Arch Linux 2009.08 Released With New Features

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Arch Linux 2009.08 Released With New Features

The developers behind Arch Linux have announced the release of Arch Linux 2009.08. This ISO for the rolling Arch Linux distribution contains an updated snapshot of Arch's core, which includes the Linux 2.6.30 kernel and many other key package updates...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=NzQ0NQ

[hax0r]

Most useful GNU/Linux ATM, and one that sucks the least, it rocks. Hats off to the KISS principle and optimized pacman.

[RealNC]

Is it just me, or does Arch win (slowly but surely) over Gentoo, which seems to be dying as time passes on. They don't even offer real installation ISOs anymore (not enough developers to do it, and there's not even an installer.)

[Darkfire Fox]

I've used Ubuntu since almost exclusively since 7.10 Gutsy, but I decided to give Arch Linux a try about 5 weeks ago.

I had almost zero experience working with line commands (except when Ubuntu occasionally hiccuped), so I was sweating bullets when I installed it on a new partition and configured it to give me a fully functional KDE desktop. But, by simply following the directions given in the wiki, I encountered no major problems setting it up.

Ubuntu is still my primary distro, but I'm really starting to like Arch Linux. The rolling-release model is its primary attraction, and in some ways it just works better than Ubuntu does. Especially for non-Gnome desktop environments.

I can't say if or when I'll make a full transition, but Arch is definitely growing on me.

[MùPùF]

Yeah! Nice to see Arch is getting popular and gets the attention of Michael !

[Zhick]

They don't even offer real installation ISOs anymore (not enough developers to do it, and there's not even an installer.)
Well, there's no real point in offering a installation-cd as you can install Gentoo with any liveCD (it's even the recommended way). Also not having an installer is exactly the point of Gentoo.
Still I agree on this:
Is it just me, or does Arch win (slowly but surely) over Gentoo, which seems to be dying as time passes on.
I'm myself very intrigued by Arch... After > 1 year of Gentoo you get tired of compiling everything yourself and having to sort out all kinds of blocking packages etc. I'll probably stay with Gentoo on my desktop though as it makes changing between fglrx (9.3) and radeon relatively simple (it's still a pain in the ass, but afaik Arch doesn't even have X Server 1.5 in it's repos anymore, which is necessary to do this), and since I've been playing quite a bit in the recent past this is important to me. But if I should ever be able to get together the money to get myself a notebook I'll most probably install Arch on it.

[BlackStar]

I love Arch. It's not for people who don't RTFM, but pacman and the AUR are a true goldmine. Pacman is lightning-fast and makes it tremendously easy to create and share custom packages or modify existing ones.

Rolling releases are a double-edged sword. You *will* encounter breaking changes sooner or later, but fortunately it's easy to rollback and pin a package. However, you'll have to be more careful upgrading than with your run-of-the-mill Ubuntu installation:*it's a good idea to visit the forums prior to 'pacman -Syu' and hold back specific packages if there are known problems.

Even so, the wiki and the community are very active and will typically find workarounds to any problems you might encounter within hours.

Finally, Arch makes it very easy to customize its init scripts and general configuration (would you really feel comfortable doing that with, say, Ubuntu?) If something breaks and you can't boot anymore, you have everything you need to fix the issue at a single location. Nice!

A great rolling distro for sure. If distrowatch is any measure, Arch has been consistently around the 9-10th most popular distro for the last year, while Gentoo has been slowly slipping below the 20th place (22, currently).

[HaaTa]

A neat little site that shows how efficient Arch's rolling release is:

http://oswatershed.org/

AUR makes trying out the latest open-source ati/radeonhd drives very easy.

[RealNC]

Well, there's no real point in offering a installation-cd as you can install Gentoo with any liveCD (it's even the recommended way). Also not having an installer is exactly the point of Gentoo.

No, it's not. Gentoo had an installer, but no one was fixing the bugs (lack of devs and interest) and so it was removed. Then they declared the lack of it the "point of Gentoo". :rolleyes:

Every distro must have an install ISO with an installer. If I have to install Arch first in order to then install Gentoo, I'll just keep Arch and do without Gentoo.

[Tinuva]

No, it's not. Gentoo had an installer, but no one was fixing the bugs (lack of devs and interest) and so it was removed. Then they declared the lack of it the "point of Gentoo". :rolleyes:

Every distro must have an install ISO with an installer. If I have to install Arch first in order to then install Gentoo, I'll just keep Arch and do without Gentoo.
Well you have it slightly wrong. You don't need to install arch to install gentoo. You can for example just boot the Arch live cd/usb, then use that to install gentoo. None the less, I agree I would prefer downloading a Gentoo cd instead of a Arch cd when installing Gentoo.

But don't get me wrong, I am a Arch fan all the way. Use it at work, on my laptop as well as my desktop at home, and even on my HTPC which boots directly into XBMC.

[Apopas]

Every distro must have an install ISO with an installer. If I have to install Arch first in order to then install Gentoo, I'll just keep Arch and do without Gentoo.
I don't understand why someone must use another distro to install gentoo since gentoo has its own live cd?

[RealNC]

I don't understand why someone must use another distro to install gentoo since gentoo has its own live cd?

"Warning: The 2008.0 releases are deprecated, and their links will be removed soon. You should use the weekly releases instead."

Live CDs are dead. The "weekly releases" are just minimal install ISOs. No installer there, and no plans to make one either.

[Apopas]

They stopped even the live cds? :confused:
It seems the end of gentoo is approaching :(

[AdrenalineJunky]

Well, there's no real point in offering a installation-cd as you can install Gentoo with any liveCD (it's even the recommended way). Also not having an installer is exactly the point of Gentoo.
Still I agree on this:

I'm myself very intrigued by Arch... After > 1 year of Gentoo you get tired of compiling everything yourself and having to sort out all kinds of blocking packages etc. I'll probably stay with Gentoo on my desktop though as it makes changing between fglrx (9.3) and radeon relatively simple (it's still a pain in the ass, but afaik Arch doesn't even have X Server 1.5 in it's repos anymore, which is necessary to do this), and since I've been playing quite a bit in the recent past this is important to me. But if I should ever be able to get together the money to get myself a notebook I'll most probably install Arch on it.

you can always download the package from the arch rollback machine and install it with pacman -U

[DeepDayze]

I am a Debian Sid user now, and I just installed Arch in VBox to try it out...looks pretty damn good and I am starting to like it. The pacman package manager has many similarities to Debian's apt-get that should not be too hard to make the switch. Too many things broken in Debian now, so I am considering making a distro change soon and arch is on my list

[numasan]

This last year I used Fedora 10 both at work and home. I used Gentoo for 5 years before that. I still much prefer Gentoo for the control and how clean and simple it is, even if Fedora is easier to install. I don't mind installing Gentoo since it's something you do once, but installing on many different machines binary distributions win.

Just recently I finally installed Arch on a test-machine, and I really like it! Pacman is super fast, and like Gentoo it KISS. Will definitely use Arch more in the future, but Gentoo will always have a special place in my heart as well as on my hardware! :)

[atriqus]

I am a Debian Sid user now, and I just installed Arch in VBox to try it out...looks pretty damn good and I am starting to like it. The pacman package manager has many similarities to Debian's apt-get that should not be too hard to make the switch. Too many things broken in Debian now, so I am considering making a distro change soon and arch is on my list

This (http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pacman_rosetta), the pacman rosetta page, is also generally helpful when coming from another distro as far as package management is concerned.

[DeepDayze]

This (http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pacman_rosetta), the pacman rosetta page, is also generally helpful when coming from another distro as far as package management is concerned.

Thanks, that's a pretty good comparison of how to do many common operations with the most common package managers including pacman

Bookmarked that page for reference in future.