Trying Arch Linux - Have Questions

I want to install Arch Linux on a machine however want to make sure it will provide me with the latest version of Gnome like 2.22 or even 2.24. When I do a net installation and pull packages from the web, can someone please tell me what the best way to make sure I get the latest and greatest packages would be on my machine?

 

Arch linux is fully up to date, and it looks like we'll have gnome 2.24 in a few more days.

archlinux.org has a list of packages where you can search for what you want and see if it's up to date for you enough.

 

OK so when I do a package search from the URL you recommended, I see the following options:

- Core
- Extra
- Testing

Are all 3 of those repos enabled during a default netinst installation of Arch 64? Does any of them have greater priority over another? What if Core has Gnome 2.20 and Extra has 2.24. How can I force Arch to install and use the 'extra' package? Or do I have this mentality all wrong?

 

Core contains the packages for just a base install, extra contains everything else, community is packages not in extra voted on by the community..

They are all enabled by default.

Core won't contain any WMs, it's the very basics.

either way, you can tell to install specifically from one repo by appending whatever/ before the package you're installing, eg. pacman -S extra/gnome

 

Thanks - trying this now on my laptop!

 

Make sure to check out the beginner's guide

http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beginners_Guide

 

I read this in the "Beginners Guide":

So my question is if I enable Testing, does this offer more bleeding edge packages of lets say Gnome or Firefox?

 

Nope, just package deemed unstable.

 

Ignore Thomas, the correct answer is yes.

But they might be unstable

 

OK - so if I enable testing repos in Arch, I will get more recent versions of software however they're not stable and could break with no support, correct?

 

Right, I know gnome 2.24 is in there right now, but I'm unsure if firefox 3.1 is.. I'm not using it.

 

What I meant was that it wasn't that more bleeding edge...Gnome, Firefox, etc. are already at the latest in the regular repos.

Also, you can correct someone without being an ***.

 

gnome 2.24 isn't in the regular repos but it's in testing... not getting what you're saying, they're definitely more bleeding edge then the normal repos

 

Do you know is the "suspend" when lid is shut works with Arch? I know it is flaky with Ubuntu 8.04 (32) but I was wondering if perhaps I would have better luck in Arch. Sometimes when I open my lid from suspend, I hear 2 - 3 seconds of chronic high beeps and then I can login again.

 

That mostly depends on the computer you have. To be honest though I had problems with suspend in Ubuntu and never had them with any other distros, so maybe it'll be fine.

 

Honestly it's still the newest..newest stable.

 

there's that

 

Just got it installed and when GDM loads, I have no mouse or keyboard on my laptop. I can switch to TTY1 and keyboard seems to work fine but when I am in run level 5 as my regular user, I have no mouse and or keyboard.

 

Sounds like your xorg.conf wasn't configured right, do you still have your Ubuntu install?

If so I'd recommend just copying the xorg config over from there.

 

No - this is a fresh install. Not dual booting...if I look at my xorg.conf, I see the following:

Code:

# nvidia-xconfig: X configuration file generated by nvidia-xconfig
# nvidia-xconfig:  version 1.0  (buildmeister@builder58)  Wed Oct  1 15:12:53 PDT 2008

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier     "Layout0"
    Screen      0  "Screen0"
    InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
    InputDevice    "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
EndSection

Section "Files"
EndSection

Section "Module"
    Load           "dbe"
    Load           "extmod"
    Load           "type1"
    Load           "freetype"
    Load           "glx"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    # generated from default
    Identifier     "Mouse0"
    Driver         "mouse"
    Option         "Protocol" "auto"
    Option         "Device" "/dev/psaux"
    Option         "Emulate3Buttons" "no"
    Option         "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    # generated from default
    Identifier     "Keyboard0"
    Driver         "kbd"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier     "Monitor0"
    VendorName     "Unknown"
    ModelName      "Unknown"
    HorizSync       30.0 - 110.0
    VertRefresh     50.0 - 150.0
    Option         "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier     "Device0"
    Driver         "nvidia"
    VendorName     "NVIDIA Corporation"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier     "Screen0"
    Device         "Device0"
    Monitor        "Monitor0"
    DefaultDepth    24
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       24
    EndSubSection
EndSection

 

Try the archlinux forums, I'm not too good with x, when I installed I just copied my Debian config file

 

Yeah - I posted there to but have not heard anything yet. Appreciate it.

 

What's the major improvements of 2.24 over 2.22?

 

Check out gnome.org, although the biggest thing is improvements to nautilus for me, tabbed file browsing.

 

I love it!
+1

 

I still don't have it

 

I was going to take a screenshot to tease and realized whatever package in Gnome allows me to do so is not loaded on my new system

 

Ahh - needed 'gnome-utils' or 'gnome-extra' installed.

 

Cool stuff. When can I expect it to appear in Pacman?

 

I think sometime within the next week, judging by the updates we're getting

 

Nice. Can't wait.

 

Your missing the "Modes" option in your screen section. Find out what resolution you have and input it like this.

My resolution is WXGA (1280x800) and it would look like this:

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Device0"
Monitor "Monitor0"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 24
Modes "1280x800" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
EndSection

You may also have configure your rc.conf/.initrc wrong. Check those out too.

 

You can always look through your xorg server log file to see what's going on. A

Code:

grep WW /var/log/Xorg.0.log

will show you xorg server warnings, and a

Code:

grep EE /var/log/Xorg.0.log

will show you xorg server errors. (You may need to edit this command to correctly point to your xorg server log file)

If you're running a recent version of xorg-server with evdev input hotplugging, you could try commenting out all of the InputDevice sections because you don't need them anymore. Like this;

Code:

# nvidia-xconfig: X configuration file generated by nvidia-xconfig
# nvidia-xconfig:  version 1.0  (buildmeister@builder58)  Wed Oct  1 15:12:53 PDT 2008

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier     "Layout0"
    Screen      0  "Screen0"
#   InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
#   InputDevice    "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
EndSection

Section "Files"
EndSection

Section "Module"
    Load           "dbe"
    Load           "extmod"
    Load           "type1"
    Load           "freetype"
    Load           "glx"
EndSection

#Section "InputDevice"
    # generated from default
#   Identifier     "Mouse0"
#   Driver         "mouse"
#   Option         "Protocol" "auto"
#   Option         "Device" "/dev/psaux"
#   Option         "Emulate3Buttons" "no"
#   Option         "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
#EndSection

#Section "InputDevice"
    # generated from default
#   Identifier     "Keyboard0"
#   Driver         "kbd"
#EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier     "Monitor0"
    VendorName     "Unknown"
    ModelName      "Unknown"
    HorizSync       30.0 - 110.0
    VertRefresh     50.0 - 150.0
    Option         "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier     "Device0"
    Driver         "nvidia"
    VendorName     "NVIDIA Corporation"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier     "Screen0"
    Device         "Device0"
    Monitor        "Monitor0"
    DefaultDepth    24
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       24
    EndSubSection
EndSection

Features/EvdevInputDriver at the FedoraProject

Good Luck..

 

Thanks all. Decided to move back to Debian however...

 

Aww.. Giving up so soon?

Amranu, how's Arch64? It is a lot more tedious compared to Arch32? How's the support?

 

Uh, so far the only difference from arch 64 to arch 32-bit is installing the lib32 libraries, nspluginwrapper and typing nspluginwrapper -v -a -i to install flash.

I've been using various distributions on 64-bit since April, there've been almost no problems that are 64-bit specific, though you need to edit the pkgbuild files of some aur packages to install them.

 

Any noticeable speed increases? I'm back in Ubuntu for the time being, and I swear, I miss Arch. Ubuntu is so... cloggy. It's like driving a Bugatti Veyron for a while then going back to a Toyota Camry. It's just... not the same.

 

I dunno, don't have much experience with 32-bit actually. When I was using 32-bit I was on an 6 year old laptop, and rarely booted linux, so..

 

Ahh.. I see. A bold adventurer, eh?

Hmm.. I think I'll still stick to 32-bit, just for simplicity sake. Can't wait to install Arch again..

 

heh, ok, but as I said, no big difference from them

 

A little off topic, but will installing lib32 allow me to run 32 bit programs in arch64? For instance, can I install a 32bit matlab on arch64 if I download lib32?

 

yep, that's how it works.

 

What about the flash player? Still no compatibility? if the lib32 is installed will I still have to run it from chroot?

 

I use Kubuntu, but just wanted to say hello from Otown, Carlos. I can't get away from the debian packages myself.

 

I've never had to run anything from a chroot..

 

Nice. That's good to hear.