Questions about Arch Linux

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MrCrispy

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I've been using Ubuntu/Fedora for a while and recently tried Arch. Well, I actually used Manjaro. So far I really like it, I don't want to say its faster because I can't tell that, but I do like pacman + AUR (not needing to add ppa's is great) and I like the Arch wiki too. So many things to explore.

But the Arch community itself seems very unfriendly. I'm not a beginner but they will refuse support to anyone who hasn't done a full manual install. I've even seen people who wrote a bash script to speed up the install be told 'you don't have Arch' which is of course total bs.

I'm actually going to try out Antergos, it is just fancy installer which will use the same repos. I have a few questions -

- how often do I need to update? Some forum posts on Arch say to update daily and if you dont things will break.
- how big are the updates? I have data caps on my home connection
- how often does Arch break and need manual fixes? I know its a rolling distro on bleeding edge. How hard are the fixes?
- for users who switched to Arch from Debian/Fedora etc based distro, what are your thoughts?

I'm planning to use this on a used Thinkad I just bought which will become my main machine.
 
I normally use antergos myself. I installed manjaro on a machine at one point for awhile and liked it. Manjaro for sure isn't arch, it their case it would be like saying Mint was Ubunti. Manjaro changes a few core things runs more of their own packages and Manjaro kernels. They also default to the BFQ scheduler for spinning hard drives (and possibly SSDs not sure on that). Overall though the advantage of manjaro is they do hold updates for a bit... so its rolling but perhaps not quite as bleeding edge as arch. If you want things like the latest Nvidia driver packaged on the day it drops then manjaro isn't the one. However from what you have said perhaps its the better option.

I do perfer Antergos myself. I like using the arch kernels not that you likely care but using arch or antergos you can run hardened kernels ect.

Arch will have updates daily. Most days it will be a couple megabytes with simple libraries or command line tool updates. However their will be days where it can be 400-500 mb easy, if you leave it a week perhaps as much as a GB. It really depends what other software you install of course as well.

Arch does every kernel update so 4.14.1 -> 4.14.2 -> 4.14.3 ect. You can skip those for awhile its not a big deal and I doubt anything would break. Putting off most updates shouldn't break anything, that may have been an issue in the early days of Arch when perhaps some packages didn't have dependencies properly linked. If you stick 100% to the arch repos I would say the chances of you having issues with updates breaking things would be close to zero. When it comes to the AUR the chances go up. Its a user repository and many of the maintainers do a great job but a few are not as well maintained and if they don't get updates pushed things can get funny. When it comes to the AUR they have a simple vote count if you stick to stuff that has higher ratings you should be fine. If you see 2-3 packages of the same, check to see which has been getting updates ect In the package manager you can click on the AUR entry and it will pop up in your defualt browswer with all that data.

Anyway for my perosnal machine I perfer arch over everything else. Fedora/Suse the RPM guys are great in commercial settings... and I'll be honest I have never been a big debian fan myself for whatever reason.

Oh one intersting little hack on Arch.... it sounds like your going to run this on a farily new machine and perhaps you don't care. But Specter and Meltdown Arch of course is fully patched... but should you want a little extra zip. (again would matter more if its got an older chip that is heavily impacted)
You can turn the patches off (more perofmrance no protection) on a per boot basis at the grub boot. Just add "Spectre_v2=off notpi" into your boot line... just hit e at the grub entry and type them in if your gaming or something and want to disable them for that boot. (you can add them to your grub.cfg if you want to turn them off completely) I woudln't suggest turning them off completely... but I have an old Core 2 Duo system around the kids still use and I turned both off cause ya the poor old core chip turns into a Penitum II with the patches applied. lol
 
That's a good tip for turning off Spectre patches, thanks. I will be running this on a Core i5 cpu (Thinkpad T430).
I see it in this list - https://www.techarp.com/guides/complete-meltdown-spectre-cpu-list/7/

Actually I see Core 2 Duo cpu's in there as well, but if the perf impact is so high then I might turn it off anyway.

I can't remember the exact differences but when I compared Manjaro KDE to Antergos KDE, Antergos seemed better. It was maybe something I did. On my Manjaro install which is a few weeks old now, I do 'pacman -Syu' every few days and I already had multiple updates > 400MB :arghh:. I also tried OpenSuse Tumbleweed and Fedora and they both installed so much extra stuff and you're right, felt more enterprise oriented.

Battery life still isn't as good as Windows 10, even after I installed tlp. That is my only real concern.
 
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I've had very poor luck with Manjaro. 9 out of 10 times I've tried it the install image hasn't even booted on the hardware I've tried it on. Ubuntu/Debian then again has been pretty much bullet proof.

Two weeks ago I last time burned a Manjaro image and tried to boot it on an old AMD box (Phenom) I have in the garage. It hanged and I couldn't bother to start finding out why.
 
now often do I need to update? Some forum posts on Arch say to update daily and if you dont things will break.
Click to expand...

Typically you'll see updates every day. It's up to you how often you want to update. Arch isn't well known for handling months and months worth of updates though so I wouldn't recommend going like 6 months without updating. That said I did have a an Arch installed on a drive that had been sitting around for about 6 months and it upgraded just fine.

how big are the updates? I have data caps on my home connection
Click to expand...

Varies. typically smallish but can get bigger especially on days with kernel updates.

how often does Arch break and need manual fixes? I know its a rolling distro on bleeding edge. How hard are the fixes?
Click to expand...

Straight Arch was my go to distro for a long time. Across a lot of different hardware. I never had it "break" on me. For awhile I did have certain packages blocked from updating though as certain functionality would break. For example specific binary versions were needed for compiling Android and Android apps. So if I updated those binaries compiling would break.

for users who switched to Arch from Debian/Fedora etc based distro, what are your thoughts?
Click to expand...

It was far superior to to Ubuntu (Xubuntu to be exact) when I switched to Arch back around 14.10 or so. A lot has changed now though for things that I want. For Arch getting an LSM to fully work is 100% impossible at the moment. SELinux is missing lots of functionality. AppArmor can't do full confinement with Snaps.

Stuff like that is what made me shift to a different distro. I went to Solus for a little while before Solus 3 was released and ended up going back to Arch. Once Solus 3 hit I switched and haven't looked back. Full confinement AppArmor. Curated rolling release. Nobody can make me turn away from Solus at this point. It would take Ikey dying for me to leave Solus.
 
I used arch for a bit, the rolling release model didn't work for me, it seemed to create issues.

I find people use Arch simply because they don't like adding PPA's. Thing is, I don't see the issue with adding PPA's. If you have a dependency issue (and that's a big IF as it's very rare) it's quickly and easily resolved with a command or two, usually the OS will actually tell you which command to use and adding PPA's is really simple.

Xbuntu for me these days I'm afraid, gives me little to no trouble.
 
What is LSM Vermillion? I heard of LSB but not this.

I dont mind adding ppa but a lot of things I want to use have complicated install steps for other distros and 1 step install in AUR. I know its because someone wrote the same steps in the PKGBUILD but it makes life easier for me, and it will update with one command.

Also my laptop is rather old so any performance I can tweak out of it is good. And everyone says Arch is much faster. I don't know how much of that is subjective. I haven't tried Solus. I really like KDE and they don't have that.
 
MrCrispy said:
What is LSM Vermillion? I heard of LSB but not this.

I dont mind adding ppa but a lot of things I want to use have complicated install steps for other distros and 1 step install in AUR. I know its because someone wrote the same steps in the PKGBUILD but it makes life easier for me, and it will update with one command.

Also my laptop is rather old so any performance I can tweak out of it is good. And everyone says Arch is much faster. I don't know how much of that is subjective. I haven't tried Solus. I really like KDE and they don't have that.
Click to expand...

Linux Security Modules

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Security_Modules
 
Mazzspeed said:
Interesting. What software isn't available via PPA or Deb MrCrispy?
Click to expand...

Some examples :-

https://the.exa.website/ - seem to have packages for most formats except .deb
https://github.com/junegunn/fzf#installation - again nothing for Debian

Arch: 'pacman -S exa/fzf'

Both of these I find extremely useful.

Compare the install procedures -

https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/setup/linux

vs 'yay -S code'

https://docs.docker.com/install/linux/docker-ce/ubuntu/
https://docs.docker.com/install/linux/docker-ce/fedora/

vs 'pacman -S docker'

Now docker is in the official repos for all major distros, even then the install steps for Arch are 1 line and not for others. In addition the Arch wikin entry - https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Docker#Installation is a great resource.

These are the things that made me like Arch.

I haven't in fact found a program that isn't in the AUR :) Now I know technically one might say that AUR has no moderation and is insecure, but can I trust 3rd party ppa more?
 
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Basically Daily updates, typically not that large.

pacman + AUR is really awesome.

If that thinkpad is one of the common ones, you shouldn't have much problem with it, although ubuntu/mint will probably have better driver support. Thinkpad and Dell support on linux does tend to be better imo than most laptop oem brands.

The Arch community really can be a bunch of jackass'. I pretty much sum it up as "You mean just starting out, you don't have an in depth understanding of linux file systems / structures, and know the commands to manipulate every electron on your device via CLI? You're a fucking sad loser and should just go install Ubuntu!"
 
KarsusTG said:
Basically Daily updates, typically not that large.

pacman + AUR is really awesome.

If that thinkpad is one of the common ones, you shouldn't have much problem with it, although ubuntu/mint will probably have better driver support. Thinkpad and Dell support on linux does tend to be better imo than most laptop oem brands.

The Arch community really can be a bunch of jackass'. I pretty much sum it up as "You mean just starting out, you don't have an in depth understanding of linux file systems / structures, and know the commands to manipulate every electron on your device via CLI? You're a fucking sad loser and should just go install Ubuntu!"
Click to expand...

Your last line is so accurate. Those people think just because they copy pasted some commands off a wiki into a terminal they are somehow better and Linux gods. They usually shorten their response to RTFM/W but thats exactly what they mean.
 
MrCrispy said:
Some examples :-

https://the.exa.website/ - seem to have packages for most formats except .deb
https://github.com/junegunn/fzf#installation - again nothing for Debian

Arch: 'pacman -S exa/fzf'

Both of these I find extremely useful.

Compare the install procedures -

https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/setup/linux

vs 'yay -S code'

https://docs.docker.com/install/linux/docker-ce/ubuntu/
https://docs.docker.com/install/linux/docker-ce/fedora/

vs 'pacman -S docker'

Now docker is in the official repos for all major distros, even then the install steps for Arch are 1 line and not for others. In addition the Arch wikin entry - https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Docker#Installation is a great resource.

These are the things that made me like Arch.

I haven't in fact found a program that isn't in the AUR :) Now I know technically one might say that AUR has no moderation and is insecure, but can I trust 3rd party ppa more?
Click to expand...

I think those instructions were a bit over the top. IIRC I installed docker to Ubuntu with a simple 'sudo apt install docker'.
 
B00nie said:
I think those instructions were a bit over the top. IIRC I installed docker to Ubuntu with a simple 'sudo apt install docker'.
Click to expand...

I think that was the old version which is no longer supported. From the linked page -

"Older versions of Docker were called docker or docker-engine. If these are installed, uninstall them:
$ sudo apt-get remove docker docker-engine docker.io"

This page - https://computingforgeeks.com/installing-docker-ce-ubuntu-debian-fedora-arch-centos/
lists methods to install latest docker on different distros. Arch is the simplest. That page isn't accurate as AUR isn't needed and you can install it from official Arch repo so its even simpler.
 
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MrCrispy said:
Your last line is so accurate. Those people think just because they copy pasted some commands off a wiki into a terminal they are somehow better and Linux gods. They usually shorten their response to RTFM/W but thats exactly what they mean.
Click to expand...

Personally, I believe the fact that the two software packages you listed don't support anything but the neckbeard distro's actually supports your findings of arrogance within the Arch community. I would refuse to use those software packages based on that fact alone, no matter how good they were.

Linux users not only feuding with Windows users, now we have apparent hardcore Linux users feuding with other Linux users! Unbelievable.
 
Mazzspeed said:
Linux users not only feuding with Windows users, now we have apparent hardcore Linux users feuding with other Linux users! Unbelievable.
Click to expand...

Go read a Systemd vs init thread. Those are epic shitshows. Makes the Windows vs Linux ones in here look tame.
 
Windows users fight other windows users as well. What can you say geeks of all stripes are just human and humans enjoy a good argument its the basis of everything we hold dear. The run win 7 cause 10 spys on you... or suck it up and just run 10 threads are just as epic. Only difference perhaps is lay people tend to understand what is going on in the win user fight threads.

The main difference between the two is Linux users actually have some power. They argue more because any Linux user with the chops can be a Linux developer. In most cases when members of a project disagree it leads to compromises and innovation for the betterment of the project. In extreme cases they split and we end up with Forks. Which is also not a bad thing at all. Some times its the best thing for innovation. Having teams split off, they may compete for awhile but often at some point one idea is proven superior and the better version ends up being the standard. Or both projects evolve into completely different things. Look at things like Open office... the Libre guys forked, and a few years later their superior fork is the standard. Development Democracy it makes the software better but it can be very ugly just like political democracy.

Arch has helpful users plenty of them. It also has the read the wiki types as well... Having said that if you are brand new to Linux. If you choose to go pure arch or atergos you don't expect much help other then the wiki. If you are new and expect to do lots of reading Arch is no different then the other major distros in fact I would say its easier to get written information about arch. One reason some arch people say read the wiki is because arch maintainers spend a lot of time keeping that wiki up to date and as easy to read as possible. Most people with a little bit of Linux experience should be able to grok what they need to know from it if they take the time to read. If your the type of user whos first instinct when you run into an issue is to post in a support forum, arch isn't for you. If you are the type that wuold rather read 20 pages and try 2 or 3 things before giving up arch is a much better option then some of the majors like Ubuntu.
 
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Mazzspeed said:
Personally, I believe the fact that the two software packages you listed don't support anything but the neckbeard distro's actually supports your findings of arrogance within the Arch community. I would refuse to use those software packages based on that fact alone, no matter how good they were.

Linux users not only feuding with Windows users, now we have apparent hardcore Linux users feuding with other Linux users! Unbelievable.
Click to expand...

You can install the binary on deb systems. And I wouldn't call Fedora and OpenSuse neckbeard distros !!
I've read that .deb is a much harder to use package format so that may have something to do with this. And these aren't built by the Arch community so I don't know how its related.
 
I like Arch wiki because its to the point and concise with an almost pathological disregard of hand holding, pretty much like Arch. I like this approach as its no bs. The problem is if you find something vague or which doesn't match your use case, and you want to ask someone to help or clarify things, good luck :)

The Linux community is extremely fragmented. Most of the debates and flamewars are so petty and people don't even use technical arguments. systemd debates are a good example, neckbeards protesting its the end of Linux without a single technical argument about why its bad and even worse, little understanding of what it does - its not just an init script like they claim.
 
MrCrispy said:
You can install the binary on deb systems. And I wouldn't call Fedora and OpenSuse neckbeard distros !!
I've read that .deb is a much harder to use package format so that may have something to do with this. And these aren't built by the Arch community so I don't know how its related.
Click to expand...

You shouldn't have to compile from source in this day and age, it's not 1999. The fact the developers develop for every Linux platform but the one that is arguably the most popular one is outright ridiculous, highlighting a belief of superiority on behalf of the developers - Everyone else can package their applications as .debs just fine. For that reason I would flat out refuse to use the software.

Fragmentation was far worse in the old days of computing, what we have now is almost ideal compared to the 80s/90s.

The issue with things like systemd were outlined very well by a talented Linux sysadmin friend of mine: Systemd goes against the Unix philosophy of 'do one thing and do it well', it replaces many well working and carefully scripted components of Linux and replaces them with one huge binary with very little benefit and for many years systemd was very broken. It's the same issue with OSX, instead of following it's Unix roots Apple destroyed everything Unix about the OS to the point it's a shadow of it's former self with no real improvements, there are a group of users that would like to avoid seeing Linux head down the same path and that in itself isn't such a bad thing.

Passion = Good.
Flaming and Fanboyism = Stupid.

It's like the Linux users that believe everything should be terminal and GUI = Bad, an impractical and ridiculous point of view in my opinion, especially when they're so forceful with their opinion.
 
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MrCrispy said:
I like Arch wiki because its to the point and concise with an almost pathological disregard of hand holding, pretty much like Arch. I like this approach as its no bs. The problem is if you find something vague or which doesn't match your use case, and you want to ask someone to help or clarify things, good luck :)

The Linux community is extremely fragmented. Most of the debates and flamewars are so petty and people don't even use technical arguments. systemd debates are a good example, neckbeards protesting its the end of Linux without a single technical argument about why its bad and even worse, little understanding of what it does - its not just an init script like they claim.
Click to expand...

The only real technical argument you have to understand about the systemd debate is this. It does to much. That is most people complaint.

The unix philosophy is modualrity... a lot of little units all doing what they do clearly and well, as a system you lock them together like building blocks and build a system. SystemD in a lot of peoples view breaks with that philosophy and on that alone they rail against it. Others hate that it uses binary format for logging. Myself I see how it solves more issues then it creates... having said that if you ever have to deal with a corrupted systemd log knowing that it wouldn't have been an issue without systemd makes forgetting how systemds logs are more secure have proper timezone correct time stamps on them ect pretty easy. The old logging method had advantages but imo the disadvantages out weigh what systemd brings.

Really though I think the SystemD debates are mostly over at this point. There are more reasons systemd makes sense then not. Can you still build a hyper fast version of Linux without systemd... yes. Can you build a system without systemd and solve all the issues systemd addresses for millions of users? I don't think so.

Anyway the fragmentation isn't bad and I hope it never stops. Fragmentation is what makes Linux strong. Its ok if there are 100 DE projects... its ok if every core component has 20 forks. The best will rise and get better, the competition will make the long time projects move forward. You could argue that all sorts of linux bits are perfect as they are right now and no longer need anything but bug fixes.... but nothing improves that way. Let multiple groups fork those things when they believe they have a better idea. After a few iterations perhaps they prove their point and that work either gets incorperated into the main project... or distribution maintainers start using the better forked version and at some point and that version becomes the standard.

The Libre office example I pointed out earlier is a good one. A group had what they thought was a better idea so they forked and kept going. Over time that project grew and became the main version of open office. You can also look at say Calligra which started as a fork from Koffice eventually the fork became the standard. Claws mail client is another one I can think off the top of my head that's actually a fork.

It seems chaotic if you follow all the "neck beard" in fighting sure... but no matter what everyone that releases code releases it in the open, and its free to use. In many cases a software will fork cause the handful of people working on the project can't agree and those competing projects from that point push each other, borrow code from each other... and often at some point the best of both projects end up in the main project that ends up distributed to the masses via the Ubuntu and Redhats of the world. :)

Forking and arguing about direction isn't just a Linux thing either its a FOSS thing. You can look at web tech and see the same stuff... Wordpress and Joomala for instance wouldn't not exist without the concept of forking. As both are not original projects they are both examples of Forks that are more popular then their mother projects.
 
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Gentoo attitude vs Arch attitude: https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-1073762.html
In short yes Arch users have an attitude problem with new users. There is only one distro with a more arrogant persona and dismissive on newbies...

What is wrong with Systemd: https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-983808.html https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-1031982.html https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-1065458.html https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-1081938.html

There is an AWEFUL lot wrong with systemd. binary logs are a royal pain but that is really just the tip of the iceberg. There is a fundamental "not invented here" arrogance with systemd as it constantly reinvents aspects of the main system an absorb it into the codebase. There are benefits of a collection of simple tools doing just their job but very very well but lets skip that as that isn't the issue with systemd...
The issue with systemd is an architectural issue ... go through all those gentoo threads if you really really want to see all of them

to list a couple... PID1 is meant to be a simple process. What PID1 actually needs todo is 1) get launched by the kernel 2) spawn init 3) sweep zombies THAT is literally it.
This is all PID1 needs to be
Code: 
#define _XOPEN_SOURCE 700
#include <signal.h>
#include <unistd.h>

int main()
{
   sigset_t set;
   int status;

   if (getpid() != 1) return 1;

   sigfillset(&set);
   sigprocmask(SIG_BLOCK, &set, 0);

   if (fork()) for (;;) wait(&status);

   sigprocmask(SIG_UNBLOCK, &set, 0);

   setsid();
   setpgid(0, 0);
   return execve("/etc/rc", (char *[]){ "rc", 0 }, (char *[]){ 0 });
}
Openrc-init (yes openRC does provide PID1 if you want) is 222LOC. SystemD PID1 is how many lines? hundreds of thousand? why is this important? PID1 is a process you do NOT want to crash and equally shouldn't result in a reboot because of a "higher system update" YET this is exactly the case with systemd... Sure if you want a more complex init then make PID2 really complex, a billion lines of code if you want BUT PID1 must not crash! everything is a child to PID1 so what do you think happens when PID1 crashes? and it has happed: and it will happen again and again and again...

"so what" you say... well everything about the architectural decisions seem to built around what windows was doing and basically saying UNIX way is old. The SystemD unitfiles are ini format which actually causes some annoyances with coreutils (there is a reason one of the core UNIX philosophies is: Expect the output of every program to become the input to another, as yet unknown, program. Don't clutter output with extraneous information. Avoid stringently columnar or binary input formats. Don't insist on interactive input. ). The output of sytstemd commands is clearly from someone who doesn't come from a unix background (compare systemctl -a | cat”[*] , to “chkconfig” and “rc-update show”)


"oh but these are just because you don't like there way".... no what I don't like is the lack of responsibility or architectural forethought.
with PID1 now being soo big the attack surface is getting bigger and because of the insistence of rewriting aspects of the bootprocess and tying it all into libsystemd the most stupidest of bugs now pwn the ENTIRE system ... THIS is the BS you expect from microsoft with the svchost.exe and the resultant msblast virus...
We now are in the situation where because systemd dev's decided to implement their own means to handle DNS AND because they don't understand how such things work a nasty bug was created (CVE 2017-15908)... you leave DNS people todo DNS stuff you DO not let init people do DNS stuff... There is a reason I don't do powersupply design where I work and stick with power electronics BECAUSE there are better people at PSU so why the hell would I implement something... poorly...

Systemd now has dynamic users ,,, gosh what could go wrong with a user being created on-demand by a behemoth of an init/service manager....

butbutbut bug always occur ... Yes they do and this then leads onto the actual problem. Attitude. The arrogance is the real issue.
There is a reason Pottering/SystemD won the annual pwnie award 2017 for the "lamest vendor" ( https://pwnies.com/winners/) simply because of potterings handling of bugs: 5998, 6225, 6214, 5144, 6237 ... go read them, it's embarrassing. How can people support such a development structure. Then there is the farce of kdbus and how they attempted to force it into the kernel. Then there is the bugs in systemd causing dmesg to be spammed because they arrogantly polluted the namespace. Then there is the sloppy udev code forcing the kernel to fix userland (causing linus to ban commits from systemd developers).

Its their blasé attitude to their own bugs, their arrogance people should take what is forced on them that is the issue. Pottering actually threatened/Warned Gentoo and actually went back on an original statement about udev. How can people defend a development team run like this is beyond me? Pottering consistently screws things up AND only after he moves on does it actually start getting straightened out (pulseaudio is a perfect example... then some asshat let him loose on the init/services).

Systemd has done some nice things BUT because it is part of the behemouth that is libsystemd you cannot actually run anyone of them independently (udev is the one thing that can be built individually for now - see the warning and that is why gentoo created eudev). IDEALLY systemd would be 100% modular and you could have what you want and compliment it with others but that isn't the case as it doesn't work well with other daemons. syslog is a classic example "if you don't want binary logs then recompile and use your own" EXCEPT systemd does not adhere to the logging infrastructure and thus what is logged isn't correct. A "nice" feature that systemd implemented ensures that GNOME is now dependant on an init system... why the hell should a desktop environment care about what init/service manager you use? Gentoo found this and highlighted this AND GNOME denied it until they looked into it and they were using something that they didn't realise was part of systemd AND Thus they became dependent on the init system,... Systemd response "feel free to implement logind" YET had they actually done a sensible job and made logind runtime this wouldn't have occured. Luckily Funtoo/Gentoo users figured out the absolute bare minimum of a shim to keep GNOME happy


I could carry on but seriously... read the gentoo threads. The binary logs really are the least of the problems AND I am glad I am on gentoo where I can choose what I want
 
But systemd sped up boot times for the laptop brigade! ;)

Honestly, Gnome devs are just as arrogant, pretty soon they'll strip the mouse pointer out of the OS and claim it's an improvement.
 
Mazzspeed said:
You shouldn't have to compile from source in this day and age, it's not 1999. The fact the developers develop for every Linux platform but the one that is arguably the most popular one is outright ridiculous, highlighting a belief of superiority on behalf of the developers - Everyone else can package their applications as .debs just fine. For that reason I would flat out refuse to use the software.

Fragmentation was far worse in the old days of computing, what we have now is almost ideal compared to the 80s/90s.

The issue with things like systemd were outlined very well by a talented Linux sysadmin friend of mine: Systemd goes against the Unix philosophy of 'do one thing and do it well', it replaces many well working and carefully scripted components of Linux and replaces them with one huge binary with very little benefit and for many years systemd was very broken. It's the same issue with OSX, instead of following it's Unix roots Apple destroyed everything Unix about the OS to the point it's a shadow of it's former self with no real improvements, there are a group of users that would like to avoid seeing Linux head down the same path and that in itself isn't such a bad thing.

Passion = Good.
Flaming and Fanboyism = Stupid.

It's like the Linux users that believe everything should be terminal and GUI = Bad, an impractical and ridiculous point of view in my opinion, especially when they're so forceful with their opinion.
Click to expand...

Compiling from source is bad now? Isn't that the whole point of open source?

The 'systemd doesn't follow Unix philosohy' is total bs. Why do these people never complain about the Linux kernel doing the exact same thing and doing too much? Why not split the kernel into components so that it doesn't include drivers etc? Oh right, because its by Linus. And systemd isn't one huge binary.

The old init scripts were a hackjob and broken in so many ways. From what I've read thee was no predictable way to even tell which services were up and have dependencies on them.

I suggest you read this - http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/the-biggest-myths.html. And tell you sysadmin friend to read it too and learn something. There's a very vocal group of Linux users who abhor all change and improvement and want to stick to their old ways.

Don't get me started about Gnome - its a clusterfuck and does everything worse than KDE - it uses 2x more resources, every week they remove more features and claim its better for the user, other distros had to fork Gnome2 into Mate/Cinnamon because Gnome3 was so bad, and it hasn't improved since. But yet its the default in most major distros. Why ??!! And they just got a $1M donation while KDE does 100x more with a budget of just $125k. I don't think Gnome will ever get better and the direction they are going is firmly anit-desktop and anti-power users.
 
And yes I've read some of those exchanges and people like Lennart, Kay Sievers come off as arrogant, but is Linus any better? pulseaudio and systemd solved hard technical problems that no one wanted to tackle. Regardless, things just dont get accepted into Linux because of one person, thats the beauty of open source. systemd has been accepted because of technical reasons, and is why everyone has switched to it, except for those refusing to do it just because. Every Linux server in the world runs systemd. That means a consistent interface thats predictable and powerful.

Here's a good post from a developer on why systemd is better than old init scripts -
Honestly all the people who think systemd should be replaced - do it! There's no shortage of smart people working on Linux. If someone comes up with a better solution it will be adopted.
 
Well as far as the Linux kernel not being built as per "unix philosophy" that is just completely wrong.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monolithic_kernel

BSD is monolithic. All current Unix system 5 operating systems such as Solaris, HP-UX, AIX... are all monolithic as well.

Linux didn't reinvent the cart with the Linux kernel... hes following the very much the tried and true (for damn near 50 years now) monolithic design featuring loadable driver modules. Its the proper way to do things.

Its MS and their entire "driver" idea that is broken.

As for Gnome... they have the right idea. A DE should stay the heck out of your way, launch software and not be seen or heard unless required. :) Saying gnome isn't for power users is odd... a DE >.< isn't for power users in the Linux world. ;) I prefer gnome... I personally believe their is more crap they could strip out yet. Activities is the most ingenious feature of any DE ever. I am also not the type that loads a docker... I get rid of that crap first thing. Action key type the first few letters of the program I want and hit enter... action key and visual representation of every running program I have on every desktop I'm using. (and if you don't turn a docker on action screen puts your favorite programs on the left... its superior imo) Not sure why people want a bunch of other useless stuff all over their screen all the time. :) But that's me... wonderful thing about Linux if you don't like Gnome don't run it, run a fork, or run KDE or a KDE fork... run open box if you prefer. Up to you... lots of good DEs to choose from.
 
bd0fb252416206158627fb0b1bff9b4779dca13f.gif
 
Gnome is run by dictators who force their vision of computing on everyone else and if it doesnt align with your usage, screw you. e.g. removing system tray, not allowing binaries to be executed, tons of other featues they remove because 'its not needed'. Absolute bs. Files/Nautilus is now worse than Finder in MacOS and that takes some doing. For having so little, why does Gnoem take 2x the resources? Because the code/design is bad.
 
MrCrispy said:
Compiling from source is bad now? Isn't that the whole point of open source?

The 'systemd doesn't follow Unix philosohy' is total bs. Why do these people never complain about the Linux kernel doing the exact same thing and doing too much? Why not split the kernel into components so that it doesn't include drivers etc? Oh right, because its by Linus. And systemd isn't one huge binary.

The old init scripts were a hackjob and broken in so many ways. From what I've read thee was no predictable way to even tell which services were up and have dependencies on them.

I suggest you read this - http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/the-biggest-myths.html. And tell you sysadmin friend to read it too and learn something. There's a very vocal group of Linux users who abhor all change and improvement and want to stick to their old ways.

Don't get me started about Gnome - its a clusterfuck and does everything worse than KDE - it uses 2x more resources, every week they remove more features and claim its better for the user, other distros had to fork Gnome2 into Mate/Cinnamon because Gnome3 was so bad, and it hasn't improved since. But yet its the default in most major distros. Why ??!! And they just got a $1M donation while KDE does 100x more with a budget of just $125k. I don't think Gnome will ever get better and the direction they are going is firmly anit-desktop and anti-power users.
Click to expand...

I never said compiling from source was bad, I claimed it's an old, antiquated method of installing software. If you think the init daemon was antiquated and systemd was a necessity than surely you agree? As for the init daemon being a hack job, I don't think that's really the case at all and I fail to see how it was in any way broken enough that it needed to be replaced by a binary monster.

Bear in mind that I'm impartial in this discussion, as long as my OS works to my expectations I'm happy. Besides, I personally think the init daemon vs systemd arguments ended many moons ago and it's time to move on.

As far as Gnome is concerned, I totally agree. I think Gnome is a bloated mess trying to reinvent the wheel in an attempt to chase Apple. I think the environment feels tied down and limited and I can't stand installing a vast number of extensions just to get the out of the box experience behaving how I expect it to behave and I believe the devs are hugely arrogant. Have they fixed that memory leak bug yet? I first noticed that over 12 months ago.
 
Mazzspeed said:
I never said compiling from source was bad, I claimed it's an old, antiquated method of installing software. If you think the init daemon was antiquated and systemd was a necessity than surely you agree? As for the init daemon being a hack job, I don't think that's really the case at all and I fail to see how it was in any way broken enough that it needed to be replaced by a binary monster.

Bear in mind that I'm impartial in this discussion, as long as my OS works to my expectations I'm happy. Besides, I personally think the init daemon vs systemd arguments ended many moons ago and it's time to move on.

As far as Gnome is concerned, I totally agree. I think Gnome is a bloated mess trying to reinvent the wheel in an attempt to chase Apple. I think the environment feels tied down and limited and I can't stand installing a vast number of extensions just to get the out of the box experience behaving how I expect it to behave and I believe the devs are hugely arrogant. Have they fixed that memory leak bug yet? I first noticed that over 12 months ago.
Click to expand...

I agree with you - compile from source is old method and using package managers shouldn't be needed anymore. I think that is the goal of all the package manager systems. With AUR they allow a way to compile from source which appears transparent to the user. I agree its better if its an actual binary package.

I am not a sysadmin, far from it. What I've read is that the old init scripts were very flaky and a pain to maintain and could not be ported among distros, its also impossible to find simple things like e..g which services failed, which I think is 1 line in systemd, and to say e.g. 'start this program only when network and usb is up' without a bunch of loops/hacks which wasn't reliable.

I am just a normal user. Agreed on all Gnome points. Just too limiting and forces you to adapt to a new thing without any benefits. Another thing is Gnome apps - not very good. In fact the best of class of almost any category is a KDE app. Imagine an app like Kdenlive - if Gnome devs got a gold of that they'd remove 90% of features and claim it was better. Krunner is also an amazingly useful thing.
 
Everyone is entitled to their opinion on DEs. To be honest I really don't get the KDE love at all... its bloated. Its own system tools cheat to show you lower ram usage... don't believe me boot up Ksysguard and gnomes system monitor and you'll see ksysguard reports anywhere from 200-500mb less used ram on pretty much any system running in KDE or Gnome. IMO KDE is only good for people that really for some illogical reason like windows. To me it looks like a poor mans version of the MS DE.

I understand why people love XFCE I'm one of them and XFCE for a lot uses is my go to. I get LXQT... KDE though don't get it at all myself. My opinion though I don't really care much what people run of course.
 
ChadD said:
Everyone is entitled to their opinion on DEs. To be honest I really don't get the KDE love at all... its bloated. Its own system tools cheat to show you lower ram usage... don't believe me boot up Ksysguard and gnomes system monitor and you'll see ksysguard reports anywhere from 200-500mb less used ram on pretty much any system running in KDE or Gnome. IMO KDE is only good for people that really for some illogical reason like windows. To me it looks like a poor mans version of the MS DE.

I understand why people love XFCE I'm one of them and XFCE for a lot uses is my go to. I get LXQT... KDE though don't get it at all myself. My opinion though I don't really care much what people run of course.
Click to expand...

Totally disagree. Gnome is clearly copying MacOS. Bloated by what definition? It uses less resources as confirmed by every possible tool and review.

KDE != Windows. If taskbar + system tray + system menu == Windows, then XFCE is Windows too. But you love XFCE, makes no sense. And btw KDE Plasma uses same amount of resources as XFCE/LXDE etc. Maybe you can say exactly what is bloated?

And why is it 'illogical' to like that layout? You are subtly trying to insult users who like that desktop by equating them to 'Windows users'. It makes far more sense then Gnome's default layout with no indication of what's running.

Anyone is free to run what they want. Objectively, Gnome is worse in (almost) every area, there is no doubt about that. The one thing Gnome does better is Wayland support. And considering they are funded by RH's millions vs mostly unpaid volunteers, its a real shame.
 
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I can't help but agree with MrCrispy, I find KDE far less bloated than Gnome, especially considering that Gnome memory leak. I actually find KDE to be a really nice environment, modern and functional without the bloat while still allowing for freedom.

Sorry ChadD. ;)

I don't mind package managers. I can go to the developers website, add their PPA and install exactly what i want. If the very latest version I want isn't in the AUR, and I found that quite often it wasn't, I had no choice but to compile from source - It's the Chicken and the egg!
 
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XFCE makes sense to me its light weight... doesn't require you to use a start menu, in fact the default doesn't really have one. It has a start bar lite application launcher. But the Wisker menu thing that looks like KDE is an add on. You know why I like XFCE though honestly... cause it makes perfect dumb linux terminals. I can very easily setup a basic windows like bar with a very simple launcher to house the 3-4 programs I want said machines to have... and then pretty much lock it down. End result is yes a pretty simple interface that any windows user in a storage room or receiving depot understand instantly. Heck if you really want to make it look the old ass Windows 98 machine your replacing you can use the XFCE "redmond" window decorations. lol ;)

The KDE is lite now claims almost always come from people that have stripped their KDE installs down, or run a default version where the distro maintainers have stripped it for them. Default KDE uses as much ram as Gnome does, really I would say gnome may even be a bit lighter. Of course most people install a bunch of add ons with Gnome, and most folks don't run a down to the boards version of KDE either. Overall I say on the ram used score they are pretty much a wash. Stripped to the basics neither is RAM hog in my experience.

Calling it a hog or bloated perhaps wasn't fair on my part... KDE has I agree come a long way from its seriously bloated beginnings.

I am not trying to insult anyone... but ya I find copying windows illogical. And no matter what anyone says all I see when I look at KDE is non-MS windows. Gnome looks nothing like MacOS... if your talking about the Dock to Dash extension (KDE has their own mac alike dockers as well), hey I'm not a fan either. Never turn it on, or install any of its replacements. I know most Distros turn it on by default... not sure why they do that really.

A Docker does make more sense to me then a start bar which we can thank MS for... thanks MS for the stupid start bar idea. I will say that yes I hate the start bar, the entire idea bothers me. Using a DE where my super key pops up a start menu drives me batty. Gnome default... hit your super and see everything running instantly, have your fav program launches on the side, or search... is unique and imo makes it the best DE anywhere.

Wonderful thing about Linux though we can disagree on DE completely as its completely irrelevant.
 
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Mazzspeed said:
I can't help but agree with MrCrispy, I find KDE far less bloated than Gnome, especially considering that Gnome memory leak. I actually find KDE to be a really nice environment, modern and functional without the bloat while still allowing for freedom.

Sorry ChadD. ;)

I don't mind package managers. I can go to the developers website, add their PPA and install exactly what i want. If the very latest version I want isn't in the AUR, and I found that quite often it wasn't, I had no choice but to compile from source - It's the Chicken and the egg!
Click to expand...

One reason a lot of AUR maintainers use the build from source option... is because it saves them work, as well as saves them trusting anyone else to build binaries. Most build from Source AUR entries are pulling the source from the GIT or sourceforge source. No need to house built binaries anywhere. Just pull the latest code from git and build it and follow any rules as far as installing dependencies ect. It makes things pretty easy to maintain going forward. It also means that if the AUR maintainers realise that their package has an issue with arch in someway that can be fixed with a build flag that is easily accomplished. Software projects that do keep binaries around don't often keep 10 different versions.

I love the AUR but I don't install a ton of stuff from the AUR myself. Only real example I can think of for myself is UMS (universal media server) I love it and arch is the only distro I know of that lets me install it from my package manger. I have run it in other distros but not via their package managers. Its not a big deal to simply install the dependencies yourself... and then install the tarball as you see fit for most of us. Still its nice that in arch their is a well maintained AUR entry that any level Linux user can just click and hit install. :)
 
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Has anyone used OpenSuse Tumbleweed? I read they have an automated system to build and test (OBS - https://build.opensuse.org/) which is available for anyone to use. Sounds like a very useful thing.

btw I'm really thankful for the discussion in this thread.

I've personally tried multiple Linux distros on 2 different laptops (1 has 4GB and is maybe 9-10y old, other is a bit newer but still its from 2012 and has 8GB). I've tried Fedora, Kubuntu, KDE Neon, Manjaro XFCE/Gnome/KDE, Linux Mint etc. Some have been full installs, others live iso. Every single time Gnome uses at least 1.5-2x the memory of KDE/XFCE. The only difference between distros is the amount of apps included which only affects disk size, not runtime.

With Gnome I always had to install a bunch of extensions just to get a basic desktop experience which for me has to include a system tray and taskbar. KDE also has fullscreen launcher which you can change in 2 clicks. If 'start menu' is the only reason you said it looks like Windows, that isn't fair! There are a million options. With Gnome I have to use what the devs dictate. I do not and will not accept that. I use the file manager a lot (who doesn't?) and Files in Gnome is childish - no tree view, no dual panes, no address bar etc etc last time I had to use it. Dolphin is considered by everyone the best Linux file manager, Thunar from XFCE is next.

Again, Gnome has $$$$ and paid devs from RedHat, which is why its the default. This is also why systemd adoption was quick but there were technical reasons too. RH due to their clout can push whatever the hell they want into Linux.
 
Mazzspeed said:
I can go to the developers website, add their PPA and install exactly what i want. If the very latest version I want isn't in the AUR, and I found that quite often it wasn't, I had no choice but to compile from source - It's the Chicken and the egg!
Click to expand...

The AUR version is often just a script file to download the code and build it locally, plus some dependency checks etc. Often there are 2 packages in AUR, e.g. ABC and ABC-git. The 2nd one is just like getting the latest code yourself but its all automated and managed by the system. Best of both worlds :)
 
MrCrispy said:
Has anyone used OpenSuse Tumbleweed? I read they have an automated system to build and test (OBS - https://build.opensuse.org/) which is available for anyone to use. Sounds like a very useful thing.

btw I'm really thankful for the discussion in this thread.

I've personally tried multiple Linux distros on 2 different laptops (1 has 4GB and is maybe 9-10y old, other is a bit newer but still its from 2012 and has 8GB). I've tried Fedora, Kubuntu, KDE Neon, Manjaro XFCE/Gnome/KDE, Linux Mint etc. Some have been full installs, others live iso. Every single time Gnome uses at least 1.5-2x the memory of KDE/XFCE. The only difference between distros is the amount of apps included which only affects disk size, not runtime.

With Gnome I always had to install a bunch of extensions just to get a basic desktop experience which for me has to include a system tray and taskbar. KDE also has fullscreen launcher which you can change in 2 clicks. If 'start menu' is the only reason you said it looks like Windows, that isn't fair! There are a million options. With Gnome I have to use what the devs dictate. I do not and will not accept that. I use the file manager a lot (who doesn't?) and Files in Gnome is childish - no tree view, no dual panes, no address bar etc etc last time I had to use it. Dolphin is considered by everyone the best Linux file manager, Thunar from XFCE is next.

Again, Gnome has $$$$ and paid devs from RedHat, which is why its the default. This is also why systemd adoption was quick but there were technical reasons too. RH due to their clout can push whatever the hell they want into Linux.
Click to expand...

To be honest I don't really care what the "default" de is. Why does that matter to people really ? Ubuntu ships 20 different official spins. Manjaro has Gnome KDE and XFCE official ISOs. Antergos just offers you a simple menu when you install which do you want installed (heck you can even select all) :)

I don't disagree on Files I never liked files... having said that I consider a file manager a program itself and not an essential part of any OS.

$ gio mime inode/directory Thunar-folder-handler.desktop

Really whatever file manager you prefer use it in whatever DE you prefer. :) If it isn't clear that command will set Thunar as your default file manager.... you can set it to whatever else you like.

Run
$ gio mime inode/directory
This should return all your systems registered file managers. You can set the mime type to which ever you like.

On KDEs windows alike look... I find the default to look exactly like windows... I hate seeing home and trash on the desktop, I just can't stand how look a like it is. I do get that you can trick it out... I have seen some very nice screens of peoples KDE desktops. Its perhaps not fair to judge a DE on its default setup (although gnome seems to take a lot of heat..... based on it forces me to customize it !!! right before the follow up of it doesn't allow me enough power user features :rolleyes:)

Hey again its just a DE man whatever you prefer is cool with me. I have tried to like KDE more then a few times over they years and just can't. I have setup pretty much every DE I think at some point and liked parts of many of them... but at the end of the day I always end up back on Gnome. No one has done anything as well as Gnome activities imo. The KDE Full screen launcher.... is it going to annoy you if I say it just looks like windows 8 to me. ;) lol

As far as start bars go what do they really bring to the table ? Its cool I get that I'm in a small minority that hates start bars, I'm not going to convert the world... and hey Gnome isn't likely to convert the world either.

I remember when Gnome 3 hit it took me awhile to get it to... I installed all the silly add ons like everyone else, I messed with a bunch of bars. The more I used Gnome shell as is though the more I got it. Its fast it stays out of my way while I'm working... I don't alt tab any more pulling up the wrong program all the time. (yes I can alt tab I just don't) I can make full use of multiple desktops and quickly see what I have running where. The stuff I launch all the time is right there.... the search function for stuff I use less often is brilliant, in general I just hit the first letter of what I'm looking for and its right there, It knows my w means writer and not some other program that starts with w.

There is no arguing that Gnome is a different DE then most are used to. It grows on you... and if you do a ton of multi tasking work running Gnome before long everything else seems stupid. lol Again just my opinion. I don't think a lot of people give Gnome a true shot. Spending more time setting it up then actually using it... trust me use it for a few days doing real work as it SHIPS (turn off dock to dash... I mean kill the stupid hot corner if you want I hate that as well) but keep the extensions to a min and see if it starts to make sense when you have 20 programs open on 3 desktops.
 
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Oh on Tumbleweed. I don't have a lot of experience with it. Suse is a solid distro. I did run tumbleweed for a month or so last year. I did overall like it. Yast and some of the Suse tools are really fantastic. In the end I moved on mainly because on the machine I was using has an Nvidia GPU. Last I used Tumbleweed their was no DKMS support and no easy way really to install the NV driver. (may have changed now not sure) Suse supports all that stuff on Leap but not tumbleweed. So if you are using Nvidia you will have to install the driver yourself the hard way I just booted into run mod 3... and you will have to reinstall driver updates the same way, and repeat every time you update the kernel. Its not a major issue and I just kept the Nvidia tar ball in my home directory to make my life easier when I booted into run mode 3... still for me Tumbleweed didn't offer enough over arch to make me deal with that. DKMS with arch is much less painful.
 
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