On Fri, Jun 22, 2012 at 02:38:48PM EDT, Alexandre Ferrando wrote:

On 22 June 2012 20:34, Chris Jones wrote:

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I am a long-time debian user.

[..]

You're not missing a thing, archlinux doesn't have that kind of liveCDs, just the installer. At least officially. Can't remember right now any live-cd aside from archbang ( but that is the livecd of an arch based distro, not just arch IIRC)

PS: If you're looking into installing arch, don't use a core installation, or at least grab the lattest. It is better to use a netinstall.

One additional problem is that I only have network access via a WiFi connection at this point, and to make things a little more complicated, I need to install some non-free firmware to get it to work. I did manage to boot to a framebuffer console & a bash prompt, but then I was pretty much stuck anyway: Didn't have a network connection, so that I couldn't even download additional packages w/o running the install. In any case, it's pretty obvious that I misunderstood the wiki and thought that the iso could run without having to install Archlinux to my hard drive.. so that I could take a look at a standard/demo environment and form an opinion. That's why I chose to download the core flavor of the iso, rather than the net install.. reasoning that bigger is better and that it was more likely to provide some kind of full-fledged demo environment. What I did not realize is that until you actually install Archlinux, booting the .iso only causes the packages that are required to run the install to be extracted.. everything else is still tucked away in the /i686/arch/ directory. At that stage, I couldn't as much as start a barebones X server + an XTerm and verify that the ‘nouveau’ driver that ships with the .iso does not result in a black screen.. or that I am able to bring up a wlan network connection.. etc. I guess I should have made it clear in my original post that I want to: - make sure Archlinux will run on my hardware with minimal headaches - check out pacman.. see how it compares with debian's apt. In any event, case closed. Thanks much for your comments.. not to forget the other gentlemen who kindly took the trouble to reply. CJ -- HOW ARE YOU GENTLEMEN?

On Friday 22 Jun 2012 21:43:06 Jesse Juhani Jaara wrote:

Just login as root and start bagging in sed and awk clauses to the console ^_^ should work.

Also, I'd highly suggest rolling out VirtualBox and playing with an installation. This will 1) mean you won't bork your existing system, and 2) allow you to go through the install at your own pace. The first time can take a while, since you won't be used to the way things need to be configured. Paul

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 06/22/12 20:48, Chris Jones wrote

I never bork my existing system(s).. ;-)

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On Jun 22, 2012 5:55 PM, "David Benfell" wrote:

On 06/22/12 15:10, Mauro Santos wrote:

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You could try archboot[1]. tpowa has been doing a great job at providing unofficial up-to-date install/live images. They provide the same as the official install images (but up-to-date :p) so don't expect any fancy guis.

[1] https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=143541

There is also Bridge Linux, which seems in my experience to mostly do things quite nicely. Once you've installed, it's Arch Linux.

Or yet-another-option -- my personal favorite thanks to unusual levels of utility and awesome -- you can "dynamic netboot" Arch from a 1/2 MiB PXE image: http://releng.archlinux.org/pxeboot/ ... as linked on the Downloads page. This will let you select a recent image to boot on-the-fly, providing you have a decent inet link. -- C Anthony

On Fri, Jun 22, 2012 at 06:55:22PM EDT, David Benfell wrote:

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You could try archboot[1]. tpowa has been doing a great job at providing unofficial up-to-date install/live images. They provide the same as the official install images (but up-to-date :p) so don't expect any fancy guis.

...

[1] https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=143541

There is also Bridge Linux, which seems in my experience to mostly do things quite nicely. Once you've installed, it's Arch Linux.

Downloading.. thanks.. CJ -- HOW ARE YOU GENTLEMEN?

On 23/06/12 06:41, Chris Jones wrote:

On Sat, Jun 23, 2012 at 12:10:05AM EDT, Chris Jones wrote:

[..]

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Downloading.. thanks..

Duplicated the grub entry for the Arch iso:

| menuentry "bridge-gnome-2012.5-x86_64.iso" { | set isofile="/iso/bridge-gnome-2012.5-x86_64.iso" | loopback loop (hd0,7)$isofile | linux (loop)/arch/boot/x86_64/vmlinuz archisolabel=ARCH_201108 img_dev=/dev/sdb7 img_loop=$isofile earlymodules=loop | initrd (loop)/arch/boot/x86_64/archiso.img | }

Won't boot.. gives me the usual ‘wait for 30 seconds’ and never gets to load the kernel.. or can't find the initrd.. Different file names I assume..

Need to check the contents of the iso.. tomorrow..

CJ

Please note that bridge-gnome is not supported by Archlinux and is not recommended as installation media. -- Jelle van der Waa

On 25/06/12 06:32, Chris Jones wrote:

On Sat, Jun 23, 2012 at 06:15:42AM EDT, Jelle van der Waa wrote:

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On 23/06/12 06:41, Chris Jones wrote:

[..]

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Please note that bridge-gnome is not supported by Archlinux and is not recommended as installation media.

Thanks. I looked inside the bridge-gnome iso.. but I don't know enough about what's required to make an iso bootable from the HD.. And since I was never able to register on the ‘bridge’ forums to ask the folks there if it's even possible, I've pretty much lost interest.

Bit of a shame Archlinux does not provide a live environment that lets you verify you can run X11.. connect to the network.. etc. You can connect to the network with the live-cd, since the netinstall uses the internet to download the packages.

Btw checkout the testiso's for more recent kernels, worked fine for me in a VM.

I guess I'll just install Archlinux to my HD when I have more time.

CJ

-- Jelle van der Waa

On Mon, Jun 25, 2012 at 11:24:26AM -0400, Chris Jones wrote:

On Mon, Jun 25, 2012 at 04:07:34AM EDT, Jelle van der Waa wrote:

[..]

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Bit of a shame Archlinux does not provide a live environment that lets you verify you can run X11.. connect to the network.. etc.

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You can connect to the network with the live-cd, since the netinstall uses the internet to download the packages.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I only have access to a wireless connection at this point. With current ubuntu-based liveCD's¹ that are designed to demo the product, my wireless connection is available as soon as I'm presented with the desktop. When you boot the Archlinux .iso, once you're at the root prompt, you would need to extract the relevant packages such as wicd or network-manager et al. manually from the .iso before you can contemplate bringing up a wireless connection².

Nothing wrong with that, mind you³.. The .iso is simply not designed to work that way.

...

Btw checkout the testiso's for more recent kernels, worked fine for me in a VM.

Because the network connection from your VM to the host system is not a wireless connection. It emulates a standard wired connection that requires no exotic firmware or additional packages: aeverything you need to access the network is ‘in the kernel’.

I am not being critical of Archlinux from a general standpoint.. it's just that my circumstances are what they are and as such the .iso does not currently meet my requirements.

CJ

¹ .. which means that these liveCD's ship some non-free firmware to keep my wifi NIC satisfied..

² .. and copy over the iwlwifi-*-ucode blobs from a /lib/firmware/ that lives in another partition..

³ .. I have the same wifi firmware problem with debian as with Archlinux for instance..

Answering to your original question about trying out archlinux using a live environment. Archlinux doesn't ship without anything but the bare essentials to run an OS. There is no DE, GUI, default apps, etc. as all is left to the user to decide what to use. As has been mentioned before basically arch live cd is mainly useful for installation and/or recovery. There are many arch based distributions, some shipping live cds with guis, which you can use to take for a test ride. https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Arch_Based_Distributions_(Active)