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Debian testing .vs. Arch Linux

Submitted by miggols99 on 28 May, 2008 - 15:24

I've been using Debian testing for a while, and here's what I have to say about it

Debian testing

Advantages

  • Plenty of packages in the repos
  • apt is very fast
  • Uses sudo as default if you tell it to
  • No need to edit any configuration files
  • Modular KDE
  • Flash works on 64bit!

Disadvantages

  • No AUR or anything similar so I have to compile packages the old fashioned way (./configure, make, make install)
  • *-dev packages! These are horrible because you have to install a big bunch of them to compile something
  • Hideous fonts to start with - I had to install patched Ubuntu packages, and now apt is complaining about it even though the packages work fine..
  • Hard to get a hold of non-free packages
  • Wireless doesn't work out-of-the-box
  • Compiz makes scrolling lag

And now for Arch Linux

Arch Linux

Advantages

  • Very fast
  • Pacman even faster than apt
  • Extra packages in the AUR like freetype patches. Much easier to install
  • Wireless works out of the box
  • No *-dev packages

Disadvantages

  • No GUI (have to install from CLI after installation)
  • Flash is very problematic on 64bit
  • Compiz makes scrolling lag
  • Have to configure things through configuration files (e.g. /etc/rc.conf)
  • Hard crashes (have to reset computer)
  • KDE isn't modular (but this is fixed with KDEmod)

So which one do you think is better? I should probably wait for the KDEmod live CD because pure Arch really isn't working for me...

Comments

out of the box?

Submitted by Guest on 28 June, 2008 - 17:59.

I'm just making the same comparison, I use Debian lenny and on one laptop I've installed Arch to compare.

I'm skeptical that wireless works "out of the box" in Arch considering that wireless-tools and wpa_supplicant have to be installed by the user, and either configured with text editor or have a frontend like networkmanager or wicd. Wink In Debian everything was ready, I just had to add ipw2200 firmware to /lib/firmware/. That firmware is now free so in future releases wifi should genuinely work out of the box with wpa, wep, vpn etc. With a wireless adapter with free driver and free firmware it already works ootb.

out of the box: well in Debian using the regular installer you get a complete DE ootb, in Arch all I got out of the box was a shell, the pleasure of vi and a lot of work to do.

Some of your points seem more to do with familiarity than anything else. There's no need to use Ubuntu packages for *anything* in Debian, you can get all the fonts you need from Debian repos including ms-ttf.

Adding non-free packages is as simple as adding non-free to the default repo line in /etc/apt/sources.list. Adding community contributed stuff is as easy as adding contrib to the same line (& contrib packages are supported by Debian security updates). Patent encumbered multimedia stuff is available from debianmultimedia repo, unofficial but maintained by a Debian developer.

Debian does require some terminal use, you certainly can't do everything via gui yet.

It's unusual to *need* to compile anything in Debian thanks to the enormous repositories but there are occasions when you might want to. I generally compile from source to get newest versions of certain applications but otherwise no real need. I can only think of two applications that I had to compile myself, coverfinder and emelfm2.

Modularised packages (separate -dev): I'm in two minds about this. It is a pita initially to install all the dev tools in Debian, but on the other hand they take up a lot of space and if you don't need them it's a waste of bandwidth and disk space. Ideally in a binary distro a regular user would never need them anyway but of course real life is different so Arch's vanilla approach is a benefit overall.

Speed: I suspect that pacman *is* faster than APT, however the Arch mirrors are noticably slower and fewer than Debian's and sometimes time out. But pacman is certainly an impressive tool, I like it a lot.

As for overall speed for the two distros I'll be doing some tests to compare. I'm not ready yet as still installing stuff onto Arch so the system is comparable to Debian (broadly same applications and services and DE). I've read so many claims but never seen real world data so I'm doing my own Smile

Well...

Submitted by miggols99 on 29 June, 2008 - 13:13.

By the fonts, I meant the subpixel hinting. KDE3 doesn't let you use subpixel hinting without the patches Ubuntu add to them (but KDE4 has it build in to Qt4 I think). I'd prefer smooth, clear fonts rather than pixelated MS fonts..so just wondering, is there any repo available for Debian that has patched freetype/libxft etc. Confused

Also you're right about Debian working better out of the box. All I had to do was install and I was mostly done. Then next I had to install the firmware. That's good news that the firmware is now open Smile

Yeah, the things I wanted to compile on Debian were quite obscure...so most users won't need to install things like that. For example I wanted a frontend to dpkg/apt to install stuff, it was called kdpkg I think...

Speed is true with pacman. I've always noticed slower speeds with downloading, but installing is always blazing fast. There's always a small pause when it goes to download the next package.

Arch

Submitted by Guest on 19 June, 2008 - 18:58.

Hi,

Funny how things are different, I tried to install Debian Etch, and it crashed even without the Xserver running. I installed Arch, so you have to fiddle with one maybe two files but on my hardware it just rocks.

/Jakob

+1 for Arch rocking. I have

Submitted by Guest on 24 August, 2008 - 13:45.

+1 for Arch rocking. I have never had a faster OS on my hardware. Tried a bunch of linux flavors and winXP at one time...BTW I love to configure.