arctic Posted July 22, 2006 Report Share Posted July 22, 2006 Okay, I have Arch up and running. Most things work now. What doesn't work yet is the following: - Localisation of Gnome. I want to set it to German language, have edited all necessary config files and checked them twice in order to make sure that there is no mistake. Then I launch the language generator and get a positive feedback. When I apply the new language in gdm, the system tells me that german (de_DE blah) is not a valid language. In Gnome, I have then part of my system in german, the other part in english. Ouch. - Sound. My soundcard is detected but cannot be activated in Gnome, although alsaconf and alsamixer have no problem with the card. Gstreamer asks for a valid module that I would have to install but doesn't ell me which. I took a look at the packages available and the information I got is absolutely zero, nada. Pacman gives me no useful information, either. And that is what I see as the main problems with pacman. No package information included like in urpmq. - device handling: When I plug in an USB stick, I see two CD and DVD devices and one USB device mounted, although I have only one DVD, one CD and one USB device mounted. Strange. And no icons/popups on my desktop although they should be there, according to my Gnome configuration. So, you Arch-gurus, now it is your turn to help me. ;) Mandriva might be "outdated" by now, but at least it always did what I asked it to do. :D Maybe I can tame Arch in the next few days... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianw1974 Posted July 22, 2006 Report Share Posted July 22, 2006 I haven't got it running at the moment, but I remember a lot of stuff was configured in /etc/rc.conf. Not sure if that helps any, I only used in English and with KDE :P And I gave up cos ndiswrapper stopped working and I lost networking. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ffi Posted July 22, 2006 Report Share Posted July 22, 2006 I want to set it to German language Why would you want to do that :huh: the system tells me that german (de_DE UTF8 blah) is not a valid language. I think Arch is functioning as it should :P ;) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arctic Posted July 22, 2006 Author Report Share Posted July 22, 2006 Why should I want to use a gernan layout in Gnome?... 1000 points question. Simple answer: 'Cause I am from Germany. ;) Ian, I know that most things are configures in rc.conf, but that doesn't help me at all. Everything is perfectly set up in my config files (yeah, I did a lot of reading and have spent a whopping six hours on configuring Arch) and it's still stubborn. And no. Arch is currently not functioning as it should (I know, it was ironic, but anyway...). I mean I do have some years of Linux experience under my belt with several so called "expert distros" (Slackware, Debian, Gentoo) and still I am stuck. Something is weird here... edit: YAY! I got the locale setting problem nearly solved. Using the de_DEeuro ISO-8859-15 locale caused problems and switching to de_DE.UTF-8 solved the issue mostly. Okay, the euro and "at" symbol don't work yet, just like all brackets, but I will solve that, too... I hope... Then there are still two more to solve. I guess the soundcard problem will be the easier one to fix. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arctic Posted July 23, 2006 Author Report Share Posted July 23, 2006 One thing is interesting. I have reinstalled Mandriva on my primary harddisk (it took me exactly six minutes) and was curious how big the size difference between a "lean" distro like Arch and a "bloated" one like Mandriva is. Now, prepare for the shock of your life: Arch has Gnome installed but is still missing Openoffice, evolution, firefox, gaim, gimp and some other applications that I have installed on Mandriva and it has the new modular Xorg, which is supposed to be smaller in size. Arch uses roughly 1,68 GB on my secondary harddisk. Mandriva (with the bloated Xorg, OOo, Gimp, etc) uses roughly 1,54 GB on my primary harddisk!! How is this possible that the "lean" Arch distro needs more space for fewer apps than the "bloated" Mandriva???? :huh: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ffi Posted July 23, 2006 Report Share Posted July 23, 2006 (edited) When I did a standard install of Mandriva 2006.0 it needed around 3-4 GB and I still don't get why anyone would want to install german :huh: Edited July 23, 2006 by ffi Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arctic Posted July 23, 2006 Author Report Share Posted July 23, 2006 Are you joking around? :D I explained it earlier why I want german language support: I am from Germany and as a journalist, I need a working german keyboard and german desktop layout. That ain't so hard to understand, is it? ;) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tyme Posted July 23, 2006 Report Share Posted July 23, 2006 hard drive space: rm -rf /var/cache/pacman/pkg/*.tar.gz cleans out the packages from pacman. since most of your packages are comming down from the server, even the ones from the install if you choose network or if you updated after you installed it. also keep in mind that with arch there are no -devel packages, so you're getting everything you need - not just the binaries. sound: have you read the wiki article? lots of information there, probably will solve your problems. localization, you're probably just missing a package or something. i'm not sure off the top of my head. i don't know what's up with your udev and seeing multiple devices. doesn't happy here :-P arch isn't weird :P it's just not in-your-face-simple. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scarecrow Posted July 23, 2006 Report Share Posted July 23, 2006 (edited) Localization in Arch is done by editing a single file: /etc/profile Since the introduction of the latest glibc, not all locales are included, but generating them is really simple: http://www.archlinux.org/news/209/ (and yeah, I forgive you for missing it, it may be self-explicable for dedicated Arch users, but since it's some 4 months old it's quite easy to miss! :P ). And yes, I do agree that this should be in capitals in the wiki, but as you have already noticed the single weak point of Arch is the documentation, which isn't as good as it should be (aknowledged by everyone, including the distro founder). Regards. Edited July 23, 2006 by scarecrow Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arctic Posted July 23, 2006 Author Report Share Posted July 23, 2006 Heh, Slackware wasn't simple either, but there, the devices handling was - for me -predictable. Yes, I have read the wiki and will work on the soundcard thing. But first I want to fix that idiotic locales annoyance. And I have edited /etc.rc.conf, etc/profile and run the locale-gen. :P Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arctic Posted July 23, 2006 Author Report Share Posted July 23, 2006 Ah... I finally got my @ and ?‚? keys working. pfff.... but sound is still a no go. :D Oh, and even after cleaning the cache, Arch uses more space than Mandriva. :lol: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tyme Posted July 23, 2006 Report Share Posted July 23, 2006 Oh, and even after cleaning the cache, Arch uses more space than Mandriva. :lol: hard drive space, maybe. memory, i highly doubt it - and that's where it really counts. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arctic Posted July 23, 2006 Author Report Share Posted July 23, 2006 Well, I was only referring to the harddisk space. It is simply surprising to me that it actually needs more space on the harddrive for less files. Maybe it is because there is more documentation in the config files included than in Mandriva... :unsure: RAM usage in Arch: Gnome + Epiphany + Xchat: 111.2 MB. Will post the results of Mandriva once I boot into it again. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scarecrow Posted July 23, 2006 Report Share Posted July 23, 2006 (edited) Oh, and even after cleaning the cache, Arch uses more space than Mandriva. :lol: Of course it does. For example, "pacman -Sy gnome gnome-extra" installs the whole gnome desktop, PLUS the devel packages, which are not separated from the execs and libs (this is typical Arch philosophy, but it's absolutely the same under Slackware as well). If you were a KDE user, then even after cleaning cache, KDE would eat almost 600MB of HD space- everything installed. So, no wonder it uses more space than in Mandriva- but as Tyme said, no way the almost vanilla Arch kernel uses more resources than the heavily patched Mandriva one... Edited July 23, 2006 by scarecrow Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arctic Posted July 23, 2006 Author Report Share Posted July 23, 2006 Hmmm... Now I have booted into Mandy and have: Gnome + Xchat + Epiphany running plus the sound server (which is not yet working on my Arch) and I get 85,1 MB Ram usage. that is a difference of 26.1 MB Ram. And a bare Gnome desktop uses only 72,1 MB Ram in Mandriva 2006. I think we have a new topic for a heated discussion, folks. :D And scarecrow, I have exactly the same applications installed in Arch and Mandy. Thus the Gnome apps are not the answer to the hdd-space usage question. The answer must lay somewhere else, but where? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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