Re: [Nmh-workers] OT: Arch Linux.

[Bob Carragher]

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