Basically, you fill in the program name, version number, dependencies, and the steps to compile it. There is an example PKGBUILD (the script that builds the package) included, and you just fill in the blanks. This is very useful because its is amazingly easy to make your own Arch package. Just browse to the proper directory of the program in /usr/abs and type ‘makepkg’ and that will download and compile and a package. It allows you to simply compile and make a package. “Pacman -Syu” is all you need to update your system. I was able to upgrade kernels perfectly as well. I upgraded to GCC3.3 (and then to 3.3.1 later) without any problems. For example, the Arch CD comes with GCC3.2.2. It is able to fully upgrade your system without a hitch. What more can I say? Pacman will fetch binary packages from servers (there’s 3, Current, Unofficial, and Unstable) and install and upgrade your system. This is Arch’s package manager and PORTS-like build system. I’ll now proliferate on some of the advantages of ArchLinux over other distributions:ġ. There is a i586 port in Beta, but since you cant use the standard repositories, its not very good. So if you run something older, you’re out of luck. This means you need a P2 or better (or Athlon). This brings me to a very important point. So your experience may differ on hardware support of course. I was able to set up my cd burner, Sound, and internet all using the ArchLinux documentation. So that was really my only problem in the beginning. They had me install ALSA, and use those drivers instead of the OSS emu10k1. So I popped into the Arch IRC room, and got lots of help from users and developers. This is actually a problem others were having, as I found out later. My big problem was that when I would try to ‘modprobe’ the emu10k1 driver (for my SB Audigy sound card) it would fail. While they are not included in the 0.5 ISO, ‘hwd’ should be in the 0.6 ISO. There are Arch packages for both of these. It will handle hard drives, motherboard, and other basic components, but you better know the kernel modules for your sound card, Ethernet card, modem, video card, etc.Īctually, if you at least know your Ethernet/modem module, you can run it and download HOTPLUG(this is what Slackware uses) or HWD(this is what Knoppix uses), and it will detect the hardware for you. This is important because ArchLinux doesn’t do much hardware detection. One nice thing about the install though is that you can edit your configuration files during the install, so you can have a fully working machine before you even reboot. You partition drives using FDISK or CFDISK, you then mount the partitions, choose your packages, install, and then install LILO or GRUB. The install is relatively strait-forward. Its Curses based, so its not exactly ‘text’, but its not exactly Graphical. The install is very much like Slackware’s or FreeBSD’s. This was probably one of the things that made my experience so good, so I suggest you do the same. On to a big point: I read all the documentation on the Arch site first. I began the download of the 650MB ISO image (there is also a 100MB Base ISO). So no more distro bashing, I chose to try Arch. Why not Gentoo? I dont want to compile everything, that was my problem. APT simply wasn’t as good as I would have hoped, and I found the community discouraging. I have Debian on one of my other machines and I simply didn’t like it. Now you may wonder why I didn’t go with Debian. I was getting tired of having to compile updated packages myself. Then Arch Linux 0.5 came out and I was very intrigued by it. I loved it, and laughed at those who used ‘more automatic’ distributions (ok, I didn’t actually laugh). A few months ago I was a Slackware Junkie.
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