TechieMoe.com

Introduction:

I was first introduced to Arch Linux a very long time ago (around version 0.1 homer) off of Distrowatch.  The only thing that really possessed me to try it then was that it was under 300MB and claimed to be "i686 optimized".  Not to put too fine a point on it, it sucked.  It was nearly unusable, the install script was still in its infancy, and the illustrious homemade package manager "pacman" had yet to be more than vaporware.  With version 0.6 I see that the little distro is growing up, but its voice still cracks quite a bit and it's covered in very bad acne. 

Install:

The installer is a text-mode/ncurses installer that reminds me a great deal of Slackware, around version 8.2. If you've read my review of Slackware 8.2, you probably have a good idea that any analogy to that distro is most definitely a very bad thing.  Though the install is fairly simple and almost intuitive, it still lacks the polish of newer Slackwares or Libranets.  You are guided through the steps of formatting your hard drive (thankfully automated format works), choosing your packages from an archaic list much like Debian's dpkg, and setting up your network, X Windows, and kernel modules. One good thing here is that before you reboot the system you have the chance to hand edit all of the text files for these components using EITHER vi or nano, rather than some distro makers' insistence that you MUST use vi.  Thank God for small favors.  You can also edit lilo.conf or grub.conf (depending on which you choose to install). I elected for LILO because it gives me warning if I screwed something up BEFORE I try and boot to it, unlike GRUB.  Install took about 10 minutes.

First boot gave me something interesting to ponder.  The boot sequence was very fast (around 30-45 seconds) and looked very much like the boot sequence gentoo uses.  I confirmed that in the install a package named 'gentoo' was installed so I can only assume that the entire distro is based upon some permutation of gentoo.  Unfortunately, they left out the wonderful 'portage' package management system which makes a 2 day install of gentoo worth it.

UPDATE: A reader has brought to my attention a strangely-named software project called "gentoo" which is actually a file manager. This is more than likely what was installed by Arch. Interestingly enough, although the folks at the Gentoo Linux Foundation are very protective of their trademark, they explicitly allow this confusing moniker. Go figure.

Package Selection:

The ISO for this distro is just a little below 500MB, and judging from the very small package collection Arch installs by default, if I had to estimate based on past experience I'd say the base install is not much more than 500-700MB.  This qualifies Arch for the Lightweight category, as I draw is the intention of the maintainers.  I wasn't really able to check the versions of everything due to a problem I'll discuss in the next section, but according to Distrowatch this version of Arch is relatively up to date, including a 2.6.4 kernel. 

Most Annoying Feature:

Just like Slackware 8.2, I booted to a root prompt and had to manually add a normal user.  Nothing terribly difficult for someone like me but absolutely impossible for Joe Average.  Once I did that I tried to see what window manager Arch decided to use by default, since I noticed XFce was installed.  I got nothing and X Windows dumped me to a terminal saying nothing had been configured.  Deja vu of the horrors that were Slackware 8.2, when I couldn't get a damn thing to load on account of the mouse driver not loading. 

Consulting the error log for XFree86 I confirmed that yes indeed it was my mouse that was giving it trouble, so I figured I'd hook up the optional PS/2 (mouse port) connection for my mouse rather than the USB I normally use, reboot, and try again.  Nothing once again.  At this point I gave up.  One day perhaps when I feel like devoting this amount of time to a distro again, I'll toss Arch in the trash and try and install Gentoo again.

Some of you may say: "Surely you're being too harsh on this distro.  It's very young, you shouldn't expect everything to work yet!" To those people I say  "NAY!  And  don't call me Shirley."  In the year 2004 where there are roughly 200+ Linux distributions out there, not having automatic hardware detection that sets up your X Windows system automatically is simply UNACCEPTABLE. I mean, even Slackware sets up X Windows correctly these days.  Arch is on the low end of the bell curve.

Who's it best for?

Wow, I almost feel like this is worthy of a catchphrase.  Who's this good for, audience?  All together now:  NO ONE!!  Joe Average was down for the count as soon as he saw the archaic ncurses installer, power users already have their own favorite "do it yourself" distros like Linux From Scratch, Gentoo, or Slackware and I doubt they'd want to waste their time on Arch when "i686-optimized" is just one kernel recompile away.