Distributions

Rolling with Arch Linux

It's always a good time to review Arch Linux since it features a rolling release model. This means frequent upgrades, with no release dates. In other words, Arch is always in its latest version, constantly being updated in small intervals of time. That makes it perfect for reviewing, since it's fresh whenever it's being taken for a spin.

Arch is inspired by CRUX, a simple and lightweight distribution which is inspired by BSD. Arch Linux first appeared in 2002. Although it shares some ideas with CRUX, Arch was developed from scratch, with no legacy from any other distribution. Arch Linux today has a devoted community, which stays close to its founding principles. According to DistroWatch's distribution ranking, Arch is doing better than ever, making it to the top ten in 2009, where it remains so far this year.

AIF

Occasionally the Arch Linux team does release installation images with a current snapshot of the core packages, a minimal set of packages found in the core repository. So core installation images contain just the packages needed for a basic install of Arch. These, together with AIF (Arch Linux Installation Framework), take care of the installation process. It is also possible to do a network installation where everything is retrieved from the Internet during the installation process. Images are available for CD (.iso) and USB stick (.img). The latest set of installation images originate from August 2009, labeled as 2009.08.

The default installation media boot option will work in the most cases. A live installation system allows configuration of the keyboard layout and the network (making it possible to do a network install) before the actual installation is started. AIF, available as an /arch/setup executable, is a command line tool with an ncurses-based interface. The installation steps managed by AIF are not unusual for the typical GNU/Linux install. This includes partition selection.

Before the partitioning, the installation source (CD, USB or network) and the time need to be set. Arch offers automatic disk partitioning and setup, together with manual disk partitioning and/or partition selection. There is an undo option, in case something goes wrong during the partition setup. The ext4 file system is fully supported.

Package selection is another important step in the installation process. The system offers a package group selection in the first step, followed by detailed package selection list. Hardware drivers are manually selected during this step. The Arch core includes firmware packages for most of the wireless chips used on today's computers, which is very important since the packages for the rest of the system (X Window System, desktop environments, programs) are retrieved from the network. For example, the Intel 4965 wireless chip in the test machine became fully operational only after the firmware installation. Speaking of WiFi, the wireless_tools package is available to install the necessary wireless network setup tools.

After the packages are installed, AIF proceeds to the system configuration interface. This is nothing more than a list of the configuration files which need to be edited with a default editor. The defaults can be a good starting point for the core installation, so only the last option is needed - root password setup. AIF installs GRUB, which is configured to ignore any other operating systems on the computer except Arch.

The desktop

I am reviewing Arch Linux as a desktop/workstation distribution this time. Therefore, the installation is just a first step which must be followed by additional installation and configuration for the desktop. The core system only contains basic services and the shell.

A wired network connection should work "out of the box" using DHCP. At this point a basic knowledge of Pacman, the Arch package manager, is a requirement. Fortunately, the Arch Wiki is a great place to look for the answers. All the manuals needed for the beginner worked like a charm during the test.

A few metapackage installs and system file edits later I had a functional desktop. In some cases, some of the packages are not installed automatically. For example, a functional X.org setup requires manual video and input driver installation. If a GNOME desktop is desired Hal will be installed as a dependency, but it needs to be started and configured to start on boot by hand. This is a good illustration of the Arch approach, since Hal is always a requirement with GNOME, but all X.org video drivers are not. Installation of unneeded video drivers wouldn't be clean by Arch standards.

There is no default desktop environment on Arch. Most window managers or desktops are available for installation, in very fresh versions. Freshness, at the time the article was written, means KDE SC 4.4.1, GNOME 2.28.2 and XFCE 4.6. Most of the packages come in a vanilla setup, therefore available desktop environments look and behave the same as they would if the installation was done from the source tarballs.

Other popular programs are very fresh too. Firefox 3.6, Thunderbird 3.0, Pidgin 2.6.6 and OpenOffice.org 3.2 are just part of the big software collection Arch provides in its repositories. All the searches for the additional software ended successfully during the test, which included Nvidia proprietary drivers and Flash plugin.

Speed

Arch seems very fast. While there is no exact measure, the overall subjective experience during this test was highly positive. A completely functional system with all necessary system tools and services installed and running, was fast and stable 100% of the time.

Installation and setup does take some time. Reading the documentation and installation/setup tasks take quite lot of time, even for advanced GNU/Linux users, especially those who have no experience with Arch. However the Arch Wiki provides all the answers for system and package installation and setup.

The Arch Way

Arch is developed and maintained in the "Arch way". "The following five core principles comprise what is commonly referred to as the Arch Way, or the Arch Philosophy, perhaps best summarized by the acronym KISS for Keep It Simple, Stupid."

In the Arch dictionary, simple and code-correct means no automatizing or autoconfiguration, and almost no patching. Therefore, user needs to do everything related to the installation and configuration. Sometimes the user involvement goes pretty far. For example, after the Network Manager installation, it needs to be started manually and set to do so on startup. Pacman does resolve dependencies automatically, so that part does not need to be done by hand.

The benefits of "The Arch Way" are good system performance and absolute control over the installation and setup, much like the control one gets with Gentoo. It is worth investing time in Arch if you want to learn the internals of a GNU/Linux system, maintain complete control over your system, and get good performance.

Conclusion

Overall, Arch is great. First, it's great for the users who want to learn GNU/Linux by choosing packages and editing configuration files. It's great for the users who have a knowledge of GNU/Linux and want to put together the system mostly by hand. Those who want an easy install and a functional system out of the box should avoid it.

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Fedora 13 Alpha released

The first alpha release of Fedora 13 is out. "We need your help to make Fedora 13 the best release yet, so please take a moment of your time to download and try out the Alpha and make sure the things that are important to you are working. If you find a bug, please report it -- every bug you uncover is a chance to improve the experience for millions of Fedora users worldwide." There is a lot of new stuff in this release; see the announcement for a summary.

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Debian Project Leader Elections 2010: Call for nominations

Nominations are open for this year's Debian Project Leader election until March 11, 2010. "Prospective leaders should be familiar with the constitution, but just to review: there's a one week period when interested developers can nominate themselves and announce their platform, followed by a three week period intended for campaigning, followed by two weeks for the election itself."

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Fedora Board Recap 2010-03-04

Click below for a recap of the March 4, 2010 meeting of the Fedora Advisory Board. The main topic was Release Lifecycle Proposals.

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Ubuntu changing its look

Ubuntu has posted a page on its new branding, representing a significant change of look for the distribution. No more brown. "We're drawn to Light because it denotes both warmth and clarity, and intrigued by the idea that 'light' is a good value in software. Good software is 'light' in the sense that it uses your resources efficiently, runs quickly, and can easily be reshaped as needed. Ubuntu represents a break with the bloatware of proprietary operating systems and an opportunity to delight to those who use computers for work and play. More and more of our communications are powered by light, and in future, our processing power will depend on our ability to work with light, too." Screenshots and more are included.

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Ubuntu 8.04 ClamAV update

The version of ClamAV shipped with Ubuntu 8.04 LTS has reached its end-of-life. "Upstream ClamAV announced that the end of life for ClamAV versions 0.94 and earlier to be April 15, 2010. To properly support users of ClamAV in Ubuntu 8.04 LTS, this maintenance release upgrades ClamAV to 0.95.3." This advisory also applies to the corresponding versions of Kubuntu, Edubuntu, and Xubuntu.

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MeeGo: Toward Day One

Valtteri Halla, the Nokia representative on the MeeGo Technical Steering Group, has posted some information on the future of the project. "The most important question is of course about the code. We hope to move on here very quickly now. Nokia and Intel have set the target to open the MeeGo repository by the end of this month. I guess this is something that finally will signify the real 'Day One' of MeeGo project, a genuine merger of moblin and maemo. What is scheduled to be available then is the first and very raw baseline to a source and binary repository to build MeeGo trunk on Intel ATOM boards and Nokia N900."

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Announcing NEOPhysis

NEOPhysis is a new distribution for the Openmoko Freerunner. "What is Neophysis? It's a sort of Linux from scratch for the Freerunner (although it could potentially run on any embedded system which runs a bit of daemons and has libraries as per the following notes), we re-thought the concept of "distro" aiming at boot speed and phone stability." The project is in the early alpha stage.

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Arch Linux Newsletter March 2010

The March 2010 issue of the Arch Linux Newsletter is out, with news from the Arch Linux community.

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DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 344

The DistroWatch Weekly for March 8, 2010 is out. "It is always nice to have a choice of operating systems to run on our desktops. The PC-BSD project has been doing marvels with FreeBSD - in the project's latest release, version 8.0, the developers have turned the predominantly server operating system into an amazingly easy-to-use desktop system that anybody can install and use. Read our first-look review to find out more. In the news section, Canonical updates Ubuntu's desktop theme, KNOPPIX releases a new version of the popular live CD, openSUSE adds the LXDE desktop to the list of options on its install media, and a project called multicd.sh delivers a script that combines several CD images into one bootable CD or DVD with a single command. Also in this issue, links to interviews with Ubuntu's Melissa Draper and KNOPPIX's Klaus Knopper, some speculation on the possible release date of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, and a bunch of useful shell scripts for a variety of common tasks. All this and more in this issue of DistroWatch Weekly - happy reading!"

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Fedora Weekly News 216

The Fedora Weekly News for March 1, 2010 is out. "In Announcements, we have several development items, including changes for packaging guidelines, a call for F13 translation packages rebuilds, and news on Fedora 13 Alpha RC4 decisions from last week. In news from the Fedora Planet, thoughts on UX collaboration between conferences, how to set up client and server certificates for use with Apache Qpid, and perspectives on why the IIPA's position toward Open Source is problematic and wrong. In Marketing news, an update on last week's Fedora Insight sprint, work on a Communication Matrix for the Marketing team, and detail on the past weekly meeting activities, including decisioning the F13 slogan -- "Rock It!" In Ambassador news, an event report from Dhaka, and updates on the Campus Ambassador program. In Quality Assurance news, next week's Test Day focus on webcams, lots of tasty detail from QA Team weekly meetings, and a new tool, fedora-easy-karma, which greatly asssists in the process of filing feedback on packages in updates-testing via Bodhi. Translation reviews the upcoming Fedora 13 tasks in that area, updates on the Transifex 0.80 upgrade, and new members in the Fedora Localization Project for the Russian, Traditional Chinese and Greek teams. This week's issue closes with security advisory updates from the past week for Fedora 11, 12 and 13. Read on!"

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The Mint Newsletter - issue 101

This issue of the Mint Newsletter covers the LXDE edition and the Helena XFCE edition and several other topics.

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openSUSE Weekly News/113

This issue of the openSUSE Weekly News covers Pavol Rusnak: Announcing Connect!, Andrew Wafaa: openSUSE & Google Summer of Code 2010, Bento-Theme implementation approach, Linux.com/Joe Brockmeier: Beginner's Guide to Nmap, and Poll: Which linux Distro do you use frequently.

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Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter #183

The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter for March 6, 2010 is out. "In this issue we cover: Mark Shuttleworth: "Light" the new look of Ubuntu, Announcing the 10.10 Ubuntu Developer Summit, UI Freeze in place for Lucid, Developer Membership Board meeting, International Women's Day Vote, Getting Patches Upstream, The Grand App Writing Challenge Submissions, Server Bug Zapping results, Ubuntu Classroom Team presents "ClassBot", February 2010 Team Reports, and much, much more!"

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Debian at CeBIT

Click below for a report from the Debian booth at CeBIT. "This year we were guests at the booth of Univention, a German company basing their products upon Debian, in exhibition hall 2, near one of the main entrances of the exhibition. While I must say that we had less visitors (an overall trend at this year), the quality of questions asked was far better than previously."

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Innovators get Linux to boot in 1 second (EDN)

EDN reports that MontaVista Software has developed an embedded version of Linux that boots in less than a second. "In addition to designing real-time Linux, MontaVista has been working on the development of real-fast Linux, a Linux operating system that boots in less than 1 second. The team who worked on the project includes Alexander Kaliadin, Nikita Youshchenko, and Cedric Hombourger. Many on the team also worked on the MontaVista real-time Linux. "One of the first things we did years ago was to make the Linux scheduler pre-emptive and deterministic," says Hombourger. These fast-boot developments are not necessarily limited to real-time or an embedded Linux; however, they can get a conventional Linux distribution to boot in 1 second, as well."

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The Three Giants of Linux (Linux Magazine)

Linux Magazine takes a look at the Linux distribution ecosystem. "By the time Slackware came onto the scene, there were already half a dozen Linux distributions. A few months later however, on August 16th 1993, one of the most important was about to emerge all on its own, which today takes the crown for the oldest surviving independently developed Linux distribution. Meet Debian. Debian was not a fork of any previous work, but an independent project in its own right, created by Ian Murdock. Entirely community driven, Debian remains the largest non-commercial distributor of Linux. Almost one year after the birth of Debian, in 1994 the third and final member of the most influential distributions arrived on the scene, Red Hat Linux."

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The Linux Desktop Will Have Its Day (LinuxInsider)

LinuxInsider talks with Mark Shuttleworth. "Mark Shuttleworth: People think of Ubuntu as Linux, or Red Hat as Linux, or they think of Debian as Linux. But actually the real work gets done in many upstream communities. The distributions get a lot of credit. And our focus has been to really try to serve those upstream communities well by delivering their code to users on a very predictable schedule with the highest levels of quality and integration."

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