This post is part one in a two part series (part two can be read here). In this post, I’ll explore some of my thoughts and feelings about Arch from a fairly high level vantage point–consider it a 50,000′ review. In the next post, I’ll explain why I feel comments like this one demonstrate a certain degree of naïvety, although it’s by far one of the more benign ones I’ve encountered in my short time partaking in the Arch community.

For those of you who know me or, at the very least, read my (mostly) pointless and fairly infrequent rants, you’ll probably recall my decision to leave Gentoo. Some eight or nine months later, I changed my mind and stuck with it for a while longer. That’s no longer the case, and as of January this year I permanently switched over to Arch Linux. I’ve been holding off on posting this rant primarily to take a “wait and see” approach to determine how well I’d do without Gentoo.

The short version is thus: I haven’t missed Gentoo one bit. I started about a year ago (maybe less), running Arch in a VM, tweaking settings, playing around with KDE 4.7-something, and spent quite some time familiarizing myself with the system. Coming from Gentoo and FreeBSD, the transition wasn’t that bad–I’m used to taking a greater hands-on approach with my systems than most people might be comfortable with–so ultimately, Arch felt like a natural fit.

Then I took the plunge.

For the interested, I should share a little bit of history. My initial foray into the world of Unix and Unix-like operating systems began around 2000ish (actually earlier, but it wasn’t until then when I started tinkering with them for my own purposes) with OpenBSD. I later transitioned to FreeBSD for a variety of reasons–mostly the improved performance and greater compatibility (at that time) with other software. It wasn’t until quite some time after that when I began using the ports collection, and prior to then I made a habit of configuring and compiling most of the software I used by hand. As my software library began to increase, so too did the amount of time needed to invest into updating it. I eventually began looking for other solutions, although I kept a FreeBSD system at home for a number of years thereafter.

Sometime later, around late 2003 or early 2004 (possibly as late as 2005), I began experimenting with Gentoo. While I tried other Linux distros, I found most of them too alien in contrast with my beloved *BSDs. Their package managers were strange and sometimes convoluted, and I had little idea how to properly install custom configured software as I was prone to doing. The BSD way worked, but I knew it wasn’t optimal since /usr/local seemed to be mostly unused or remained distro-specific as to its preferred usage. Gentoo was a reasonable fit: Its well-documented nature, a ports-like collection (portage), and the tendency to keep mostly out of the user’s way beckoned me to take a closer look. Better yet, though the system was compiled mostly from scratch, configuring individual options and customizing packages was simple and very BSD-like.

I’ll keep this as short as I can, but I’ll just say this: I ran Gentoo on my desktop and as a file server for a number of years, probably from 2005-2006 until just last year (2011). Indeed, in 2006, I made the switch to use Gentoo almost exclusively, even while I was going to university. Later that same year, my FreeBSD install on my file server was gone, victim to the spread of Gentoo. Don’t get me wrong: I still love FreeBSD–and Gentoo, too–but for home use FreeBSD didn’t seem cut out for what I wanted to do. Granted, I’d still run it in circumstances where I needed a stable, long-running platform as a web service or similar, but at that time, Ports often lagged behind Gentoo and sometimes the only way you could install software was to download and compile it yourself. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course. (N.B.: In 2010, the situation somewhat reversed: Ports was updated with newer software versions while Portage stagnated. Strange what a few years will do.)

So, the transition to Gentoo was made because everything I wanted was just an emerge away. Things remained like this for a long time, too, because Gentoo was at the bleeding edge, and the convenience of a rolling-release plus fairly simple package management was seductive. I think that’s why I had a hard time adopting other distros. Frequent, new releases of software allowed me to continue sampling what was coming down the turnpike and forced me to stay up to date on current software.

Gentoo was not without its warts, of course. I won’t go into detail here as I’ve linked to my thoughts on the matter earlier in this post–and they should be mostly up to date–but the problems that began as a slow trickle eventually turned into a torrent of disaster. Occasional dependency conflicts requiring manual intervention, lengthy X server compiles (and let’s not get into glibc or a desktop environment like KDE), the lack of package maintainers, and a slow, downward spiral into the abyss lead me to look for alternatives. I didn’t want to part with the rolling release model; indeed, once you’ve sampled such ambrosia, it’s difficult to whet your palate with meager release-based distros. Around this time (late 2010, early 2011), I was participating fairly regularly in various Slashdot discussions and made a similar offhanded remark about my concerns with Gentoo, and someone suggested trying Arch Linux. So I did.

The thing that struck me the most about Arch was its simplicity. There’s very little that it does for you. System configuration using the standard init scripts is exceptionally simple and straightforward (mostly in /etc/rc.conf), and with the exception of the package manager and build system, Arch makes Gentoo look like an impenetrable fortress of automation. Within a few days of using Arch, I fell in love with the brilliantly minimalistic design.

Truth be told, there’s a lot about Arch to love and enjoy. It does take some time to get the system configured to your liking, but the installation process is mostly painless and fairly simple (bugs in the installer notwithstanding). Using an AUR helper like yaourt isn’t necessary but strongly recommended. It also helps to have at least a passing understanding of how makepkg and pacman work and interact. Of course, it isn’t necessary to use extras like the Arch Build System (ABS) and the Arch User Repository (AUR), but to ignore them is to do yourself a great disservice: There’s so much software available on the AUR that it makes Ubuntu’s impressive repositories and widespread support (through .debs) seem almost anemic.

However, I don’t think it’s possible to use Arch for very long until you’re drawn in by the allure of creating your own PKGBUILDs. I think that’s at least part of what I like most about Arch. Unlike Gentoo’s ebuilds, PKGBUILDs are simple. Armed with just a basic understanding of sh-like syntax (e.g. bash), a moderately skilled user otherwise unfamiliar with PKGBUILDs could put together a custom one in under an hour. More advanced users could piece together PKGBUILDs customizing their favorite software in an evening or two (mostly dependent upon how many packages they want). But here’s the trick: If your PKGBUILD fails for whatever reason, it’s unlikely to break your system save for inappropriate dependencies or “conflicts” statements. Since pacman (Arch’s package manager) examines the contents of packages, including those generated by custom PKGBUILDs, and determines where each file in the archive is to be placed, it takes an exceptionally stupid habit (usually using -f for force) to circumvent pacman’s all-seeing eye.

To illustrate: When Arch released GIMP 2.8, I was disappointed by some of the new features. The solution? Create a GIMP 2.6 package! (You can download the PKGBUILD here, but be sure to grab both the gegl and babl PKGBUILDs, too.) Since the Arch project provides all the appropriate PKGBUILDs for the official repos, it’s easy to find the one you want, download it, and then modify it to your liking. You don’t even have to deal with the headaches caused by portage overlays.

The astute reader may have noticed that I haven’t yet addressed the issue of binary package updates with regards to the core system and official repositories. There’s a reason for that. While having the binary packages available is nice, and it’s certainly better than spending two days compiling KDE, it wasn’t my primary reason for switching. Binary releases did impact my decision–and don’t get me wrong, I love being able to download just the updates I need without compiling anything but the few AUR packages I have–but it’s one of those conveniences that’s nice to have. I won’t begrudge compiling the system (or kernel) from scratch, because I spent so many years with stagnant Gentoo systems compiling off and on over a week or two. It would seem a tad bit hypocritical of me to complain about compile times. Besides, if you swing that way, you can do that with Arch, too.

I don’t mean to wax optimistic about the glory of Arch. It’s not without the occasional sharp edge, and there’s a plethora of things that will snag the naive user who hasn’t yet developed the healthy habit of thoroughly reading documentation. I certainly wouldn’t recommend it to someone who’s new to Linux in general (they should use Ubuntu or a similar distribution), but for others who are at least familiar with the shell and want a do-it-yourself distro, Arch is certainly worth a look.

Interestingly, and unexpectedly, Arch has made using Linux fun again. I’m reminded of the days when I first started getting into Gentoo after understanding its quirks and loving every minute of it. The difference, though, is that I spend so much time doing things in Arch and with Arch that I almost don’t do much else (not even games!). My Windows install is probably lonely; it might receive a boot once every three weeks for the occasional update or game that I can’t otherwise get working under Wine, but even then, there’s so much more to explore with Arch.