The Linux 3.7 Kernel Is Going To Be A Beast

[bobwya]

I must be one of those strange cases that have no problem whatsoever with Arch. Same installation for the last 3 years. A couple of situations where i had to fix some problems when major changes occurred (well explained and documented on the arch linux site or the forums)

I've been using SystemD for more than 2 years now. Although it's true that at the beginning it was a bit of a pain in the ass, it's been in a rock solid state for more than a year and a half. And of course this is Arch, you are going to have to configure your system so if you make mistakes like with everything else it'll go wrong. You read (what you should have done before and not after), you fix them, you learn, you don't make them again, and then everything goes more smoothly than you'll ever find on Bugbuntu. And you just don't go back.

One of the reasons I use ARCH and Gentoo is because it gives me a kick up the arse to delve into the depths of how a Linux Desktop system is configured. I personally find most Ubuntu-derived distros to be a bit boring. However I currently run about 7-8 distros (on bare metal) in a multi-boot configuration to compare how they do things. I like to remain distro agnostic!

If you've been using systemd this long then perhaps you should be made aware it should be written "systemd" (correction I received some months ago from the ARCH systemd maintainer!!) - "SystemD" is not the correct name...

BTW I've had my ARCH install switched over to systemd for about a year. So I've given it a fair go before feeling I could comment (either way) on the relative merits of Init-V vs. systemd (Upstart will die some day soon like Compiz). Some people seem to feel able to dimiss systemd without even testing it all... In fact I did try and offer some fixes to the BASH completion script for systemd about 9 months ago... However I just got the brush off by the guy who does the ARCH systemd packaging... Not very community spirited IMHO...

Actually I read most of the ARCH and Gentoo Wiki pages in great detail (both are a bit lite on systemd detail IMHO). However my fstab get a bit complicated (as you can imagine!!) One little slip and a systemd-based system won't boot. That's just a fact - and is no fault of ARCH - it's simply how it's written. Perhaps there is simple switch so it doesn't just hang during boot - on a minor system configuration error (e.g. mountpoint for a non-critical FS partition does not exist). But not even dropping to a TTY console (like Init-V generally manages to do) - to do some quick repair work - is really unnecessary...

Also I thought systemd would magically/on demand mount remote CIFS fmountpoints from my fstab file when I went to access them... However this is not how the lazy mounting works sadly... Personally I don't care so much about fast boot speeds (I boot of a Sammy 830 SSD after all). After boot KDE takes care of any speed gains I might have gained from systemd



Bob

[Vadi]

And we're stuck to 3.5 for another 6 months in Ubuntu...Yay.

Yeah, and you're shielded from new problems that spawned in 3.7, so by the time you get it, some things are hopefully rectified.

I stopped using bleeding edge after running into way too many problems almost daily. You just can't use a computer as a computer then, it's always something that needs fixing...

[XorEaxEax]

Yeah, and you're shielded from new problems that spawned in 3.7, so by the time you get it, some things are hopefully rectified.

I stopped using bleeding edge after running into way too many problems almost daily. You just can't use a computer as a computer then, it's always something that needs fixing...

That may have been the case for you but it's certainly not 'the truth' as there are lots of us running bleeding edge distros like Arch and Gentoo. I've been running Arch for 5 years (closing in on 6) and during that time I've had one showstopper bug which was a kernel upgrade where changes to my network card driver made the system unstable under severe loads which forced me to downgrade the kernel until it was later fixed in a minor kernel update.

There's no way I could use a system on a day-to-day basis even if it crashed only once a week, maybe if you enable the 'testing' repo you will encounter lots of bugs and problems, I don't know as I've never enabled it (there's bleeding edge and there's BLEEDING EDGE) but I'm very thankful to those brave souls who serves as the guinea pigs so that packages are working fine once they hit core.

And just to be clear, I'm not arguing against using distros with a fixed upgrade path and older better tested packages, I'm just pointing out that using a bleeding edge distro does not equal 'daily fixing' or crashes.

[boast]

I never have issues with Arch. I really wonder what people do to their installations...

There was that one recently with the /lib being moved to /usr I think, or something like that. And since people aren't subbed to the mailing list, there was tons of forum action a few days with broken systems, lol

(I boot of a Sammy 830 SSD after all). After boot KDE takes care of any speed gains I might have gained from systemd

rofl, same here.

[XorEaxEax]

There was that one recently with the /lib being moved to /usr I think, or something like that. And since people aren't subbed to the mailing list, there was tons of forum action a few days with broken systems, lol

The change was also plasted on the front webpage together with a description of why it required manual intervention and a link to a wiki entry which dealt with troubleshooting should the upgrade not go smoothly so there was no need to be subscribing to the mailing list in order to be aware of this.

If an upgrade fails you'd logically look at the frontpage and/or forum to see if there are any information on the issue as it is clear evidence that something isn't right, however instead some people decided to delete (!) the files which could not be updated automatically which left them with a broken system, go figure...