I took a break from Ubuntu yesterday evening, and installed Arch Linux off the 2007.08 Don’t Panic ISO. The timing of its release was in perfect sync with my reattachment to the Internet, and so I decided that was fate, and I had to try it. There was also the fact that I kept a 4Gb partition for Windows on my machine, and I was itching to overwrite it.

Another part of my desire to switch for a bit was dpkg. The entire time I was kicking around offline, trying to wrangle a way to install software without a connection, I kept thinking, “This is dumb. If I was using Arch, pacman would have handled this much better.”

Maybe or maybe not. I’m far more intimidated by the idea of an offline Arch installation than an offline Ubuntu machine.

Anyway, I’m always excited to get back to Arch, even though I know I’ll go back to Ubuntu before long. I love how clean and fast it is, even though it takes a little more effort to put into place. Openbox 3.4.4 is default of course, and it looks as good on this as it does in Ubuntu. Snappier than the Ubuntu version, and snappier than earlier OB releases.

The Don’t Panic installation procedure is more or less the same as earlier versions — it takes about 15 minutes to put a base installation into place, and from there you’re up and running. I’m guessing if you have unusual hardware or a particular tweak you want to access, the DP installation is an improvement. From my perspective, it’s more or less the same … not worse, not better, just the same.

My only suggestion for the devs: Next time, use a name that doesn’t include an apostrophe. It confused the heck out of Graveman. 😉 But then again, it doesn’t take much to do that. 🙄