flirting with Arch

I recently made the move from ubuntu to arch linux. i kept asking people to sugguest me a good distro. i told em all i want is that to be a simple, well documented… one. i think i asked them for some more things but i don’t recall them right now. anyways, someone recommened me arch. seen my IM client’s banner(asking for a new distro that is simple…). so i though hey why not give it a try. i mean i have heard of arch before this. i remmember reading about arch been put on a usb drive some time back. so that was the first time i heard about it.

i think for me the main reason to try arch was that, it was said to be a simple, fast, documented distro. fair enough after installing it and bringing it to a stage where i can use my it for my daily tasks. i feel that it is indeed a simple and fairly documented system. i know for a fact that there are many people out there who use the word ’simple’ to identify and discribe there distro. but when it comes to arch you feel that it is a bit more simple than most of those. it tries not to change stuff where it is not really needed.

arch have a package managment system called pacman. which is pretty cool. im a big fan of apt. been with ubuntu for about 2 or 3 years. i have grown so found of apt. i always like debain baised distros. i think apt was a main factor that made me like debian baised distros. i mean rpms were so messy… you run in to all sorts of ‘hells’(dependency hell for a example )…

well i really don’t know how rpm is working these days. but when i first tried it, which was like about 3 or 4 years back. it was a pain in the neck. anyways arch is not baised on debian and it does not have apt. but i find pacman to be faily a cool package manager. it is kinda like apt in some ways. it manages dependencies. you can upgrade your system easily.. just like you would have done a distro upgrade in apt. so i think that was a another reason that made me like arch.

arch and all its apps are compiled for i686 arch. so it runs faster in my lap! which is also a grate thing i mean speed is something that will always add value when it comes to computers hehe(i am just speculating… or i am just guessing… so yeah it might not be true in some cases… who knows).

i installed the core packages. and then xorg, gnome… so on. i had a sound problem with ubuntu. but with arch it seems to have gone away. i got the chance to configure more settings in my system when i am installing arch. its basically like i had to get x working, then gnome and then sound… etc etc. but after all if wasn’t that hard. and i found arch wiki and the forums very helpful. i think the wiki is far from compelete but hey i am not complaining! it helped me a lot and i am sure it will be improving a lot in the comming months as more and more people add content to it.

arch also so have something like gentoo’s poratge thing called abs. its simply a pakgbuild file and the sources for some application. when you can’t find a application you want in the arch repos you can always search the commiunity supplied arch builds. but even if you failed to find them you can always get the source and compile it your self! lol. i mean i was thinking… what the heck. just go ahead and compile it your self. you don’t always need to download binaries… this is open source and why the hell aren’t we gaining the real advantages by just compiling it on our mashines. which is will result in a faster working program(given that you have set the correct settings… gcc flags… etc etc).  but of course the binary packages have there own set of merits

all in all arch is a cool system. if you like what systems like gentoo offers. but if you feel that you aren’t ready for gentoo or something like that just yet, or if you are plain lazy! just go with arch. its a do it your self thing(up to a certian extent of cause. they have done a lot of work to make things easier for you… ) + simplicity.

so if you are in search for a new distro give arch a try! you won’t be dissappointed

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