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ARCH LINUX! Linux newbie, learning a lot!

TBSN

TBSN

Senior member
Hey all,

I've messed around with linux several times before, tried out Ubuntu for a while, and a few other distros for a short time.

I decided I'd give it another shot and try to really learn how it works.

I heard Gentoo was a good one to try, but I found it annoying as hell and unnecessarily complicated to install. Arch was really cool because installing the base system wasn't too difficult, but it still leaves you with a very spartan system. So far I have set up a few things and learned a lot about what's actually going on.

to set up the wifi, I had to install netcfg and manually create a profile for my WiFi.

I had to install Sudo (so I don't always have to log in as root) and I just added permission for my non-root account so I can use it. I'm going to have to read up on a lot of things, like permissions and editing a lot of the configurations for programs. I'm not sure, but it seems like when I install packages they install so that only the root can use them. This may not be true though... And I also don't know what an Alias is.

So in short I'm a little lost but there's plenty of info online.

So my question is, where do I go from here? Are there any resources you recommend to get me started? I only know the simplest of commands. I have a couple goals like figuring out how to change the screen brightness. Yeah, I don't even know how to do that.

This isn't a work computer by the way, the harddrive is dedicated to Arch so I'm not worried about screwing anything up.

-TBN
 
Are you following the arch beginners guide? It explains everything. When you install something with pacman it should work for everyone. You might not have your user setup correctly. An Alias is something in your bash settings you shoundn't have to mess with that.
 
Cool, I'll check out those links! Thanks a lot. Yeah I was mistaken about the pacman permissions, it works fine.
 
Hm cool, I'll check it out. I'm trying to get a boot manager to work, I'm having trouble. When it works, it just boots into X11 rather than Xfce, and it only works if I log into root. I got Xfce4 to work though. The only thing I really hate about Linux is the terrible battery life. It takes a lot of fiddling around to get it to use less power.
 
I'm trying to get a boot manager to work, I'm having trouble.
Click to expand...

You mean a display manager like GDM?

When it works, it just boots into X11 rather than Xfce, and it only works if I log into root.
Click to expand...

XFCE runs on top of X, unless you mean that it boots to the X crosshatch screen with no WM running.
 
Yeah, sorry I meant a display manager.

And yes I meant that it shows the X screen with a virtual terminal and no WM. (or maybe that is a WM? It's not Xfce though, although I did put the option "exec Xfce4" in the Xinit file
 
Yeah it's Xterm. It's alright I'll figure it out eventually. I like arch, but maybe I'll go back to an easier distribution for a while.
 
Yea, I haven't worried about little things like that in a long time. It's nice knowing how that stuff works so you can fix it if it breaks, but I prefer to just let the Debian devs handle that kind of stuff these days. =)
 
I followed all of the guide. The wiki is really helpful.

I just installed Debian to try it out, I really like it because it's easier to set up. I'm selling the laptop I've been using so I wasn't trying to make a functional system.

I'll be sticking to windows on my main computer. There's nothing in Linux that I need but it's fun to play around with. If I decide to set up a home server or something I would probably use linux, but for desktop use it doesn't really make sense (for me).
 
Sweetness. Just got my first ArchLinux PC running. Total Linux noob and figured that with the tutorial and everything it would help me learn a lot more than other full builds.

Its pretty basic at this point. Dell Inspiron 8200 w/ LXDE DE and Openbox WM. Using Chromium for the browser.

So far things are going well. I ran into some hurdles while trying to manually configure my HDD and setup my Network (my dumbass grabbed the wrong gray cable... it was the other cable that was plugged into the router lol).
 
bobross419 said:
Sweetness. Just got my first ArchLinux PC running. Total Linux noob and figured that with the tutorial and everything it would help me learn a lot more than other full builds.

Its pretty basic at this point. Dell Inspiron 8200 w/ LXDE DE and Openbox WM. Using Chromium for the browser.

So far things are going well. I ran into some hurdles while trying to manually configure my HDD and setup my Network (my dumbass grabbed the wrong gray cable... it was the other cable that was plugged into the router lol).
Click to expand...
Welcome to the dark side 😉
 
bobross419 said:
Sweetness. Just got my first ArchLinux PC running. Total Linux noob and figured that with the tutorial and everything it would help me learn a lot more than other full builds.

Its pretty basic at this point. Dell Inspiron 8200 w/ LXDE DE and Openbox WM. Using Chromium for the browser.

So far things are going well. I ran into some hurdles while trying to manually configure my HDD and setup my Network (my dumbass grabbed the wrong gray cable... it was the other cable that was plugged into the router lol).
Click to expand...

Cool, I bet you'll learn a lot like I did. It gets frustrating when something doesn't work and you can't figure out a fix, but that's linux for you 😛
 
TBSN said:
Cool, I bet you'll learn a lot like I did. It gets frustrating when something doesn't work and you can't figure out a fix, but that's linux for you 😛
Click to expand...

And if you stick with it you'll hit a point where that frustration turns a complete 180° and turns to doing things in Windows. I can't keep track of how many times I try to do something in Windows and feel rage because it's so much extra effort to get it going compared to Linux.
 
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