A Linux Alternative

[Matt Manos]

Just wanted to throw this out there for those of you who like to get hands-on with your operating systems . . . I installed Arch Linux on my Toshiba Satellite L305-S5955 laptop about a week ago and would highly recommend it for a DIY distribution. The installation process was considerably more involved than I was used to. Quite a bit of it involved editing config files at the command line. Happily, there's a beginners guide (that covers installation) which offers some of the best Linux documentation I've ever seen. The beauty of Arch is that you can make it as minimal or as full-featured as you want. The installer only gives you a Linux kernel, a few basic tools, and a package manager. Other pertinent points are as follows. You can create a very speedy system, since it doesn't come with any extraneous cruft and is optimized for i686 processors. There is a smaller chance of finding a bug in some convoluted gui app because Arch itself doesn't have any convoluted gui apps. Additionally, Arch makes as few changes as possible to packages in its repositories, keeping them as close to upstream as possible. Arch is a rolling release, so you can get the latest and greatest software with a single command. Never again will you have to reinstall just to get the new version of your_favorite_program. Occasional breakage may occur due to the "bleeding edge" nature of the distro. This is typically the result of an upstream bug, not something introduced by Arch. It doesn't take a Unix guru to install Arch. I've been using Ubuntu and openSUSE for about two years and I managed to install it and do a basic config in the course of about four to six hours. Folks less spoiled by guis should be able to get it done in far less time. YMMV

 

[avg1joe]

I haven't tried arch but I've had fun with puppy linux in its many flavors. Its amazing some of the things you can do with this little distro.

 

[Matt Manos]

I love Puppy. Version 4.3.1 was the first Puppy to properly detect my Satellite L305-S5955 wireless chipset.

 

[Smith P.]

Did you try Ubuntu 9.10 ?

 

[Matt Manos]

I did. The kernel boot parameters in /boot/grub/menu.lst have to be edited to make the cooling fan work properly in my cheap Satellite L305-S5955. Grub2 made this a little difficult. I found out how to edit the corresponding file in Grub2 but I never got my cooling fan issues resolved to my satisfaction. With Arch, I can edit menu.lst and tell pacman (the Arch package manager) never to upgrade to or update grub. With 9.01 I had problems with X eating up 15% of my laptop's RAM at any given time and that was after I added a xorg ppa to my repositories. Prior to that X was taking up twice that much RAM. I think this issue was alleviated with 9.10 but I don't remember what the memory usage was. On the other hand, I installed 9.10 on my e-Machines desktop without a hitch. Ubuntu One seems buggy but that appears to be a common problem. I also really liked openSUSE 11.1 on my desktop. I dislike having to fool with umpteen different repositories, though. I periodically get the urge to try out Fedora but I just can't seem to get the hang of it.