Okay. Archfags aside,I really want to know:
How good is Arch Linux compared to other lightweight Linux distros? (Xubuntu,Puppy Linux and Knoppix come to mind)
Pic related,a machine I might try it on.
>>54308111
Straight talk: Its alright, but if you're an idiot you can make a mess.
>lightweight
>Xubuntu
>>54308111
Are you the anon that doesn't buy anything new ever?
>>54308111
Honestly it's perfect.
Archwiki is AMAZING, fixes every fucking problem you might possibly run into.
Pacman is great
Arch is minimal so you don't have 2.5k packages from the get-go for no reason desu
>>54308111
It is an excellent distro iff you are willing to invest time reading manuals and configuring your system. In my opinion Pacman is the best package manager.
>>54308145
ok i exagerated a bit but it doest sit well with the others
>>54308111
Pretty much any distro has an option for a minimal/lightweight install. Just go with Debian (what Ubuntu, Mint, Knoppix, etc are based on) or Red Hat (Fedora, CentOS, etc) or any of their bigger deratives.
pacman -S lxqt kde-applications
I haven't used any of the others you mentioned, but I'm still gonna say it's great.
Arch isn't designed to be "lightweight". It's designed to be whatever you want it to be.
In that sense, compared to most other distros, it's a bit ridiculous to call it good or bad. Pacman is nice, but otherwise, the out-of-box experience is setting things up the way you like them, rather than getting right to what it is you do with your computer.
For some, that's a dealbreaker; for others, it's not. If you distrohop a lot (not necessarily out of dissatisfaction but just to get your feet wet with everything), then Arch will almost definitely disappoint you. It's not meant to be a fantastic plug and play distro.
I've had my Arch setup for about 5 months now. After the 1st month, there are times where I literally forget that I'm using Arch or Linux in general. I just update things regularly, do what the notices say, and it's pretty much smooth sailing, all while having my system exactly how I want it.
I remember when I was a noob and changed distros all the time. Then I grew up and settled on CentOS for life. I have better things to do it my life than compile every fucking program myself..
>>54308111
It's excellent if you know what you are doing, want the latest software, and will be using it on a regular basis. If you aren't using it on a regular basis, you run the risk of having a hell of a time updating the system (at least, this used to be a problem in like 2013).
>>54308199
I had CentOS once,and it was insanely hard to use. I didn't see them listed,but what are Mandriva and Mandrake based on? And Slackware?
>>54308261
Well,I would want to purpose this system to be a retro games server (in the way that every old game I would want to play is just stored onto a RAR archive of its own that I can copy to my main PC.)
>>54308154
I can second this. Have been running for 2 months now, the initial installation was easy-peasy when following the instructions in the wiki and I feel very comfortable and ease with it now.
Also inb4 fatty makes an appearance. Picture related.
>>54308213
I would never just install the whole kde-applications group, there's so much shit I don't need in there...
>>54308357
Mandriva and Mandrake are/where Redhat based.
Slackware was SLS based. This image should explain it a bit better:
http://futurist.se/gldt/wp-content/uploads/12.10/gldt1210.png
If you plan on doing a minimal / lightweight install pretty much all distros are the same except for things like the package manager and release/update cycles.
>>54308357
Something like an LTS release of Ubuntu is probably better suited for this, if you are just serving files. I think the server version does not come with a graphical interface by default, if that's what you're looking for.
>>54308380
>the initial installation was easy-peasy when following the instructions in the wiki and I feel very comfortable
To be quite honest with you
Personally I just followed the fucking Reddit Arch installation image. It worked perfectly and it's very easy, just typing in commands in order.
From there I just learned by doing shit as i needed to by looking on wiki.
>>54308497
>I think the server version does not come with a graphical interface by default, if that's what you're looking for.
Uh...that's quite a problem since I need a slight bit of GUI. (I worked on Windows servers and while yes,I understand command and Linux,I work better with a GUI based server OS)
>>54308516
Or that, yep.
>>54308127
you can even make a mess without being an idiot
>>54308111
It's a neckbeard-oriented netinstall distro.
>>54308945
ah fatty, hello.
>>54309054
Hello, my dear neckbeard-friend.
>>54309140
BMI 39
>>54308111
Pretty as good as you are using it desu
>>54308111
>overzealous autistic fan boys
>"you'll learn how Linux REALLY works!" When it's literally just configuring a package manager and letting scripts do the rest
>offers nothing that minimal net installs already offered for other distros don't
>muh bleeding edge packages!! when you can just install directly from the upstream source in any distro
>only reason to use it is the aur, which is full of broken and unmaintained packages and isn't monitored at all, most "packages" are just a bash script to download the package and it's install script from GitHub
>aur is far worse than Open Build Service, which actually lets you package binaries and programs for multiple distros
It's not the worst distro, but there's nothing it offers that makes it worth using over any other distros and it has the worst fucking user base.
>>54309158
It has the worst fucking non-user base, buddy. Including you
>>54309158
>every package developer pushes their progress upstream all of the time
>configuring a package manager
You dont configure it at all though
>offers nothing that minimal net installs already offer
Except an actually minimal setup, instead of slightly lighter ubuntu
>wanting to use Open Build Service, run by openSUSE
>>54309303
It's just a troll
>>54309303
Why do you actually want a overly minimal setup anyways?
>>54309474
Servers or embedded hardware, in which case you want something stable instead of Arch.
>>54309526
This is the reason I was expecting. And Arch is discarded on it.
Then why bother with arch in other cases (laptop or desktop systems, who are common in /g/)
>>54308111
Just as much of a fucking mess like any other distro
The main plus side IMHO is that the community is hardened by the countless bugs they've dealt with and nowadays is better in dealing with their distro being a fucking mess than any other community.
>something gets fuked in Arch
>tons of fix suggestions or at least workarounds over what might've gone wrong
>something gets fuked in other distro
>"I have no idea man, try reinstalling"
Except Gentoo folk that is, they're a knowledgeable bunch. But Gentoo is a PITA if you don't have a cutting edge CPU.
This is why I consider Arch to be "easier to use" than almost all other distros. People still memin about CLI installer have absolutely no idea.
I'm currently on Manjaro because of reasons, but if something goes awry I'm always ready to go back full Arch.
>>54308154
>fixes every fucking problem you might possibly run into
If that problem is at least 2 years old.
>posting an Arch thread on /g/
this sort of shit always blows up.
Anyway, as an Arch user myself, it's the cleanest distro I've used so far. I don't know if its my hardware (crappy netbooks every time), but nearly ever other distro has broken on me somehow or they have just imposed bullshit I don't want.
Debian and its derivatives (ie ubuntu) imposed their bullshit on me, and they crashed (especially debian, it just crashed all the time), and *ubuntu didn't crash but it would show a popup window: "System program failed" with an OK button.
antergos and manjaro, Arch based, still made some choices on my behalf that broke the internet connection every 5 minutes. I'm not even kidding
Gentoo takes a lot of work to get working, while it does get you exactly the system that you want, you need to wait 2+ hours for X to compile. And you'll always run into some kind of error during your install (though you can always switch some options in your menuconfig and recompile, it's a hassle anyway).
I just wanted something that is easy and quick to install and that doesn't crash randomly on me or impose some resourcehog bloatware (aka Desktop Environment) on me. Arch did the trick. I was amazed at how quickly I got it running and to this date I haven't run into any sort of trouble
>>54309600
> Debian and its derivatives (ie ubuntu) imposed their bullshit on me
Did you use a net install or selected one of the pre configured options? The pre configured desktop options are for not very technical users who don't manually want to install every part of their desktop environment. Net install unless specified otherwise won't install anything but a base system more minimal than Arch.
>>54309586
>But Gentoo is a PITA if you don't have a cutting edge CPU.
And how does that work? What DM does it use that uses so much CPU resources?
>>54309754
Instead of using binary packages you compile everything from source. Compiling costs a lot of CPU and takes a long time if you don't have a good one.
>>54309754
Not sure if you realize it but in Gentoo you compile (mostly) everything from source, which is a great tax on CPU
Enjoy updating your system for 6 hours every time
>>54308111
it's nice to tinker around.
That's why so many rice their desktop, the like to configure every little thing imaginable.
Aside from that it's pretty much a distro like every other, besides a pretty gud package manager.
Hope this is neutral enough as an ex-archfag.
>>54309754
>DM
DE.
And no. The entire system is based on "Compile your own shit"
That consumes a lot of CPU.
>>54308111
no different aside from configuration and package management system.
