Things I should know about Arch Linux

[TheGuyNL]

Hey there,

 

I've been using Debian for a long while but recently bumped into Arch Linux and it looks very attractive to me as it's very clean, built up from the bottom without nonsense.

So I've got it up and running next to debian, just to give it a try and it works just great. But I'm just wondering if there is things I should know, like usefull stuff or any cool tricks.

Also like packages I should probably install, just throw it at me! I'm interested to know what you guys use and want to find these awesome little things.

 

If I really like Arch, which already looks like it, I'll probably switch it up and make it my daily driver

 

So guys, let me know what I should know about!

 

Thanks for your answers 

[Ex0Thermic]

I've  not used it myself so i'm not going to be much help (sry)
but Jupiter Broadcasting have a youtube channel and done an I SWITCHED TO Arch so it might be worth a watch  ?

 

[TheGuyNL]

I've  not used it myself so i'm not going to be much help (sry)

but Jupiter Broadcasting have a youtube channel and done an I SWITCHED TO Arch so it might be worth a watch  ?

 

I have to say, very nice guy there. I never saw him around, the video looks nice and thank for the tip

[Satlen]

I recommend installing Yaourt so that you can install AUR apps easily in the console instead of downloading them, compiling them then running them.

 

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Yaourt

 

There is also these scripts that make it quick and easy to install

 

This one is the better of the two b/c it lets you choose everything https://github.com/helmuthdu/aui

 

This one is more simple installing xfce and a few other basic apps http://tuxomat.ml/my-arch-linux-instant-soup/

[virtualTune]

@alpenwasser can help

[TheGuyNL]

I recommend installing Yaourt so that you can install AUR apps easily in the console instead of downloading them, compiling them then running them.

 

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Yaourt

 

There is also these scripts that make it quick and easy to install

 

This one is the better of the two b/c it lets you choose everything https://github.com/helmuthdu/aui

 

This one is more simple installing xfce and a few other basic apps http://tuxomat.ml/my-arch-linux-instant-soup/

 

I already have yaourt running because of some stuff I wanted and found it. Thanks for the tip though. I use gnome (mainly because I'm used to it) as my GUI btw.

[rashdanml]

i3wm is a very minimalist and easy-to-use window manager. 

[alpenwasser]

@alpenwasser can help

 

Will need to get back to this tomorrow, time is a bit short

today.

 

Arch have actively maintained custom CPU optimized kernels with BFS and BFQ schedulers.

 

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/linux-ck

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Repo-ck

Huh, haven't come across that before, looks very intriguing

I must say.

i3wm is a very minimalist and easy-to-use window manager.

Indeed. I've been using it for almost two years now, really have

come to love it.

[rashdanml]

Arch have actively maintained custom CPU optimized kernels with BFS and BFQ schedulers.

 

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/linux-ck

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Repo-ck

That reminds me, I need to install Linux-ck on my laptop to take advantage of some of its power saving features. Already managing to push about 9 hours of decent use on my Thinkpad on a 9-cell battery, but with most power saving features enabled, that should go up to 12-14 hours. 

[Crabtr]

The best piece of advice I can give you is to play around with anything and everything and don't get flustered if/when things break. One of the best things about Arch and I suppose Linux in general is the freedom that's been given to you to experiment with things. If you break something, try to fix it.

Update often, read update notes and the wiki, hangout in their irc (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/IRC_channels) and forums, and subscribe to a few mailing lists (arch-announce, arch-general, and aur-general are great) to stay updated and get a good flow of information. Once you feel confident, start contributing back where you can.

[TheGuyNL]

The best piece of advice I can give you is to play around with anything and everything and don't get flustered if/when things break. One of the best things about Arch and I suppose Linux in general is the freedom that's been given to you to experiment with things. If you break something, try to fix it.

Update often, read update notes and the wiki, hangout in their irc (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/IRC_channels) and forums, and subscribe to a few mailing lists (arch-announce, arch-general, and aur-general are great) to stay updated and get a good flow of information. Once you feel confident, start contributing back where you can.

 

Thanks for the tips on the mailing lists, I didn't know about them And yep, I'm not scared to break the system (I've done it tons of times before) because I'll probably find a way to fix it, challenges are fun!

 

i3wm is a very minimalist and easy-to-use window manager. 

 

I'll surely check it out! Seems like it's good

[alpenwasser]

Well, most of the stuff I was going to mention has already

been mentioned I see. As said, I use i3wm as my window

manager, with very Vim-like keyboard shortcuts for great

efficiency.

Also highly recommendable is tmux, absolutely awesome if you

do a lot of work on the command line (and if you have Arch,

I don't see why you wouldn't ). Also configured very Vim-

like.

Oh, speaking of shells: ZSH is my preferred choice,

along with a syntax-highlighting plugin (package:

zsh-syntax-highlighting in the official repos).

Screenshot of that, with a vertical tmux split:

What I can also recommend, although it's not really specific

to Arch or Linux, is a Vim-like browser extension. Makes

browsing the web much more efficient. There are a few

different ones out there, differing in their level

of "hardcoreness". Personally I've recently switched to

Pentadactyl (Firefox), which is on the upper end of the "Vim

Scale of Hardness ™", but there are others which are a

bit simpler to use (VimFX I used for a while, not quite as

powerful, but more newbie-friendly).

[ThE_MarD]

Heyyo,

 

For GUI package manager? I've been really enjoying PacmanXG.

 

https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/pacmanxg4-bin/

 

It works with the default sources & AUR plus can scan for updates. It's handy if you're lazy like me with Terminal commands lol.

[alpenwasser]

@alpenwasser

 

Good tip on the syntax-highlighting. I am also using ZSH but I didn't look into modifying it too much. For my desktop I am currently using GNOME 3.12

 

http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/193910-best-linux-distro-for-me/?p=2631534

http://postimg.org/image/503ceyntv/

 

I have found the syntax highlighting rather convenient, can highly

recommend it. Other than that the primary customization I've done

is the prompt, for which I started with somebody else's .zshrc and

then modified that to suit my preferences.

Heyyo,

For GUI package manager? I've been really enjoying PacmanXG.

https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/pacmanxg4-bin/

It works with the default sources & AUR plus can scan for updates. It's handy if you're lazy like me with Terminal commands lol.

Oh, welcome to the forum!

I always kind of forget about GUI package managers because I rather

like pacman actually (plus, I do quite a bit of SSH terminal work

for which I can't use a GUI anyway), but yeah, if you're not too fond

of doing everything on the CLI, might be worth a look as well.

[TheGuyNL]

Well, most of the stuff I was going to mention has already

been mentioned I see. As said, I use i3wm as my window

manager, with very Vim-like keyboard shortcuts for great

efficiency.

Also highly recommendable is tmux, absolutely awesome if you

do a lot of work on the command line (and if you have Arch,

I don't see why you wouldn't ). Also configured very Vim-

like.

Oh, speaking of shells: ZSH is my preferred choice,

along with a syntax-highlighting plugin (package:

zsh-syntax-highlighting in the official repos).

Screenshot of that, with a vertical tmux split:

What I can also recommend, although it's not really specific

to Arch or Linux, is a Vim-like browser extension. Makes

browsing the web much more efficient. There are a few

different ones out there, differing in their level

of "hardcoreness". Personally I've recently switched to

Pentadactyl (Firefox), which is on the upper end of the "Vim

Scale of Hardness ", but there are others which are a

bit simpler to use (VimFX I used for a while, not quite as

powerful, but more newbie-friendly).

 

Looks like a very nice highlighter there. I've never really used vim btw, got used to nano (it was the first editor I used basically) but I'll take a look at vim as you seem to like it alot!

 

Heyyo,

 

For GUI package manager? I've been really enjoying PacmanXG.

 

https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/pacmanxg4-bin/

 

It works with the default sources & AUR plus can scan for updates. It's handy if you're lazy like me with Terminal commands lol.

 

I'm fine with doing all on command-line, used to it. Thanks for the tip though

 

 

Just a little thing I'd like to share with you guys while I'm at it:

I am currently doing my internship at a nice software development company. Here I got a pc on my first day running Windows 7, I asked if they were fine with linux, they were not sure about it because the rest of them were using Windows (even though there are a few Linux geeks there aswell). So I went ahead and setup my development environment on the Windows pc, this took me about a full day to get up and running. This was caused by some tools that didn't work straight away and needed some troubleshooting, which made other programs act weird. Finally I managed to get everything running and it worked okay. 

But today I said, screw it, I'm making it a dual bool with Arch. I wanted to take the challenge and see how long it would take me to get the same tools up and running within Arch. So, starting I build the base system with Gnome as a GUI (just a thing I got from Debian, I'm used to it ) and the base was running within 30 minutes of work, which was fast in my opinion. Taking the Windows 7 install takes about the same time. 

Now comes the fun part, the development tools: I started of building yaourt & pacaur (still can't decide which I like better) to get going.

And then, just trying pacman/pacaur/yaourt with the program name and I was done within the hour! I was astonished at how much programs there are available in the AUR. Everything I needed was in there, and installing it was a breeze. The system runs quicker than on Windows, everything worked directly without any troubleshooting being involved! 

 

That's what I wanted to share! I'm starting to love Arch already, I hate to go to websites and download the piece of software I need and the existence of the AUR helps out alot there. I'm gonna make it my daily driver and see how it goes.

 

Happy Arching!

[Maximation]

This is a very interesting thread. Thank you to everyone who contributed to it. I have been using Manjaro for a couple of months, and I find it about time to try out Arch. This was pretty helpful, I will start tinkering around in Arch very soon.

[Speedbird]

This is a pretty good guide, it's what I used to set it up on a VM. https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beginners%27_guide

[Maximation]

This is a pretty good guide, it's what I used to set it up on a VM. https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beginners%27_guide

Of course I have read a lot of the articles (well, a few) from the Arch wiki, they are brilliant. The Arch Linux wiki is just the best wiki ever created. It is full of amazing material.