On 01/26/2010 02:26 PM, Damien Churchill wrote:

2010/1/26 Carlos Williams:

...

This is my 1st time ever installing Arch Linux with GDM / Gnome desktop environment. I did not install 'gnome-extra' package because I don't want all the useless applications. I prefer to only install what I need. I am have been using an Ubuntu 10.4 workstations and got everything working on my new Arch system. It is very fast even installed the latest nVidia drivers from their site. My only issue I have is the fonts look horrible. I did go to 'System> Preferences> Appearance> Fonts tab' and set the fonts to 'Sub Pixel Smoothing' for LCD's but I am missing the smoothness and glossiness (Anti Aliasing) that Ubuntu had. My Arch fonts still look very rough and 1993'ish. I don't know what I can do to make my Gnome / Desktop environment appear more polished and cleaner. Do you guys have any suggestions?

Do I need a specific WM or special decorative package? I work a lot on my workstation and need it to be pleasing to the eyes. The fonts I have don't make my system look very appealing. I know it sounds stupid but I really like my DE to be pleasing on my eyes since I use if for hours at a time...

Thanks for any help!

If you open the Fonts tab in the Appearance preferences, and click Details, another window opens that allows you to set the font hinting. Ubuntu has it set to Slight by default so changing this might help how the fonts look. Worth a try at least!

Damien

You might want to also try the cairo-lcd package from aur. http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=16459

On Tue, Jan 26, 2010 at 4:09 PM, Andrea Fagiani wrote:

I suggest taking a look at the Font_Configuration http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Font_Configuration article in the Wiki, it's got a lot of useful tweaks. Also, I found myself very comfortable with the Cleartype packages, namely cairo-cleartype, freetype2-cleartype and libxft-cleartype (which you can find in AUR); they /do/ make arch a better visual experience!

Yeah I will review the Wiki again in more detail. I have never installed anything from AUR but assume it's pretty straight forward. I will try your suggested packages... Thanks!

On Wed, 2010-01-27 at 12:55 -0700, Brendan Long wrote:

On 01/26/2010 06:37 PM, Carlos Williams wrote:

...

On Tue, Jan 26, 2010 at 4:09 PM, Andrea Fagiani wrote:

...

[snip]

Yeah I will review the Wiki again in more detail. I have never installed anything from AUR but assume it's pretty straight forward. I will try your suggested packages...

Thanks!

Installing from the AUR is kind of a pain, I'd suggest that the first package you get is yaourt. It lets you install directly from the AUR install of downloading individual files and then running makepkg.

Bad advise, IMHO. yaourt is a helper, not meant to be a pacman replacement. To Andrea, you should learn to download the PKGBUILD and all accompanying files first (to a directory you have write access to) and how to edit PKGBUILDs and run makepkg. Once you've got passing familiarity with that then using yaourt does save time. Basically, if you start off with yaourt, you're screwed if things break somewhere down the line, since you won't know what's happening behind the scenes, as it were.

On Wed, 2010-01-27 at 16:43 -0600, Burlynn Corlew Jr wrote:

2010/1/27 Ng Oon-Ee

...

On Wed, 2010-01-27 at 12:55 -0700, Brendan Long wrote:

...

On 01/26/2010 06:37 PM, Carlos Williams wrote:

...

On Tue, Jan 26, 2010 at 4:09 PM, Andrea Fagiani wrote:

...

[snip]

Yeah I will review the Wiki again in more detail. I have never installed anything from AUR but assume it's pretty straight forward. I will try your suggested packages...

Thanks!

Installing from the AUR is kind of a pain, I'd suggest that the first package you get is yaourt. It lets you install directly from the AUR install of downloading individual files and then running makepkg.

Bad advise, IMHO. yaourt is a helper, not meant to be a pacman replacement. To Andrea, you should learn to download the PKGBUILD and all accompanying files first (to a directory you have write access to) and how to edit PKGBUILDs and run makepkg. Once you've got passing familiarity with that then using yaourt does save time.

Basically, if you start off with yaourt, you're screwed if things break somewhere down the line, since you won't know what's happening behind the scenes, as it were.

I agree with this a 100%. I do not mind people using automated package builders, but you need to be aware of whats going on. The IRC channel regularly gets people that have run into exactly this, people being told to use yaourt initially then when a build fails they have no idea how to troubleshoot. I'm really not convinced automated builders are very k.i.s.s., but we are a binary based distro so I won't get into that.

My concern is not necessarily KISS (its open to interpretation much of the time) but that in Arch, users MUST know what's going on in their system, without too much abstraction.

On 01/27/2010 03:47 PM, Ng Oon-Ee wrote:

On Wed, 2010-01-27 at 16:43 -0600, Burlynn Corlew Jr wrote:

...

2010/1/27 Ng Oon-Ee

...

[snip] Bad advise, IMHO. yaourt is a helper, not meant to be a pacman replacement. To Andrea, you should learn to download the PKGBUILD and all accompanying files first (to a directory you have write access to) and how to edit PKGBUILDs and run makepkg. Once you've got passing familiarity with that then using yaourt does save time.

Basically, if you start off with yaourt, you're screwed if things break somewhere down the line, since you won't know what's happening behind the scenes, as it were.

I agree with this a 100%. I do not mind people using automated package builders, but you need to be aware of whats going on. The IRC channel regularly gets people that have run into exactly this, people being told to use yaourt initially then when a build fails they have no idea how to troubleshoot. I'm really not convinced automated builders are very k.i.s.s., but we are a binary based distro so I won't get into that.

My concern is not necessarily KISS (its open to interpretation much of the time) but that in Arch, users MUST know what's going on in their system, without too much abstraction.

The difference between yaourt and building yourself isn't that significant. Without yaourt: - Download all files to a directory - Type "makepkg" - Type "pacman -U packagename.pkg.tar.gz" With yaourt: - Type "yaourt -S packagename" It's important to now how PKGBUILD files work (and read them when you install from the AUR), but all yaourt does is simplify minor steps. The most major step (reading the PKGBUILD) isn't forced on the AUR, but is suggested WITH BIG SCARY WORDS with yaourt. Just my thoughts on the matter. -Brendan Long