postmarketOS on the Pyra ?

[levi]

Ditto Arch. Now, Arch did take me the best part of a part time week to get set up and working the first time I did it, but I've installed it on a few machines now and I can get to a working machine now in about 15 minutes, all set up how I like in about 45 minutes. I consider that time well spent as it allows me to get older machines working without taking up too much disc space, or slowing down the boot process too much.

Edit: For a dedicated machine, Debian post-stable is a fine choice for me. I do like Arch's rolling releases as it means with very little investment of effort from myself I get a constantly improving machine, but that mainly applies when I've installed linux on a machine that wasn't designed for it originally. On a machine designed to work with and supplied with Linux, I'm happy with something like Debian, given it's solid package database that just works.

 

[tigerroast]

Or Gentoo. Bleeding edge and maximum customization.

I'm all about the Gentoo on all of my computers. It works EXACTLY how I want it to, with no bloat whatsoever. And Portage is an amazing package manager. Being able to use USE flags to compile every single package with exactly the features I want and not one single extra, is awesome.

I could go on but this would turn into a giant wall of Gentoo-loving text.

Gentoo was of interest to me when I jumped into Linux (since I use a Chromebook, I guess it still is), but I never took the plunge. Spending hours trying not to fuck up my first Arch installation was already daunting, but having to sit through compilation as well? With the hardware I had at the time? No, sir.

Actually, functionally speaking, ABS is quite similar to Portage, although not as powerful and is probably more like *BSD ports. I don't know, could you give me some of your thoughts contrasting Gentoo and Arch?

Then you would love Debian Sid... Sid is unstable, but he gets to play with all of the latest toys and gadgets.

Actually, that raises an interesting question. Arch, after a very short testing cycle, typically packages the latest stable releases of whatever packages it ships, which explains why, despite it being "bleeding-edge rolling release," I've had no stability issues outside of Enlightenment.

Is Debian Sid the same way? What's the main difference in how it's handled in comparison to Arch?
[doublepost=1497048620,1497045910][/doublepost]

Ditto Arch. Now, Arch did take me the best part of a part time week to get set up and working the first time I did it, but I've installed it on a few machines now and I can get to a working machine now in about 15 minutes, all set up how I like in about 45 minutes. I consider that time well spent as it allows me to get older machines working without taking up too much disc space, or slowing down the boot process too much.

Right? I wanted to get the WiFi working before I started the install process, so my first Arch install took me much longer than it should have. And I wasn't even that comfortable with the command line at the time, so mulling over what steps to take added more time.

I didn't have the patience to stretch that out over a week, so I worked through the night to get a functioning Arch+KDE 4 install. Go big or go home.

Edit: For a dedicated machine, Debian post-stable is a fine choice for me. I do like Arch's rolling releases as it means with very little investment of effort from myself I get a constantly improving machine, but that mainly applies when I've installed linux on a machine that wasn't designed for it originally. On a machine designed to work with and supplied with Linux, I'm happy with something like Debian, given it's solid package database that just works.

Debian is an excellent OS, but I do have some (probably minor) concerns about some of the packages being quite old. Since the kernel's a DragonBox special, that's not a worry (plus, they can include atomic mode-setting[1]!), and, depending on how it ends up playing out, Pandora packages will be at their latest versions (whether there's a compatibility layer or all packages get rebuilt).

If using backports doesn't introduce any issues, then I really have nothing to complain about. I'm getting LibreOffice 5, that's for damn sure!

[1]:http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=OMAP-DRM-Atomic-MS-Linux-4.2

 

[trix]

I don't have a lot of experience with Arch, but from what I've seen Pacman is an excellent package manager, one of the best around for binary packages. I've been told it can also do source-based installs, but is not built from the ground up for it the way Portage is.

As for compiling, even on mediocre hardware it's not that bad, really only the really big packages are an issue (Desktop environment, Xorg, Firefox, OpenOffice, LibreOffice), and even then, Portage can do binary installations too. Personally I just set up the basic OS and leave all the large compile jobs to run overnight while I'm away from the computer. But that's just me, I prefer to compile every package my OS uses and stay away from the binary option, but a simple -k tells portage to fetch and use binaries and that works great too.

Gentoo will take longer to set up than Arch for sure. But the Gentoo Handbook and Documentation is AWESOME and extremely very thorough and well explained and anyone can jump right in and learn the entire OS they are using if they wish. Also, installing Gentoo is just a one time thing (presumably). Once installed, as an actual OS I use every day, I prefer it by leaps and bounds. Because I set it up completely myself, and understand how every level of my system works thanks to that, anything I want to do with it or fix or add, I know exactly where to start, because I understand on a deep level how everything works together. That is purely 100% thanks to the Gentoo Handbook and Documentation (and, of course, tons of man pages).

Arch Linux has many advantages, some even above Gentoo, but for more specific comparisons someone more familiar with Arch should speak to it.

Also, it's funny you mention BSD's Ports, as that is what Portage is based off of.
[doublepost=1497054478,1497054158][/doublepost]OH and one other huge advantage, Gentoo is by far the most stable OS I've ever used. I have yet to EVER see it crash or fail to boot, even through two corrupted hard drives much to my surprise. I don't enable a lot of the "testing" packages (though I have a couple dozen of them) so that is part of it, and being compiled for specifically my system and setup and nothing else is also likely a part of it.

Upgrading the entire system at once can be a pain, if it has been a long time since the last update. I try to update once every couple of months so it's pretty straightforward, but I've had systems that went a couple of years without updating and while they worked wonderfully, updating them and upgrading all the packages yielded some problems. That said, the vast majority of the problems I faced could have been easily avoided if I'd have read the readme that was shown to me when I started updating, rather than skipping it and doing it my way.

 

[levi]

Arch's port-a-like system works when it works best by cloning a git repository that just contains a PKGBUILD file. Run makepkg on it (a script provided by pacman) and that pulls down the source, builds it and spits out a package file. Install that using pacman and it'll be integrated into your system package database like any other. I am usually surprised that it works so smoothly when I use it, though it does feel a little crufty the way it pulls together shell scripts and curl and autotools and makefiles, but somehow it all hangs together.

 

[Letalis Sonus]

Or Gentoo. Bleeding edge and maximum customization.

Gentoo and bleeding edge? Gentoo is one of the most conservative distributions I have seen so far, their idea of stable even beats Debian. If you want bleeding edge, Arch is the bloodbath you're looking for.

I don't have a lot of experience with Arch, but from what I've seen Pacman is an excellent package manager, one of the best around for binary packages.

I do miss some features and its parameter syntax is something I really dislike, but from what I've heard it's actually a package manager with sane concepts and code - trying to build rpm yourself is apparently an Odyssey that has yet to meet its match.

I've been told it can also do source-based installs, but is not built from the ground up for it the way Portage is.

It doesn't. They simply use the PKGBUILD system that you might already know from the AUR to build everything - it's not related to pacman.

 

[levi]

$ pacman -Qo /usr/bin/makepkg
/usr/bin/makepkg is owned by pacman 5.0.1-5

 

[trix]

Gentoo and bleeding edge? Gentoo is one of the most conservative distributions I have seen so far, their idea of stable even beats Debian. If you want bleeding edge, Arch is the bloodbath you're looking for.

Gentoo (like Debian) separates stable and testing. They are conservative when it comes to stable, but have bleeding edge packages available. In Gentoo you can decide which packages are bleeding edge and which are stable yourself. I wouldn't recommend going full bleeding edge for every single package (on ANY distro) unless you like problems, but Gentoo makes it easy to choose exactly what you what per package, that's what Gentoo is.

Also, given Portage builds from source, Gentoo unstable or testing packages are often the very latest. Many packages use version .9999 to mean live builds (like github), and you can't get more bleeding edge than that.