Begin with Arch and add desired packages: any real benefits over existing distro?
I've spent about a year or so with Fedora and Gnome. My view has changed from being initially very impressed with the "out of the box" usability and seeming 'eye-candy' of it all to now becoming increasingly frustrated by what I see as avoidable issues caused by daily updates - many of which I see as simply bug fixes. What I'm looking for is stability and performance (aren't we all?).
I'm running five/six year old hardware but good for its time: quad core i7 2.6; 12gB DDR3; Asus mainboard; Nvidia GTX580. I've just added a Samsung EVO 850 SSD. I gather Linux is good with resources.
My main uses are entertainment and photo editing. But I'm becoming disillusioned with ongoing lack of full support for things like my graphics card. I don't claim to understand any of the issues underlying subjects such as session manager,s screen controller, compositing etc. but it seems nuts that in 2016, nobody has yet found a way to both support my graphics card properly, AND allow my video settings to be stored and loaded on boot. So playing DVDs can still be a slightly hit and miss affair, with occasional flicker, blocking, stutter. Surely this shouldn't happen even with this slightly older hardware? The various branches of DE's seem to have grown more out of philosophical or personal disputes than purely practial/programming issues, yet it's the end-user who lives with the results of those conversations.
So I'm thinking of starting with Arch Linux and then adding just the packages I need e.g. VLC, GIMP and a browser. That's pretty much it!
It's not at all clear from reading all the reviews etc. just what I might gain. For example, if I just get away from Gnome/GTK altogether and use KDE, could this bring any benefits or advantages in terms of better graphics integration and performance? I've no idea of the merits of Qt5 versus GTK. Are all distro's/DE's quirky in their own way and we simply end up having to decide which problems we'd prefer to deal with? Another example is in multimedia support. The ArchWiki says that "upstream prefers" phonon-vlc, as gstreamer was used by many as a way to deal with "patent encumbrance" even though the Mp3 patent restriction has just recently expired. But then a google search returns plenty of results about problems using phonon-vlc in KDE.
My question is to help me decide whether there is any genuine merit in spending the time and effort to learn through installing Arch and reading all the relevant docs, or whether I've simply become a 'geek' and am worrying about details that will finally have no real practical difference in terms of everyday use. It's not as if my current install is unusable (F25). It's largely very good, but I DETEST it keep breaking for seemingly silly, trivial reasons.
Comments
-
Linux still has a hill to climb to become a major player on the desktop. That is a market seized and controlled by MS. Linux, however, dominates the internet servers and cloud computing mainly because it is stable running as a server, and does not have to worry about graphics, multimedia and the "eye-candy". There are reasons why manufactures do not want to release their source-code to the FSF. Open source can only support what it can access. Perhaps, developers of open source just did not have hardware like yours to experiment with. This is where contributions come into play.
Actually, this that the driving force behind open source computing. Its about collaboration. All who use a specific product help to improve it. In otherwords, consider sending your specs to these developers so they can start improving their software to work better.
Perhaps, it may be best to build your own computer using open source supported hardware. These products have been confirmed to work well with open source/Linux.
Every distrobution is different, built with a particular audience in mind, with different niches. I have read that ArchLinux is for computer users who want to customize their system from scratch, add only what they need before the installation and easily remove and add as they progress with their systems. Slackware has that same theme. There are just different methods of going about it. It all depends on your goals. There is no one distro for all.
Look into ways of contributing. You might be able to resolve some issues.
0
Categories
- All Categories
- 206 LFX Mentorship
- 206 LFX Mentorship: Linux Kernel
- 732 Linux Foundation IT Professional Programs
- 339 Cloud Engineer IT Professional Program
- 165 Advanced Cloud Engineer IT Professional Program
- 66 DevOps Engineer IT Professional Program
- 131 Cloud Native Developer IT Professional Program
- 119 Express Training Courses
- 119 Express Courses - Discussion Forum
- 5.9K Training Courses
- 40 LFC110 Class Forum - Discontinued
- 66 LFC131 Class Forum
- 39 LFD102 Class Forum
- 219 LFD103 Class Forum
- 16 LFD110 Class Forum
- 32 LFD121 Class Forum
- 17 LFD133 Class Forum
- 6 LFD134 Class Forum
- 17 LFD137 Class Forum
- 70 LFD201 Class Forum
- 3 LFD210 Class Forum
- 2 LFD210-CN Class Forum
- 2 LFD213 Class Forum - Discontinued
- 128 LFD232 Class Forum - Discontinued
- 1 LFD233 Class Forum
- 2 LFD237 Class Forum
- 23 LFD254 Class Forum
- 680 LFD259 Class Forum
- 109 LFD272 Class Forum
- 3 LFD272-JP クラス フォーラム
- 10 LFD273 Class Forum
- 91 LFS101 Class Forum
- LFS111 Class Forum
- 2 LFS112 Class Forum
- 1 LFS116 Class Forum
- 3 LFS118 Class Forum
- 2 LFS142 Class Forum
- 3 LFS144 Class Forum
- 3 LFS145 Class Forum
- 1 LFS146 Class Forum
- 2 LFS147 Class Forum
- 8 LFS151 Class Forum
- 1 LFS157 Class Forum
- 10 LFS158 Class Forum
- 4 LFS162 Class Forum
- 1 LFS166 Class Forum
- 3 LFS167 Class Forum
- 1 LFS170 Class Forum
- 1 LFS171 Class Forum
- 2 LFS178 Class Forum
- 2 LFS180 Class Forum
- 1 LFS182 Class Forum
- 4 LFS183 Class Forum
- 30 LFS200 Class Forum
- 737 LFS201 Class Forum - Discontinued
- 2 LFS201-JP クラス フォーラム
- 17 LFS203 Class Forum
- 111 LFS207 Class Forum
- 1 LFS207-DE-Klassenforum
- LFS207-JP クラス フォーラム
- 301 LFS211 Class Forum
- 55 LFS216 Class Forum
- 49 LFS241 Class Forum
- 43 LFS242 Class Forum
- 37 LFS243 Class Forum
- 13 LFS244 Class Forum
- 1 LFS245 Class Forum
- 44 LFS250 Class Forum
- 1 LFS250-JP クラス フォーラム
- LFS251 Class Forum
- 143 LFS253 Class Forum
- LFS254 Class Forum
- LFS255 Class Forum
- 6 LFS256 Class Forum
- LFS257 Class Forum
- 1.2K LFS258 Class Forum
- 9 LFS258-JP クラス フォーラム
- 114 LFS260 Class Forum
- 151 LFS261 Class Forum
- 41 LFS262 Class Forum
- 82 LFS263 Class Forum - Discontinued
- 15 LFS264 Class Forum - Discontinued
- 11 LFS266 Class Forum - Discontinued
- 23 LFS267 Class Forum
- 18 LFS268 Class Forum
- 29 LFS269 Class Forum
- 199 LFS272 Class Forum
- 1 LFS272-JP クラス フォーラム
- LFS274 Class Forum
- 3 LFS281 Class Forum
- 2 LFW111 Class Forum
- 257 LFW211 Class Forum
- 176 LFW212 Class Forum
- 12 SKF100 Class Forum
- SKF200 Class Forum
- 791 Hardware
- 199 Drivers
- 68 I/O Devices
- 37 Monitors
- 98 Multimedia
- 174 Networking
- 91 Printers & Scanners
- 85 Storage
- 753 Linux Distributions
- 82 Debian
- 67 Fedora
- 16 Linux Mint
- 13 Mageia
- 23 openSUSE
- 147 Red Hat Enterprise
- 31 Slackware
- 13 SUSE Enterprise
- 350 Ubuntu
- 464 Linux System Administration
- 39 Cloud Computing
- 70 Command Line/Scripting
- Github systems admin projects
- 91 Linux Security
- 78 Network Management
- 101 System Management
- 47 Web Management
- 56 Mobile Computing
- 17 Android
- 28 Development
- 1.2K New to Linux
- 1K Getting Started with Linux
- 365 Off Topic
- 113 Introductions
- 171 Small Talk
- 20 Study Material
- 522 Programming and Development
- 291 Kernel Development
- 213 Software Development
- 1.1K Software
- 211 Applications
- 180 Command Line
- 3 Compiling/Installing
- 405 Games
- 311 Installation
- 79 All In Program
- 79 All In Forum
Upcoming Training
-
August 20, 2018
Kubernetes Administration (LFS458)
-
August 20, 2018
Linux System Administration (LFS301)
-
August 27, 2018
Open Source Virtualization (LFS462)
-
August 27, 2018
Linux Kernel Debugging and Security (LFD440)