[LAU] Switching the distro

[mark hadman]

On 29 May 2011 15:24, Bernardo Barros <bernardobarros2 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> If you want to build a lot of stuff yourself, Arch Linux and Gentoo crosses
>> my mind.
>
> With ArchLinux you don't have to build anything if you don't want to.
> Do not spread misinformation!
>
> The default is to install (generic optimized) binary packages.

I have to build lots of stuff in Arch because a lot of stuff just
doesn't come pre-built. That said, the Arch User Repository combined
with the yaourt package manager script makes it easy to build many
many pckages from source.


Arch caveats:

- Stuff breaks. I recently had to revert gedit to pre v3 so that I
could continue using it with Supercollider - this involved using a
custom 'downgrade' script which isn't officially supported. I now have
gedit pinned so that it won't be upgraded. Same thing happened with
Wine breakage just the other day - all this because Arch packages
always follow the upstream, broken or not - tough luck if you want to
stick with Gnome 2 while Gnome 3 gets its bugs ironed out...
- Package management (pacman) is very good but generally involves
using the command line. There are graphical front-ends but they are
unofficial.
- It takes a while to get up and running - an Arch install comes
without an X-server or Alsa

Having said that - Arch is extremely lightweight because there's
nothing there that you don't add yourself, the support (wiki/forums)
is excellent and you'll learn a lot about your operating system.