DVCS

[Jonathan M Davis]

On Thursday 20 January 2011 03:39:08 Jeff Nowakowski wrote:
> On 01/20/2011 12:24 AM, Gour wrote:
> > I've feeling that you just copied the above from FAQ and never
> > actually tried Archlinux.
> 
> No, I haven't tried it. I'm not going to try every OS that comes down
> the pike. If the FAQ says that you're going to have to be more of an
> expert with your system, then I believe it. If it's wrong, then maybe
> you can push them to update it.
> 
> > The "do-it-yourself" from the above means that in Arch user is not
> > forced to use specific DE, WM etc., can choose whether he prefers WiCD
> > over NM etc.
> 
> So instead of giving you a bunch of sane defaults, you have to make a
> bunch of choices up front. That's a heavy investment of time, especially
> for somebody unfamiliar with Linux.
> 
> > That's not true...In Arch there is simply no Arch-8.10 or Arch-10.10
> > which means that whenever you update your system package manager will
> > simply pull all the packages which are required for desired kernel,
> > gcc version etc.
> 
> The upgrade problems are still there. *Every package* you upgrade has a
> chance to be incompatible with the previous version. The longer you
> wait, the more incompatibilities there will be.
> 
> > Otoh, with Ubuntu, upgrade from 8.10 to 10.10 is always a major
> > undertaking (I'm familiar with it since  '99 when I used SuSE and had
> > experience with deps hell.)
> 
> Highlighting the problem of waiting too long to upgrade. You're skipping
> an entire release. I'd like to see you take a snapshot of Arch from
> 2008, use the system for 2 years without updating, and then upgrade to
> the latest packages. Do you think Arch is going to magically have no
> problems?

There is no question that Arch takes more to manage than a number of other 
distros. However, it takes _far_ less than Gentoo. Things generally just work in 
Arch, whereas you often have to figure out how to fix problems when updating on 
Gentoo. I wouldn't suggest Arch to a beginner, but I'd be _far_ more likely to 
suggest it to someone than Gentoo.

Arch really doesn't take all that much to maintain, but it does have a higher 
setup cost than your average distro, and you do have to do some level of manual 
configuration that I'd expect a more typical distro like OpenSuSE or Ubuntu to 
take care of for you.

So, I'd say that your view of Arch is likely a bit skewed, because you haven't 
actually used it, but it still definitely isn't a distro where you just stick in 
the install disk, install it, and then go on your merry way either.

- Jonathan M Davis