Sirupsen's Blog

After about 8 months with Ubuntu, I decided it was time for change. I had for a while wanted to switch to some other distribution, not really because I did not like Ubuntu, more because I wanted to learn more about Linux, and try something new. And I felt Ubuntu limited me in this matter. Furthermore, I wanted to have a system which I did not feel I had to reinstall whenever new major updates came out, I wanted a system I could improve over time. I wanted a system where I could switch desktop environment/window manager quickly, and without googling myself on how to then remove all the old, now useless, packages.

I quickly found a distro. which seemed to fit my requirements, Arch Linux. Arch Linux is lightweight, and simple. I found a quote on the Wiki, which describes it quite good. “Linux, with a nice package manager.” I want to add something to that though: “Linux, with an awesome package manager (Pacman), and a kick-ass Wiki.” That Wiki seriously provides the best information on everything you’ll ever need to know – I have yet to run into a problem which is not described here.

So yeah, you basically start with bare-bones Linux, which can boot into a CLI, has the basic stuff like Vi, grep, and so on you’d install anyway. From there, you simply start building your system with the Arch Linux beginner’s guide (which is extremely good). You install Vim, Xorg, Drivers, and so on. As it was my first (and hopefully only on this computer) install, I took good time to do each step, to understand what I was installing, and why I was installing it. Once I had Xorg up (g, I already felt like I had learned a lot more about how Linux works at a lower level. I was already starting to really like Arch Linux.

At some point when Xorg was set up, I of course needed a Window Manager. I looked a lot around. There are hundreds of different Window Managers, tiling, not-tiling, and these big desktop environments (Gnome, KDE). I had already decided I didn’t want to go for a desktop environment, since then I’d have a shit load of gui-config tools, and not learn exactly where configuration files are located (oh how I search the knowledge). I quickly figured out that Openbox was very popular on the Arch Linux forum. So I decided to install it, and found the neat Arkid theme, somebody had posted it in a screenshot thread on the Arch Linux forums.

And then it was just a matter of setting up all the stuff I usually set up when I install Ubuntu: Vim, Chrome, Pidgin, Music player, Dropbox, and so on. And Pacman (the Arch Linux package manager) made this a pleasing experience. I ran into a few packages which I could not install with Pacman however. But, I quickly figured there was something called AUR (Arch User Repository), in which I have yet to not find a package, meaning I never have to compile anything. And of course, my fellow Arch Linux users have also provided me with tools which allows easy installation from AUR. I found a tool called Clyde, which works nicely for me. Basically just a Pacman clone which can also install from AUR as well.

And now, I’ve been running this system for a few weeks, and I feel at home. I love it really. If you are looking to try something new, and already got some Linux knowledge, then you should defiantly go and try Arch Linux! Oh yeah, and should you run into issues the people at #archlinux @ freenode are really nice, and helpful.

Here’s a screenshot of Archbox, because everyone loves screenshots.

Tagged: arch, experience, linux, os, ubuntu