![[H]ard|Forum](/styles/hardforum/xenforo/logo_dark.png){kind=logo}
RanceJustice
Supreme [H]ardness
- Joined
- Jun 9, 2003
- Messages
- 6,629
Just wanted to report my experience with Arch Linux, which may very well become my favorite distribution of the Linux OS. I've messed around before with Mandrake, Redhat, Fedora, and Ubuntu/Debian variations here and there over the years. Ubuntu and Mint are without a doubt excellent, full featured, easiest to get into a working operating system distributions. However, they sometimes suffer from doing things in a non-standard way, limited user transparency so its hard to fix when things are borked, and a 6 month release cycle where new program versions especially of big stuff, like kernals, are held back. Thus this brings me to Arch, to build a terminal server that will primarily act as a storage box (with 2x 1TB WD Green drives, and a 74gb Raptor for the OS) and secondarily be used for any other "server" necessities.
On the grand scale of "difficulty for a noob" where PCLinuxOS , Xandros, and Mandriva are at the easiest end, and Linux from Scratch, Slackware, and Gentoo at at the hardest end, Arch seats itself just more accessible than Slackware and Gentoo. Unlike Gentoo, you don't need to compile everything yourself and unlike Slackware you have an awesome dependency-resolving package manager known as "pacman".
The Arch way includes
-rolling releases. You'll never be out of date for too long as new versions and programs are constantly being dumped into the repo. However, this might occasionally lead to some bleeding edge issues. Thankfully the maintainers leave the items most likely to break in the "experimental" repos, which are uncommented by default
-simplicity (in the technical sense) and transparency. Nothing is hidden from the user. You will know lots about your machine because though there may be an occasional wizard to guide you, most of the time its going to be you and the command line. Install what you need from a wide variety of packages including several official repositories, and a number of user-created packages and build scripts as well! Install what you need, and nothing you don't!
Web resources that are important for starting with Arch
www.archlinux.org - the homepage
bbs.archlinux.org - forums!
wiki.archlinux.org - a very comprehensive and up to date wiki, in most cases
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beginners_Guide - the beginner guide, which will be a step by step method to getting your Arch system installed and into a desktop environment.
#archlinux on freenode - IRC channel.
If at all possible its very nice to have a second PC with internet access so you can read along during your install, or join an IRC channel for help.
Specs on my box running Arch -
Antec P180 Mini
Intel Core2Quad 9450 2.6ghz w/ Scythe MUGEN 2 cooler. I'll OC it pretty soon if it turns out to be helpful to do so and I start running servers (game, voice etc..) on it.
Gigabyte LGA775 motherboard with integrated GeForce 9400 graphics, Nvidia HDA integrated sound, gigabit ethernet
4gb DDR2-1066 RAM. May upgrade to 8gb soon
GeForce 9400 IGP - works with the "nvidia" binary drivers for 3d acceleration
Nvidia HDA sound. Don't need a sound card on a box like this, so its suitable
HDD (system) - 74gb 10,000 RPM Raptor I had laying around.
HDD (storage) - 2x 1 TB WD Green drives.
Optical - external DVD super multi. Its a samsung that uses 2 USB ports. I installed from this media.
So far I've not run into any compatibility problems with my hardware, or any arcane wizardry necessary to get it to work. Note that I chosse the "nvidia" binary closed source driver for 3d acceleration mostly so I could see if it works, but I'm sure I could get around with the "nv" 2d open source driver, with all the desktop shiny easily.
I'll be posting in the future as I gtet things set up. This is a picture of my basic desktop of KDE4 at install, taken by the Kscreenshot app. Its a little downsized -http://ompBLOCKEDWHY?loader.org/vMmNkbw
More to come, hopefully, as I start installing things I need to turn it into a NAS server!
On the grand scale of "difficulty for a noob" where PCLinuxOS , Xandros, and Mandriva are at the easiest end, and Linux from Scratch, Slackware, and Gentoo at at the hardest end, Arch seats itself just more accessible than Slackware and Gentoo. Unlike Gentoo, you don't need to compile everything yourself and unlike Slackware you have an awesome dependency-resolving package manager known as "pacman".
The Arch way includes
-rolling releases. You'll never be out of date for too long as new versions and programs are constantly being dumped into the repo. However, this might occasionally lead to some bleeding edge issues. Thankfully the maintainers leave the items most likely to break in the "experimental" repos, which are uncommented by default
-simplicity (in the technical sense) and transparency. Nothing is hidden from the user. You will know lots about your machine because though there may be an occasional wizard to guide you, most of the time its going to be you and the command line. Install what you need from a wide variety of packages including several official repositories, and a number of user-created packages and build scripts as well! Install what you need, and nothing you don't!
Web resources that are important for starting with Arch
www.archlinux.org - the homepage
bbs.archlinux.org - forums!
wiki.archlinux.org - a very comprehensive and up to date wiki, in most cases
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beginners_Guide - the beginner guide, which will be a step by step method to getting your Arch system installed and into a desktop environment.
#archlinux on freenode - IRC channel.
If at all possible its very nice to have a second PC with internet access so you can read along during your install, or join an IRC channel for help.
Specs on my box running Arch -
Antec P180 Mini
Intel Core2Quad 9450 2.6ghz w/ Scythe MUGEN 2 cooler. I'll OC it pretty soon if it turns out to be helpful to do so and I start running servers (game, voice etc..) on it.
Gigabyte LGA775 motherboard with integrated GeForce 9400 graphics, Nvidia HDA integrated sound, gigabit ethernet
4gb DDR2-1066 RAM. May upgrade to 8gb soon
GeForce 9400 IGP - works with the "nvidia" binary drivers for 3d acceleration
Nvidia HDA sound. Don't need a sound card on a box like this, so its suitable
HDD (system) - 74gb 10,000 RPM Raptor I had laying around.
HDD (storage) - 2x 1 TB WD Green drives.
Optical - external DVD super multi. Its a samsung that uses 2 USB ports. I installed from this media.
So far I've not run into any compatibility problems with my hardware, or any arcane wizardry necessary to get it to work. Note that I chosse the "nvidia" binary closed source driver for 3d acceleration mostly so I could see if it works, but I'm sure I could get around with the "nv" 2d open source driver, with all the desktop shiny easily.
I'll be posting in the future as I gtet things set up. This is a picture of my basic desktop of KDE4 at install, taken by the Kscreenshot app. Its a little downsized -http://ompBLOCKEDWHY?loader.org/vMmNkbw
More to come, hopefully, as I start installing things I need to turn it into a NAS server!
