[GLLUG] Arch Tribulations

Sat Jan 30 16:59:14 EST 2016

FreeBSD does sound about like what you want. I just put it on a Raspberry
Pi and I found the experience very nice out of the box. It was much easier
than the suggested Raspbian distribution, which was a bit miserable.
On Jan 30, 2016 2:39 PM, "Richard Houser" <rick at divinesymphony.net> wrote:

> Chick, unfortunately about half of what you just wrote about is ultimately
> systemd specific or the way it's developers do things. At it's core, it
> violates the Unix way of doing things and its developers have actively
> resisted attempts to provide stable APIs so there are options. As sad as it
> currently is, I expect things to be mostly stable again on that front after
> a few more years, just like the initial PulseAudio implementation mess from
> the same individuals.
>
> Even on Mageia, which was forced to switch three years ago, about half of
> the major problems I encounter are systemd related (the largest of which
> are a few complete boot failures and PID 1 100% CPU usage, probably after
> installing patches).
>
> A lot of this comes down to RedHat pushing these changes for political
> reasons in spite of the technical problems. Unfortunately, RedHat was just
> to big of a player and got their way after a long fight from much of the
> community.
>
> With most the other distros ultimately falling over to systems, a fair
> number of users made the jump to BSD. With how you tend to use your
> machines and the general age of the hardware involved, perhaps BSD is
> actually a better fit for you. Have you looked into it lately? Most the
> user space is the same.
>
> The other issue, 680MB for a text installer without local packages is a
> joke. Mageia's GUI installer for x86_64 or i586 came out about 80MB last I
> used it. I normally just do a network boot or install from DVD, though.
>
> On January 30, 2016 1:55:20 PM EST, Chick Tower <c.e.tower at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> I decided to install Arch Linux (as well as Slackware and Bodhi) on a
>> "new" laptop I bought on Craigslist.  Arch has changed some since the
>> last time I installed it, before systemd existed.  If anyone else wants
>> to try Arch, I would suggest you try one of the derivatives of it, such
>> as Bridge, ArchBang, or Manjaro (you can find others by searching on
>> Distrowatch) and avoid most of the pain of setting it up from scratch.
>>
>> The first thing that annoyed me was the installation.  You download a
>> 680MB ISO image and it doesn't even have the installation files on it.
>> You have to do a network install.  Other distros manage to put a live
>> GUI version and the basic installation files on a CD, so what the heck
>> is Arch's problem?  All it has is a live, command-line version of Arch.
>>   Granted, it has all the tools you need to prepare for and conduct the
>> installation, but just not the packages that will actually be
>> installed.
>>   This aggravation was just the warm-up.
>>
>> The installation went fine.  I added extra programs just fine, including
>> X and my preferred window manager, Fluxbox.  Then getting Arch
>> configured was a largely undocumented horror.  Sure, they have a wiki
>> page that suggests things, with links to how to configure them, but a
>> lot of things are scattered all over their wiki without links.  I wanted
>> to boot to a command line and then run startx when I wanted Fluxbox to
>> run.  Oh, startx is in another package that has yet to be installed.
>> And you have to create your own .xinitrc, or find one that works.  No
>> virtual terminals are installed by the xorg-server metapackage, not even
>> xterm, so that's something else you have to figure out on your own.
>> Luckily, I had already installed another terminal emulator, but I was
>> surprised to not find the ubiquitous xterm installed.
>>
>> I never knew that wireless chips could
>> be blocked both by hardware (via
>> a button on the PC) and by software.  I've never before had a laptop
>> with a wireless on/off button.  No other distro I've installed has
>> soft-blocked the wireless hardware, but Arch does on my laptop.  At
>> least the error message tells you that you need rfkill to unblock it,
>> but God forbid the developers actually script Arch to run this for you.
>>   Arch also gives the wireless and Ethernet interfaces odd names.  Ben
>> Chavez would have really unusual network interface names every time he
>> installed Arch, and I could never figure out how he did that.  I didn't
>> when I installed Arch years ago, or with any other distro I've tried.
>> It turns out the kernel comes up with those names, maybe by querying the
>> chips that provide the networking interfaces.  You need some udev rules
>> to change the interface names to the more-familiar wlanX and ethX, and
>> every distro but Arch seems to handle that
>> automatically.
>>
>> I wanted a firewall and Privoxy.  Sure, they install easily enough, but
>> they aren't "enabled" in systemd, so they don't run until you learn you
>> have to enable them.  Who in their right mind installs something as
>> critical as a firewall but does not want it to run?  Sure, you want to
>> make sure it's configured the way you want it, and then have it start up
>> on the next reboot.  Not even a warning during installation that it
>> won't run until you issue some command, which Debian and its derivatives
>> do warn you about, although it's a completely different command.  At
>> least I don't have to wrestle with firewalld...yet.
>>
>> Arch developers have really drunk deeply from the systemd Kool-Aid
>> pitcher.  They don't even include cron, because systemd has timers, none
>> of which are set up for you, of course.  Not that there are any logs to
>> rotate, as by default there are none, everything goes into the
>> systemd
>> journal.  I've read somewhere else that there's a way to make systemd
>> create the usual text logs of the past, but I have to wonder if there's
>> a way to remove old log information in the systemd journal to keep it
>> from filling the hard drive partition.  I assume there is, but that
>> entails reading even more about systemd.  I had not thought systemd was
>> a PITA in any of the distros I've tried before that used it, but Arch
>> has made a believer out of me.
>>
>> You might think I dislike Arch.  I don't, but I dislike the pain of
>> configuring it after installation, and which is greater than I remember.
>>   I know that once I get it right it should be stable and fast and
>> easily updated, or stable until the Arch developers decide to make
>> changes in how the system works yet again.  I just think they could make
>> the configuration less painful without compromising their goal of
>> letting users make Arch serve whatever purpose
>> users want it to.  I just
>> wanted to vent here, but be glad I waited until I got it mostly
>> configured and didn't make this a daily rant.
>> :)
>>
>> Please don't suggest I try some user-friendly distro, like those named
>> after candy or an African word.  I want something lean and mean on my
>> old laptops without the continual compilation of Gentoo, the relentless
>> austerity of suckless.org's stali Linux, or the
>> interesting-but-not-grown-up Puppy.
>>
>>
> --
> Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.
>
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