• @[email protected]
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    249 months ago

    I’ve used arch on one machine now, am a total noob to it, and I really like it. I see what people are raving about and I see no reason to shit on it. I don’t really care if 6 years ago some people were annoying about it

        • @[email protected]OP
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          9 months ago

          Faster, more stable, no systemd, supports musl and architectures not usually supported by most distros. It’s probably the most stable rolling release distro out there.

                • @throwwyacc
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                  29 months ago

                  What are the systemd bugs that are so bad? I kinda get the bloated comment, but I don’t really mind when it serves its purpose

                  • @[email protected]OP
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                    29 months ago

                    Closing handles on services that for god knows what reason, just hang. Also stopping and starting services again doesn’t always work as intended.

                • @[email protected]
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                  9 months ago

                  I literally haven’t run into a single one in the whole time Arch has been using it.

                  (I installed Arch shortly before it switched to systemd and have been using it since without pause)

                  • @[email protected]OP
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                    19 months ago

                    You must be running hardware not older than 4 or 5 years. Try running it on hardware 10+ years old.

            • @[email protected]
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              9 months ago

              The main benefit is that when people get tired of distro flame wars, they can move on to init system flame wars.

            • @[email protected]
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              99 months ago

              With the price of energy being what it is, people need the systemd flame wars to keep them warm!

              • TheHarpyEagle
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                29 months ago

                I have no horse in this race, I don’t have strong feelings about it either way as long as it works. But I can’t help but notice that OP skipped replying to me.

                • @[email protected]
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                  39 months ago

                  OP said “bloated and full of bugs”.

                  I’ve been using Arch since shortly before they started using systemd and literally never ran into a systemd bug.

                  I have no clue at this point what “bloated” means. Maybe if everything works and you don’t have to hack up your own solution all the time, that’s “bloat”?

            • Yes. From their website:

              C library diversity

              Void Linux supports both the musl and GNU libc implementations, patching incompatible software when necessary and working with upstream developers to improve the correctness and portability of their projects.

              • @[email protected]
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                19 months ago

                “Patching incompatible software”

                What does that mean? If glibc is supported why there is a portability issueand requirement of patches?

                  • @[email protected]
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                    9 months ago

                    I have checked the void website and it does NOT support glibc. Here is it:

                    Wait edit: there is musl variant and glibc variant…

                    Incompatible software

                    musl practices very strict and minimal standard compliance. Many commonly used platform-specific extensions are not present. Because of this, it is common for software to need modification to compile and/or function properly. Void developers work to patch such software and hopefully get portability/correctness changes accepted into the upstream projects.

                    Proprietary software usually supports only glibc systems, though sometimes such applications are available as flatpaks and can be run on a musl system. In particular, the proprietary NVIDIA drivers do not support musl, which should be taken into account when evaluating hardware compatibility.

                    glibc chroot

                    Software requiring glibc can be run in a glibc chroot.

                  • @[email protected]
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                    19 months ago

                    Well if glibc is supported all glibc softwares must work right?? Patching the software to support musl would not be needed if it does support glibc

                  • @[email protected]OP
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                    9 months ago

                    Not just musl, software that depends on systemd (or parts of it) as well.

                    We also need to patch binaries as well sometimes 😁. It is fun though, cutter and/or iaito are great tools.

            • @[email protected]OP
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              29 months ago

              Yes, there are basically 2 builds for every architecture. One is glibc, the other is musl. I haven’t used the musl builds that much, just toyed with them a few times (mainly because of lack of software), but if you only use open source software that doesn’t specifically depend on the GNU toolchain, yes, you can daily drive it, no doubt there. And yes, it is faster than the glibc builds.

                • @[email protected]OP
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                  9 months ago

                  The syntax is a bit different, but everything else, more or less the same. In fact, if you just wanna repackage a deb or an rpm, it’s even easier than in Arch, xbps-src can handle deb and rpm automatically, it detects dependencies and does repackaging on it’s own. You basically just have to feed it the deb/rpm file in a one liner, that’s it.

                  I should probably give an example. Here is the template file (they’re called templates in Void) for Viber. You basically just feed it the deb, do a vcopy (copy operation specific to xbps-src) and that’s it, everything else regarding the repackaging is done automatically by xbps-src.

                  • Thanks for the explanation. How does xbps-src handle dependencies? I.e. does it somehow detect the dependencies in the original package and find corresponding Void Linux packages? What about dependency versions? What happens if a dependency is not available in the Void repos?

            • @[email protected]OP
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              9 months ago

              No, just bootup and general responsivness of the system. Software is still compiled by the ssme compilers used in other distros. Everything is not magically faster.

              Though on the musl build, yeah, it is faster. Trouble is, you can’t run glibc software on it. Through chroot, yeah, but natively, no.

            • 56!
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              29 months ago
              • The package manager is extremely fast
              • The lack of systemd reduces startup time
              • The musl libc marginally speeds up programs
          • @[email protected]
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            19 months ago

            Interesting. I will have to try it some time. I just know on my raspberry pi 5, out of the few OSes I could get to run on it, Arch was the fastest and smoothest running, and gets updates all the time. All this, even though rpi5 is not even officially supported yet!

    • Ann Archy
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      29 months ago

      It’s a bit tounge in cheek, nobody actually got mad at the arch namedropping. More like “I’m a platinum level player in LoL”. Lol.

      • @[email protected]
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        29 months ago

        I always got the impression that it was more of an “Oh god one of THESE insufferable people”. I’m just saying from my experience – they have a point. Arch is pretty nice.

      • @[email protected]
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        109 months ago

        The existence of ArchWiki and the Arch User Respository (AUR). And rolling releases, if that’s your thing.

      • @[email protected]
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        79 months ago

        Basically just the fact that it’s very lightweight, I was able to install it on an rpi5 (not officially supported), install only what I needed, and was able to resolve all the issues I had for my niche use-case.

        There is a quite noticeable difference in how snappy it feels versus the official rpi OS. Arch runs way zippier on it. Those devices are a little limited hardware-wise so it makes a big difference in what it feels like to use that system.

        I also like knowing that the updates flowing in so quickly, I get the latest fixes and new features before I would on any of the other distros I’ve used. I have always been a little scared of rolling releases but over the last couple months I haven’t seen any breakages yet so fingers crossed! A lot of people have tried to tell me rolling release can be solid, but I was skeptical.

        • @[email protected]
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          39 months ago

          snappy it feels versus the official rpi OS

          I blame the desktop manager. Once I ditched the default von on the pi, and replaced it with standard gnome, the pi became almost as snappy as my regular notebook.

          in general: standard debian should be exactly as light-weight as arch.