Arch on a dial up system

[grendal]

I'm downloading Arch 0.7.2(full iso), from what I've read it seems to be a very good distro to really learn Linux and I must admit that even though I've been using Linux, Mandriva, for a couple of years, I still know very Little. My question is since I live in Dial Up 'ville, will I spend a lot of time doing this: Here is what I use my pc for: 1) the play Madden 2005 (via Cedega) 2. internet (kind of surf & email) 3.watch DVD's and sometimes TV. 3 listen to music and burn discs. 4 Play native games. 5) Use Open office 6)I prefer KDE, but gnome doesn't bother me either. I have a NVIDIA card, so I will be installing those drivers, any links to a how to or is it basically like Mandriva? After that all I can think of needing are Java, flash and a pdf reader, but I'm guessing those aren't too painful.

 

 

So with the little bit I do with my pc, should I expect any real problems? I mean I am getting the full iso, so I'm hoping that should provide me some ease of configuration (ie staying off the net to get a ton of files).

[scarecrow]

After doing a base installation (where you should not include all packages if you install the 2.6.X kernel: devfsd, hotplug and pcmcia packages are for use with the old 2.4.X kernels and should not be installed at all), then installing KDE, xorg, nvidia, openoffice is extremely easy:

pacman -Sy kde nvidia openoffice-base

And after that

pacman -Sy hwd lshwd

hwd -x

will create a functional xorg.conf which you can finetune later (e.g. changing "nv" to "nvidia", setting keyboard layouts and virtual resolutions)...

 

BUT: Arch is a bleeding edge distro, and as such it updates VERY often (factly 95% of the packages in the 0.7.2 ISO are already old!), and doing that on dialup is a big pain in the &*^.

If you were on broadband, I would surely encourage you using it.

Edited July 5, 2006 by scarecrow

[Gowator]

If you are happy with non bleeding edge then why not?

I would perhaps try and get it all working with the ISO and a friends DSL if you can and then just not update anything not strictly necassary.

I haven't personally used arch but it seems an excellent distro for really learning linux.

I don't know if it has a utility for pacman like apt-cache where you can find all the deps and get a list for download on someone elses line but then stick them onto CD but someone will know.

[grendal]

Thanks guys

 

No I don't really need bleeding edge, but who really does? And Gowater, you read my mind. If I can get get a list of the files I may need and the repo for them, I could be off and running -i.e. get a cd full of stuff. To start out, I'll stick it on a spare HD and plug it in whenever I have time to play around.

Edited July 5, 2006 by grendal

[scarecrow]

Ah, OK then, but have in mind that Gnome, OpenOffice and KDE (as well as any program in the /extra repository of Arch) is NOT included in the CD- you have to fetch+ install after installing your system!

Generally upgrading Arch is quite easy if you can get the packages from a fast line- you just have to copy them in /var/cache/pacman/pkg directory, and an upgrade command ( pacman -Syu ) will just fetch the "hdlists" (which are a few KB, and not some 60MB, as is the norm for Mandriva), and use the packages you've already put in pacman's cache directory without the need to download them from the net.

Its also true that Arch is generally administered from CLI, but if you want a GUI-based administration tool, then you can use webmin (which does several jobs in an easy way), as well as a GUI for pacman (there are a few available, the latest and most promising being probably pakman, a QT3 based frontend which is cool enough, and rather reliable- although not official).

Edited July 5, 2006 by scarecrow