DVCS

[retard]

Thu, 20 Jan 2011 13:33:58 +0100, Gour wrote:

> On Thu, 20 Jan 2011 06:39:08 -0500
> Jeff Nowakowski <jeff at dilacero.org> wrote:
> 
> 
>> No, I haven't tried it. I'm not going to try every OS that comes down
>> the pike.
> 
> Then please, without any offense, do not give advises about something
> which you did not try. I did use Ubuntu...
> 
>> So instead of giving you a bunch of sane defaults, you have to make a
>> bunch of choices up front.
> 
> Right. That's why there is no need for separate distro based on DE user
> wants to have, iow, by simple: pacman -Sy xfce4 you get XFCE environment
> installed...same wit GNOME & KDE.

It's the same in Ubuntu. You can install the minimal server build and 
install the DE of your choice in similar way. The prebuilt images 
(Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Lubuntu, ...) are for those who can't decide 
and don't want to fire up a terminal for writing down bash code. In 
Ubuntu you have even more choice. The huge metapackage or just the DE 
packages, with or without recommendations. A similar system just doesn't 
exist for Arch. For the lazy user Ubuntu is a dream come true - you never 
need to launch xterm if you don't want. There's a GUI for almost 
everything.

> 
>> That's a heavy investment of time, especially for somebody unfamiliar
>> with Linux.
> 
> Again, you're speaking without personal experience...

You're apparently a Linux fan, but have you got any idea which BSD or 
Solaris distro to choose? The choice isn't as simple if you have zero 
experience with the system. 

> 
> Moreover, in TDPL's foreword, Walter speaks about himself as "..of an
> engineer..", so I'm sure he is capable to handle The Arch Way (see
> section Simplicity at https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Arch_Linux)
> which says: "The Arch Way is a philosophy aimed at keeping it simple.

I think Walter's system isn't up to date because he is a lazy bitch. Has 
all the required competence but never bothers to update if it just works 
(tm). The same philosophy can be found in dmd/dmc. The code is sometimes 
hard to read and hard to maintain and buggy, but if it works, why fix it?

> The Arch Linux base system is quite simply the minimal, yet functional
> GNU/Linux environment; the Linux kernel, GNU toolchain, and a handful of
> optional, extra command line utilities like links and Vi. This clean and
> simple starting point provides the foundation for expanding the system
> into whatever the user requires." and from there install one of the
> major DEs (GNOME, KDE or XFCE) to name a few.

I'd give my vote for LFS. It's quite minimal.

> 
>> 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.
> 
> There are no incompatibilities...if I upgrade kernel, it means that
> package manager will figure out what components has to be updated...
> 
> Remember: there are no packages 'tagged' for any specific release!

Even if the package manager works perfectly, the repositories have bugs 
in their dependencies and other metadata.

> 
>> 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?
> 
> I did upgrade on my father-in-law's machine which was more then 1yr old
> without any problem.
> 
> You think there must be some magic to handle it...ask some FreeBSD user
> how they do it. ;)

There's usually a safe upgrade period. If you wait too much, package 
conflicts will appear. It's simply too much work to keep rules for all 
possible package transitions. For example libc update breaks kde, but 
it's now called kde4. The system needs to know how to first remove all 
kde4 packages and update them. Chromium was previously a game, but now 
it's a browser, the game becomes chromium-bsu or something. I have hard 
time believing the minimal Arch does all this.