On Thursday 20 January 2011 03:39:08 Jeff Nowakowski wrote: > On 01/20/2011 12:24 AM, Gour wrote: > > I've feeling that you just copied the above from FAQ and never > > actually tried Archlinux. > > No, I haven't tried it. I'm not going to try every OS that comes down > the pike. If the FAQ says that you're going to have to be more of an > expert with your system, then I believe it. If it's wrong, then maybe > you can push them to update it. > > > The "do-it-yourself" from the above means that in Arch user is not > > forced to use specific DE, WM etc., can choose whether he prefers WiCD > > over NM etc. > > So instead of giving you a bunch of sane defaults, you have to make a > bunch of choices up front. That's a heavy investment of time, especially > for somebody unfamiliar with Linux. > > > That's not true...In Arch there is simply no Arch-8.10 or Arch-10.10 > > which means that whenever you update your system package manager will > > simply pull all the packages which are required for desired kernel, > > gcc version etc. > > The upgrade problems are still there. *Every package* you upgrade has a > chance to be incompatible with the previous version. The longer you > wait, the more incompatibilities there will be. > > > Otoh, with Ubuntu, upgrade from 8.10 to 10.10 is always a major > > undertaking (I'm familiar with it since '99 when I used SuSE and had > > experience with deps hell.) > > Highlighting the problem of waiting too long to upgrade. You're skipping > an entire release. I'd like to see you take a snapshot of Arch from > 2008, use the system for 2 years without updating, and then upgrade to > the latest packages. Do you think Arch is going to magically have no > problems?
There is no question that Arch takes more to manage than a number of other distros. However, it takes _far_ less than Gentoo. Things generally just work in Arch, whereas you often have to figure out how to fix problems when updating on Gentoo. I wouldn't suggest Arch to a beginner, but I'd be _far_ more likely to suggest it to someone than Gentoo. Arch really doesn't take all that much to maintain, but it does have a higher setup cost than your average distro, and you do have to do some level of manual configuration that I'd expect a more typical distro like OpenSuSE or Ubuntu to take care of for you. So, I'd say that your view of Arch is likely a bit skewed, because you haven't actually used it, but it still definitely isn't a distro where you just stick in the install disk, install it, and then go on your merry way either. - Jonathan M Davis