Arch Linux moves up to Linux 3.0

http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS2477413399.html

by darkduck • 15 years ago

77 20 15 years ago

prg3182• 15 years ago

"Based in part on the minimalist CRUX distribution, Arch Linux was launched by Judd Vinet in March 2002"

Nitpick correction: Judd Vinet created Arch from scratch in 2002 based on the minimalistic ideas of CRUX, but Arch Linux was built from scratch, and pacman was written by Judd in C.

The article is also somewhat misleading -- toting this release as having a ton of new features over the previous release. Arch Linux is a rolling release distribution and any sane Archer will immediately completely update their system after a fresh install, so none of these features are really new to any existing Arch Linux user.

The syslinux installation functionality from the installer, as well as BTRFS support from the installer, is new and good to see.

Arch moved to Linux days after 3.0.0 was released. It's nice to use a distribution where you can have the latest versions of everything for testing and development. I've been using it for six or seven years and still prefer it on my desktop and (not-so-mission-critical) servers.

RexRollman• 15 years ago

Of all the Linux distributions, Arch is my current favorite. I especially like its init system and Pacman. It also has an incredible wiki.

jcmhn• 15 years ago

Even when pacman gets confused the steps required to fix it are very simple - because the developers don't believe in allowing magic anywhere in the system. It's as minimalist and elegant as freebsd and slackware were 15 years ago, but it's as feature complete and very nearly as easy to use as Ubuntu.

beej71• 15 years ago

+1 on the wiki. It seems that when I'm searching for general Linux problems the Arch wiki comes up as a top hit with greater-than-average frequency.

+1 on Arch for that matter. :-)

prg3182• 15 years ago

Pacman is beautiful IMHO. The ABS (Arch Build System) is also an elegantly simply way to create package build scripts for packages. Package build scripts are in a single file (a "PKGBUILD") that is extremely easy to edit or create for new packages.

Here's an example that demonstrates the beauty of simplicity:

http://www.archlinux.org/pacman/PKGBUILD.5.html#_example

I've found it to be a magnitude simpler than creating DEB packages.

With ABS, it really brings the best features of the from-source based distros to the table without having to compile your ENTIRE system from source and having recompile stuff for every new software install or upgrade.

The power of Arch Linux really lies within its simplicity.

steve-howard2• 15 years ago

I love using Arch. The rolling release means there's no eventual super-painful process for updating; you just update everything and your system is up to date. It does break sometimes, but in recent years developments in both the installers and pacman have made it a lot easier to get a system that Just Works (for many things). I was pleasantly surprised to learn about KMS, which lets graphics drivers deal with the console/X resolution (so I don't have to remember which vga=0xsomething I need).

cliang• 15 years ago

I'd like to hear more about the degree to which things do sometimes break and the steps that users generally take to fix them. Thanks.

dorian-graph• 15 years ago

One of the best, most useful wikis I've come across.

helper• 15 years ago

Why is this news? The 3.0 kernel could very well have been called 2.6.40, would that have been news worthy?

gtaylor• 15 years ago

Because Arch had to make some changes due to assumptions on their end, w.r.t kernel naming scheme. This is part of the breakage that the article mentions.

Ideka• 15 years ago

Also note that Arch is a rolling-release OS. The lastest iso (previous to the linux 3.0 one) was released on june/july last year -- that's 15 months ago.

daedhel2• 15 years ago

I used Arch for years.

But in the last year, my system broke 4 times with updates mainly due to major changes in configs, wich weren't in the news.

This distro is not stable.

It's time to go back to Sid.

syaz1• 15 years ago

So true man. Big updates always screw my system over... everytime I change certain hardware there are bound to be problems that require lurking around wiki/forums.

Nontheless I've been using it for many years, I've yet to find a better and feel-at-home replacements.

vegai• 15 years ago

I was kinda with you until "to Sid".

daedhel2• 15 years ago

How so ?

kaneo• 15 years ago

Arch's news feed (http://www.archlinux.org/feeds/news/) is worth adding to your RSS reader. Firefox's Live Bookmarks keeps it close by, for me.

Any possible breakage that updates may bring can usually be found in their news posts as well as what you can do to fix it.

Probably won't cover everything, but that coupled with the .pacnew settings for config file changes has kept my system from breaking.

Arch Linux moves up to Linux 3.0

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