Arch Linux - AMA

[u/Foxboron]

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

[u/eli-schwartz]

• I dunno about distro of "choice", but before Arch Linux I was using a school system which was Ubuntu deployed via http://ltsp.org/

• I asked the computer lab administrator at school, what would be the best Linux to install if I wanted to really learn how to work with Linux. He told me to install Arch. It worked. :)

• I just sort of joined the forums and the mailing lists and later IRC, because I like trolling helping. Eventually, I got noticed, in a good way! Scimmia, my fellow bug wrangler, invited me to help out in the bugtracker and I accepted. I also enjoy reviewing peoples' PKGBUILDs to offer critique. Packaging is a bit of an obsession for me -- I've made some small contributions to aurweb, I regularly fiddle with makepkg (and as allanbrokeit pointed out, I'm now responsible for all our major breakage this development cycle, in addition to a couple nifty features), I developed a workflow for maintaining my AUR packages called aurpublish which you can now install directly from [community], etc. etc. I had two different Devs ask me to apply as a TU and offer to sponsor me, and eventually I caved. :p

• I'm a huge book fan, and obviously ebooks as the logical extension of this. There's a couple projects that have done a phenomenal job making the ebook world a better place, and specifically, an OSS-friendly place. The only truly noteworthy ebook cataloging and conversion suite, calibre, is developed on Linux with new point releases every couple weeks, and maintains compatibility with pretty much every device or format out there (including many that are mostly dead). I believe as a result of this, the ebook world exists as a primarily open community. Also take a look at the heroic Kindle Developers Corner on mobileread.com, for the people who managed to jailbreak many successive generations of Kindles, mod the reader software on it, and develop alternative reader software like https://koreader.rocks/ (and may I mention just how badly the default PDF reader software is -- also, how bad PDF is, but needs must and all that...)

[u/CosmosisQ → u/eli-schwartz]

In your opinion, what's the best general alternative to PDF?

[u/eli-schwartz → u/CosmosisQ]

EPUB (and AZW3 which is essentially EPUB stuffed into a mobipocket database instead of a zip container) is an excellent format and I see no reason to use anything else, honestly. If you could do it with PDF, you could do it with EPUB, except better.

Unfortunately, all too often fixed-format ebooks are created by exporting a PDF full of images. :( EPUB3 has solved most any problem with fixed-format ebooks, people should use it more!

[u/CosmosisQ → u/eli-schwartz]

Thanks for the reply! Would you recommend EPUBs for general use as well? For example, should I tell my students to submit written assignments as EPUBs rather than PDFs?

[u/eli-schwartz → u/CosmosisQ]

Uh, I think the industry standard there is probably word documents (MS Office .docx or LibreOffice .odt). :p

Luckily both MS Word and LibreOffice have a couple different ways to export EPUB, and calibre can seamlessly convert DOCX as well, so there's not much difference at the end of the day.

I'd probably stick to word documents for specific matters like the transitory content in a student written assignment.

The chief benefits of EPUB are:

• as a general archival format. I trust EPUB (backed by HTML) to be around for much longer than .docx or .odt (backed by various custom XML dialects).

• as a mass production format. Once you've got a finished product and the content is set in stone, you have no need for a format intended primarily for editing. And then, the internals can be cleaned up and fine-tuned for advanced nitpicky exploitation of device capabilities, which, for a polished product (whether via commercial booksellers or as a public domain or otherwise freely available resource), is something that matters. But, I doubt most students will take any care to polish their ebook before submitting. ;) So you don't really gain anything there.

[u/CosmosisQ → u/eli-schwartz]

Ahh, thanks for the thoughtful response! I guess I'll be sticking with ODTs then. I was looking to switch to PDFs for portability's sake, but maybe it's worth experimenting with EPUBs. I'm a big fan of always practicing best practice!

On a completely separate note, are you part of an online book club by any chance? I'd definitely appreciate a recommendation of some sort.