Is Arch Linux Really Faster Than Ubuntu?

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Tue, May 25, 2010 at 02:49:08PM -0300, Marcelo Cavalcante wrote:
> Not what I mean...
> 
> You're not forced to do anything...

If you use the distribution you are.

> Come on.. We're using Linux.. We can have a lot of distros.. hundreds.. a
> lot of options..

We can, but honestly, we probably shouldn't.   It's inefficient and
wasteful.  The vast majority are crap and die quickly.

> So, you're not "forcing anyone to deal with all the details". We're just
> giving an option for those who want to have this kind of experience.
> Understand?

Well that's not how it is being sold on the web page.  It doesn't
say "This is the distribution for people that want an old fashioned
do-it-all-yourself experience".  I wish it did say that.  I could
respect that.  The way it currently represents itself, I consider harmful
to users.  Same way BASIC is harmful to new programmers.  It makes you
think you are learning useful things, but in fact it only teaching you
bad habits that will later be hard to get rid of and really don't apply
when you want to move on to a distribution people actually want to use
for real work.

You want to learn something useful?  Go figure out how Debian's package
tools work, how it manages the filelists and other database details.
Learn how packages are built and the rules files involved, how debhelper
works.  That stuff is there and it makes life easier and better.
It's useful stuff to know and teaches you best practices.  As you said
yourself, you prefer debian on servers.  That's why you should learn how
that works.  Debian of course has the advantage that you don't have to
learn it to use it, but its all there if you are interested.

> For example.. Let's suppose that someone already knows a lot of Linux but
> doesn't want to spend a lot of time installing a linux distro dealing with
> all these details. But, the person is interested on try Arch Linux system,
> pacman package manager, etc.. The Arch Way... Well.. If you wanna try Arch,
> but doesn't wanna deal with all the details like you said, we won't force
> you to do it. You can try Chackra Linux (http://chakra-project.org/).
> 
> Chackra is a live cd using Arch Linux with kde packages. You'll have a
> simple installation system (simpler than Ubuntu, in my opinion, by the way).

My problem with the existance of such distributions is that they tend to
make claims like "You will learn lots of things" or "It's faster because
it is optimized for your system" or similar.  People that don't know
any better actually believe such crap.  That is harmful.

If it was honestly presented as:

"This distribution aims for being simple to implement, so nothing is
automated.  It will be a lot of work."

then fine.  But they never present it that way.  They always claim it's
a good thing, when it isn't.

I hate seeing people waste time repeating things that don't have to be
repeated, especially when someone is claiming they are actually going
to learn something useful from wasting their time.  They are not.

-- 
Len Sorensen
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