[ale] Fwd: Re: Losing Ubuntu

James Sumners james.sumners at gmail.com
Fri Aug 13 19:38:35 EDT 2010


Sounds like just another Debian derivative to me[1].

There are several nice things about Arch:

1) It doesn't install anything extraneous. Whereas the base Debian
install has several useless daemons installed and running by default,
Arch has none (maybe NFS). You install what you need/want, and that is
it.

2) The package manager, pacman, is inspired by apt and port. The main
repositories provide binaries for all of the packages, but there is
also the community repository. Anyone can create a PKGBUILD[2] and
upload it to the community site and pacman can be used to
build/install them.

2a) Creating a new package for something that isn't already in the
repositories is _easy_.

3) It uses a rolling release system. Every so often a new "version"
will be released, but it's really just a snapshot of the repositories
on that date.

I think these things, and others, make Arch an excellent alternative
to Debian on the desktop. I think #3 makes it a horrible choice for
servers.

[1] -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mepis
[2] -- http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PKGBUILD

On Fri, Aug 13, 2010 at 7:18 PM, Paul <ale at pcartwright.com> wrote:
>
>
>  On 08/13/2010 01:29 PM, James Sumners wrote:
>>  So, to the original poster, I commend you for shunning the Ubuntu (I
>>  don't like it). But instead of going to Debian, you might want to look
>>  at Arch. Arch is very much like Debian, just newer.
> what about Mepis? what about antiX.mepis?
>
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-- 
James Sumners
http://james.roomfullofmirrors.com/

"All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts
pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it
is magnetic to the corruptible. Such people have a tendency to become
drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly addicted."

Missionaria Protectiva, Text QIV (decto)
CH:D 59



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