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    installgen2Whitson Gordon
    12/06/12 2:20pm

    Maybe this is just me projecting my bad experiences with Arch, but if you wanted a really customized Linux distribution, why not go with Gentoo? Compile times are a pain, but I've found Gentoo to be a lot less fussy than Arch. In all honesty though, I'd just go for a minimal install of Debian testing or Ubuntu.

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      nickthenameinstallgen2
      12/06/12 6:53pm

      I've found that doing a minimal installation of ubuntu and a bit of messing around in the command line allows you to gain plenty of knowledge of linux without having to end up with a rather unstable setup. Also, much of the knowledge you pick up when installing a distro from near-nothing is distro specific, so it's nice to make your distro specific knowledge be on something that is very common.

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      freddy_younginstallgen2
      12/07/12 8:35am

      Fussy in which way?

      Actually I couldn't stand Gentoo because of its compile times.

      Arch just works

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    The MossWhitson Gordon
    12/06/12 12:16pm

    I just installed Arch on my laptop as I was upgrading to Win 8. I dual boot with it using the Win 8 bootloader (instead of GRUB). Took a bit more reading and a few trials, but got it up and running now and loving it!

    https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Windows_and_Arch_Dual_Boot#Using_Windows_boot-loader

    The tricky thing with this one is to make sure there's a /boot partition for GRUB to reside on and an FAT-32 partition so Windows can see it. The bootloader looks like this, fyi

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      akshay2000The Moss
      12/12/12 3:11am

      Do you mean to say that you are using only Windows 8 bootloader? Why? I mean, yeah, it looks good, really good. But usually, people load Windows bootloader via GRUB by chainloading. No?

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      The Mossakshay2000
      12/12/12 12:07pm

      Well I guess that's a good question, as I've asked myself that a few times too.

      The reasons that lead me down this road was to try something else and that it looked really good. It's weird though because it goes through BIOS, loads the Win8 bootloader, I select my OS... but when I pick my Arch Partition, it basically restarts by going through BIOS and all, and then pulls up GRUB (so there's no chainloading needed for this).

      It's fairly cool and visually appealing to be doing it this way, but it is very slow and not very practical. I've been contemplating switching back to chainloading with GRUB since that's much faster, and easier to deal with too.

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    BishopBlaizeWhitson Gordon
    12/06/12 11:35am

    Since I built my first Hackintosh I realized how useful is to have a fully tested list of hardware to choose from before you build and add the OS. Linux has good compatibility, but not perfect, and the reason I left was because of one too many updates that took a weekend to get my soundcard working again. I wonder if someone might link to such as list for people wanting to do a linux build?

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      Whitson GordonBishopBlaize
      12/06/12 11:50am

      Ubuntu has a pretty good list of compatible hardware: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HardwareSupport

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      majorsquirrelWhitson Gordon
      12/11/12 12:50am

      So can I use that list for my Arch install? Would that work well?

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    zomeburnerWhitson Gordon
    12/06/12 12:50pm

    I was wondering if switching to a non-debian-based distro would make some softwares uninstallable. Could that be the case ?

    For examples, games, drivers, and so many others apps ? It's just that I don't often see an Arch package available... I know there is the compiling possibility, but... ?

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      Whitson Gordonzomeburner
      12/06/12 12:52pm

      This is why I love the AUR. Chances are, if there's an app you want, someone's already compiled it and you can install it with a package manager like Yaourt or Packer. In fact, I've probably had to compile LESS from source on Arch than I did on Ubuntu!

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      srzbblezomeburner
      12/06/12 5:52pm

      I've been using Arch for more than one year and I never had to compile.

      If it's not here: https://www.archlinux.org/packages/

      Then it's here: https://aur.archlinux.org/

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    myrddynWhitson Gordon
    7/11/13 11:56pm

    I appreciate your articles, so I turned off my AdBlock...

    ... only to find you don't have ads on here. Is that intentional or is something else blocking them?

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      Whitson Gordonmyrddyn
      7/12/13 12:49am

      First of all: Thank you!

      Second, yes we do have ads, though not a ton of them. Usually only one or so is visible at a time, so maybe you're just missing it?

      Although something else could be blocking them. Maybe FlashBlock?

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    donniezazenWhitson Gordon
    12/07/12 1:26pm

    I like the direction and leadership Ubuntu has which is lacked in Arch. In Arch, most decisions are made by Desktop Environments. For example, power menu in Gnome is decided by Gnome, they also removed delete key function, etc.

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    SenorValascoWhitson Gordon
    12/06/12 4:43pm

    I remember back when you posted the last guide I bookmarked it with the intention of giving it a shot. Now around 2 years later I've bookmarked the updated guide...wonder if I'll get around to it this time...

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    aem2Whitson Gordon
    12/12/12 1:07pm

    I run Arch on both my server and my desktop, and I am wicked confused by systemd. I know it's now the linux standard, but I miss my rc.conf, dammit!

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    Mr_Green_LinuxWhitson Gordon
    12/06/12 11:38am

    Whitson do not forget to mention setting up of pacman-keys, unless you edit pacman.conf not to use them.

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    juzeraliWhitson Gordon
    12/06/12 12:44pm

    Thanks. I loved reading the article!

    Reply