Dipping my toe into the water

[mparillo]

First, I try to do my part for Kubuntu. Out of the box, I find it more polished than Debian KDE. And without Kubuntu, NetRunner Stable (laggy and feels strange to me, as if they customized too much) and Linux Mint KDE (feels OK to me but a bit laggy) would probably have to fold.

If Arch installation proves difficult and/or forums are inhospitable, I recommend Manjaro. Their forums and IRC channel are very helpful. And, while the official repos are not huge, the AUR is pretty awesome; it even includes proprietary software like google-chrome and dropbox. That said, Manjaro, too, seems a bit laggy. For me, either on a netbook or in a 1GB VM, Kubuntu just feels like the lightest KDE distro.

[claydoh]

I like the idea of arch, but I have to say some of the user base turns me off. It is not just in the user support communities.
Look at nearly every post or news article about $DISTRO, and often the very first comment is along the lines of "blah blah arch is better", or "you should have used arch".

I don't care how theoretically, technically, or theologically superior a system is over others, the whole mentality of "if you have to ask, then it is not right for you" is total male cow doo-doo. As is the idea that if it isn't working right in Arch, then it must mean that the upstream is to blame. ( I am mildly pointing an occasional finger at a certain popular Linux podcast on this one).

Heck I need to shut up, it is time to go to bed. I seem to be syncing my personal circadian rhythm with Australia's time zones with all my overnights at work. Maybe it will keep me from getting jetlagged when I fly down there next month.

[MoonRise]

I don't care how theoretically, technically, or theologically superior a system is over others, the whole mentality of "if you have to ask, then it is not right for you" is total male cow doo-doo. As is the idea that if it isn't working right in Arch, then it must mean that the upstream is to blame.

+1

[eggbert]

I've been thinking about trying Arch as a daily driver OS, but frankly it scares me. I don't like the idea that I have to check the Arch news to find out if an update is going to hose my system. While rolling releases are a nice idea, I've found they don't work well in practice. Maybe Arch is different, but it still worries me.

[GreyGeek]

I've been thinking about trying Arch as a daily driver OS, but frankly it scares me. I don't like the idea that I have to check the Arch news to find out if an update is going to hose my system. While rolling releases are a nice idea, I've found they don't work well in practice. Maybe Arch is different, but it still worries me.

It is different, and not a distro I would recommend to noobs or even the average user. You can get a feel for Arch by running it as a guest OS in VirtualBox, which is what I did. I ran their Plasma 5 DE of their latest release. it looked the same menu wise, but it didn't work the same. I've gotten very use to the dpkg manager and apt-get, muon or synaptic. I didn't like pacman or its gui, Octopii. It all depends on what you are used to and 18 years of KDE 1 through 4 creates expectations that, for me, Plasma 5 doesn't meet.

[sithlord48]

arch is not based on debian so no debian tools (dpkg apt ,synaptic) muon (kubuntu only ) etc...
pacman is very different then apt i don't prefer one or the other they are both equally easy to use if you take the time to get used to the switches. .
apt-get update / upgrade == pacman -Syu .. , apt install == pacman -S ,, and so on..

the thing i do like about arch is that i get exactly what i want on my system. it doesnt do much for you so you need to know your system and how to use linux in general its not a noob friendly set up . my wife who has been using kubuntu since the 5.x series has adjusted to arch with her only complaint being that AUR packages "ask to many questions" when using octopi to update them

while we are on the subject lets talk about the AUR since its one of the best things about arch. The AUR for those who do not know is the Arch User Repository its similar to Ubuntu's PPA system with one major difference you need to build AUR packages they are not precompiled (its generally easy as "makepkg PGKBUILD")

As a developer making the makepkg is easier then making a working deb file. it forces me to be a better upsteam since arch will build patchless, so for once i have a proper make install instead of just relying on the debuild to do it so it would be eaiser for me now to make any kind of install since make install does almost all the install work (excepct for menu and mime info so i have to move two files after make install much less then before)

As a user the real downside of the AUR is that i need to build i need to get the dependcies and etc (yaourt helps alot w/ aur building) and update prompts are not quite the same as if they were prebuild . The version is set in the pkgbuild file so if building from git you have a dumby version in that file and get a real version at build time so aur packages are not updated when the source changes its when the recipe changes . i've been told its the users job to update aur packages manually for git or dailys.. so baiscly i have to reinstall all my -git packages before to know they are upto date.. the "stable" aur packages will generally have the pkgbuild updated with the new version number these updates will work for the most part the same as a normal update. (if using octopi )

/mini rant.

[jpenguin]

The aur is the best part of Arch. I haven't had many bad upgrades, other than sound breaking. Compiling takes a bit long at times too

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[Snowhog]

Well, I've decided to abandon my venture (for now) into Arch Linux. I may look at it again down the road.

[NickStone]

...While rolling releases are a nice idea, I've found they don't work well in practice.

What a load of crap!

I have been using a rolling release based upon Arch for quite a while now, and have had no issues with it hosing my pc, except when I tried the openRC edition of Manjaro whereby after an upgrade the whole system failed to work, but cannot blame Manjaro for that as it doesn't officially support openRC. Manjaro's init of choice is systemd and Manjaro is a very stable rolling release distro. And providing you know what your doing and read the Arch wiki and web pages you will not have an issue with Arch.

[SecretCode]

I have not yet begun my venture into Arch (too many other things occupying my time), but it's been a distro I've been interested in for a while - if only because of the wealth of detail available on the wiki etc

[Snowhog]

Detailed wiki's yes, but, the information on those wiki's isn't always up to date. I don't fault Arch for that specifically; the wiki's are member maintained. And like any endeavor supported by volunteers, we get what we pay for.

I had a reason to re-do my Arch VM installation -- from scratch -- and ended up with issues I couldn't understand the 'why' of, even though I used the same Arch .iso, created the VM from scratch, and followed the same instructions. Anyway, I went through the entire process, from start to finish, four times since last night. Given what I experienced, and my experience level (relatively high), I can understand why Arch isn't recommended for those 'new' to Linux.

Kubuntu Linux is, from my experience and in my opinion, a very good distribution; might even go so far as to say the best distribution available (even though I haven't tried "all" the others). I can honestly say, that since I started using Kubuntu back in 2007 (Edgy Eft), the number of 'issues' I've encountered could be counted on the fingers of my hands, and still have fingers left. And of those 'issues', Google and the members here in Kubuntu Forums . Net allowed me to quickly resolve all of them. Not one of those issues were ever 'deal breakers'.

Every Linux distribution has its adherents/followers, and not every Linux distribution is for everyone. It is almost certainly true that "One Linux will never satisfy all people"; to each his own.

[GreyGeek]

Snowhog, I experienced your remarks in every way. I think you are pretty much spot on with Kubuntu, too.

[Snowhog]

Well, I tried to get Arch up and running WITHOUT ANY ISSUES again today, and couldn't.

I expect to get banned from the Arch Forum because of the last post reply to a thread I just started there this evening. A .pdf of the thread is attached.

I think everyone here knows that I am reasonably intelligent, and that I can and do work things out on my own, asking for assistance, generally, only when I need to. But Arch folk 'seem' to see things differently as to how members are supposed to do things, even when those folks are brand new to Arch. Oh well. Their loss.

[NickStone]

Well, I tried to get Arch up and running WITHOUT ANY ISSUES again today, and couldn't.

I expect to get banned from the Arch Forum because of the last post reply to a thread I just started there this evening. A .pdf of the thread is attached.

I think everyone here knows that I am reasonably intelligent, and that I can and do work things out on my own, asking for assistance, generally, only when I need to. But Arch folk 'seem' to see things differently as to how members are supposed to do things, even when those folks are brand new to Arch. Oh well. Their loss.

Your question was answered here -> https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic....07345#p1607345

[jpenguin]

Not many Arch users seem to abide by their forum guidelines. I mentioned that I used manjaro for a while, and they didn't exactly welcome me to pure Arch.
I used Architect for my last install, parts of the wiki are outdated; I once did an F2FS install though.

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