A week since I became an Archer !!!

Last week I shifted, after a lot of contemplation (and hardwork), over to Arch Linux.

Given it wasn’t that easy - once my Ubuntu Grub disappeared, I had to reinstall my Arch distro around 8 times to figure out where I was going wrong - and yes, at one moment of time I actually had 4 different OSes booted on separate partitions on my laptop !! In the end I finally had to settle with Archbang Linux, based on the Arch kernel but with a different Window Manager.

And I tell you - the last week has been very tough but ( now that I come to think of it ) also very rewarding. Trying to get myself acquainted with my terminal - Terminator, different openbox themes, mpd, daemon files, the Arch wiki and forums and conky configs etc has been very exciting and I’m always learning.

So my desktop finally looks like :

This has come from a weeks worth of fiddling around.

For those of you who have no clue whats going on around here -

The arch philosophy 2.0 :

• simple : without unnecessary additions, modifications, or complications
• elegant : combining simplicity, power, effectiveness, a quality of neatness and an ingenious grace of design
• versatile : capable of doing many things competently; having varied uses or many functions
• expedient : easy, or quick; convenient

At the end of all of this you get a system which is yours and only yours. It has evolved as you have, reflects your personality, is as efficient as you have made it to be.

Never thought so much about an OS, have you?

But after all of this, Arch is not, I repeat NOT for everyone. It is for users who have spent considerable time with the CLI, know their way around a Linux system, have a hacker tendency - you learn by tweaking and fiddling around the system, and who are capable of dealing with errors and crashes on their own.

Or those who are capable of keeping up Arch’ssteeplearning curve.

With respect to the last point, the Arch user community is the “RTFM” type ( read the f** manual ). Yes they will help you out, but they expect you to have researched a lot and read the first 5 pages of google search results. Thats how the Arch philosophy works - you (ALWAYS) learn by doing. No matter where the error is, you will always figure it out.

For more info head on over to Arch’s website

For the next few weeks, I’ll probably posting a few more posts on my progress.