[SOLVED] Well, I'm not ready for Arch. Bye!

I guess Arch is just too much for me. It's been a great learning experience, but I just can't take all the configuration. I know I'll come back; I love the philosophy and customizability, but I just don't understand Linux enough to do well with it.

Farewell, Arch! We will meet again!

Now, I either go back to Ubuntu, even though I'm getting kind of sick of coming back to that slow, brown monster all the time, or I check out a different distro. I've got my eye on openSUSE, but I had a bad experience with their implementation of KDE4 (even though that was back in June when KDE4 REALLY sucked).

What do you all think? Is openSUSE a good option?

Speed, Community Support, Hardware Support, and how good is KDE 4 now?

Try Debian Lenny. It feels like Ubuntu, but is more stable.

Redrazor39 said: What do you all think? Is openSUSE a good option?

In that case I would rather use Fedora than OpenSUSE if I had to.

But let's try to clarify this a bit. You want a fast desktop, but you seem to prefer KDE over Gnome, right ? What about Kubuntu ? Mandriva ? Slackware ?

And I tried Debian Lenny on the desktop a few months ago (because I wanted to test some OpenVZ, Xen and VMware things), and it felt faster than Ubuntu Hardy's desktop, and none of the brown is there, I liked it, but I need to Ubuntu from time to time to be able to support my users at work. But remember .. Debian Lenny is still fixing critical bugs before it will be released as the next Debian stable.

You could try ***_Zenwalk_***, it will be fast & light compared to Ubuntu & easier than Arch in the GUI kind of way.

I haven't used it yet, but when my next download period starts with my ISP account it is the first thing I'm going to test.

Another vote for Zenwalk. It's fast and clean, looks fine and it's just about as easy to setup as *buntu.

Ok... I think I spoke too soon. I just reinstalled Ubuntu and I'm using that now, but I feel like I WANT to go back to Arch, hard or not. It just seemed so... right. I had Xfce set up on it and I loved it, BUT I didn't feel like it would be easy enough to set up things like volume control, network managers, etc. (all the good stuff in the panel).

Now I'm thinking back, realizing I could have just come here or the Arch Linux newbie forums and asked for help with that. I love how I'd be able to choose whatever packages I want for stuff. For example, I wanted to replace thunar with PCmanFM, get an awesome browser, maybe use AbiWord instead of OpenOffice bloatware, etc., but I didn't even ask. I just gave up on the first day, and I'm not one to give up (I really get mad at myself if I do, just like now).

I guess now my punishment is that I have to go through the entire process of reinstalling Arch (which shouldn't be so bad now that I've done it about 4 times on this computer) and then going on to completely shape my system to my needs/wants.

Thanks Arch community!

Redrazor39 said: Ok... I think I spoke too soon. I just reinstalled Ubuntu and I'm using that now, but I feel like I WANT to go back to Arch, hard or not. It just seemed so... right. I had Xfce set up on it and I loved it, BUT I didn't feel like it would be easy enough to set up things like volume control, network managers, etc. (all the good stuff in the panel).

Now I'm thinking back, realizing I could have just come here or the Arch Linux newbie forums and asked for help with that. I love how I'd be able to choose whatever packages I want for stuff. For example, I wanted to replace thunar with PCmanFM, get an awesome browser, maybe use AbiWord instead of OpenOffice bloatware, etc., but I didn't even ask. I just gave up on the first day, and I'm not one to give up (I really get mad at myself if I do, just like now).

I guess now my punishment is that I have to go through the entire process of reinstalling Arch (which shouldn't be so bad now that I've done it about 4 times on this computer) and then going on to completely shape my system to my needs/wants.

Thanks Arch community!

When I was using Arch, I found the Arch Wiki pretty good to find out about configuring things. http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Main_Page

And in my opinion playing with Linux should be fun somehow, not punishment :)

I just started Arch 2 days ago and love it. :P

I installed Arch today :D got it working with Internet, XFCE,Firefox, its been fun!

Can't you keep an Ubuntu partition, and an Arch partition? While you are getting Arch configured just how you like it, you can go back to Ubuntu to check something or do something you haven't figured out yet on Arch.

linkmaster03 said: Can't you keep an Ubuntu partition, and an Arch partition? While you are getting Arch configured just how you like it, you can go back to Ubuntu to check something or do something you haven't figured out yet on Arch.

+1 Good point! I've had an Ubuntu + Arch dual-boot before. What I did was letting one of the two use the MBR with Grub, and the other got Grub only on the partition itself and not on the MBR. In that setup I basically only had to insert the relevant Grub config part into the Grub config part of the Linux installation that had Grub installed in the MBR after each kernel upgrade.

Ditto. I tried Arch and really liked it and its rolling release philosophy. I got everything up and running except my wireless connection with my laptop. Normal ethernet worked and I got Gnome installed and it worked fine with my Nvidia card, but I returned to Ubuntu due to the wireless problem. I will probably return one day and give it another try.

Side Note:

I purchased a HP 6380 wireless printer and Ubuntu picked it up perfectly without me having to do any configuration...I was so surprised.

Redrazor39 said: Ok... I think I spoke too soon. I just reinstalled Ubuntu and I'm using that now, but I feel like I WANT to go back to Arch, hard or not. It just seemed so... right. I had Xfce set up on it and I loved it, BUT I didn't feel like it would be easy enough to set up things like volume control, network managers, etc. (all the good stuff in the panel).

You can post over here too:

*_http://cafelinux.org/xubuntuforums/index.php/board,158.0.html_*

It is the Xubuntu forum that also caters for Arch & anything else that uses Xfce.

It is fairly new, so it needs people to post there so the search-able knowledge builds up which will also help to increase the number of users which will get the snowball rolling.

There are some familiar staff/mod names over there e.g.

RAV TUX, Tux Aubrey, Rui Pais, Smartboyathome, LaRoza, kevinf311, Bruce, useResa, handy

...but I just can't take all the configuration.

The configuration aspect of Arch is generally way overstated. I just installed Arch on a third computer last week and the total 'configuration' was about 6 minutes total.

Bob

jeffreyldavidson said: I purchased a HP 6380 wireless printer and Ubuntu picked it up perfectly without me having to do any configuration...I was so surprised.

Some months ago I installed Ubuntu on some machine at work, it had some Epson printer connected via usb, and it was left on. After the installation I already started looking for some howtos because I had the impression from searching for that brand and type of printer that installation was not that very easy. The moment I opened the printer admin interface the printer was already there, configured and all, ready to use, and leaving me speechless for quite a while.

Well, now I have Arch with Xfce set up. All I need to do is add compiz fusion and some other tweaks, and it'll be perfect (almost)!

Thanks for all your help and encouragement. Arch has been such a good learning experience (and I love how fast it is).

Redrazor39-- now a happy Arch linux user :)

Redrazor39 said: Well, now I have Arch with Xfce set up. All I need to do is add compiz fusion and some other tweaks, and it'll be perfect (almost)!

Thanks for all your help and encouragement. Arch has been such a good learning experience (and I love how fast it is).

Redrazor39-- now a happy Arch linux user :)

I've been using Arch for around 8 months & have found that it continues to increase its appeal. You will strike a few problems in the future that are bound to be frustrating, the best advice I a can give you is that if you can't access the internet from another machine, in the circumstances that you install software, usually due to an -Syu that causes you to loose the internet then print the info on this page out & keep it safe:

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

Being able to downgrade your way out of trouble is both incredibly quick & easy, as you find out from experience.