Why Arch Linux?

Sun Apr 24 20:48:22 UTC 2011

I'm running the first commercial distro here Slackware.  Slackware got 
out of pre-compiled packages except for what comes on the distro disks 
and for third party stuff after that scripts get downloaded and run.  If 
the scripts work, you're golden otherwise things could be left messy on 
your system.  The scripts are supposed to download stock linux packages 
then apply just enough changes to make them work on slackware.  
Linuxpackages.net is as far as I can tell neither maintained any longer 
nor supported by the community.

On Sun, 24 Apr 2011, Shlomi Fish wrote:

> On Sunday 24 Apr 2011 17:41:04 Anders Holmberg wrote:
> > Hi!
> > One question.
> > I was a debian user 10 years a go but went over to a comercial os.
> > Xp infact.
> > However thinking of beginning with linux again but am not sure what to use.
> > I don't remember much but i am wondering if archlinux would be a go for
> > me or should i stick with another distro for now.
> > /A
> 
> Well, if you could handle Debian 10 years ago, you should be good to go with 
> Debian today, because it improved subtantially. Other options which may be 
> better:
> 
> * Ubuntu - a Debian derivative, borrowing from Debian unstable, that appears 
> to be the most popular distribution out there (and certainly the most 
> hyped[Hype].). Good hardware utilisation, lots of integration and glue (at 
> least in GNOME, hard to know about KDE, which many people and I happen to 
> prefer now, so it's a turn-off), and good community knowledge. And naturally, 
> being based on Debian it has a large selection of packages.
> 
> * Fedora / CentOS - what were once Red Hat Linux, which later split into 
> Fedora (the community distribution which is released every 6 months) and Red 
> Hat Enterprise Linux (= "RHEL" - based on a Fedora, long term release, is 
> released when convenient, and then maintained with vendor patches), which 
> CentOS is a community version of it (based on Red Hat's packages and 
> agreeably) that aims to be as compatible as possible, but some commercial 
> programs will only be supported on RHEL. CentOS is stuck at yesteryears' land, 
> while Fedora can be very bleeding edge. I had a good experience with running 
> Fedora versions in VMs and on different partitions, but I like Mandriva 
> better.
> 
> * Mandriva - the distribution I started using because I bought a 40 GB hard-
> disk and it was the first to support installation to the journalised ReiserFS 
> file-system (which actually trashed my hard-disk shortly afterwards) and which 
> I grew to like, and am now using out of inertia. In the public eyes, it seems 
> to have been largely superceded by Ubuntu, and a lot of people think it's 
> pass? but it is still actively maintained, with a helpful and clueful 
> community (albeit a smaller and less noisy one than Ubuntu's) and now it also 
> has a more community fork called Mageia Linux, which seems interesting but I 
> did not switch to, due to having converted to rpm5 on Mandriva already, and 
> out of initial inertia. 
> 
> I'm using Cooker, which is what becomes the next Mandriva release, and has all 
> the latest programs with all the latest and greatest bugs (and gives some 
> satistfaction in me helping to debug bugs from the stable release). The 6 
> months (now 12 months again I think) release should be much more reliable than 
> that.
> 
> * MEPIS - a more faithful custom Debian-based distribution than Ubuntu. For a 
> while it was Ubuntu-based, but now it's Debian-based. 
> 
> * SUSE - a "Eurolinux"-so-to-speak distribution that sported very good 
> localisation and internationalisation and so was popular outside the English 
> speaking world. Tended to do things in a different way to Red Hat and similar 
> distributions (including ot a large extent Debian), but now may be much 
> better. In a bit of a legal limbo now due to Novell buying it and selling it 
> again, but openSUSE is open-source and can be maintained by the community.
> 
> ----------------
> 
> These are the main open-source desktop-oriented, non-LiveCDish distributions 
> that I'm aware of, but there are many others and some people like to use very 
> obscure ones (and there are many exotic distributions that some people swear 
> by.). I don't know how much their choice will matter to a blind person 
> (assuming you are one.), and you are likely to run into quirks and bugs with 
> any of them given enough time and expertise. But they all should be fine 
> choices and they all have their trade-offs. Pick one and stick with it, and 
> then you can play with others in a VM or install in a different partition, and 
> try to get used to it for a prolonged period. Open source is all about choice 
> and we and most people like it that way. (Many opinionated people claim may be 
> daunting for newcomers, but choice in open-source, like choice in restaurants 
> in most large cities, or the morning's cereal aisle in the supermarket, is 
> unavoidable due to its free-and-open nature and we need to learn to make the 
> best of it). 
> 
> Regards,
> 
> 	Shlomi Fish
> 
> [Hype] - it's not commercial hype like Java was at the time, more like 
> grassroots hype, but it's still hype, and I dislike having things hyped.
> 
> -- 
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
> Shlomi Fish       http://www.shlomifish.org/
> http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/ways_to_do_it.html
> 
> I may be a geek, but I?m a true Klingon geek-warrior! And a true Klingon geek
> warrior ALWAYS bottom-posts.
> 
> Please reply to list if it's a mailing list post - http://shlom.in/reply .
> 
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