Arch vs. Gentoo?

[lufthanza]

I hear there is a rivalry (maybe one-sided) between gentoo and arch. I looked into Arch to see what it's like and they use 90% precompiled packages!! How can they even compare themselves to Gentoo?

[Telexen]

They can compare because they make claims about Gentoo off the bat to their users that are about 95% false. I don't care if someone wants to use Arch, it just bugs the hell out of me when they go off and compare it as a faster Gentoo.

- Portage is better...it offers MUCH more customization, but doesn't force it on users any more than Arch does
- You're not limited to source with Gentoo like *most* of their users will claim...there are plenty of binary host servers to use if you want binary packages
- Sure it may be optimized for i686 or x86_64, but if you really care about the optimization, you can easily pull more from Gentoo
- They claim their packages are more bleeding edge - how this is possible with portage's masking system is beyond me. All it takes for me to use the same if not newer packages is one line in package.keywords

[AgentMat]

I use both, and I must admit that arch is "almost" as flexible than gentoo (no use flag but my arch install is actually smaller in size (less headers, ...), is as fast than my optimized but still safe gentoo install (march=prescott -02 -fomit-frame-pointer) and you have a working arch installation (and I mean a complete one, with all the packages I use, DE, applications, OOO, ...) in 20 minutes. Updating it is as simple as typing pacman -Syu and I haven't had any problem with it yet.

I still prefer gentoo because I really like to be able to customize everything, but for my old laptop arch is a bliss.

[Cyker]

Lets not get too rose tinted here - There are loads of things which are either not in portage, or are very behind; gnutls is one example I recently made an overlay for.

[d2_racing]

Yeah Arch is a binary distro, but you can compile from source like Gentoo with a PKGBUIILD..so some peoples say that Arch is a Gentoo binairy distro.

[Paapaa]

I think it is pure fanboyism for any Gentoo user to bash Arch. I have not tried Arch but this is what I think:

1. Both allow great deal of customization and allow you to install only the packages you truly need.
2. Arch can be installed/maintained a lot faster because no compilation is needed. This also makes it probably more stable.
3. Come on, who actually thinks the so called "Gentoo Ricer-Oplizitimatlitions" really matter shit in the actual usage? I think the only exceptions are some very CPU bound scientific software etc. Normal software only need a HD with low seek time...
4. USE flags? Well, to be honest, I don't give a shit if a program takes 855kB of disk space instead of 870KB had I removed some feature from it using USE flags.

Hmm, why DO I use Gentoo in the first place? Mostly because I know it. Not because it is faster, leaner, meaner.
_________________
Paludis, the way packages are meant to be managed.

[AllenJB]

[AgentMat]

[didymos]

[Paapaa]

[Rob1n]

[didymos]

[Paapaa]

[didymos]

[omp]

- Both are nice and small.
- Gentoo is definitely more customisable.
- Gentoo will obviously run on more systems, as packages are compiled.
- Arch's core is binary-based, but they allow source packages; look up the AUR.
- Gentoo is completely source-based, but it does allow you to install binary packages.
- Both have great communities. (#archlinux is definitely a fun place to be.)

I haven't really used Arch for much more than an hour or so, so I can't give you too many details about it. If you can not decide, I would recommend trying both out for a short period of time and seeing which you like more. You can't come to the users of one of the two distributions and expect an unbiased answer when it comes to opinions.
_________________
meow.

[Naib]

Well I have Arch on my server simply because I under-clocked the CPU to remove one fan and under-volt the other to keep it quiet and I needed a binary distro (moving house soon so should be able to find a place for the server and put it back to stock & put gentoo on it).

I settled on Arch cause it was the only one I found that supplied the all the drivers for my hardware out of the box (sensor and CPU-clock the main two)
The problem is... its a binary distro and as such you are stuck with what they think is best

Take for example... VIM

[roderick]

[dusik]

[didymos]

[StifflerStealth]

I used Arch since February this year. I don't have anything bad to say about it. It is a great distro, and they name the 64 bit branch correctly: x64. Gentoo calls it AMD64, which is completely stupid because it's not called that. The x86 architecture was started by Intel, and AMD made a compatible chip to that architecture, so the correct name is x86 for it. Like x64 is the correct name for the 64 bit series, well x86_64 I guess would be more correct, but everyone calls it x64. That and Intel people need to call their processor an AMD64.

Yeah, Arch is binary, but so what? There are a lot of Gentoo packages that don't have USE flags and you really don't get any more speed out of it if you compile it with every optimization you find in the GCC handbook than if it is juct compiled with the standard defaults that both Gentoo and Arch devs use. There are only a couple packages that should not be distributed as binary. One is the kernel and one other is the nVidia drivers ... you can see what packages I mean by those two. With the nVidia drivers, Arch needs to have specially compiled drivers for all teh different kernels and if you make your own kernel you need to make your own nvidia package. In Gentoo it's sane with nVidia, just install it no matter what kernel you have since it compiles to it.

There was only one thing that I could not do right in Arch and that is the networking. It never really worked right since I installed it for the first time. Web pages would take about 9 seconds to load, by that, I mean the browser would stay blank and nothing would appear for 9 seconds and then the page would load. Then just recently I did an update, a big massice update because I haven't done one for two months, and this is where my network became weird. I mean, google.com would not be found, but I could go to other websites. :S Some just worked and others didn't. I booted up with a Gentoo LiveDVD 2007.0 and the network worked perfectly. Weird. It might be a configure error or something.

Honestly, do I think one is better than the other? No I don't. Gentoo and Arch both have very strong features and work very well. However, they both also have weak points as well. Some people criticize Arch for not having a lot of packages, well there are many user repositories and the Arch repos do have a lot. They have all that most people will need. Only the few people that need some obscure program will not find it in the arch repos. I personally think Gentoo has too many programs. A lot of it could be cut out to personal repos that only a handful of people would ever use. There is the saying about the kid in the candy store trying to decide what he wants but there are so many choices he doesn't know what he wants and that applies to Gentoo. Some of Gentoo could be cut off and split and put else where, say in overlays.g.o. Then there wouldn't be so much and portage would be screaming fast.

My rant/2 cents.

EDIT: Oh, Arch didn't have the expat 2.0.x upgrade headache.

[AaronPPC]

[96140]

--

[AaronPPC]

I can't argue with that philosophy--I agree with it. It'll be painful for them in the short term though.

Anyway, thanks for the reply. I'll do some more reading.
_________________
--Aaron

[david_e]

I have used Arch Linux for about one year until I switched to Gentoo about a month ago... Arch is a great distribution and despite the small size of its repos it had almost everything I used. The only real weakness I found in its repos was the lack of scientific software. For example the full ATLAS-Lapack implementation, while Gentoo is simply the best with that stuff... but that is not really a standard desktop package.

The main difference I feel between Gentoo and Arch, apart from the binary vs. source major difference (and the reason of my change), is the approach. Arch is strictly KISS. For example it has not something like the "rc-update" but one has to write down an array of daemons to start at boot time in the exact order he wants them to start (there is no checking for services dependencies). The main (and only AFAIK) package builder script is written in BASH: makepkg and PKGBUILDS are really straight-forward to be written (I used to write some PKGBUILD for the stuff I wanted to install but where not in the repos). All Arch sysadmin is made using only pacman and vim...

Gentoo is not that simple and the use of various tools to administrate the system is really needed (rc-update,etc-conf,revdep-rebuild etc...), but it's much more flexible.

As of up-to-dateness Arch packages are more or less as new as ~ARCH packages are in Gentoo, while the stable branch of Gentoo is far more conservative, and I like this approach as I don't mind waiting for the new gnome a couple of months to have more tested packages.

[Ion Silverbolt]

I have used both and like both. I prefer Gentoo as I think what it offers is better. More flexability, easier to manage, and more packages. There were at least 5 or 6 programs Arch didn't have that I wanted to install.

Still, if I needed to install something quick, I can't think of a better binary distro than Arch if you like a more custom slimlined install than the other distros provide. And Pacman is top knotch. I think it's better than apt-get but then again, I think apt-get is overrated.