My OperaDay of the Distros - Into Day Two
Friday, December 12, 2008 8:30:15 AM
Tech News -
1) I got the basic core of Arch linux installed. It only took about 10 minutes from start to finish.
2) This distro is great for what it is. What I mean by that is don't expect a pretty installer, it's ncurses based. Don't expect a pre-built flashy desktop waiting for you, you get dropped to a terminal at the first start.
3) You get a great deal of support, almost anything you need, can be located on the ArchWiki. It's a much cleaner format than Ubuntu's forums and IRC and Wiki. I like the fact that it's a mostly centralized place to get the information you need.
4) For some reason a setup using an encrypted LVM consisting of Swap and /home failed. I'm not sure why, but I'm looking into it, and hopefully can get it fixed.
5) This really is an impressive distro, I mean, you have to do the work yourself to configure everything, but that's one of the things I love. I'm warning you, if you don't feel comfortable using the terminal, don't use this distro. If you think you've used the small gnome-terminal enough to be sort of comfortable, try it out in a virtual environment. What's the worst it could hurt? At least if you give it a try, you can say you got the experience.
6) A great bonus about the bare bones install, you can pick your window manager. If you're a KDE fanboy, use KDE. If you're set on Gnome and Gnome is all you want, go Gnome. If you like E17, XFCE, or another lightweight window manager, use them. No one forces you to use a window manager, or to go through hell and back to remove one and install another.
7) If you do decide to give this distro a whirl, get ready to run the command "pacman -Ssu && pacman -Syy && pacman -S links" - This will give you a terminal based web browser.
8) For those of you who have a network connection during install, chose that as the install medium, it will make configuring your network easier later on.
9) So far, FGLRX works flawlessly, so does the Synaptics Touchpad, the same with Flash and Java support in Opera, as Well as my Logitech Quickcam. I'm sure this list could go on and on of things that work.
10) I can't say it's all my fault these things are up and working, I did install them and configure some, but the package builders are the ones who did the work. Guys, this distro is still just blowing my mind. I can't even explain how amazing it really is.
11) I think I could start living in the terminal and be totally fine, and it's all thanks to Arch Linux :]] Because of this distro, I actually feel ok if my Xserver doesn't start, I don't panic, I'm ok configuring my network from the command line, I'm ok doing a lot of things I wasn't ok to do before.
12) This distro is pretty slick in that it has multiple repositories, one with binaries, and one with user supplied software that gets compiled for you (using a tool called yaourt).
13) The pacman and yaourt tools work very closely, "yaourt -S <package_name>" and "pacman -S <package_name>" does the same thing. The difference is that yaourt will compile software from the Arch User Repository (the one with user supplied software), and pacman will install a binary from one of the Arch Linux repositories.
14) I don't even know if I want to continue testing with the "Day of the Distros"
I think I might have found my new desktop distro for sure :]
(14 of course is sarcasm, I will continue with the testing of the last distro on my list - Lunar Linux - and then have a full post of side by side comparisons. Yeah, I decided I want to show you guys the faults and positives of each distro, at least from my stance.)
I'll have more for you later
~ Happy Hacking
PiklesOnFire
1) I got the basic core of Arch linux installed. It only took about 10 minutes from start to finish.
2) This distro is great for what it is. What I mean by that is don't expect a pretty installer, it's ncurses based. Don't expect a pre-built flashy desktop waiting for you, you get dropped to a terminal at the first start.
3) You get a great deal of support, almost anything you need, can be located on the ArchWiki. It's a much cleaner format than Ubuntu's forums and IRC and Wiki. I like the fact that it's a mostly centralized place to get the information you need.
4) For some reason a setup using an encrypted LVM consisting of Swap and /home failed. I'm not sure why, but I'm looking into it, and hopefully can get it fixed.
5) This really is an impressive distro, I mean, you have to do the work yourself to configure everything, but that's one of the things I love. I'm warning you, if you don't feel comfortable using the terminal, don't use this distro. If you think you've used the small gnome-terminal enough to be sort of comfortable, try it out in a virtual environment. What's the worst it could hurt? At least if you give it a try, you can say you got the experience.
6) A great bonus about the bare bones install, you can pick your window manager. If you're a KDE fanboy, use KDE. If you're set on Gnome and Gnome is all you want, go Gnome. If you like E17, XFCE, or another lightweight window manager, use them. No one forces you to use a window manager, or to go through hell and back to remove one and install another.
7) If you do decide to give this distro a whirl, get ready to run the command "pacman -Ssu && pacman -Syy && pacman -S links" - This will give you a terminal based web browser.
8) For those of you who have a network connection during install, chose that as the install medium, it will make configuring your network easier later on.
9) So far, FGLRX works flawlessly, so does the Synaptics Touchpad, the same with Flash and Java support in Opera, as Well as my Logitech Quickcam. I'm sure this list could go on and on of things that work.
10) I can't say it's all my fault these things are up and working, I did install them and configure some, but the package builders are the ones who did the work. Guys, this distro is still just blowing my mind. I can't even explain how amazing it really is.
11) I think I could start living in the terminal and be totally fine, and it's all thanks to Arch Linux :]] Because of this distro, I actually feel ok if my Xserver doesn't start, I don't panic, I'm ok configuring my network from the command line, I'm ok doing a lot of things I wasn't ok to do before.
12) This distro is pretty slick in that it has multiple repositories, one with binaries, and one with user supplied software that gets compiled for you (using a tool called yaourt).
13) The pacman and yaourt tools work very closely, "yaourt -S <package_name>" and "pacman -S <package_name>" does the same thing. The difference is that yaourt will compile software from the Arch User Repository (the one with user supplied software), and pacman will install a binary from one of the Arch Linux repositories.
14) I don't even know if I want to continue testing with the "Day of the Distros"
I think I might have found my new desktop distro for sure :](14 of course is sarcasm, I will continue with the testing of the last distro on my list - Lunar Linux - and then have a full post of side by side comparisons. Yeah, I decided I want to show you guys the faults and positives of each distro, at least from my stance.)
I'll have more for you later
~ Happy Hacking
PiklesOnFire
