I’ve installed arch Linux and liked it, but lfs and Gentoo would be too time consuming compiling everything and not doing anything during and after install. Are there any distros like arch that don’t have me compiling everything?
NixOS or GNU Guix are your best options for advanced distributions. Guix is a much newer project so theres a lot of ways you can contribute.
Guix isn’t a Linux distro but it’s definitely unique and probably for advanced users! :)
lol I didn’t know Hurd was still a thing
They mean ‘Guix System’. Just like there is ‘Nix’ the package manager and ‘NixOS’ the distro, there is ‘Guix’ the package manager and ‘Guix System’ the distro.
A linux distro is a linux distro. It’s you, who invests the time to experiment and understand, who unlocks advanced features. There’s no shortcuts to learning Linux than to use it and read about it and install it many many times.
Exactly. You can use Ubuntu in a noobish way, or you can do crazy things with it. It’s not the tools, but the craftsman that makes the difference.
That said, distros each have a niche, so find the one that’s closest to the types of problems you want to solve. For example, if you’re making a kiosk, you’re probably better off pushing out your own images, so a distro that’s designed to build small images is probably desired over one that seeks to pack in every library and application under the sun.
If you don’t know what you want, pick something well supported and dig in to whatever interests you. Want to learn systemd? Pick a distro that uses it and write your own service files (e.g. maybe a Minecraft server, or perhaps synching). Want to learn to build software yourself? Grab a tarball from the project’s page instead of installing through the package manager. And so on. If you start from something unfamiliar, you’ll have to learn a lot of irrelevant things, which may not be what you want.
Have you at least tried to install Gentoo? Everyone has to think they can, and fail, at least once in their lives.
This comment feels like an XKCD quote.
Close, XKCD:456.
It’s a great way to polish you sysadmin and troubleshooting skills, that’s for sure.
Similar to arch in what way? What about arch don’t you like, you can look at other arch-based distros.
Most distributions have binary package managers anyways, so you won’t struggle to find some.
Exactly. If it is the rolling nature op does actualy like perhaps opensuse tumblweed is a good one to try?
There isn’t anything about arch I specifically don’t like, I’d just like to see if there’s anything that’s better in a certain criteria I don’t yet know of.
There are lots of good distros. The question is a bit too vague for useful answers.
You could always try NixOS.
Arch may not be particularly easy to use, but it’s a simple system, in that you can build a mental model of your entire setup with a fraction of the effort and time that you’d need to expend with other systems. It gives you the standard Linux experience without fuss, or handholding.
Nix, however, gives you several capabilities that other systems won’t, but you’re paying for that through its learning curve.
Just enable flatpaks or install Pop_OS! and use only flatpaks.
My personal journey was Arch > Void > Gentoo > Arch > Nix > Void again > realizing there’s nothing really like Arch and going back for good. Hope this helps!
Same
What do you mean? Arch doesn’t have you “compiling everything”. It’s a mostly binary distribution. The Arch repositories are binary, and more than a few of the packages in the AUR are binary as well.
I’m also not following “not doing anything during and after install” - what do you mean by after install in that sentence?
I’d love to help, but I can’t figure out what your issue is. If you’re looking for something like Arch, but faster and easier to set up, try Endeavor - it’s basically Arch with a graphical installer and some neat extra tools.
I’d also suggest looking in to Void, since you don’t appear to be afraid of the command line. You’ll find it similar in approach to Arch, but everything is binary packages; there’s no compiling unless you grab dev tools and pull the source from Github or Codeberg or whatever yourself.
I’m also not following “not doing anything during and after install” - what do you mean by after install in that sentence?
I made the mistake of trying to pacman -S librewolf not realizing it was going to compile from source. An hour later (on my Ryzen 7 5800X) it wasn’t finished, so I killed it and installed librewolf-bin.
librewolf is not an official arch package it is in AUR. So you couldn’t have just typed pacman -S librewolf to compile it; and if you really wanted it without compiling libreworlf-bin.
You’re right, I used
yay. I usedpacmanto illustrate the point.
What’s the purpose? Which application do you have running on Linux that you think you need to compile everything, configure everything, and that will only run on an “advanced” distro?
Is it some high specialized clustered distributed high performance, high availability computing application where you need your own kernel tweaks in?
Or are you just a distro hopper, tinkering just for the sake of it and for imaginary bragging rights? If it’s for learning, try to establish a specific real goal and learn how to reach it.
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Try Void
What do you mean by “not doing anything during and after install” re Gentoo?
Your computer isn’t held hostage during compilation of that was your impression
Until it hangs because I tried to play Classic Doom.
NixOS! I can’t for the life of me figure this shit out. It just won’t click for me but I get the advantages so I wanna use it so bad
I completely agree with this, I want to use it so badly but I think the documentation and other video tutorials aren’t explaining it in a way that clicks for me, maybe?
check out the matrix room https://matrix.to/#/#nix:nixos.org. a lot of really smart and helpful people in there.
Ooh, I’m bookmarking it! I’ll check it out later!
I like Void, it feels a little more like a BSD. But I’ve only really used it for experimentation, no idea what it’s like as a daily driver.
You could also try an actual BSD. OpenBSD has a very clear style and direction which I like but be careful when partitioning, they have their own ‘disklabel’ system. Updates are really streamlined with syspatch and sysupgrade.
NetBSD had a nice TUI installer. It may appear a bit less focussed on its aims but has a lot going for it: many supporter platforms, a friendly community, etc.
There’s also FreeBSD, DragonflyBSD, possibly more but I don’t have much experience with those.
The FreeBSD handbook is amazing for this! IMO the best guide out there for an operating system
What do you mean by “advanced Linux distro”?
If you mean starting at a minimal starting point and only installing what you need, then you may as well start off with a minimal Debian netinst, then add the stuff you want once you’ve got the minimal system installed.
What do you need that Arch doesn’t provide?
OP is probably complaining about AUR packages needing to be compiled most of the time. In that case, use the chaotic AUR. If you don’t trust it, then compile the software from the AUR yourself.
Are the AUR helper applications still not well documented these days?
Why would a wrapper around pacman need documentation? Anyways, --help and the Arch Wiki have it too.
nixos is a personal love of mine.
But it’s source-based (with a binary cache)
It takes like 10 seconds to install a package. Get benefits of Source based distros while still being fast af + No dependency hell
That binary cache means you don’t have to compile anything the distro provides. Same as any binary distro.
but with a simple
--substitute falseyou can make it compile on install. I love nixYes, or if you override something you’ll compile that thing and anything depending on it. If you override glibc, you’ll recompile pretty much the entire system!
true,
--substitute falsewill compile all dependencies, down to the compiler itself, but a simple (/s)nix-build " " [package] --checkwill compile just the chosen package, skipping dependencies, and compare it against the cached binary in the repo to ensure they’re equivalent.
I could have gotten that nix-build command slightly off as I’m typing this from memory. I am also saying most of this in jest as they aren’t really solutions to anything mentioned above and I moreso find them interesting features.
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not doing anything during and after install
You know that those of us who use Gentoo as a daily driver don’t just stare there and watch things compile, right?
Maybe once during the initial install but on a modern system kicking off updates before bed and coming back in the morning to an updated computer isn’t unusual (just read any news and postinst messages).
When I was using it, every two or three months. And even then, kick off an update or install, go to the bathroom, get some coffee, come back and it’s ready.
