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Re: [Nmh-workers] OT: Arch Linux.
From: |
Bob Carragher |
Subject: |
Re: [Nmh-workers] OT: Arch Linux. |
Date: |
Tue, 01 Aug 2017 17:26:12 -0700 |
Hi Ralph,
Thanks for all your information and explanations on Arch Linux!
On Tue, 01 Aug 2017 11:40:05 +0100 Ralph Corderoy <address@hidden> sez:
> > I have a sufficiently non-standard install. Specifically, I prefer to
> > use ctwm instead of any of the modern "desktops"
>
> Arch Linux's install media leaves one at a VT with a shell.
> https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Installation_guide runs
> through the next steps, Internet access, partitioning,
> installing the core packages, and finishes with references to
> other wiki pages about common packages. So you get to choose
> if X might be useful, what window manager, etc. There are
> packages that just depend on lots of others so Gnomers can get
> their fix easily.
Oh, that's very nice! Most importantly for me, example shell
commands are given in the guide.
The 3 major and 1.5 minor reasons I use the Gnome tools (and
panel) are:
1. Update management -- I *really* don't want to be a
full-time sys-admin again, and the major reason I liked
Ubuntu was that it took care of all that for me. I just
logged into the "update" user I created for myself,
clicked on the "Update Manager" icon in the Gnome
session, and let it do its thing. If Arch Linux makes
it that easy (or there's a way to configure it to do so,
so that I control *whether* an update happens, but
otherwise it's automatic), then that works for me!
2. Network management -- specifically, for WiFi access.
3. Printer management -- specifically, to change printer
configuration (e.g. double-sided vs. single-sided) prior
to a print job.
4. Hardware temperature monitoring -- for which I use the
psensor(1) application that is launched by Ghome panel,
although anything that provides me a running visual
would suffice.
4.5 gkrellm(1), the Gnome GUI for the Krell hardware
monitors. There's probably some other GUI I can use.
One complication of this is that the certain Gnome applications
can be randomly restarted when some monitoring daemon is poked,
which in my situation sometimes leads to gnome-screensaver(1)
being restarted. If I then suspend my laptop, when I awaken it,
the appropriate hooks are not in place, and thus *none* of my
input devices (keyboard, mouse, trackpad) does anything -- and I
need to hard-reboot. (I've created scripts to prevent this and
similar Gnome-annoyances.) Not having to deal with this would be
a *very* nice bonus!
> > I need to see what has changed since my last OS update, which usually
> > means figuring out the new way to do XYZ -- and that's what typically
> > causes this to balloon to days
>
> With a rolling release, this tends to be a steady trickle of
> incremental package upgrades, most don't bother me, and when
> one does other users are in the same boat *now* so the solution
> is normally easy to find, e.g. top thread on the forum, rather
> than digging about for something from months ago when "testing"
> users first encountered it.
Woot! B-)
> > is it trivially easy to undo a package's upgrade?
>
> As a rolling release, a package can assume your other packages
> are up to date so there's not the "pinning" of one package at
> an old version whilst the rest move on. I think you can do it,
> but it's explicitly not supported.
>
> The repo has the current packages. There's an
> https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Archive that has the
> previous ones, and I used that once for the Nvidia problem that
> stopped graphics working.
Hmm ... this gives me *slight* pause, but probably as long as my
shell and NMH don't unexpectedly change then I can probably deal
with it. B-) Since there's a repo of packages, I can (probably)
just install an older version and cross my fingers that the newer
versions of libraries it depends on won't break the older build.
Bob