[arch-general] Booting archlinux .iso to take a look

[gt]

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:
> 
> [..]
> 
> > > 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.
> 
> 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)