1. Arch linux anyone? Distro choices blah blah.

[Federico Flego]

Hi there,

I've being using Archlinux on a Dell inspiron 5150 (Pentium 4 3.06 GHz, 
1Gb RAM) for a few years. It is very similar to Slackware with a 'user 
friendly' software install manager.
The main philosophy is it installs basic (really basic) software, than 
you add what you want.

In my opinion, when you want to run Linux on old machines, the largest 
gain is to run a light window manager (I use xfce, heavier than lxde)). 
Changing distribution will give smaller gains in comparison.

Archlinux actually provides you these smaller gains too, since it 
doesn't install and keep running, as several distributions do by 
default, all possible demons and other little programs that constantly 
check everything...

If you need some of these applications, as for example a battery daemon 
for your laptop, you need to explicitly install them. You could achieve 
the same result de-installing/turning off a lot of unwanted stuff on 
other distributions. I prefer to start from little and add on :)

Hope it helps somehow...

Cheers,

Ico.


> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Today's Topics:
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>    1. Arch linux anyone?  Distro choices blah blah. (dom at latter.org)
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> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Subject:
> Arch linux anyone? Distro choices blah blah.
> From:
> dom at latter.org
> Date:
> Fri, 27 Nov 2009 16:15:56 +0100
> To:
> clug at cambridge-lug.org
> 
> To:
> clug at cambridge-lug.org
> 
> 
> Anyone using Arch?
> 
> I've been using Ubuntu for a few years [0] but I've just tried using the 
> live version
> of 9.10 and if I boot the laptop with the big external display attached, 
> I get an
> utterly unusable flickering console.
> 
> FWIW I've installed Ubuntu 9.10 on the "kitchen radio" [1] laptop which 
> is just
> about minimum spec and it works reasonably well.  I've switched from 
> Gnome to LXDE
> on that machine to conserve RAM.  Only weirdness was that it would not 
> install properly
> if I made my /boot partition an ext2 filesystem.  Worked fine with ext4.
> 
> So I'm thinking of dumping Ubuntu - I've been waiting for it because the 
> 9.04 kernel
> has a bug in the intel video driver that makes video performance suck 
> the big one...
> and it appears it's still buggy.
> 
> Besides, the requirements of Ubuntu do creep up and the laptop's not 
> getting any
> faster.  So I'm currently looking at Arch and Frugalware, both of which 
> claim
> to be lightweight and for the experienced Linux user.
> 
> Anyone used either of these?
> 
> [0] Mandrake before that; and before that on the work fileserver, SuSE, 
> and before
> that I think it was Red Hat on a 486SX/33...
> [1] Main job is, indeed, living in the kitchen and providing me with 
> Radio 4.
> 
>