Arch Linux
So I finally got my computer back. Sure took a while. I was sitting with pretty much just a clean Windows Vista install and decided to try something new. Until now Ubuntu has been the only Linux distro that I’ve used so why not try something else. As I’m a customization addict I figured Arch would be a fun choice.
It took some reading, tweaking, testing, installing, reinstalling, uninstalling, partitioning, formatting, configuring and before I knew it I had an Arch system running. Nah to be honest it wasn’t all that bad. I wouldn’t recommend it as a first Linux distro but for anyone who knows a bit about the Linux system it should be doable. And once the actual system is installed it starts getting really fun.
Arch comes with the Pacman package management system which is really easy to use. For a person who is already familiar with apt-get it’s pretty much just a matter of learning the equivelants of already known commands. This makes installing programs and libraries a breeze with Arch.
The real challenge was getting a window manager and desktop environment going. I had decided that I would try out Fluxbox. After messing around with it for a few hours or so I gave up. There were simply stuff I couldn’t get to work that I really wanted. Instead I decided to install XFCE. Again it took a bit of tweaking and configuring but it wasn’t that hard.
So now I got a pretty good and really fast Linux system running on my computer. Still dual booting with Windows mostly so I can develop for both platforms and of course to enjoy a bit of gaming every once in a while. Installing/configuring Arch was a bit of a challenge and this topic might be good for some tutorial later on. However there are plenty to find already if you take the time to look around. I must say I’m really enjoying the distro and I think that I’m going to like it even more than Ubuntu.
Take care everyone
Sigurd
