First Install

First Install

Having been sitting in my torrent inbox for quite a few days now, my archlinux-2009.02-core-x86_64.iso has been begging me to install it. I have future plans to get an install happening on Zhora, but that will have to wait until later. Those of you who read my first blog post entitled Introductions will remember that Zhora is my old HP Compaq Presario. The reason that I have to wait to get Arch installed on Zhora is that she is currently in several different pieces and filled with dust.

So, with Zhora out of commission, there is only one solution! VBox! I understand that there is no chance of my botching up my production OS if I install Arch on a virtual machine. Again, some of you might remember that my main computer (a hybrid mongrel conglomeration of different brands) is named Pris. That’s where my new shiny Arch install will be going =]

So, before I installed Arch I decided to check out the Arch wiki at http://wiki.archlinux.org/ before doing too much. Of interest to me seem to be the Beginners Guide http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beginners_Guide as well as The Arch Way http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/The_Arch_Way. I certainly like their concept of “The Arch Way”. Simplicity, check. Openness, sure that’s always important, I will know exactly what’s going on. User-centric, meaning I will have complete control and responsibility over my system. Sounds good to me. Feedom, check. What good GNU/Linux distro would be complete without freedom? The ‘freedom’ from The Arch Way actually seems to be more free than the regular libre freedom that normally accompanies GNU/Linux – I will actually get to make all the decisions and even chose what my system will *be*. And I left this one to last on purpose – Code correctness over convenience. This is something that I really agree with. Code correctness is something that I have always strived for, especially while programming. There’s just something nice about knowing that what you have put together isn’t a dirty hack. And it’s easier to understand the system that way as well. I really thing The Arch Way is great, and I have a feeling that I might even end up writing more about it in the future =]

So, back to my first install. Basically it was really straight forward. Because I use the dvorak keyboard layout, there was a little bit of extra configuration here and there but all in all it was easy enough. Now… when I say straigtforward, take it with a little grain of salt. I got it installed all right, but the term ‘installed’ on Arch Linux means something a little different to what I would normally think it to mean. Once Arch Linux is installed, I was only about half way through the Beginners’ Guide. When ‘installed’ Arch Linux is nothing more than a nice black console that you can type commands into. It’s a bit like using Ubuntu, but you can only use the terminal and it fills the whole screen. It turns out that to get the Linux that I love, I need to do a little extra work.

First, X has to be installed. Hmmm, okay, I have heard about X a bit before. X11… the thing that makes windows appear, the foundation of most WMs (Window Managers) and DEs (Desktop Environments). It has the nice hollow X for the cursor. Well, not yet anyway I haven’t gotten it installed quite yet. Now, I don’t know how I messed this up exactly, but I misread the Beginners’ Guide. I would find this out later, anyway. There is a part in there that says when testing the xorg.conf file, certain tests may display false negatives. Well, I must have missed that part. So I thought I had done something wrong with drivers or my xorg.conf (which lives at /etc/X11/xorg.conf incidently). I spend quite a few hours trying to work out what the heck was going on. I even did a reinstall at one stage, thinking that if I redid it all again I might see what was going wrong. I eventually gave up and called it a day.

So no Xorg running, just a black terminal and some nice pretty white text. At least I had the base system installed though.

Having been sitting in my torrent inbox for quite a few days now, my archlinux-2009.02-core-x86_64.iso has been begging me to install it. I have future plans to get an install happening on Zhora, but that will have to wait until later. Those of you who read my first blog post entitled Introductions will remember that Zhora is my old HP Compaq Presario. The reason that I have to wait to get Arch installed on Zhora is that she is currently in several different pieces and filled with dust.

With Zhora out of commission, there is only one solution! VBox! I understand that there is no chance of my botching up my production OS if I install Arch on a virtual machine. Again, some of you might remember that my main computer (a hybrid mongrel conglomeration of different brands) is named Pris. That’s where my new shiny Arch install will be going =]

Now, before I installed Arch I decided to check out the Arch wiki at http://wiki.archlinux.org/ before doing too much. Of interest to me seem to be the Beginners Guide http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beginners_Guide as well as The Arch Way http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/The_Arch_Way. I certainly like their concept of “The Arch Way”. Simplicity, check. Openness, sure that’s always important, I will know exactly what’s going on. User-centric, meaning I will have complete control and responsibility over my system. Sounds good to me. Feedom, check. What good GNU/Linux distro would be complete without freedom? The ‘freedom’ from The Arch Way actually seems to be more free than the regular libre freedom that normally accompanies GNU/Linux – I will actually get to make all the decisions and even chose what my system will *be*. And I left this one to last on purpose – Code correctness over convenience. This is something that I really agree with. Code correctness is something that I have always strived for, especially while programming. There’s just something nice about knowing that what you have put together isn’t a dirty hack. And it’s easier to understand the system that way as well. I really thing The Arch Way is great, and I have a feeling that I might even end up writing more about it in the future =]

So, back to my first install. Basically it was really straight forward. Because I use the dvorak keyboard layout, there was a little bit of extra configuration here and there but all in all it was easy enough. Now… when I say straigtforward, take it with a little grain of salt. I got it installed all right, but the term ‘installed’ on Arch Linux means something a little different to what I would normally think it to mean. Once Arch Linux is installed, I was only about half way through the Beginners’ Guide. When ‘installed’ Arch Linux is nothing more than a nice black console that you can type commands into. It’s a bit like using Ubuntu, but you can only use the terminal and it fills the whole screen. It turns out that to get the Linux that I love, I need to do a little extra work.

First, X has to be installed. Hmmm, okay, I have heard about X a bit before. X11… the thing that makes windows appear, the foundation of most WMs (Window Managers) and DEs (Desktop Environments). It has the nice hollow X for the cursor. Well, not yet anyway I haven’t gotten it installed quite yet. Now, I don’t know how I messed this up exactly, but I misread the Beginners’ Guide. I would find this out later, anyway. There is a part in there that says when testing the xorg.conf file, certain tests may display false negatives. Well, I must have missed that part. So I thought I had done something wrong with drivers or my xorg.conf (which lives at /etc/X11/xorg.conf incidently). I spend quite a few hours trying to work out what the heck was going on. I even did a reinstall at one stage, thinking that if I redid it all again I might see what was going wrong. I eventually gave up and called it a day.

Hmm, no Xorg running, just a black terminal and some nice pretty white text. At least I had the base system installed though. That is at least something. There is something about putting a system together and configuring it yourself that makes one proud to be a Linux user.