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Friday, June 8, 2012

From zero to sixty in about six hours

I will be the first to admit that is not my best record for running an arch install. Taking EVERYTHING into account. DVD I/O failure, USB drive not wanting to work. Hard Drive failure and the first install attempt borking after updating (No fatal kernel errors this time!). Anyway after I got it all figured out what to use for the install the legit installation only took about four hours total.

Its not something I am going to do a full documentation on since arch has some AWESOME docs over on their site: Arch Linux: Beginners Install Guide.
Plus that if you don't have an active network connection then you likely should not be playing with this.

So why suddenly move back to arch?
Well I got invited to FOSSCON this year by a fellow in IRC who asked me if I could help out with the Arch "Corner" at the event. Me always loving a social gathering of the nerds decided I would. The issue was I was not running arch at the time. I was running Xubuntu  so I spent most of today running too and fro getting another arch install going.

So whats the story here?
Arch in and of it self is like playing amnesia (no really) when you get started you pretty much wake up with nothing but a terminal... -You know that nice black background with white text thing that hackers and pseudo hackers like to mess with that seems like wizardry to the normal user? That thing. Yep you got it!- This can be a little scary for some users who are used to nice slick streamlined GUI like Gnome, KDE or the Unity. Fear not for the documentation page above will bring you back into the glory of a GUI...and one you pick none the less. -Or you can go all hardcore and stick to the terminal like jack should have stuck to Rose.-

Unlike Ubuntu and its many many many clones (Ubuntu was once a clone....) arch makes you think when using it. Don't just carelessly update your system because it could lead to issues. Read the arch homepage and make sure its safe.  Which leads me to another reason arch is epic: Pacman... no kids not the game pacman in arch stands for Package Manager -See what they did there...? If not, find a wall and go kick it with out and shoes on at full force then come back and look again. Rinse and repeat till you get it- Pacman in arch is like software center in ubuntu... only with out the GUI.... I mean really that is cool.

Anyway I am not here to sell you on installing arch because I am not going to lie its a bitch the first time through. It took me on my first install about 12 -15 hours total to get it running. -Today was only about 4 after getting the initial install going- after this as mentioned before you are dropped into a terminal where the world is your oyster. After you get network running its a good idea to do an update or just you know follow the instructions on the guide linked above.

Anyway after all my work was over I had a nice light desktop running enlightenment17 or "e17" for short over all I like it. its on par with  XFCE performance wise but its also a step up due to composting and other effects which really give this DE its own flare. Right now other then the google talk plugin this is near perfection, hell I even have Teamspeak3 on here and I did it with less pain then I did on ubuntu. (Well after installing Yaourt) Everything works as it should: with out question

So here is how it looks:

Over all I am giving arch a 9.5/10 you cant beat the ammount of control it gives you over your system. If your willing to build from the ground up you are in essence building your own OS. Sounds like fun to me.

Thanks for reading.

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