ArchLinux is the Linux distribution I am currently using. I’ve been using it on a daily-basis since March 2004.

I find it extremely stable, controllable and flexible. I’ve been running my first installation for a long time, even after I had successfully moved it to my new computer (just by copying & changing a few config lines - amaizing isn’t it?). Unfortunately, the new HDD died and I had to make a reinstall. The LAN server I have at home also runs ArchLinux.

During the time, I’ve also used: Redhat 7, Mandrake 8, Mandrake 8.1, SuSE. SuSE lasted for about 6 months and I was getting comfortable using it. I even managed to make my Winmodem work with some beta compiled modules. Unfortunately, I managed to crash it and didn’t know how to fix it because of excessive curiosity - I’ve pressed “I” if I remeber well for extra information during the booting process. That was the end of it. One more reason to use a text-based-config distribution. Time and lots of Windows related activities forced me to move back to Windows.

Add the whole range of Windows versions to my above Linux experience and you get my entire Operating Systems’ experience. I managed to keep my last Windows installation pretty stable, but stability is not the only reason I switched to Linux.

I find Linux a trully programmer’s environment. It develops creative thinking, learn by trying and a lot of other concepts usefull for an engineer (a software engineer to be more precise). The Community is great and you can find every day something new and entertaining to learn.

Being part of a fast moving world, I rapidly realised that many of the things I’m learning in Faculty are getting obsolete. Software engineers need constant refreshing, development tools make life a lot easier. Look at Linux as like an entire fast evolving system of People, Software & Philosophy. A developer can rapidly fit into this design.

Key aspects which support my decision to use ArchLinux

  • follows KISS principle (Keep it Simple, Stupid)
  • ease in making new packages - I once read a howto for making RPMs…
  • everything available in one command (”pacman -S something”) no matter what license it has- you’ll find that several big distros don’t have all the codecs in their repositories and you need to tweak the system in order to get non-GPLed software installed
  • short installation routine, using base install - tweaking is done afterwards using config files (you need to know what you’re looking for)
  • packages are not mutilated, moving config files from their default position (where the author wanted them to be) - documentation is removed (part of the Arch philosophy - the net is bigger, everything can be found online)
  • lots more which I forgot now, which I’m enjoying every day

My Desktop

A screenshot of my desktop can be found here.
In the screenshot:

  • KDE 3.4.2
  • Psi 0.10-test2 featuring a preview of the not yet released Stellar2 iconset
  • lots of KDE applets running on the top bar: Weather Report, Run Command, Dictionary, System Guard (CPU Usage, Memory Usage, My Network traffic, LAN Server’s Internet traffic, CPU Temperature, CPU Fan Speed), System Tray, Sound Mixer applet, Clock
  • System Tray applications: KMix, Apollon, KMail, Psi, Akregator, Amarok

Software Packages

My local software repository is quite big (with packages built using scripts found on the ArchLinux forums), but I also share some packages.
The binaries can be found here and the sources here.