Comments on: Review: Arch Linux

By: Alex

Alex — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 09:39:42 +0000

How could you miss the beginners/installation media? Wow…

+ Poorly written & and a review that was obviously made in haste.

Mediocre blogging at best

By: Mark

Mark — Tue, 25 May 2010 00:16:08 +0000

” With Ubuntu 10.04 running on my computer I am utilizing 1.7G of RAM; with Arch running the same exact programs (all the differences existing under the hood i.e: alsa in Arch instead of Pulse in Ubuntu) I am utilizing 364M”

1.7G of RAM compared to 364M? there is clearly something wrong with your Ubuntu installation that needs fixing.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 20 May 2010 20:38:35 +0000

This post is full of all kinds of ironic generalizations. For the sake of arguing with actual quantitative data though… With Ubuntu 10.04 running on my computer I am utilizing 1.7G of RAM; with Arch running the same exact programs (all the differences existing under the hood i.e: alsa in Arch instead of Pulse in Ubuntu) I am utilizing 364M of RAM.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Ubuntu and when I install Linux on other people’s computers, I almost always install Ubuntu; however, I find it hard pressed to believe that Ubuntu ran better for you than Arch, the only thing I can believe that would even account for that would be something like the wrong video driver in Arch, for instance: using the catalyst driver in Ubuntu and the radeon-hd driver in Arch.

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Tue, 18 May 2010 10:29:23 +0000

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By: Mr

Mr — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 22:22:12 +0000

Ok, I just gave Arch Linux much more time even though I put some bad things about it above. It has been stable and fast and I like it… no wonder it has so many fanboys I have to admit it’s real good though.

By: Mr

Mr — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 22:43:47 +0000

Most people try Arch because they think they’re being clever. All this stuff about Arch being difficult to install is just rubbish, it’s time consuming, not difficult. And after all that setting up you’ve got a system that’s no better than Ubuntu that installs in less than half an hour. I actually found Ubuntu 9.04 to boot and run quicker than Arch + Xfce4.

One other thing, about the Arch forums…it’s a boring place….lots of people slapping themselves on the back and thinking that they’re clever because they’re using a system that needs constant repairing thanks to ‘pacman -Syu’.

Arch is for people with more time than sense.

Arch fanboys are worse than mac fanboys. Not only do they think that everything else is wrong and bad, but they try to convert everyone to their cause.

By: Null

Null — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 23:29:09 +0000

I’m a former Slackware user but I switched to Arch Linux recently. I wish I found this distribution sooner because there’s many annoyance that I had to deal with on Slackware and now that I use arch, those problems are gone. Pacman is truly a great package manager and it’s very fast.

By: km

km — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 06:31:45 +0000

Just like the guys said before – use the installation guide along with beginners guide and you will have your linux in 30 minutes as well as huge knowledge about your system.
What is more Arch Linux has the best documentation I have ever seen. Even if I work on other machine with other distro I often use Arch Wiki to check some details.

By: FreeBooteR

FreeBooteR — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 00:26:17 +0000

‘depmod -a’ worked fine for me.

By: mandog

mandog — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 08:34:05 +0000

People do miss it although its right in front of them the main reason is in my 1st post its called attitude i’ve used a+b+c Distros i’m no beginner? so we miss Beginners guide as we don’t need it O but we do to install X server etc!. As for the rolling release in 3 + years I have only had minor problems with Arch Linux.
No major breaks update every day keep an eye on the main Arch page, read the Pacman output when upgrading, don’t use symbolic links as they break things down the line, and don’t use testing.
its called K.I.S.S.

By: Eric Mesa

Eric Mesa — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 15:07:44 +0000

Thanks for supplying the link. Again, it stinks that I somehow missed that.

By: Eric Mesa

Eric Mesa — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 15:06:01 +0000

Stinks that I somehow missed the Beginner’s Guide, I guess. Perhaps the Arch community needs to make the link to that guide a little more obvious? But I didn’t mean to say that Arch wasn’t a great distro once it was setup. The setup was just a PITA vs Slackware.

By: Eric Mesa

Eric Mesa — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 15:03:05 +0000

To be fair, I’ve actually had that happen to me with my main distro, Fedora. Basically, if it’s not a security update, you shouldn’t update if it’s working well.

By: Linux Learner

Linux Learner — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 08:34:24 +0000

I would also suggest using the Beginner’s Guide: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beginners%27_Guide

That link is posted on the main wiki page: http://wiki.archlinux.org — as are links to many other helpful articles.

By: kami84gr

kami84gr — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 06:49:07 +0000

Arch is a great distro!!! If you take the time to install it using the BEGINER”S GUIDE (not the general guide) it will only take you 20 minutes to have a working xorg to which you can install any DE available out there.

The most important aspect of Arch’s installation is that once those 20 minutes have passed, you would have lerned more about Linux and your system in general than you would ever learn with a fast-food like distro in years!!!

As for as using it on a daily basis, Arch has been proven to be rock-solid, ultra light and super fast when you set it up right….and you can set it up right because EVERYTHING you’ll ever need is inside its Wiki.

You should not be afraid of its rolling release development system….that is what makes it so great. You ‘ll always have the latest versions of favorite software available for your desktop and stability is not an issue provided that you keep an eye once in a while on their bug tracking section of their site. Even if an update brakes something you can always go back to the previous version of your package easily.

No more waiting around for 6 months to get the latest technology, plus , no need to worry about installing a new distro every 6 months.

I don’t say that Arch is perfect, but for me, having past through ubuntu, mint, debian, fedora, freebsd,(in chronological order) Arch is as close to perfection as it gets…im totally addicted to it!!!