Arch?

manic111 · 12 Aug 2008 at 13:10

I'm looking at replacing my Ubuntu petition with Arch, as I keep hearing great things about it! I was just wondering a few things. Firstly, how easy is it to partition your drive correctly during the install? I definately don't want to screw up my Vista install!

Secondly, how easy/hard is the install itself? I keep reading reviews saying that Arch isn't really a "geeks" distro, but these tend to be written by people with more Linux experience than myself! I can blunder around Ubuntu and generally get things right more by luck than judgement-could I do Arch, or should I stay away?

manic111 · 12 Aug 2008 at 13:22

OK cool...any chance you could give me a quick run through of how to use a VM? Again, it's something I've blundered through before but didn't really get!!!!

manic111 · 12 Aug 2008 at 14:21

OK cool, I've read up a bit on Virtual Machines and am now downloading an Arch ISO-will try it in VirtualBox first!

One question, when you have the option of selecting a virtual hard drive during the virtualbox setup, having done this, is this all that the virtual OS will be able to see? So if I give Arch 10gb of my physical hard drive, it won't be able to touch anything else?

I'm asking because I am wondering whether it is safe to let the Arch installer auto prepare my hard drive. I figure that it will be safe if all it can see is the virtual hard drive, but if it can see the rest of my C drive is it possible that it will wipe that too?

manic111 · 12 Aug 2008 at 14:35

OK cool, sounds the same as what I did for my Ubuntu install earlier in the year. Just wondering if you've taken into account the fact that Im using a virtual machine- you havent mentioned it if so

Also, when using a virtual hard drive, how easy is this to delete? Does it create it as a seperate partition, or is it just a group of files somewhere? If you want to uninstall a virtual machine, how do you delete the virtual hard drive?

manic111 · 12 Aug 2008 at 15:21

K, that's what I thought. So if I manually partition during installation, it will only touch the virtual drive? It wont be able to touch the remainder of my harddrive at all?

EDIT/UPDATE!: Right, I've taken the virtual machine plunge!!! So far its all going ok, I've partitioned the hard drives well enough, and am trying to configure my packages. However, despite downloading the "core" ISO I only seem to get the option for the base packages; I dont get support, devel or lib categories. Anyone have any idea why?

manic111 · 12 Aug 2008 at 16:27

K, I've found a "newbie" guide online which is proving to be pretty useful in deciding which packages to keep and which to lose. It's a bit out of date but good with most packages. Is it best to install the ones which I'm not sure about?

manic111 · 15 Aug 2008 at 23:20

marscay said:
arch is all about keeping it simple and minimisation, install less to start with if you're not sure and go from there......stick with base packages for a fresh install.

Yea, I've done that- I was more asking the question in terms of the base packages.

Anyway, I've been away for a couple of days of job interviews (yay!) but am back to Arch fun now! Currently got as far as configuring my desktop, probably start on that tomorrow. Will let you know how it goes!