[SOLVED] I'm thinking of checking Arch out... Here's what I'm probably doing-- any ti

Ok so after hearing about how great Arch Linux is from these forums and after reading their simplicity philosophy (which is AWESOME! I always wanted a computer without the extra &#@! lying around and have worked for weeks optimizing and re-optimizing any systems I've had), I think I'll give it a go with Arch.

It's not as simple as it would be for an expert, for I am a semi-noob at linux. Probably even less than that, but what I mean is I'm not afraid of the command line and embrace it, in fact, along with proper help documentation. I've never done anything with any source code, never programmed or anything, I am just now starting to understand using vim, etc.

Since Arch has such an amazing installation guide right on the site (albeit a long one), I was planning to print it out and read over it (just to wrap my mind around the process) and then go for it with guide in hand. What other help documentation would be beneficial in my quest to conquer the beast that is Arch?

Lastly, I NEED excellent community support. How is it here? If I had a question because something wasn't working as expected (or even if I wanted to change a simple setting), would posting here get quick, helpful responses? What are the Arch Linux Forums like? Are they as helpful as the Ubuntu forums for Ubuntu? Without this Arch is a no-go for me. I have to have some kind of support to hold my hand at first until I really start to get good at figuring out Linux myself.

Thanks for any help.

Redrazor39 said:

Since Arch has such an amazing installation guide right on the site (albeit a long one), I was planning to print it out and read over it (just to wrap my mind around the process) and then go for it with guide in hand. What other help documentation would be beneficial in my quest to conquer the beast that is Arch?

The Installation Guide is included in the Arch Linux cd (the /arch directory if I am correct.) Another good guide that I would recommend is the Beginner's Guide (also in the wiki). Don't worry these guides are excellent and make the installation and setup very painless.

Lastly, I NEED excellent community support. How is it here? If I had a question because something wasn't working as expected (or even if I wanted to change a simple setting), would posting here get quick, helpful responses? What are the Arch Linux Forums like? Are they as helpful as the Ubuntu forums for Ubuntu? Without this Arch is a no-go for me. I have to have some kind of support to hold my hand at first until I really start to get good at figuring out Linux myself. From my experience they are helpful, I've had all my questions answered. But tbh I have seen, at times, hostile behavior between users on the Arch forums on other posts (which is why I still hang around here on the UF forums, it's the best community for any OS). But look at it yourself to find out for sure.

Hope that helped, and good luck. :)

OutOfReach said: The Installation Guide is included in the Arch Linux cd (the /arch directory if I am correct.) Another good guide that I would recommend is the Beginner's Guide (also in the wiki). Don't worry these guides are excellent and make the installation and setup very painless.

The beginner guide is on the CD as well, under /arch/beginnersguide.txt

OutOfReach said: From my experience they are helpful, I've had all my questions answered. But tbh I have seen, at times, hostile behavior between users on the Arch forums on other posts (which is why I still hang around here on the UF forums, it's the best community for any OS). But look at it yourself to find out for sure.

Hope that helped, and good luck. :)

They are a great community. They just get a bit defensive because there are so many different people there which built their OS to be perfect for them.

Wow! Two helpful responses in under 11 minutes! This is awesome!

Alright, It's getting late where I live so I can't work on it now, but tomorrow probably I'll print off the wiki and beginners' guide so I can refer to them when I need to. It's winter break, so I have some time (and this is fun to me-- it's like brainteasers but with practical rewards).

Also, I was thinking of installing KDE4 if I go for a graphical environment (I've NEVER run a computer without a GUI before, but I'm trying to become more terminal-friendly), but is it stable yet? Last time I checked on openSUSE a few months back it was horrible. Is it any better now? Would you still recommend KDE3? My only experience with KDE3 was on fedora and it was negative; they loaded the menus with a ****load of stuff only seen on Windows boxes. I don't really like GNOME that much.

Something keeps telling me I'll be reinstalling Arch at least once, but it'll be in a positive way (like checking it out the first time, then knowing what I want and doing that the second).

Alright I just realized it's about 83 pages of material to print off... That's gonna suck :-|

Oh well. What do you all think? Should I just print off anyway (I probably have the ink+paper) or is there an easier way that will be just as convenient?

Redrazor39 said:

Also, I was thinking of installing KDE4 if I go for a graphical environment (I've NEVER run a computer without a GUI before, but I'm trying to become more terminal-friendly), but is it stable yet? Last time I checked on openSUSE a few months back it was horrible. Is it any better now? Would you still recommend KDE3? My only experience with KDE3 was on fedora and it was negative; they loaded the menus with a ****load of stuff only seen on Windows boxes. I don't really like GNOME that much.

I too have had problems with openSUSE's KDE4 implementation (same goes for Kubuntu, but that's a different story), anyways I've found that KDE4 on Arch is a lot more stable (but that doesn't mean it's crash-proof). I recommend instead of trying the normal KDE4, try KDEmod. It's KDE4 but modularized and optimized for i686. There's a proper how-to installation here.

Alright I just realized it's about 83 pages of material to print off... That's gonna suck

Oh well. What do you all think? Should I just print off anyway (I probably have the ink+paper) or is there an easier way that will be just as convenient? The Installation Guide and Beginner's Guide are on the Arch Linux CD (both of them under the /arch directory). Just open the guides in a different virtual console during installation with either nano or vim. :)

I'm a recent Arch user, and I gotta tell you that the installation is not that hard, sure there are no GUIs but they're not needed. Arch probably has one of the best wikis I've seen and covers almost anything you might need. I installed yesterday took a couple of hours off programming and decided to install it.

Regarding KDE4, it's a good DE but I had some issues with my Nvidia card so I ditched it, but I tried the first KDE and it kinda sucked, then I tried 4.1.3 and it's a great improvement, I heard 4.2 is even better. So yes it's usable but it all depends on your taste. I hate KDE3 and I liked KDE4, so there you go.

And don't worry about installing it a second time, the guide is very well documented and at least you'll have a ncurses based menu so you don't have to everything in the command line

OH! I just remembered! Hardware support and Dual boots!

I'm thinking of installing Arch on a Sony VAIO VGN-SZ430N

Is it as easy to dual-boot Arch and Windows as it is with Ubuntu and Windows? Is this covered in the Guide/Wiki?

Redrazor39 said: OH! I just remembered! Hardware support and Dual boots!

I'm thinking of installing Arch on a Sony VAIO VGN-SZ430N

Is it as easy to dual-boot Arch and Windows as it is with Ubuntu and Windows? Is this covered in the Guide/Wiki?

It should be fairly easy, just make sure not to install your Arch partition on your Windows partition.

For your dual booting, you might want to read the wiki article on Grub.

The Arch community is great. No as big as Ubuntu's but that is something in its favor IMO. Your posts don't tend to get lost there, buried under an avalanche of other posts.

The Arch Beginner's Guide is only huge because they have to cover all their bases. Print the whole thing out and you'll be up and running in about an hour, counting download and installation time.

Redrazor39 said: OH! I just remembered! Hardware support and Dual boots!

I'm thinking of installing Arch on a Sony VAIO VGN-SZ430N

Is it as easy to dual-boot Arch and Windows as it is with Ubuntu and Windows? Is this covered in the Guide/Wiki?

Yes it's easy to dual boot, the grub menu is generated by the installer, all you have to do is, at least that's what I had to do, uncomment the template entry that's in the menu.lst, you might have to change the partition but everything is covered in the guide.

#archlinux on freenode is very good.

The post installation page is great for *_after_* you have Arch up & running with your DE/WM installed:

*_http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Post_Installation_Tips#Configure_dhcpcd_*

The Arch HowTo pages are fantastic as well:

*_http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Category:HOWTOs_%28English%29_*

This page has some very useful how-to's on it too:

*_http://archux.com/page/installation-guide/_*

Also, once you have got Arch installed & setup, find the time to become familiar with how to downgrade a package, once you are armed with that information, there isn't too much that can cause you trouble for very long. Here is a link to where you will find some of the info':

*_http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=6283883&postcount=3_*

& here:

*_http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Downgrade_packages_*

Redrazor39 said: OH! I just remembered! Hardware support and Dual boots!

I'm thinking of installing Arch on a Sony VAIO VGN-SZ430N

Is it as easy to dual-boot Arch and Windows as it is with Ubuntu and Windows? Is this covered in the Guide/Wiki? Here's some extra assurance: I've successfully installed Arch on a Sony Vaio VGN-SZ61XN/C. Hardware support is not an issue.

Phew this is all so helpful. Thanks everyone!

Today I'm gonna work on installing Arch. Wish me luck!

Update: about 100 pages of hardcore Arch support. I'm gonna skim through it and then go for it. Just looking over it, this seems like an excellent guide (I printed it off just in case I can't access the file for some reason)

Went through two ink cartridges, lol

Note: don't worry about ANY of the tweaks and extra crap at first. Just get as far as installing a DE, and unless you're familiar with it don't jump into a -box. I eased in via LXDE and am very happy I did. Once you have your DE up and a browser and such and you're online, THEN work on all the optional stuff.

SomeGuyDude said: Once you have your DE up and a browser and such and you're online, THEN work on all the optional stuff.

+1

This would have also saved the OP all the paper & ink he used if he just printed the sections up to xorg

mips said: +1

This would have also saved the OP all the paper & ink he used if he just printed the sections up to xorg You don't even need X. I've spent quite a bit of my time in that guide using elinks and screen.

Xiong Chiamiov said: You don't even need X. I've spent quite a bit of my time in that guide using elinks and screen.

Yes. Because *everyone* knows how to use screen like a master.

Ok guys here's a status update: i've successfully installed arch twice now (messed up the first time) and I installed kdemod as my de. Kdemod SUCKS. It's not that it's really that horrible, it's just that I don't like it. I'm gonna reinstall again (it's actually not so bad seeing as I learn so much from the experience). This time I'm going for xfce4- light, simple, fast.

Thanks for all your help everyone!

You didn't have to reinstall to get rid of KDEmod, you only needed to remove it:

*_http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pacman#Removing_Packages_*

All of the Pacman commands are valid in Yaourt, so bookmarking the Pacman page in the Arch wiki & referring to it whenever you need to do anything with packages is a really good idea as it will save you a great deal of time in the long run.