Archived
Posted on 2009-10-06 (Updated on 2019-01-24)
Recently, tioduke inquired about how my Arch adventure was going, so get ready for a follow-up post!
Installing Arch was not as simple as other distros I've tried; however, I was able to get through it and found my netbook to be in a useable - if bare-bone - state. Arch does not come with a lot of extra fluff when it's first installed, so I was left with my console and the highly developed Arch wiki.
The wiki (and some folks in the #linuxoutlaws IRC) had things like my wireless card up and running, but I never quite got up to an X session. I believe I stumbled into problems when I tried to set up HAL, but couldn't really get anywhere from there. I even took it to my LUG, to partake of their wisdom, but we weren't able to get X started.
Well, that's only half accurate; I was able to get X started once or twice, but it appeared to freeze after that. I later on learned that I may have needed to install some sort of X input package... why wouldn't that be included with X itself?!?
So, after the LUG meeting, I ended up installing CrunchBang - and that's what I'm using as I type this. Someday I'll revisit Arch, but I think I went about it the wrong way this time around. First, I installed an unfamiliar drive as the primary OS on my netbook. I don't use my netbook a tremendous amount, but I do use it. Not having it available made a N810 my primary machine at the LUG meeting, which didn't really cut it. If I was going to try it again, I would install Arch on an SD card and dual-boot.
I may revisit Arch again someday. The idea of starting with a absolutely bare-bones system and building from there is an attractive one, and the rolling release idea makes a lot of sense to me. But for now, I consider this experiment... Archived.
(Any complaints about the pun can be sent directly to my parents. It's all their fault.)
Tags: linux troubleshooting
Comments
<p>Installing just what is needed for Xorg is the "Arch way"; which keeps things minimal.</p> <p>Recently, while installing the Xorg package on a different distro, the dependencies that I needed to install included a GUI app (and all of its dependencies) for configuring a network. I still can't figure out why I needed a network app to run Xorg.</p>jezra – http://www.jezra.net