Arch Linux Announces New Project Leader

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Arch Linux Announces New Project Leader

Aaron Griffin is stepping down as the Arch Linux Project Leader, who has led the distribution since 2007 where under his tenure Arch Linux boomed in popularity. With him stepping away due to minimal time to invest in the project, a process for selecting a new leader has formed...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Arch-Linux-New-Project-Leader

[tildearrow]

Aaron, you will be missed.

[muncrief]

I recently switched from Manjaro to Arch and have been very happy with it so far. My only suggestion is that they at least offer a default GUI installer as an option.

I mean my goodness, I'm an old time hardware/firmware/software designer and even I find it an unnecessarily complicated process. Yes, we can all use the command line, and I guess for some that's impressive or a mark of superiority. But I can also do long division by hand, but use a calculator instead because doing long division by hand in the year 2020 would be silly

In any case, once you get it installed and set up, and research and fix the many quirks in setting up a full desktop system from such a low level, Arch really is awesome. My anecdotal experience is that it seems much faster than Manjaro, and there's more flexibility when attempting to install or experiment with the latest Linux features and developments. Manjaro does a great job of being an easier to use bleeding edge distro, but some of those ease of use features like kernel and GPU driver management can cause difficulty when attempting to utilize modified kernels and drivers.

[rhavenn]

I recently switched from Manjaro to Arch and have been very happy with it so far. My only suggestion is that they at least offer a default GUI installer as an option.

I mean my goodness, I'm an old time hardware/firmware/software designer and even I find it an unnecessarily complicated process. Yes, we can all use the command line, and I guess for some that's impressive or a mark of superiority. But I can also do long division by hand, but use a calculator instead because doing long division by hand in the year 2020 would be silly

In any case, once you get it installed and set up, and research and fix the many quirks in setting up a full desktop system from such a low level, Arch really is awesome. My anecdotal experience is that it seems much faster than Manjaro, and there's more flexibility when attempting to install or experiment with the latest Linux features and developments. Manjaro does a great job of being an easier to use bleeding edge distro, but some of those ease of use features like kernel and GPU driver management can cause difficulty when attempting to utilize modified kernels and drivers.

Yeah, but the "hardest" part is the disk partitioning and boot loader stuff. Once you're rebooted and "up" then installing a desktop manager, a desktop meta package , a few drivers, Xorg, and some tools is literally a 1-line pacman command. Normally, you don't have to make any changes outside of the package defaults.

So, unless you're building an installer to handle all of the above and the variables associated with that then just having a "default" desktop doesn't really add much. If you go that far then you're basically Manjaro.

[halo9en]

Infosec guy & CCC member, sounds like great news.

(And anyway, thanks Aaron)

[WebMac]

I recently switched from Manjaro to Arch and have been very happy with it so far. My only suggestion is that they at least offer a default GUI installer as an option.

That's exactly why I switched from Arch to Manjaro on my new PC. It offers an awesome out-of-the-box experience! For me Manjaro is the better way of "using Arch" on the desktop.

[halo9en]

That's exactly why I switched from Arch to Manjaro on my new PC. It offers an awesome out-of-the-box experience! For me Manjaro is the better way of "using Arch" on the desktop.

Custom repositories = delayed releases. If you need an installer there are alternatives (Arcolinux, Endeavour, etc) using regular Arch repos.

[kaprikawn]

I for one welcome our new Arch overlord

[andyprough]

Custom repositories = delayed releases. If you need an installer there are alternatives (Arcolinux, Endeavour, etc) using regular Arch repos.

What are the delay times - hours? Maybe a couple of days at most? I'm using Artix with some custom repositories plus Arch repositories, but the packages seem to land right on time. Could be that Manjaro is a much longer delay though, I haven't ever done anything more with it than try the live USB.

[Chugworth]

I recently switched from Manjaro to Arch and have been very happy with it so far. My only suggestion is that they at least offer a default GUI installer as an option.

I mean my goodness, I'm an old time hardware/firmware/software designer and even I find it an unnecessarily complicated process. Yes, we can all use the command line, and I guess for some that's impressive or a mark of superiority. But I can also do long division by hand, but use a calculator instead because doing long division by hand in the year 2020 would be silly

Well it becomes a problem when everyone just uses a calculator for long division and doesn't know how to do it by hand. In a rolling distro that's constantly on the cutting edge, things can break and the user needs to know how to repair them. The complicated installation wards off any users who would not be comfortable with that. Also, you're not just getting some generic configuration. You build the system exactly how you want it with all of the packages that you need and none of that packages that you don't need. Once you've been through the installation and documented all of the steps that are right for you, future installations are not that bad at all. In very little time I could install an Arch system that boots with EFISTUB and runs on a LUKS-encrypted Btrfs partition that supports snapshot and rollback functionality with Snapper. It's mostly just a matter of copying and pasting commands through SSH.