openminds comments appear to be totally valid.
As always, use whatever works best for you.
Was something similar to that very sentiment that got me banned from Arch forum. I don't hold it against Arch gnu/Linux, nor the community either. Like every other Nix community I've experienced Arch has plenty of folks who aren't expert techies by any means and no doubt plenty who are too. Personally disapprove of elitism, nothing more on that. Am sure there's tons of kickbutt Archers in the forum and community. Though again ... been my experience it's that way with vast majority.

I like Arch but take exception to many aspects of it. Still totally wish the distro all success. Found it to be a very good/great OS, once all the pita's and hoops are jumped through.
futanari

Re: What do you think of Arch Linux

Post by futanari »

My brother is using Linux Arch. He has a thinkpad and after some time using other linux distributions he realized what programs he uses daily. He installed Arch and limited everything to those programs (mostly browsing forums via ff, livestreams via VLC plugin, reading writing different documents and programming). He did implement some keyboard shortcuts to switch between those programs and he is good to go. So it is basically those programs + terminal.
GreyGeek

Re: What do you think of Arch Linux

Post by GreyGeek »

openmind wrote:
xenopeek wrote: ... But sure, Fedora, Ubuntu, and SUSE developers are in a position to contribute more—seeing as many of them are full time employed to work on Linux. Arch Linux developers are all volunteers.
....
It's as you said yourself: The difference between full time developers who get paid by Red Hat or Suse and some hobby contributors, it makes perfectly sense.
Now there is nothing wrong with that, it's not an accusation.
....
xennopeek did not say Arch developers were "hobby contributors". He said they were volunteers. That's a HUGE difference. Calling volunteers "hobbyists" is insulting and demeaning.

Most volunteers are professional coders, many with advanced degrees in computer science, contributing for free their time and skill to various projects. Those projects range from the Linux kernel itself down to some small applet that displays the CPU temperature in the system tray. Without those volunteers Linux would not exist today, and if they suddenly quite Linux would be sorely hurt by their loss. "Hobby" coders are usually self-trained and under educated, but there are occasional exceptions to that rule. Before you would be allowed to contribute to Mint, Arch, Kubuntu or many of the application projects those who are currently doing the work on those distros and projects would want to see your pedigree and examples of your work. Only then would they decide if you could join their team. A poor coder is like a drag anchor to a team and could collapse the project so decisions are not hastily made. However, even corporations have been known to hire coders who couldn't code very well, despite their experience or certifications. Some have 15 years of experience, and some have the first year experience repeated 15 times. But, for someone sufficiently brilliant, a wunderkind, a prodigy, pedigree and certifications do not matter, their work stands out above the rest by an order of magnitude or more. Their big problem, however, is their sociability. Often they cannot get along with co-workers.
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Goz
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Re: What do you think of Arch Linux

Post by Goz »

xfrank wrote:Never used. I used Manjaro (a user friendly version ready out-of-the box). Pure Arch seems to me too time consuming.
I agree with you about Arch.
I'm trying Manjaro on my other box and it has some annoying quirks. I'm leaning away from
it but am willing to give it a chance before I try something else.
Think of Windows 10 as Hotel California for computers.
openmind

Re: What do you think of Arch Linux

Post by openmind »

GreyGeek wrote:
openmind wrote:
xenopeek wrote: ... But sure, Fedora, Ubuntu, and SUSE developers are in a position to contribute more—seeing as many of them are full time employed to work on Linux. Arch Linux developers are all volunteers.
....
It's as you said yourself: The difference between full time developers who get paid by Red Hat or Suse and some hobby contributors, it makes perfectly sense.
Now there is nothing wrong with that, it's not an accusation.
....
xennopeek did not say Arch developers were "hobby contributors". He said they were volunteers. That's a HUGE difference. Calling volunteers "hobbyists" is insulting and demeaning.

Most volunteers are professional coders, many with advanced degrees in computer science, contributing for free their time and skill to various projects. Those projects range from the Linux kernel itself down to some small applet that displays the CPU temperature in the system tray. Without those volunteers Linux would not exist today, and if they suddenly quite Linux would be sorely hurt by their loss. "Hobby" coders are usually self-trained and under educated, but there are occasional exceptions to that rule. Before you would be allowed to contribute to Mint, Arch, Kubuntu or many of the application projects those who are currently doing the work on those distros and projects would want to see your pedigree and examples of your work. Only then would they decide if you could join their team. A poor coder is like a drag anchor to a team and could collapse the project so decisions are not hastily made. However, even corporations have been known to hire coders who couldn't code very well, despite their experience or certifications. Some have 15 years of experience, and some have the first year experience repeated 15 times. But, for someone sufficiently brilliant, a wunderkind, a prodigy, pedigree and certifications do not matter, their work stands out above the rest by an order of magnitude or more. Their big problem, however, is their sociability. Often they cannot get along with co-workers.

I have no idea what post you read. Neither of us was talking about the quality of contributions only about quantity.
And hobby contributor vs professionals in this context has nothing to do with them coding for a living or as a hobby.
There are people who get paid to contribute to open source projects like the kernel for example.
They are in this context professional contributors and it explains why they have more contributions (quantity). It's their job to contribute.

Other contribute to the same project in their free time. Per definition that makes it a hobby. it's not what they get paid for.
So they most likely won't have as much contributions (quantity). If they develop other software for a living or work as fitness coaches or as cooks is totally irrelevant in this context. Since nobody questioned the quality of their contributions.

To the rest of your post: I'm not sure why you think you have to explain to me how companies select programmers or how open source works since I'm both a professional software developer and contributor to open source projects.

And also this is utter nonsense:
GreyGeek wrote: Before you would be allowed to contribute to Mint, Arch, Kubuntu or many of the application projects those who are currently doing the work on those distros and projects would want to see your pedigree and examples of your work. Only then would they decide if you could join their team.
Most of the time anybody can contribute to open source projects, completely independent from who he is or what he has done before.
The only thing that matters is your contribution.
You can get your code in the Linux kernel tomorrow. Even though you never contributed to anything.
You have to take care of a lot of stuff but adding a CV or examples of your work is the one thing you don't need.

You grab a source tree, you apply your changes, you describe what you did there, sign it and send a pull request (simplified).
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Fred Barclay
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Re: What do you think of Arch Linux

Post by Fred Barclay »

But Clem is paid for his work. Therefore he's not a hobbyist. :)

And sure, you can contribute code, but the devs are under no obligation to actually commit your pull request.
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Re: What do you think of Arch Linux

Post by openmind »

Fred Barclay wrote:But Clem is paid for his work. Therefore he's not a hobbyist. :)
Nobody was talking about Clem. Thread is: "What do you think about Arch Linux" and the debate I had with xenopeek was about Arch devs and Fedora/Red Hat/Suse devs contributing to upstream projects. There is no connection to Linux Mint.
And sure, you can contribute code, but the devs are under no obligation to actually commit your pull request.
Did I say they are? They don't decide that based on who you are or your CV, that's all I said and that's a simple fact
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