Unashamed Arch plug

[floppybootstomp]

I've been thinking about this and this is the software I use within Mint, as far as I can remember:

Thunderbird
Opera Browser
Firefox Browser (Only for download helper)
Libre Office
Scribus
Assorted media players for audio and video files.
Steam.

And that's about it so far, I still use MS for video and picture editing.

Thunderbird works fine for me so I haven't attempted to upgrade it.

I'm using Opera 12.16 as their new version makes a complete mess of my saved bookmarks.

As stated, I only use Firefox as it runs Download Helper and Opera doesn't, so not interested in upgrading.

Libre Office is a piece of cake to upgrade, they let you know when it needs it, give a link and then you can run the file or download the file and run it.

Scribus (a sort of publisher clone) is working well and I haven't attempted to upgrade.

Steam works and auto-upgrades, as far as I'm aware.

And I can play media files so why worry?

And I've actually just upgraded Mint itself to Mint Cinnamon 18.1 'Serena' it was all self-configuring and painless, including the kernel upgrade.

So, assuming it is difficult to upgrade software within the UK's favourite distro - who gives a monkeys?

All this Arch and Slackware elitism eh? Who needs it?

PS: One word: Paragraphs.

 

[Abarbarian]

All this Arch and Slackware elitism eh? Who needs it?

.

Well as far as I can see none of my posts in this thread are elitist. I started the thread to showcase my favorite os. Most of the posts I have made are informative and cover a range of views I think. Heck its not my fault your Mint os has flaws

 

[bootneck02]

That is the beauty of Linux you have a choice what suits me may not suit you, also the longer you use Linux distros you may want to experiment with another distro or distro's nothing wrong with that and as far as promoting a particular distro and informing readers is a good thing and broadens their minds about possibilities.

 

[Urmas]

There are brazillions of PPAs (personal package archives) available for Mint/Ubuntu.

Maintained by devs, mostly, but still: approach with healthy caution.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2942...g-edge-software-in-ubuntu-and-linux-mint.html

 

[Abarbarian]

There are brazillions of PPAs (personal package archives) available for Mint/Ubuntu.

Maintained by devs, mostly, but still: approach with healthy caution.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2942...g-edge-software-in-ubuntu-and-linux-mint.html

This is true. However taking that route to update for the latest packages is time consuming and potentially unsafe and requires some research if done sensibly. Certainly not as easy and safe as

pacman -Syu

Which is my point really.

 

[Urmas]

This is true. However taking that route to update for the latest packages is time consuming and potentially unsafe and requires some research if done sensibly.

Yes... but only once per PPA. When a PPA is added software sources list, that is. After that — if you insist doing things the command line way

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

I am pointless and proud of it.

 

[Abarbarian]

Yes... but only once per PPA. When a PPA is added software sources list, that is. After that — if you insist doing things the command line way

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

I am pointless and proud of it.

So after faphing around with PPA's you need TWO lines of code to update to the latest versions ?

 

[Urmas]

you need TWO lines of code

Oh, all right:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

 

[Abarbarian]

Oh, all right:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

Excellent riposte

 

[Abarbarian]

After having the thread hijacked it is time to get back on track. This is after all a thread dedicated to Arch linux.

The Big Arch Linux Interview (2005)

​

Today we are very happy to feature a huge interview with most of the developer team of Arch Linux, including its founder, Judd Vinet. If you are curious about this young and promising Linux distribution, dig in for more!

Judd Vinet: The thrill of creating something that other people use and like. I think that's the main motivation for me now. Arch has already reached a point of "best-suited distribution for me" so it's already fulfilled the goals set out when I started it. Now I find myself looking forward to adding features that other users will find helpful, and looking forward to working with other Archers. I'm truly proud of the calibre of our community and the way we've carved ourselves a little niche in the over-crowded distro contention.

Jan de Groot: Arch suits my needs, though it has its limitations sometimes. I switched to LFS and later gentoo for a while, but didn't like them. After I switched back, I became an archlinux maintainer.

Tobias Kieslich: In 2003, when I was tired of over customized distros, I found Archlinux. It had the latest software and did not look so exaggerated complex. As a bonus I got a fast and easy package manager and a distro which makes it easy to look behind the surface and learn the basics of Linux in general.

Damir Perisa: I run ArchLinux since 0.4 and since then i never had to reinstall the OS on this laptop. Besides no need to reinstall it, i have always the latest versions of software i need.
................................
Opensource software depend on people who are willing to offer some of their time to all the others. In the end, it's a big virtual team of thousands of people helping each other to have working software they can use as tools for their work.

Tobias Powalowski: I started with 0.6 one year ago and was impressed by the simplicity. An other point i really liked was that the community was really friendly and it was really easy to contribute things to Arch.
...........................
Quote from Damir ( it's a great explanation):

Opensource software depend on people who are willing to offer some of their time to all the others. In the end, it's a big virtual team of thousands of people helping each other to have working software they can use as tools for their work.
I fully agree to that.

Aurelien Foret:
All in all, before discovering Arch, I was a passive F/OSS user. I never cared for contributing to the Open Source community, or even subscribing to forums or mailing lists.

Arch changed turned me upside-down. After the first install, I immediately loved it, and it gave me the will to do something. I started to answer posts on the forums, and to report bugs. Several days after I was contributing new packages, and I started to write patches for pacman (Arch Linux package manager). Only a few months later, I got hired in the development team.

Arjan Timmerman: I came to archlinux two years ago, after looking for a new distro on distrowatch.

The KISS part it mentions was exactly what i was looking for. I had ran slackware/debian/gentoo pre1.0 and openbsd before.

"Arch Vs The World, Page 9/9"
...............
Judd Vinet:As for prerequisite knowledge, you don't need that much to start using Arch, as long as you're prepared to ask questions and read documentation. It's not as involved as we often make it out to be, but having a rudimentary knowledge of the commandline, kernels, modules and hardware config will be a big asset when climbing our learning curve.

Damir Perisa:
I think that diversity is also the key to linux. You should not try to convince say a Debian user to use something else because you like it. It has to do with ideas. The possibilities today give the people the freedom of choice. This is a strenght opensource software has compared to commercial products. You often have 2 or 3 kind of software to choose to do be productive.

Jason Chu: I only have experience with Slackware, Debian, and Gentoo. Even then, I don't see what the point in comparing them is. They may all be linux distros but they're all managed differently and have different goals.

Tobias Powalowski:
What you need for Arch:
Read the install doc,wikis manpages, learn how to use your favourite editor and some basics of how the files in /etc work together that's all you need. Since Arch delivers the things normally as they are you can read the manual of each package you need and adjust it to your needs.

Aurelien Foret:
I don't consider there's a peculiar knowledge required for an average Linux user before trying Arch. On the opposite, you'll find yourself far more knowledgeable by using it!

I thoroughly enjoyed this article which has contributions from some of the main developers of Arch. It was refreshing to read their views on the development os. They see like very nice folk and I am happy to support their efforts and would like to thank them for creating a fine operating system.

 

[floppybootstomp]

Hi Jack

 

[Abarbarian]

linuxandubuntu.com

Arch Linux Take Your Linux Knowledge To Next Level [Review] (2016)

This review will be a bit unconventional, probably because Arch Linux itself is a bit unconventional. Rather than having continued, numbered releases like most distros, Arch Linux follows the rolling-release model, meaning that you install Arch once and it updates forever (or at least, until you break something). There is no “Arch Linux 16.04 LTS”, there is simply Arch Linux. The philosophy of Arch, known as The Arch Way, focuses on simplicity and user centrality, rather than user friendliness.

Pragmatism is another central theme, where the user installs only what is needed or desired and bloatware is nonexistent. This, combined with an almost unparalleled availability of customization, makes Arch Linux the ideal choice for the enthusiast that wants to hone his/her machine down to a finely tuned instrument of precision; or for the somewhat experienced Linux user that wants to take his/her Linux knowledge to the next level.

 

[bootneck02]

Thanks for that Abarbarian, but dint think I am quite ready for that yet.

 

[Abarbarian]

My 2017 Arch Linux desktop setup(2017)

"My desktop is currently running a fairly custom configuration of Arch Linux which I'm going to attempt to explain in this post. First, I use my desktop as a multi-purpose system. My primary activities include:

• Open source software development (Ruby, Node, Go, Elixir, etc.)
• General desktop use (browser, email, chat, etc.)
• Gaming (including some Windows-only games, like Overwatch)
• Personal file server/cold storage (important files I would never want to lose)
• Media server (Plex, etc.)
• Kitchen sink (I run whatever appliances I happen to be using at the moment with docker)

I dual-boot Windows 10 so that I can play Overwatch and a few other games. I previously also used Windows as a media/file server, but I prefer to use Linux for my personal computing as there are many privacy concerns about Windows 10 and it's kind of a black box to me. For example, I tried to use Storage Spaces and nearly lost some data when a drive failed and Windows wouldn't mount my mirrored space (even though it was supposed to tolerate that failure transparently). I also wanted to encrypt the space, but after that near-miss I didn't feel confident in allowing Windows to encrypt the same data it almost ate without the encryption.

That said, I had some pretty lofty goals for my new desktop setup:"

Customisation or changing things to suit oneself is probably the most appealing feature in running a GNU/Linux operating system.
Now you probably could make all the tweaks and changes mentioned in the article from any of the hundreds of distros out there like Mint or MX-16 for instance. However it would be a long and thankless task.
This is where os's like Arch shine.

 

[bootneck02]

I haven't tried Arch but love Mint Cinnamon, anything to get away from Microsoft and to be honest will never be returning to M/S. What does surprise me that other users of M/S have not converted to a Linux Distro or dual booted. My trust with M/S was finally broken when they brought out W10 and the attitude that your PC was their property.
What I like about Linux is the freedom to choose what distribution that's suits you and not what they want to sell you and of course Linux distributions are free (except the commercial distro's like Red Hat) My wife still runs Windows 10 and when she has a problem she asks me to help and I find it confusing now, no much prefer Linux and never to be enslaved by the constraints and expense of Windows.

 

[Abarbarian]

Aye stick with Mint , Arch would give you nightmares. MX-16 would be a good replacement for Mint if you ever felt like being adventurous.

 

[bootneck02]

I am to old for adventures

 

[Abarbarian]

Yer never too old for adventures.

 

[bootneck02]

Me moving from W10 to Linux Mint Cinnamon was a bold move and an adventure into the unknown for me and now I am used to it I think I will stick with it.

 

[Core]

After years of ranking Mint as the best distro I've used, I've discovered Antergos. It's amazing. Check it out.