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masinick
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Joined: 03 Apr 2024
Posts: 8615
Location: Concord, NH
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 Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2024 7:08 pm Post subject: I agree wholeheartedly! |
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| crouse wrote: | I'd be REALLY interested in knowing what that program was. Personally, Arch has been the most stable Linux platform I've ever ran on. Updates in Arch can be done from a gui......... it was my understanding as well that Sidux updates had to be done from runlevel 3....... a drawback which I REALLY thought would annoy YOU  hating the command line and all 
But, seriously, I think that Sidux and Arch are two of the most cutting edge distro's that have it "right". Just my humble opinion though. |
I couldn't agree with you more. I would say that it is possible to get other platforms that also run in an extremely stable way. I, though, like you, have found Arch, at least for my needs, to be 100% perfect as far as packaging issues. There have been zero issues for me.
The sidux distribution is truly cutting edge, as is Arch. The recommendations that the sidux team makes as far as packaging are quite conservative to protect the system from errors given its extremely cutting edge nature. I'd say that Arch packages are probably a bit better tested out than Debian Sid packages, and that is why the sidux team is so conservative. By the time a package reaches Debian Testing, it is already very well tested and exceeds all but the best (Arch, Slackware, and Debian Stable) in reliability.
I think in Arch and sidux we have two really great cutting edge systems. That's not to say that there aren't any others that are also cutting edge and very good, but I would stick my neck out and say that you can't get one that has all of these attributes: cutting edge, yet reasonably stable and usable, fast, yet reasonably easy to master. Fedora is definitely cutting edge, but it is a slug compared to either Arch or sidux in performance - but it does support an arguably wider range of hardware platforms. OpenSUSE and Mandriva are leading edge, but I am not sure if I would call them cutting edge, and neither is as stable as Arch or sidux or more responsive at fixing issues when they do occur. Ubuntu is also leading edge, but it really has consumer appeal, and it definitely does not have the quality control found in Arch and sidux.
Someone may come up with their favorite, but I think that I have a decent case to support my claim why these two are the leaders in cutting edge software. |
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mr_ed
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masinick
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Joined: 03 Apr 2024
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Location: Concord, NH
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| Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2024 7:46 pm Post subject: Give it another try! |
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| mr_ed wrote: | I've had my system nuked by Arch a couple of times. Things may be better now though. Maybe I should install it again on my laptop.  |
I'd try again. I have a Dell Latitude D600 and Arch is the only distro I've run on the hard drive, though I've used lots of Live CDs on it. Arch has been flawless for me. It is a bit of work to set up, but tlmiller did my work for me! (I bought the laptop used from him - he has great stuff if any of you like his systems on the trading section).
I also installed Arch myself on an HP D530 desktop. I had some issues at first but got around them, and it has been flawless ever since.
Arch and sidux are now my experimental systems, and SimplyMEPIS is my stable system. |
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BrionS
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Joined: 04 Jul 2024
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Location: Rochester, NY
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BrionS
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Joined: 04 Jul 2024
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Location: Rochester, NY
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| Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2024 8:47 pm Post subject: |
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As for Arch vs. sidux I think I come down on the side of sidux only because I found it much easier to set up and get going. They're both rock-solid, bleeding edge, and fast to update but sidux wins on ease of set-up merits and full access to the gi-normous Debian APT repos (Arch repos simply don't have the volume of applications that Debian has....sorry Arch).
Though Arch wins on the merits of building native packages easily if you have the source and all dependencies -- I never used it, but I've seen AUR at work making packaging laughably simple without the need for alien and what-not.
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masinick
Linux Guru
Joined: 03 Apr 2024
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Location: Concord, NH
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| Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2024 10:12 pm Post subject: Both are quite good |
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| BrionS wrote: | As for Arch vs. sidux I think I come down on the side of sidux only because I found it much easier to set up and get going. They're both rock-solid, bleeding edge, and fast to update but sidux wins on ease of set-up merits and full access to the gi-normous Debian APT repos (Arch repos simply don't have the volume of applications that Debian has....sorry Arch).
Though Arch wins on the merits of building native packages easily if you have the source and all dependencies -- I never used it, but I've seen AUR at work making packaging laughably simple without the need for alien and what-not. |
I think that is a good assessment. Frankly though you really can't lose with either one of them. Arch definitely takes more effort and more time to get it just the way you want it, but if and when you do, it rewards you with a system that even LFS and Gentoo would be hard pressed to out optimize, and even if they could, the extra amount of work - unless you REALLY like that kind of thing, is significant.
I do think that the Debian repositories, especially Sid, are bigger than anything. At one time the BSD collections, especially with the Ports collection, had more software than anyone, but I believe that Debian has passed them up and now has more packages than any other system. Arch is no slouch in this regard, but to me, Debian has more. Frankly though, both of them get the job done well so this is not a selling point on either one other than the fact that both are more than adequate. |
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tlmiller
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Location: MD, USA
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| Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2024 10:18 pm Post subject: |
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| crouse wrote: | I'd be REALLY interested in knowing what that program was. Personally, Arch has been the most stable Linux platform I've ever ran on. Updates in Arch can be done from a gui......... it was my understanding as well that Sidux updates had to be done from runlevel 3....... a drawback which I REALLY thought would annoy YOU hating the command line and all
But, seriously, I think that Sidux and Arch are two of the most cutting edge distro's that have it "right". Just my humble opinion though. |
It would, but I never knew Arch could be updated from a gui either until yesterday when I read it in this thread. Since I have to accept that I will still need to use cli, at least sidux makes it simple to do the udpates.
As far as having to drop to runlevel 3, for me if I have to type in a command, there is no difference if it's runlevel 5 in a console or runlevel 3 in a terminal. It's still CLI.
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Last edited by tlmiller on Wed Feb 13, 2024 10:24 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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JP
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Location: Central Montana
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masinick
Linux Guru
Joined: 03 Apr 2024
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Location: Concord, NH
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| Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2024 10:24 pm Post subject: I would keep each kernel intact and point to them with GRUB |
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| BrionS wrote: | Good to know masinick.
I'm fairly comfortable with APT, but I wasn't sure if there was a more compelling reason to run smxi instead of dist-upgrade. However, when a kernel update goes through, I'm sure I will run smxi because it does a great job of re-installing my NVidia drivers and other things like that which need to be re-built for each kernel.
One problem I currently have (and not sure how exactly I will go about fixing it given my current drive partitions) is that every time get a new kernel, I have to copy the changes it makes to /boot and GRUB into my old Ubuntu partition where the active GRUB installation is (otherwise I never see the changes in the menu). I'm sure you can I can talk offline about that though since you're kind of the master of multi-boot (at least that I've seen around here). |
There is no need to go copying kernels around, regardless of where /boot is and regardless of where GRUB is. The GRUB menu is quite capable of pointing to another partition, even another drive, to locate kernels.
I recommend keeping the kernel with the / file system for each distro. If you are one of the many partition per distro enthusiasts, then keep it with /boot for each distro. Frankly, I use one partition for each distro and one common SWAP for ALL of 'em and it works fine for me.
You can either specify the complete kernel spec (and initrd spec if you need any of them), including GRUB drive location. Here are some examples:
| Code: | title MEPIS at sdb12, newest kernel
root (hd1,11)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/sdb12 nomce quiet splash vga=791
boot
title Debian GNU/Linux, kernel 2.6.22-2-686
root (hd0,5)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.22-2-686 root=/dev/hda6 ro
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.22-2-686
title PCLinuxOS
root (hd0,7)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz BOOT_IMAGE=PCLinuxOS root=/dev/hda8 acpi=on resume=/dev/hda5
splash=verbose vga=791
initrd (hd0,7)/boot/initrd.img
title Microsoft Windows XP Professional at sda1
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1 |
Notice on the Windows XP instance I use the chainloader method. With Windows you pretty much have to use that approach, but you can also use that approach for any of the other systems as well, as long as you install a boot loader in their root partition.
As a fun exercise, I sometimes boot into my MBR, then go to interactive GRUB and, using the chainloader, move on to two or three or four different GRUB menus that I've loaded onto various distros until FINALLY I boot something. I don't do that every day of course, but I have done it as a demonstration to make sure that all my GRUB instances are functioning. You could use this in order to manage your menus and your kernels.
PM me if you need some specifics and I would be glad to give you as many examples as you need - and given your configuration, I can tell you precisely what your GRUB entries should be. |
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masinick
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Joined: 03 Apr 2024
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Location: Concord, NH
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| Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2024 10:33 pm Post subject: |
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| JP wrote: | | crouse wrote: | Updates in Arch can be done from a gui......... it was my understanding as well that Sidux updates had to be done from runlevel 3....... a drawback which I REALLY thought would annoy YOU
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Dave, this is the one thing that really annoys me about sidux .... I've never had to do this with any Debian distro, so it doesn't come easy ..... fortunately, there is a reminder when I try to use the terminal that asks if I'm in init 3, otherwise, I would have crashed sidux at least a couple of times by now .
As I've said elsewhere, Arch sounds like a great distro. and one of these days I intend to install it, but right now ....... things are in a bit of a tangle ...... |
I can do this from sidux without any problem:
| Code: | | sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade |
Don't recall if I have done:
| Code: | | sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade |
from a konsole terminal; I KNOW I have done it from a TTY console TTY!, for example, without stopping X - I just Ctrl Alt F1 to get to TTY1, login as root, do my thing and logout. Meanwhile I go back to the GUI with CTrl Alt F7 to do additional work. I can go back and forth as needed. Perhaps it would break, but mine hasn't. Then again, for you, maybe you should be a bit more conservative until you are an apt-get guru. I can get myself out of a mess; many others can't, so I understand why sidux takes the position that they have - it is a conservative support position so you don't potentially lock yourself out of a desktop environment, or worse yet, mess up all of the X server.
If ya wanna take a walk on the wild side, upgrade from X. I do it the command line apt-get way and it hasn't stopped me yet - but do realize that it is potentially risky. |
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masinick
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Joined: 03 Apr 2024
Posts: 8615
Location: Concord, NH
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| Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2024 10:59 pm Post subject: Easy way to do an upgrade |
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Hey tlmiller, if you loathe typing in commands, but you would at least consider creating an alias, try doing this:
put this line into a one line script, call it dist.bash.
| Code: | | sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get -y dist-upgrade |
The -y will say yes when it asks if you want to upgrade the packages.
Make that file executable like this:
Then create an alias like this:
| Code: | | alias ug=~/dist.bash |
and put that alias into your .bashrc file, source it by entering and now you can type in ug from the command line and it will do the upgrade for you. |
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jada
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Joined: 13 May 2024
Posts: 3064
Location: Sun City, CA 92585
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| Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2024 11:05 pm Post subject: |
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KDE is crashing something wrong..........
| Quote: |
Warning: qt-x11-free breaks KDE
Posted by : x-un-i on Feb 10, 2024 - 01:55 PM Important News
Today's dist-upgrade brought a broken set of qt-x11-free packages.
It will break most KDE apps.
Better do not dist-upgrade untill the situation is completly clarified.
For those that have already done a dist-upgrade we are trying to find a solution for the problem.
For a first workaround take look into this forum's thread |
If one little thing is off, the entire system has a hissy-fit and won't do anything until you hunt the internet high and low searching for a solution, encountering all the debian hawks along the way who are ready to rip your head off at the first suggestion that debian isn't directly from god and could have a problem.
But there is still no update how fixed it. .......... how long does it take???? |
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JP
Linux Guru
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Posts: 6670
Location: Central Montana
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| Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2024 11:41 pm Post subject: |
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| jada wrote: | KDE is crashing something wrong..........
| Quote: |
Warning: qt-x11-free breaks KDE
Posted by : x-un-i on Feb 10, 2024 - 01:55 PM Important News
Today's dist-upgrade brought a broken set of qt-x11-free packages.
It will break most KDE apps.
Better do not dist-upgrade untill the situation is completly clarified.
For those that have already done a dist-upgrade we are trying to find a solution for the problem.
For a first workaround take look into this forum's thread |
<snipped anti-Debian comments>
But there is still no update how fixed it. .......... how long does it take???? |
You didn't provide a link jada, so we don't know whether you received that warning from KDE, Debian or Arch. No matter, if it affects one, it probably affects all .
Since you are obviously talking about KDE4, I was reading this article today and thought you might enjoy it as well.
Ars Technica reviews KDE 4.0 Clik
I don't know if you've already seen it or not, but I think I saw one of your posts that said you were testing KDE4, so I thought of you when I saw this article .
EDIT: That warning you posted is on the sidux forums. It's the same thing that was going on when the servers were down around the US. That was why I had to mirror the German sidux mirror to upgrade. I got a post from a guy in Ohio that they were having ice storms there and a lot of power lines were down and the internet was affected. I assume they are still working on the problem, but if you read the thread, you would see that they found a workaround right away by changing the repo's to testing instead of sid ... a piece of cake! OTOH, if you were trying to prove a point, you did ..... nobody, and no distro is perfect! Thanks for reminding us .
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Last edited by JP on Thu Feb 14, 2024 12:22 am; edited 1 time in total |
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tlmiller
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Location: MD, USA
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| Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2024 12:01 am Post subject: |
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| Good review. Definitely makes me not want to go to 4.0 yet.
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Debian Squeeze, Arch, Kubuntu mostly. Some Mandriva. Some Windows.
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mmmna
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