[arch-general] My end-user $0.02 on /etc/rc.conf splitting.

[1126]

Okay, time to drop my 0.02¢ as well. And I'm pretty sure everything said
here in this mail has been said elsewhere as well, but hey... ;)

ArchLinux tries to be as KISS as possible. That's true. And I think, it
does a pretty good job at that. And switching to systemd with a couple
of config-files instead of one rc.conf might seem like a huge step away
from this principle, but in fact it ain't. 

What is rc.conf used for right now anyway? Most of the settings in the
rc.conf are set during setup and not changed afterwards. I mean, who
changes his locale or his hostname? Then there are deamons, it's really
nice to have an array where you enter a name for a startup service and
this array is used to start services fifo. Great. But as far as I saw,
systemd provides a simple command to add services and the like. And
since it works for services, mountpoints and sockets alike, it provides a good
and coherent way to work with a lot of your system-admin things... I
like that.

So.. in my point of view, it's not such a bad thing that rc.conf gets
replaced by a couple of other files and a nice cli-interface. 

For you this change might be a reason to switch to Fedora, you say. I
mean, seriously? How is it all handled in Fedora then? Well, I don't
now, actually. But I get kinda offended by neglecting the features that
ArchLinux really make the best linux distro out there imho:

- It's a rolling release distro: You only have to carefully do pacman
  -Syu to keep your system up-to-date. I started using Linux with Ubuntu
  and first I really looked forward to a new release, I mean new
  features, new artwork and all that stuff. But distupgrade nearly
  always failed and so I re-installed my system every six months. This
  is not good! With ArchLinux I can spent way more time just using my
  system instead of playing admin.

- It has pacman: Pacman really is KISS. It does its job and it does it
  really, really good. It's fast and quite simple to use and to
  configure. 

- It has PKGBUILD: If you want compile a package due to some patches or
  extra settings (by using ABS) or if you want to install a package that
  is not in the official repos, you have to work with PKGBUILD and
  makepkg. The first being a really nice and easy to grasp file you can
  read and understand and configure to your own desires, the second
  being a tool to download the desired software, take care of
  dependencies and compiling the software. This is just dead-simple and
  great. KISS again, through and through.

- Mentioned a lot of times: the community, the wiki and the mailinglist,
  the channel. All of them are excellent and outstanding. 

Well, That's why I am staying with ArchLinux, that's why I came back
after enjoying Gentoo for quite a while, that's why I recommend it to
people asking me with which Linux they should go. 

Maybe you really switch to Fedora due to rc.conf losing it's job a
little, maybe you just did a great job trolling the list, I'm glad to
write down why I really like ArchLinux :)

1126












On Sun, 22. Jul 06:59, fredbezies wrote:
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> 
> Hello.
> 
> I've read all the arguments of Tom and Ionut. Here is my own $0.02 on
> it. When I started using archlinux back in end of 2008, the winning
> point was this file. A centralized one where you can set up a lot of
> single options.
> 
> It is *far* simpler to edit /etc/rc.conf to load daemons or modules
> than editing 2 or 3 files.
> 
> "Killing" /etc/rc.conf can't be do so soon. Or you'll see a lot of old
> users moving their on other distributions. For me it will be a one way
> ticket to fedora. And I *do hate* this idea.
> 
> But developpers must know better than users what is the best for the
> distro. Killing /etc/rc.conf ? Why not. But for me, it is more KISS
> oriented than /etc/locale.conf, /etc/vconsole.conf,
> /etc/modprobe.d/*.conf files.
> 
> As I said, it is my $0.02. Excuse my bad english, I'm no really awake !
> 
> -- 
> Frederic Bezies
> fredbezies at gmail.com