Arch Linux Install Media Updated For July 2012

[babali]

I switched to Fedora when I realized how bleeding edge it was and how often packages update. Debian is great but updates at a snails pace unless you use the unstable stuff (let me stress unstable). Arch is great but requires so much work to maintain or reinstall.

Using RPMFusion and contributing what I can that's missing really helps fill in the gaps. The downside is I have to reinstall or do a massive update every 6 months to stay on top, which didn't happen when I was with Debian or Arch. On the plus side, I tend to mess up my OS every 6-8 months and because I don't back things up regularly, I'm reinstaling anyway and Fedora seems to be easy to do so.

Well it doesn't take me more than 5 minutes to update my arch... What takes you so much times ?
And by the way I have 4 years old installations, which I did update without any needs for re-installation.

[schmidtbag]

I switched to Fedora when I realized how bleeding edge it was and how often packages update. Debian is great but updates at a snails pace unless you use the unstable stuff (let me stress unstable). Arch is great but requires so much work to maintain or reinstall.

Using RPMFusion and contributing what I can that's missing really helps fill in the gaps. The downside is I have to reinstall or do a massive update every 6 months to stay on top, which didn't happen when I was with Debian or Arch. On the plus side, I tend to mess up my OS every 6-8 months and because I don't back things up regularly, I'm reinstaling anyway and Fedora seems to be easy to do so.

I tried fedora a few years ago, I can't say I was very impressed by it. Package management felt a little sloppy compared to debian and arch, it didn't seem to have as many packages as debian, and I'm not fond of distros that get a new version every year - I prefer rolling release which is why Arch and debian sid were so appealing to me. I remember hearing fedora had rolling release discussed but until I know for sure that it exists, I probably won't bother with it.

[ninez]

I don't know what (some) people are going on about - how now without AIF, Arch is all of a sudden soooo much harder to install and is more like Gentoo - i just checked out the new ISO in VMware and it didn't take any longer to install than usual, nor was it really anymore difficult (nor was Archlinux difficult to install to begin with).

I look at archlinux like so; if you can follow a cookbook recipe and make a decent meal - you should have ZERO problems with Arch's installation documentation. it's very straight forward. but then again, if you are incompetent, than naturally, Archlinux is not a distro for you.

I doubt i will have to install Archlinux on hardware anytime soon, tough. That is the beauty of a rolling release, after all. Install it once, and let it roll. No release cycles / no having to upgrade or re-install every six-months, etc. love it.

[Mystro256]

Well it doesn't take me more than 5 minutes to update my arch... What takes you so much times ?
And by the way I have 4 years old installations, which I did update without any needs for re-installation.

Haha, I'm the sort of person who trips over anything and everything, so I guess I'm just really clumsy with my software too. I tend to need to reinstall a lot because of my "clumsiness" it seems (generally due to file system corruption and too much experimentation haha).

Even beyond that, I find the issue with Arch is that it is more prone to regressions or major changes in updates, which is the cause of most maintenance troubles for me. I love Arch but it was a bit of a love hate thing back when I used it.

I tried fedora a few years ago, I can't say I was very impressed by it. Package management felt a little sloppy compared to debian and arch, it didn't seem to have as many packages as debian, and I'm not fond of distros that get a new version every year - I prefer rolling release which is why Arch and debian sid were so appealing to me. I remember hearing fedora had rolling release discussed but until I know for sure that it exists, I probably won't bother with it.

Fair enough, to each their own; yum doesn't bother me and I reinstall my OS consistently enough that I don't really need a rolling release. Although if I had a choice, I would much rather with Arch than Debian Sid. I find that Debian is only alright if you don't mind the slow pace of Testing.

[Hamish Wilson]

I switched to Fedora when I realized how bleeding edge it was and how often packages update. Debian is great but updates at a snails pace unless you use the unstable stuff (let me stress unstable). Arch is great but requires so much work to maintain or reinstall.

Using RPMFusion and contributing what I can that's missing really helps fill in the gaps. The downside is I have to reinstall or do a massive update every 6 months to stay on top, which didn't happen when I was with Debian or Arch. On the plus side, I tend to mess up my OS every 6-8 months and because I don't back things up regularly, I'm reinstaling anyway and Fedora seems to be easy to do so.

Yeah, that is basically my experience with Fedora as well. I should really try Arch at somepoint though just to see what it is like.

[disi]

Yeah, that is basically my experience with Fedora as well. I should really try Arch at somepoint though just to see what it is like.

Fedora is great on my netbook with no real data on it. Once you made notes about all the repositories you will need for multimedia, VirtualBox, Flash, Virtualization etc. the reinstall is easy...

Gentoo, anyone? With Sabayon they have a standard compilation and kind of a current snapshot of portage to test on, isn't there any Arch based distribution Michael could use?

[babali]

Fedora is great on my netbook with no real data on it. Once you made notes about all the repositories you will need for multimedia, VirtualBox, Flash, Virtualization etc. the reinstall is easy...

Gentoo, anyone? With Sabayon they have a standard compilation and kind of a current snapshot of portage to test on, isn't there any Arch based distribution Michael could use?

I don't know the current state of gentoo, but if I have to play with a source distro, then I would use exherbo.

[Ulukai]

Gentoo, anyone? With Sabayon they have a standard compilation and kind of a current snapshot of portage to test on, isn't there any Arch based distribution Michael could use?

Chakra is a distro like this. Arch based and (unfortunately ) features a KDE desktop.

[disi]

I don't know the current state of gentoo, but if I have to play with a source distro, then I would use exherbo.

Gentoo looks better than exherbo? Every ebuild in their repository I checked, has only unstable keywords for ~amd64 or ~x86 and a maximum of 1-2 USE flags if any. What do you have unstable/stable keywords if everything is unstable? It looks more a distribution in the process to evolve... for testing stuff.

Maybe ArchBang as a snapshot of the Arch repositories?

[Fenrin]

[...]I remember hearing fedora had rolling release discussed but until I know for sure that it exists, I probably won't bother with it.

it's possible to upgrade from Fedora 16 to 17 and it should be possible to upgrade from F17 to F18, when F18 is in alpha or later. But it's officially not recommended, because it could fuck something up (not very likely though).
I have a separate home partition and don't use a LVM setup so a installation which takes about 25 minutes is not a big issue for me. Well afterwards I also have to install some applications and packages, but that's not a huge issue either.