abarbarian Posted April 4, 2022 Author Share Posted April 4, 2022 Mabox Linux – Beautiful Arch Linux with Openbox [Review] Quote Mabox Linux is a Manjaro Linux re-spin with a lightweight Openbox window manager, ready to use with pre-configured themes and utilities. We review the distribution in this post. Quote Thanks to the Openbox, this Linux distribution is super-lightweight in resource consumption while being a beautiful desktop for everyone to use. The Mabox Linux tools adapted from BunsenLabs and inspired by Crunchbang brings some of their applications. Quote The LIVE desktop lets you install Mabox via the Calamares installer. The installation takes around 3 to 4 minutes on standard hardware, and it is error-free in my test. Why anyone would want to make a fork of Manjaro beats me, why not just fork Arch ? Doing an install in 3 to 4 minutes is a bold claim, I wonder if it is true ? You just got to love the variety in the penguin world. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted April 4, 2022 Share Posted April 4, 2022 Yeah, no doubt Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abarbarian Posted April 13, 2022 Author Share Posted April 13, 2022 Archcraft OS – Minimal Arch Linux with Openbox WM Quote Archcraft OS is a free and open-source operating system (OS) based on Arch Linux. Developed by a single person, this Linux distribution promises to be “pure” Arch as in – it is exact same as vanilla Arch Linux install. Quote The installer is a window-driven step-by-step process which typically you do via commands while installing Arch Linux. However, it gives you sufficient options to go back and forth before the actual installation starts. The installation process went smooth, although it took some time in my test system (BIOS-based). The distro successfully detected all the operating systems in the multi-boot test device. And did not mess my grub. Overall installation time on average is ~15 minutes. Quote The major advantage of using a window manager instead of a traditional desktop environment is the better resource usage by the underlying distribution. Hence, Archcraft is also doing the same. This distro uses around ~390 MB of RAM in an idle state in a physical installation. Most of the memory is used by Xorg only at idle state, followed by Plank.CPU usage is very minimal at idle of course unless you do any operation. This sounds like a very neat effort shame I do not have the time to try it out at the moment. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abarbarian Posted June 2, 2022 Author Share Posted June 2, 2022 Archcraft Yet another minimal Linux distribution, based on Arch Linux. Quote Archcraft is just another Linux distribution, made on top of Arch Linux. It uses window managers and lightweight applications, which makes it super fast. With pre-configured settings, Archcraft provides you the best out of the box window manager experience. This looked to be a promising Arch based distro sadly there has been no new release since Nov 2021. They do have a good step by step guide to installing with Calamares and ABIF. The Gallery is worth a look as it has some good screenshots of a variety of Window Managers. Of interest there included two wayland configured Window Managers, Quote Sway is a tiling Wayland compositor and a drop-in replacement for the i3 window manager for X11. It works with your existing i3 configuration and supports most of i3's features, plus a few extras. and Quote Wayfire is a wayland compositor based on wlroots. It aims to create a customizable, extendable and lightweight environment without sacrificing its appearance. I rather like the Archcraft Lite version. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted June 2, 2022 Share Posted June 2, 2022 The mention of Wayland is a no go for anyone who uses nvidia https://blog.devgenius.io/wayland-and-nvidia-in-2022-2f0407fb34f4 Until performance is on par with Wayland and Nvidia, I will stick to Xorg which works fine. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted June 2, 2022 Share Posted June 2, 2022 And as of 2 months ago https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/tlyyk4/how_has_your_nvidia_wayland_experience_been/ 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abarbarian Posted October 13, 2022 Author Share Posted October 13, 2022 KaOS 2022.10 Released, Dracut Replaces Mkinitcpio Quote KaOS 2022.10 comes with an improved Calamares installer and has moved to Dracut as the new initramfs infrastructure. KaOS is an independent rolling-release distribution inspired by Arch Linux and entirely focused on the KDE Plasma Desktop and related Qt Toolkit-based software. It uses Pacman as its package manager but does not rely on software repositories developed and maintained by Arch Linux. Instead, the software is available from in-house repositories and is built exclusively for 64-bit machines. KaOS 2022.10 is the sixth update in this year’s 2022 series for this Linux distro. So, let’s have a look at what’s new. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abarbarian Posted October 24, 2022 Author Share Posted October 24, 2022 Looks like at least one Arch user appreciates excellent software. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3YoAxqasHk 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted October 24, 2022 Share Posted October 24, 2022 Nice another video Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abarbarian Posted October 25, 2022 Author Share Posted October 25, 2022 16 hours ago, securitybreach said: Nice another video OK here you go https://youtu.be/tQfWkztg73U Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted October 25, 2022 Share Posted October 25, 2022 4 hours ago, abarbarian said: OK here you go https://youtu.be/tQfWkztg73U You can't compare the two. One is stable and the other one isn't 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abarbarian Posted October 28, 2022 Author Share Posted October 28, 2022 This is not strictly a Arch article but it is very interesting. The Performance Of Six Linux Distributions On The HP Dev One The Arch results are a mixed bag. Michael does state that all the os's were installed in a stock standard way. So with a bit of tweaking I guess all the os's would show up differently. Arch , Clear Linux and openSUSE Tumbleweed seemed to come out tops in quite a lot of the runs. So it was a surprise that Arch came out last by quite a way in the overall comparison. Quote Lastly is a look at the geometric mean of all the benchmarks carried out where they successfully completed on all operating systems under test. Obviously just the raw performance is being looked at and not the power/thermal results here. Pop!_OS 22.04 was right inline with the performance provided by openSUSE, Fedora Workstation, and Ubuntu 22.04 on the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 5850U powered HP Dev One. Arch Linux in its default configuration from Archinstall was noticeably slower than the rest. Intel's Clear Linux meanwhile offered around 13% better performance overall than the other Linux distributions thanks to its aggressive default performance tuning, extra patches, and other optimizations. As I stated earlier with a tiny bit of tweaking results would be different. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted October 29, 2022 Share Posted October 29, 2022 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abarbarian Posted January 27 Author Share Posted January 27 The Performance Impact From Different Arch Linux Kernel Flavors Interesting test results on different kernels used with Arch.. I had a play once with the zen kernel but fried my old grey cell getting it to work properly and so went back to the good old standard Arch kernel. Surprisingly enough the standard Arch kernel is probably the best of the bunch for most use cases. Of course if you are a fanatic gamer or an audio buff or graphics professional or develpoper then some of the specialised kernels offer more ummph in that particular use case. Quote Out of nearly 100 benchmarks run on this AMD Ryzen 9 7950X desktop with the five official Arch Linux kernel flavors, coming in first place most often was Linux 6.1.7-arch1-1 as the default "stable" kernel used on Arch Linux and others like Endeavour OS. The default kernel was in best shape overall followed by the Zen kernel performing well in gaming benchmarks and other select scenarios. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abarbarian Posted January 27 Author Share Posted January 27 Another day another forked Arch distro. This one sounds quite nice but not quite as fast as advertised. Their google search result claims, Quote CachyOS — Blazingly Fast OS based on Arch Linux https://cachyos.org/ Quote CachyOS is a distribution based on Arch Linux, that offers an easy installation, several customization options to suit every user, and special optimizations for improved performance while remaining simple. I had a quick look through their documentation and Cachyos looks very neat and well worth a look at. https://wiki.cachyos.org/ Quote We offer two different installers: a graphical installer and a command-line interface (CLI) installer. Graphical Installer The graphical installer is based on Calamares and allows for both offline and online personalized installations with package selection. In the next release, you will also be able to select between two different bootloaders during an online installation. The installer also automatically optimizes the filesystem options for SSDs if one is detected. The following filesystems are available: XFS, Btrfs, F2FS, Ext4, and ZFS. Command-Line Interface Installer The CLI installer, written in C++, provides the same functions as the graphical installer but is more customizable and offers additional features. It is generally recommended for advanced users, but the installation process is kept simple and fast. It also supports configuration, allowing you to set options before the installation begins and then completing the installation automatically. CachyOS Desktop environments You can select from the following desktop environments (DEs) during online installation: CuteFish – An Elegant, Beautiful and Easy-to-Use Linux Desktop i3 tiling window manager, primarily targeted at developers and advanced users KDE-Plasma Desktop - Simple by default, powerful when needed GNOME Desktop - designed to put you in control and get things done Openbox is a highly configurable, floating window manager with extensive standards support Wayfire is a wayland compositor based on wlroots. It aims to create a customizable, extendable and lightweight environment without sacrificing its appearance LXQT - The Lightweight Qt Desktop Environment. bspwm is a tiling window manager that represents windows as the leaves of a full binary tree. bspwm supports multiple monitors and is configured and controlled through messages Xfce is a lightweight desktop environment for UNIX-like operating systems. It aims to be fast and low on system resources, while still being visually appealing and user friendly Hyprland is a dynamic tiling Wayland compositor that doesn't sacrifice on its looks. Meanwhile over at Phoronix, The Performance Of Arch Linux Powered CachyOS Whilst Cachyos did quite well in the testing as did EndeavourOS neither stood out from the crowd as a clear super fast os. That claim fell to Clear Linux. Quote Intel's Clear Linux distribution was easily still the front-runner of the tested Linux distributions on this Raptor Lake desktop. Of nearly 100 different tests executed (see this result file), Clear Linux was the fastest 54% of the time followed by CachyOS with wins 30% of the time. But if taking the geometric mean of all those benchmarks, CachyOS performance overall was similar to that of Fedora / EndeavourOS / Ubuntu while Clear Linux maintained a ~6.5% advantage overall compared to those other Linux distributions. Intel obviously has far more resources to invest in optimizing their contained Linux software compared to this new hobbyist Linux distribution, which performed similar to Arch-based EndeavourOS in many of the benchmarks. If I can find the time I may just give Cachyos a go. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted January 27 Share Posted January 27 Cool Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abarbarian Posted February 24 Author Share Posted February 24 (edited) How to Install Arch Linux Dual Boot I read through the above article and it seems pretty accurate and up to date. The wikiHow site also has a variety of linux guides and as usual some are very good and some are badly copied and pasted from out of date sources. $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ What caught my eye was the mention of Calam-Arch-Installer which I had never heard of. The project is hosted on SourceForge and looks to have been there since 2020. There are no links or information on the source code apart from this, https://sourceforge.net/p/blue-arch-installer/code/ref/master/ A bit more digging finds this, https://github.com/kyknos123/Blue-Arch-Installer Follow the above link and you find that the last update was made in April 2021. There is a reddit post on this project and the very first reply to the post is of interest, https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/encei0/arch_linux_on_line_installer/ Quote jvdwaa · 3 yr. ago Arch Linux Team As part of the Arch team I'm not opposed to having a live installer, someone simply has to put in the effort and provide something worthwhile and maintainable. The whole reason the previous installer was dropped was due to it being a set of unmaintainable bash scripts. Calamaras the installer framework used here seems to be a good fit since it oursources (hopefuly) all the disk setup pain. Why a lot of third party installers get a lot of critique is that they include third party content which is not supported such as this installer does. Pamac, the AUR is enabled by default? That's not something we endorse since it gives users the wrong impression. We have a similar issue with Manjaro users asking for support on our bug tracker, forums etc. while the users do not realize it's a complete fork. It's funny to see my presentation while installing The comments that follow this do seem mainly favourable though. I personally would not use the program simply because of the inclusion of Pamac especially as it is enabled by default. ££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££ This led me to, Homo Ludditus --- Looking for purity in Arch Linux The article shows the author has some very strong views. Some of which I agree with and some not. He does however show support for Calam-Arch-Installer. Quote 8. ERRR… WHAT NOW? From the above choices, I’d recommend Calam-Arch-Installer. The live session is a bit ugly, but it’s only meant as a tool to make the installation smoother. Unlike e.g. Garuda, ArcoLinux, Salient OS, RebornOS, it’s not following the model “Here’s a Live ISO with your preferred desktop and our preferred customizations, and let’s install it,” but the one that says “Here’s a Live ISO meant to test your hardware and to allow you to connect to the internet, then use Calamares to download and install the package selection of your choice“! He has some very interesting information regarding Arch derivatives that include Pamac in their packages. The whole article is well worth a read. Edited February 24 by abarbarian Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted February 24 Share Posted February 24 Interesting article. Too bad he didn't try archfi and archdi scripts as they give you a decent installation experience the Arch way while making sure you don't forget anything. https://github.com/MatMoul/archfi Considering that half the fun of Arch is learning how the system works and mastering its install procedure, I wonder what all the fuss is about with these derivative distros. I didn't use archfi until I was confident I could install Arch from the ground up. And of course when installed you are set to go forever and never have to do it again except on another machine. I agree that I wouldn't want to keep installing Arch in virtual machines. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abarbarian Posted February 24 Author Share Posted February 24 6 hours ago, raymac46 said: I agree that I wouldn't want to keep installing Arch in virtual machines. If all article writers tried out distros on hardware instead of vm's we might get more decent articles. Also it would be very helpful if article writers told you at the start of an article what os/distro they were using for their try out. I found it really confusing way back when I started my penguin research as I would read an article. Get totally confused as to why certain commands or instructions would not work for me. Then find out that the article was for some os/distro that did things differently to the one I was using. 2 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted February 25 Share Posted February 25 That is why I like getting my info here or from somerhing authoritative like the ArchWiki. This forum has members who have tried out just about all the mainstream distros on the rails, and we have a few who are very experienced indeed with Slackware, Debian, Arch, SUSE, Mint, Ubuntu, MX. The only place where I had trouble with Arch stability was in a VM and I think that was more a problem with VirtualBox Guest Additions than it was with Arch. 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted February 25 Share Posted February 25 22 hours ago, raymac46 said: Considering that half the fun of Arch is learning how the system works and mastering its install procedure, I wonder what all the fuss is about with these derivative distros. I didn't use archfi until I was confident I could install Arch from the ground up. People are daunted by the long install process and think that they can just use this or that derivative/installer and still have Archlinux, not realizing they are missing the important part of even using Arch. It is long but it is not difficult as the wiki literally walks you through 99% of things. People are just lazy... If it isn't for you, use one of the other hundreds of distros available. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abarbarian Posted March 29 Author Share Posted March 29 Arch Linux vs. Manjaro: Differences Between Them Explained Quote This article delves deeply into the Arch vs. Manjaro topic and helps you choose which one is the best option for you. Very neat article, well balanced. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted March 30 Share Posted March 30 They barely mention why holding back packages is a big issue on Manjaro. It's why Archlinux doesnt support partial upgrades. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abarbarian Posted March 30 Author Share Posted March 30 12 hours ago, securitybreach said: They barely mention why holding back packages is a big issue on Manjaro. It's why Archlinux doesnt support partial upgrades. Quote Therefore, in theory, all of this additional testing should result in a more stable operating system than Arch. In practice, however, such a claim is untrue. No decent explanation but he does put the boot in slightly. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abarbarian Posted March 30 Author Share Posted March 30 blendOS: Not Just Another Linux Distribution blendOS Quote blendOS is an Arch-based distro which supports every type of app package. Quote blendOS is an Arch-based distro which supports every type of app package. What's coming next in blendOS? Quote Our goal at blendOS is to continuously evolve and enhance the user experience through feedback and testing. Your input is crucial to helping us shape the future of blendOS. Finally someone is trying to do an os which can install programs from anywhere. Not just Flatpak or Snap but from everywhere. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted March 30 Share Posted March 30 11 minutes ago, abarbarian said: blendOS: Not Just Another Linux Distribution blendOS What's coming next in blendOS? Finally someone is trying to do an os which can install programs from anywhere. Not just Flatpak or Snap but from everywhere. That's neat but I wonder how stable it is. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abarbarian Posted May 4 Author Share Posted May 4 (edited) Posting a screenshot of CachyOS running from Ventoy on an old 8 GB usb. I am quite impressed with the way it runs, nice and smooth an pretty slick considering it is running from a usb. With no input from me it set up an internet connection and set the right time zone so from the get go I was able to surf the net. Some of the program choices are not to my taste but after a quick looksee all the ones I tried work with no glitches so far. Not impressed with the way you access applications but I suppose that could be tweaked. Just realised this is the Gnome version, not my favorite desktop environment. To be fair I have found some very neat programs like the System Monitor shown in the screenshot which looks much neater than htop, a little less cluttered and simpler for my usage. The Cachy Browser is neat and I think I will investigate it further. So if you fancy trying out a slick Arch based os then give it a whirl. Easy peasy to do from a Ventoy usb. Blazingly Fast & Customizable Linux Distribution Edited May 4 by abarbarian 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abarbarian Posted November 23 Author Share Posted November 23 Arch Linux Installer Archinstall 2.7 Adds Support for Unified Kernel Image Quote Arch Linux’s menu-based installer archinstall has been updated today to version 2.7, a major release that adds some new features and fixes many bugs. Archinstall 2.7 introduces two important features, namely support for unified kernel image (UKI), which is a single executable that can be booted directly from the UEFI firmware, and the ability to check for new versions of archinstall when initiating the Arch Linux installer. Quote Archinstall 2.7 will also be the default installer in the upcoming Arch Linux ISO snapshot for December 2023. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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