Thoughts on Arch Linux

SMN

SMN

SMN

Soldato
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OK kids, so after 2 days of swearing and re-installing, i've finally got Arch installed on a Vertex 2E as my main OS.

I would have used dd and just imaged my Fedora 12 image across but thats 32 bit and i want to go to 64 bit so i figure why not go Arch on recommendation of tntcoder and Rainmaker :)

My thoughts are as below:

1. The GUI - very confusing, the guides to installing gnome as a gui are less than intuitive (arch wiki). I had to look around a few sites to find out that i had to uncomment an extra line to load gdm and not command line to log in etc.

2. "pacman" - naturally, coming from Red Hat going to a new package manager was going to be a challenge. I'm getting to grips with it, but i have to say at first look it appears great. However, when you dig into the functionality, i find it lacking in a few aspects, such as "yum search..." / "apt find" alternative. Its also not great at tracing dependency hell.

3. Hellanzb/Lottanzb - Its a massive pain installing anything python based, as i found primarily with Hellanzb, sabanzbd, etc. I *still* cannot get it working now, after much F'ing and blinding.

It feels very responsive and a great little OS, but installing the things i actually use has left a bit of a sour taste so far. If i can find a way to install hella/lottanzb and conky, then i'll be happy. Other than i just need to get Skype which looks straight forward in the wiki.

For me, it needs a better package support base, a search function (there may be one, i just havent found it *yet*) on packages, and this is more Linux than Arch, but SORT OUT PYTHON !! Im sick to death of "you have python2 and you need python" why the frelling hell isnt it backwards compatible. Grr..

Overall, so far, Arch gets a 6/10 for me. With Fedora getting a better 8/10 due to package management.

SMN
 
Keep in mind that all the Python problems have only just occurred this last week, due to the switch-over from Python 2.7 -> Python 3. The knock-on effect is that old Python code needs it's scripts updating to point to /usr/bin/python2 rather than /usr/bin/python. This is annoying, but you have to phase out Python 2 at some point in time, and there's no nice way to do it.

This can't be fixed overnight though sadly.

Have to disagree with you on Pacman, it's the best package manager and dependency tracker of all the distros i've tried. You can search easily with it using "pacman -Ss ..." and search for installed packages with "pacman -Qs ...", is that what you mean?

Because hellanzb isn't in the official repos, it's in the AUR (user managed repo) and this means you need to wait for the package maintainer to fix the above Python issues himself. Or you could manually install it and make a package yourself.


As for installing a GUI, it couldn't be simpler following the beginners guide. Not too sure where you went wrong? It's literally a case of "pacman -S gnome gnome-extras" and an edit to the inittab to start in runlevel 5 and you're done.

It's definitely worth giving it time, once you've done the whole install process a few times and learnt the OS structure it all makes much more sense. Certainly don't let the current python issues annoy you too much :p
 
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1. Were you using the GNOME page or the section of the Beginners' Guide for instructions? I found the GNOME page (here) to have all the necessary instructions in it last time I looked.

2. "pacman -Ss <packagename>" is the search feature for pacman. :)

As for your Python issues, is Hellanzb/Lottanzb something you're installing from the repositories or from source? Possible solution (I don't know what you have installed) is just to run "pacman -Ss python python2" and that will give you both versions on your system. According to the Arch homepage, all packages in the main Arch repositories have been updated to point to the relevant location, but AUR and others may well not have been.

The reason that it isn't backwards compatible is to do with them rewriting certain parts of the language and its functions, if I remember correctly. But I'm not a Python user. :p

Edit: Wow, I spent far too long writing that. Beaten to it >.<
 
Well on the GUI issue, it was more the bits they left out. I cant remember the exact file, but you need to comment out the init3 line and uncomment init5 to get it to boot to init 5. What it failed to mention was to uncomment the line telling it to boot to GDM, for example.

I found a few little things like that unfortunately :(

I installed the "yaourt" tool, and tried using that, however i found it very.. dependancy heavy, i.e.:

"yaourt -Sy hellanzb"

Would take me to "Want to install .xyz...?" [Y] "Cant find it, try again?[Y/N]", wasnt great tbf but like you said sounds like a python problem.

I tried using the AUR tool, do you mind talking me through how you use it? From what i can understand, you go on the "thing" you want to download, extract it, then run "makepkg -s" to make the ".xz" (right?) then run "pacman -U taasdasdsa.xz" to install it?

I'll definitely persevere, it took me ages to get it to like it is now im not throwing it away or going back to x86 :)

SMN
 
SMN said:
I tried using the AUR tool, do you mind talking me through how you use it? From what i can understand, you go on the "thing" you want to download, extract it, then run "makepkg -s" to make the ".xz" (right?) then run "pacman -U taasdasdsa.xz" to install it?
Click to expand...

I personally have never used the yaourt tool, not sure I see the need in it.

I use pacman for all the official packages, and the AUR for all custom stuff. It's very easy to use, you're basically correct.

So you browse to the AUR page, eg http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=3935 (note the package is currently flagged as out of date and waiting an upgrade). Then you download the tarball, extract it, and run makepkg in the extracted directory. This will download all the source and make you a installation file for pacman. Then as you say "pacman -U mypackage.tar.xz". Yaourt basically does all this for you as a front end, but you lose the control.

You will need to manually resolve dependencies on custom packages like that. Stuff you install from pacman will be auto-managed, but AUR you do yourself.
 
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Oxy said:
Why not simply install the sabnzbd dependencies then shove the sabnzbd (unzipped) in a folder = job done.

You don't need to "install" it.
Click to expand...

When was the last time you attempted to resolve dependencies by hand? :p

SABnzbd may well be a simple case, but sometimes the scenario is :

1. You are presented with a seductively short list of, say, 3 dependencies.

2. You think "a bit inconvenient, but shouldn't take long."

3. You discover that #1 on the list depends on something.. and that something depends on something else.. ad infinitum.

4. After all that, you may still run into some incompatible-shared-library-version madness.
 
eXor said:
When was the last time you attempted to resolve dependencies by hand? :p

SABnzbd may well be a simple case, but sometimes the scenario is :

1. You are presented with a seductively short list of, say, 3 dependencies.

2. You think "a bit inconvenient, but shouldn't take long."

3. You discover that #1 on the list depends on something.. and that something depends on something else.. ad infinitum.

4. After all that, you may still run into some incompatible-shared-library-version madness.
Click to expand...

I've never had that issue with sab. I'm not manually installing the dependancies, I use pacman to get them, so if it needs anything else it grabs it at the same time.
 
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I've got sab running fine on my Arch box, juts installed straight using yaourt no problem. The package maintainer updated the package on the 24th to use the new python (http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=13691) so that could have caused some of your problems if you installed it before that. What you have to take into account is that it has 120+ votes. If it didn't work then someone would know about it and chances are be either fixing it or complaining.

Whatever problems you had with installing gnome and some lines being missing, add them to the wiki! The problem with the beginners guide is that experienced users don't usually go through it line for line and therefore little errors usually take a while to get noticed, unless someone makes a determined effort to make sure it's perfect.
 
Use bauerbill instead of yaourt. It has support for download acceleration, building from ABS, CPAN and Hackage, aswell as the AUR.
Once you get the hang of Arch it makes much more sense. Just bare in mind that it is a 'bleeding edge' rolling release model, and is never going to be as stable as something like Debian.
 
Edit the wiki with your finds. These things can go for years without being noticed, and often lead to the same forum posts all over the internet :)
 
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