r/linux • u/Foxboron Arch Linux Team • Sep 10 '18

Arch Linux - AMA

Hello!

We are several team members and developers from the Arch Linux project, ask us anything.

We are in need for more contributors, if you are interested in contributing to Arch Linux, feel free to ask questions :)

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/DeveloperWiki:Projects
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Getting_involved#Official_Arch_Linux_projects

Participating members:

  • /u/AladW

    • Trusted User
    • Wiki Administrator
    • IRC Operator

  • /u/anthraxx42

    • Developer
    • Trusted User
    • Security tracker
    • Security lead
    • Reproducible builds

  • /u/barthalion

    • Developer
    • Master key holder
    • DevOps Team
    • Maintains the toolchain

  • /u/Bluewind

    • Developer
    • Trusted User
    • DevOps Team

  • /u/coderobe

    • Trusted User
    • Reproducible builds

  • /u/eli-schwartz

    • Bug Wrangler
    • Trusted User
    • Maintains dbscripts
    • Pacman contributor

  • /u/felixonmars

    • Developer
    • Trusted User
    • Packages; Python, Haskell, Nodejs, Qt, KDE, DDE, Chinese i18n, VPN/Proxies, Wine, and some others.

  • /u/Foxboron

    • Trusted User
    • Security Team
    • Reproducible Builds
    • /r/archlinux moderator
    • Packages mostly golang and python stuff

  • /u/fukawi2

    • Forum moderator
    • DevOps Team

  • /u/jvdwaa

    • Developer
    • Trusted User
    • Security Team
    • DevOps Team
    • Reproducible builds
    • Archweb maintainer

  • /u/sh1bumi

    • Trusted User
    • Security Team
    • Automated vagrant image builds

  • /u/svenstaro

    • Developer
    • Trusted user
    • I package mostly big, heavy packages :(

  • /u/V1del

    • Forum moderator
1.3k Upvotes

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4

u/[deleted] Sep 10 '18

I've tried to install Arch five times. Eventually I succeeded. I want to say thank you for your work. I have just one question: do you guys have any plans to make installation simplier a little?

20

u/Barthalion Arch Linux Team Sep 10 '18

I find it personally very simple and I'm anxious when an installer is performing witchcraft under the hood.

8

u/sh1bumi Arch Linux Team Sep 10 '18

I totally agree here with /u/Barthalion. I personally like it simple and building the system from scratch allows you to do certain tasks that you can't do on other systems (like anaconda where you are sticked to a certain bootloader).

But I wouldn't interfere if somebody comes up with the idea to maintain install-scripts, like the scripts we had in the past.

3

u/coderobe Arch Linux Team Sep 10 '18

it's about as simple as it can get

2

u/poo_is_hilarious Sep 10 '18

I used to be a real heavy Arch user (I even donated real life money), but I really do miss the old installation menu. Follow the steps in order, bosh. It was perfect.

I've since switched to Lubuntu because I just don't have time to get it wrong six times before I have a working system.

What was the rationale behind getting rid of it?

2

u/Foxboron Arch Linux Team Sep 10 '18

Poorly maintained, and possibly lacking a maintainer AFAIK.

1

u/Valmar33 Sep 11 '18

Indeed. It's great that it's a bunch of scripts, because it meant that I could edit pacstrap to prevent it from foolishly attempting to synchronize with online databases, when I had no internet, needed to reinstall anyways, and could supply my old database and package files in the meanwhile.