[LAD] (Somewhat OT) Advice needed on distro choice

[hollunder at gmx.at]

On Wed, 23 Sep 2009 20:49:33 +0200
Fons Adriaensen <fons at kokkinizita.net> wrote:

> On Wed, Sep 23, 2009 at 07:30:27PM +0100, Chris Cannam wrote:
> 
> > On Wed, Sep 23, 2009 at 7:26 PM, Fons Adriaensen
> > <fons at kokkinizita.net> wrote:
> 
> > > So what distro should I go for ?
> > 
> > Sounds like Arch is worth a look.
> 
> Do they have a ready-to-use RT kernel ?
> 
> Ciao,
> 

There is a buildscript for one as well as a separate binary repository
including a binary rt kernel.
Currently it's already .31-rt that's being tested.
I do have consolekit here tough.

The beauty of Arch Linux is:
- Emphasis on simplicity, don't hide how stuff works, etc. see:
  http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/The_Arch_Way
- The base system is minimal
- Official binary repositories are available, including most popular
  applications
- Applications in the repositories are very recent versions due to a
  rolling release model
- Everything in the official repositories can be rebuilt easily,
  using the same scripts that were used to build the official package
  (ABS). Very useful if you want to have other compiletime options or do
  optimisations (everything is compiled for i686/x86_64 by default).
- Almost anything that's not in the official repositories can be found
  in a user maintained buildscript repository (AUR).
- There's a growing external buildscript/binary repository for audio
  applications (archaudio.org)

Sure there are drawbacks
- Arch patches as little as possible, there are no security updates
  unless upstream fixes it and provides a new version
- Rolling release model can break stuff
- very recent versions of software can break stuff

I hope I didn't forget anything important.
The arch wiki is an o.k. resource to get an overview and
general information, or just ask here or on an Arch Linux mailinglist.

Regards,
Philipp