Arch 2012.11.01 Switches To Linux 3.6 Kernel

[Sonadow]

That's funny. Your problem sounded like it was simple to fix (and may have even been caused by human error). But the funnier part is your expectation of Archlinux ~ Clearly, it's not the distribution for you when you can't even solve a conflict or are confronted with having to do something yourself to resolve a problem. ie: manual intervention - and there is nothing wrong with that, you obviously need a lot of 'hand-holding', so sticking with Windows is probably better for you.

I get the feeling Im being mocked at.

ANYWAY,

I don't need a lot of hand-holding so to speak: just a little is sufficient. Heck, i always compile my own kernel and wifi drivers for Fedora, OpenSUSE and Mageia from source, along with almost every important userland application i use on a regular basis (Firefox, Thunderbird, aMSN, Xchat, HexChat), completely bypassing the package manager save for MySQL, postgreSQL and LibreOffice.

Windows is my choice simply because of the vast amount of vendor-suppplied drivers for the variety of desktop accessories and pheripherals out there (especially printers and fully-functional launch-day driver support for most hardware), along with Office, Visual Studio, VISIO and the Windows Live suite; these are the things which I cannot live without, and are also the things FOSS have failed to dethrone even after so many years. Example: to date i still get pissed at the current version LibreOffice for making it so difficult to align tables and images to a document, or for not being able to set the orientation of one single page from a 10-page portrait report to landscape style; tasks which were do-able with 1 click since Office 2003.

[ninez]

I get the feeling Im being mocked at.

To clarify _ I'm NOT mocking you at all. I was making a joke more than anything.

I don't need a lot of hand-holding so to speak: just a little is sufficient. Heck, i always compile my own kernel and wifi drivers for Fedora, OpenSUSE and Mageia from source, along with almost every important userland application i use on a regular basis (Firefox, Thunderbird, aMSN, Xchat, HexChat), completely bypassing the package manager save for MySQL, postgreSQL and LibreOffice.

I used to use Fedora and do massive amounts of compiling (mostly manual), in a similar sort of way. ie: kernel, various libs, apps and of course having to compile a lot of extras that fedora didn't have at the time. It actually ended up being the reason i stopped using it and dropped fedora for Archlinux. With Arch, i can just have a folder of customized PKGBUILDs for that kind of thing. it ends up being way less maintenance to have a much more customized system.

Windows is my choice simply because of the vast amount of vendor-suppplied drivers for the variety of desktop accessories and pheripherals out there (especially printers and fully-functional launch-day driver support for most hardware), along with Office, Visual Studio, VISIO and the Windows Live suite; these are the things which I cannot live without, and are also the things FOSS have failed to dethrone even after so many years. Example: to date i still get pissed at the current version LibreOffice for making it so difficult to align tables and images to a document, or for not being able to set the orientation of one single page from a 10-page portrait report to landscape style; tasks which were do-able with 1 click since Office 2003.

to each their own. I don't use Windows at all, at home. (and just a little at work), But i totally understand where you are coming from, as i still use my Mac a little bit, for the odd application.

[ryao]

Any other rolling release distros out there that actually can be installed by mere mortals?

https://www.sabayon.org/

Speaking of which, Sabayon has already had Linux 3.6 for a month. They also have first party ZFS support, which Arch Linux lacks. Lastly, they are built on Gentoo, so it should be possible to use Gentoo layman repositories for packages missing from their repository. Using the Gentoo package should eliminate the need to worry about manually building packages in the rare situations where something you want is missing.

[Akka]

https://www.sabayon.org/

Speaking of which, Sabayon has already had Linux 3.6 for a month. They also have first party ZFS support, which Arch Linux lacks. Lastly, they are built on Gentoo, so it should be possible to use Gentoo layman repositories for packages missing from their repository. Using the Gentoo package should eliminate the need to worry about manually building packages in the rare situations where something you want is missing.

I think Arch had linux 3.6 in the repositories around a month also. I get that impression from the package history at least? In Arch you usually, at least as I remember it from the last time I installed it, usually not recommended to use the stuff on the install image as its very outdated.

How do they handle the licensing issue with zfs if they distribute it?

[ninez]

I think Arch had linux 3.6 in the repositories around a month also. I get that impression from the package history at least? In Arch you usually, at least as I remember it from the last time I installed it, usually not recommended to use the stuff on the install image as its very outdated.

You would be correct. Archlinux has had 3.6 for a while (i don't use it, since i use a custom-kernel, but i do remember when it first came through as an update and obviously there have been subsequent point releases since then.). ..and yeah, I know for myself anyway, on a fresh Arch install i usually only install the bare minimum to have a working system (ie: base-system + pacman and that is it)... Then reboot and update, then start installing DE, common apps, etc.

How do they handle the licensing issue with zfs if they distribute it?

they don't handle it. There is no out-of-the-box support and zfs is a 'tech-preview';

Another outstanding feature is the ZFS tech-preview level support: due to license conflicts, our team was not allowed to provide a truly (including the Installer part) out-of-the-box support, but still, if you're interested in trying out an amazing filesystem like ZFS is, it's going to be straightforward after install!.

it's still cool that you can use ZFS (if that flips your boat). But then again, this isn't some amazing feature that only they (or gentoo) offers. If you want zfs in Archlinux, you can do that very easily too; https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ZFS & https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/?O=0&K=zfs ... it looks pretty simple to install/use, as well ~ just a few commands (install zfs + kernel/modules), and some additional work if using zfs for your root partition (simple, still).

[ryao]

I think Arch had linux 3.6 in the repositories around a month also. I get that impression from the package history at least? In Arch you usually, at least as I remember it from the last time I installed it, usually not recommended to use the stuff on the install image as its very outdated.

How do they handle the licensing issue with zfs if they distribute it?

The "licensing issue" is largely a myth. See:

https://forum.sabayon.org/viewtopic....154204#p154165

You would be correct. Archlinux has had 3.6 for a while (i don't use it, since i use a custom-kernel, but i do remember when it first came through as an update and obviously there have been subsequent point releases since then.). ..and yeah, I know for myself anyway, on a fresh Arch install i usually only install the bare minimum to have a working system (ie: base-system + pacman and that is it)... Then reboot and update, then start installing DE, common apps, etc.



they don't handle it. There is no out-of-the-box support and zfs is a 'tech-preview';



it's still cool that you can use ZFS (if that flips your boat). But then again, this isn't some amazing feature that only they (or gentoo) offers. If you want zfs in Archlinux, you can do that very easily too; https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ZFS & https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/?O=0&K=zfs ... it looks pretty simple to install/use, as well ~ just a few commands (install zfs + kernel/modules), and some additional work if using zfs for your root partition (simple, still).

Sabayon's ZFS support is out-of-box. The modules and userland utilities are installed with Sabayon. The main thing missing is Anaconda support. Furthermore, Sabayon's ZFS support is first party while Arch Linux relies on users for it.

The statement of a license conflict that prevented rootfs support was a misunderstanding. I was under the impression that distributing grub2 binaries linked to libzfs was a GPL violation. Thankfully, the GPLv3 has a clause that permits it for system libraries and GRUB2 upstream considers libzfs to be a system library. At the time, I had advised the Sabayon developers not to distribute a libzfs linked GRUB2, but a discussion with GRUB2 upstream lead me to change my advice. Now the only thing preventing rootfs support is Anaconda support for ZFS.

[ninez]

The "licensing issue" is largely a myth. See:

https://forum.sabayon.org/viewtopic....154204#p154165

ahh i see. I was only going off of what they say on their website.

Sabayon's ZFS support is out-of-box. The modules and userland utilities are installed with Sabayon. The main thing missing is Anaconda support. Furthermore, Sabayon's ZFS support is first party while Arch Linux relies on users for it.

1st party, 3rd party who really cares....Reason being? - I am betting the Arch maintainer for zfs does just as good of a job as the Sabayon people do, since it's fairly straight forward to support it, in the first place.... So again, i say this isn't some fancy feature that only Sabayon/Gentoo offers (nor would it be a compelling reason to use either of them for zfs, since zfs isn't hard to setup). If i cared about zfs (which i don't) I could have an Arch install setup for it (including rootfs), in a very short amount of time...