salix vs. arch

[rayandrews]

Gentlemen,

Been using Linux for just over a year. Mint was the first thing I got working that I liked, so I've stayed with that till now. But as my knowledge grows I find myself wanting to try one of the less bloated, less Dozy distros. By nature I don't trust GUI setup widgets, I'm always asking myself what's 'really' going on and I like to do things in the most direct way possible. From what I read, Arch seems to have exactly the philosophy that I'm looking for OTOH, everyone (even people who don't use it) seems to agree that, at the end of the day, Slackware is the real deal. However I'm not a masochist so the idea of a Slackware derivative that makes life just a little bit easier, without taking anything away from the directness of Slackware itself, sounds like something I'd also be interested in. I don't doubt that most of you guys are familiar with Arch as well as many other distros, so I'm asking for an honest bit of self promotion here -- why would I choose Salix over Arch, or visa versa? Naturally package management is a huge issue. Arch seems to have reinvented the wheel. I find .deb/apt to be just fine, I don't know what I'd want more. OTOH when it comes to Slackware, one reads that there's no dependency checking and that it's primitive ... yet, dedicated users seem to have no problems. I don't know what to think. So, convert me guys ))

[mimosa]

Salix combines the stability and simplicity of Slackware with greater ease of use. In particular, that dependency problem you mention is taken care of.

Arch on the other hand has a rolling release model which means its packages are more up to date but potentially less stable.

In terms of community resources, Arch has a much bigger community and excellent documentation. The Salix forum is friendly and full of knowledgeable people; perhaps that's true of Arch too, I don't know.

I'd say Arch is quite hard work to get a working and comfortable configuration - though maybe it's easier than Slackware. But Salix is very polished out of the box. If you have new hardware (such as certain wireless cards) that may give you a bit of work. However searching the forum may well reveal a solution.

Why not give one of the Live Cds a spin? There is a wide selection of environments ranging from the ultra lightweight to KDE, to accommodate most hardware and tastes.

[antmon]

I totally agree with mimosa. Just try it. You will love it or leave it. I tried Arch and it's like Slackware with due differences. You have to do all the configuration by hand. If you started with Mint go with Salix for a taste and then go to Arch if that is your wish. Try Salix! You will not regret it!

[Tim CowChip]

Having used Arch for years before finding Salix, I was converted . They are very similar, but I found that Arch packages are updated perhaps too frequently. I have often had my system hosed by Arch updates, until I finally said "enough".

The other and perhaps main reason I was converted to Salix, is this most helpful, responsive, considerate and dedicated community.

I dual booted Arch and Salix for a long time until I replaced Arch with Slackel (djemos' Slackware-current based distro).

Once you've tried Slack, its hard to go back.

[Adys]

If you started from Linux Mint a year ago, I'd say that going directly to Arch could be "too big" to do it in one step (generally speaking).

Arch has good documentation, but it still requires some learning curve. Moreover, being a rolling-release distro, you might find yourself facing some problem that would need some particular knowledge level to be resolved.

This applies in general to every OS, but for Arch in particular, some "extra" knowledge might be a recommended requirement at some point or another.

Slackware (not Salix) might also be a "too big" jump to do in just one step.

So, starting from Mint, you could try / test several stepS, even in parallel (with multiboot installation or in Virtual environments).

One possible 'lighter" path could be LMDE, which is very similar to Mint but uses a semi-rolling release cycle. Or SwiftLinux, or SolusOS.

In parallel, familiarize yourself with one of the many editions of Salix. For an average-knowledge user, you will have dependencies resolution, plenty of packages already out-of-the-box and many more to download and add, without “thinking” about dependencies.

In the mean time, read The Salix Startup Guide, part of The Salix Wiki pages.

From one of the "easier" Salix editions, once you are comfortable with it, you could then try installing a Basic Salix (instead of the Full Installation) or even Salix Core. Or try Salix Fluxbox or Salix Ratpoison editions. Play with adding more than one Desktop Environment to your Salix OS; or adding some customization; or solving something "by hand"; or improving...

After that, you could try Slackel, which is a rolling release mix of Salix tools, latest KDE and "Slackware current" (as oppose to being based on Slackware 13.37, as Salix 13.37 is).

All these experiences can give you more knowledge, distributed in more gradual steps, while still having a working OS.

At some time you then could try Arch in parallel to one or more of the mentioned options, building "your" Arch and learning about its peculiarities, having experienced other "easier" rolling-release distros and Salix Core installation.

Then of course nothing can stop you from adding Slackware itself to the mix.

Obviously, YMMV, and what I wrote here are only very general ideas / possibilities on how to gradually increase both in knowledge and experience, while still having a working OS.

As mentioned, reading the respective wiki pages should also help you.

[Shador]

With Arch be prepared that you've got a gig of package updates readily waiting every other week. Additionally updates cause the one or other problem from time to time, which you have to search the solution for by yourself. Usually you're not the only archer experiencing that. On my arch machine after pulling in 1.5GB of updates the sysvinit scripts made the machine hang early during shutdown. Luckily soon afterwards I got systemd fully woking as I need, so I did not yet dig ino that issue.

[rayandrews]

Thanks for the replies all:

Several of you mentioned the rolling release model Arch uses, and the trouble it can cause. RR sounds like a great idea, and my LMDE uses that. It seems cool to hit the updater and have a few packages come down the wire and install OTOH, it has trashed the distro more than once, so maybe it's not quite as cool as people like to think. And one does read of Arch, in particular, melting down a bit too often. Me, I've always thought that there could be a middle way there, something like Debian's 'Stable' vs. 'Testing' -- you'd be able to RR, but still be able to do so from a well tested repo or from the less tested one, as you choose.

As nice as it is to read various opinions on this vs. that, it's especially good to read comments from people who are converts themselves. Tim says he used Arch for years and then converted to Salix, and that carries great weight, the dude knows whereof he speaks.

A helpful community is a huge thing too. I was a pretty good coder back in my DOS days, and I'd like to get involved with Linux, but it is so hard to get started. I have a thousand questions.

I love the way that you guys don't want to stray too far from Mother. I think that many a distro has gone sour when the devs wandered so far from home that they no longer could find their way back. There's far to much fragmentation in the Linux world. Choice is good, but anarchy is more like what we have. Too bad about the split from Zen, but I think you guys are on the right path with that. What about the other Slack derivatives, like Vector? I wish we could have some sort of peace congress and get everyone pulling together for once. A united Slackware empire would be a bright beacon of hope for those who (like myself) are tired of too much glitz and glitter.

Philosophically speaking, what me and my friends would like to see is and end the the artificial 'friendly' vs. 'hands-on' split in distro design. You have your 'Buntus, which, in their desire to do everything for you, go so far as to make it difficult for you to look under the hood. Then you have your Slack/Arch mentality which seems to think that suffering purifies the soul. Me, I see no reason why a distro can't be easy to set up, and possibly have lots of nice GUI applets to help you do things, while at the same time giving you unlimited ability to do things in a more direct way -- so we could have it all. Infact, I'd go so far as to design GUI applets so that they actually tutor you in how to do things directly. So, Salix seems to be offering me something like that -- it works out of the box but I still have all the simplicity and directness of Slack. Me like.

[Shador]

Several of you mentioned the rolling release model Arch uses, and the trouble it can cause. RR sounds like a great idea, and my LMDE uses that. It seems cool to hit the updater and have a few packages come down the wire and install OTOH, it has trashed the distro more than once, so maybe it's not quite as cool as people like to think. And one does read of Arch, in particular, melting down a bit too often. Me, I've always thought that there could be a middle way there, something like Debian's 'Stable' vs. 'Testing' -- you'd be able to RR, but still be able to do so from a well tested repo or from the less tested one, as you choose.

Not at all saying that RR is bad. Obviously RR is less stable than the release model used with Slackware. But the main problem with Arch is that they use the absolutely most current software as long as it is not completely broken. And being that recent means that the one or other annoying problems creep in. The burden to actually keep the system stable is moved from the developers to the user, which can mean quite a lot of work. With Arch you'd better think twice before upgrading your system with the most recent packages.

[rayandrews]

Not at all saying that RR is bad. Obviously RR is less stable than the release model used with Slackware. But the main problem with Arch is that they use the absolutely most current software as long as it is not completely broken. And being that recent means that the one or other annoying problems creep in. The burden to actually keep the system stable is moved from the developers to the user, which can mean quite a lot of work. With Arch you'd better think twice before upgrading your system with the most recent packages.

Yes, I understand. I think RR is a good thing, but it seems that Arch has taken a good idea and turned it into a liability by being so uncareful about it. A friend of mine just tried Arch, and he had nothing but trouble with that. Esp. did things go very bad very fast when he started trying to use the AUR. That's a shame since it will obviously be a huge turnoff. Myself, I think that a stable, usable package manager / updater is the cornerstone of a decent distro -- folks just shouldn't have to make sure their wills are up to date before they upgrade their systems.

[Shador]

but it seems that Arch has taken a good idea and turned it into a liability by being so uncareful about it.

Not at all imho. They are not at all claiming to be stable. One of their main goals is to be absolutely cutting-edge and the unstability that goes with that is what you have to bear with.

Esp. did things go very bad very fast when he started trying to use the AUR.

Sorry, but that seems to be a case of pebkac. I never had such problems with AUR generally. There are one or other poorly maintained packages and stuff, but generally speaking it's up-to-date and well-maintained.

The only problem I have is that I want a stable system. And I want to achieve that without cherry-picking every update and there are just so many with Arch that you've got almost no chance to do that anyway. But still Arch has it's corners like pretty much every Linux distro. It's just that you can't use every distro for anything. But sometimes Arch can be really great and their wiki is a gigantic place.