Arch migration (success!!)

[Michael Butash]

I figured if I'm going to anything, I'd prefer to go to something I can
control more, which always seems to bring me back to Arch, and more than a
few of you seem to use it too.  I attempted before and failed, but this
weekend I got there, got stable, and then found more or less all the same
desktop bugs and more, particularly with KDE, with far more pain than I'm
used to with Ubuntu or other debian derivatives.  Figured I would share
some of the experiences for better and worse even if TL:DR, but HTH someone
too.

I like certain things about Arch, but found getting it working to be a
dismal process, and one that kept teaching me just how different (or
broken) every distribution's process can be.  I simply can't imagine most
people using Arch that aren't simply diehard sysadmins, primarily even
getting it to work outside of the most basic installations.

Biggest things that totally screwed me up were my want to use GPT, these
new-fangled nvme disks that aren't still fully baked into linux, adapting
my disk/volume setup to all of this, and finding it really didn't like me
making /usr a separate partition.

GPT as far as I can tell simply doesn't work outside EFI, especially as a
legacy bios thing that has been MBR-based for eons.  Usage of GPT seems to
ass-u-me/implies it is being paired with EFI which knows these things.
Trying everything with this intel board, it simply would never boot off it,
and apparently most legacy bios are cranky about booting gpt, particularly
intel boards.  I wasted thanksgiving long weekend attempting last time,
even without raid or anything else on a standard non-nvme ssd, and never
worked.  I give up as I didn't really need GPT, but more curiosity to keep
alignment proper for ssd geometry.

I got a pair of Samsung NVME-based 950 Pro M.2 disks as my end-goal, as
their attachment to the pci-bus direct seems to be the future.
Unfortunately the tech is still new, most tools like udev still aren't
baked to detect them, and even when rigging it with rules to do so, fails
because of other things around udev not baked in either.  This includes
thins like hdparm, smart tools, any monitoring apps looking for drives at
only sd[a-z]*, zfs libs (because udev won't build /dev/disk/by-* links off
them), and most anything else looking for disks !=sd*.  Even samsung's own
firmware utility "magician" doesn't know what they are under linux.

Adapting my disk formula was actually fairly easy giving up on GPT and ZFS
already, combining MBR+ traditional linux fs tools, mdadm, luks/cryptsetup,
and lvm2 didn't so much care.  What last broke my booting linux was
combinations of mdadm and luks, and my typical habit of building /usr as a
separate partition.  I found out the hard way mdraid builds different from
initrd or a fully-booted kernel, and arch didn't seem to want to work via
UUID with grub, as it unlocks luks volumes differently in initrd than
ubuntu does (poorly in arch, imho).  Once I created a static mdadm.conf for
it, pointed grub to unlock it, it would work.  Then die on not finding /usr
to init systemd.

The usr problem was far more annoying, and took some digging, where all
recommendations I found simply didn't work.  Arch devs just never presumed
anyone would want to do that, and really have no good method of supporting
it.  Quick fix was relenting and keeping /usr on root anyways, though
annoying it wasn't so obvious with boot dying because of not getting
/sbin/init to work (really a symlink to /usr/lib/systemd/systemd or like).

After everything, I have mdraided nvme disks, luks encryption, lvm, and
ext4 atop that, so I'm at least no worse off.  ZFS was my first choice, but
linux tools not understanding nvme drives broke that as viable.  BTRFS
didn't seem to get me much with chicken and egg issues around encryption
that it would be simpler, but would have at least offered lzo compression,
if not brokenness like ZFS+udev with nvme.

Once at a desktop again, KDE with latest packages ala neon are still a
clusterfsck though, still getting my taskbar flipping around with displays
coming/going, but not Arch's fault, and at least I'm stable off of Ubuntu
so far otherwise.  I probably need to try cinnamon or mate again, something
the developers have tested more than a single monitor and video card with.

I cannot say it's been terribly worth it so far moving to Arch, but this is
only really my second full day of just simply "using it".  The fact it
really is so minimal has been a bit painful, as it requires literally
anything you might actually need to be installed, even with full desktop
meta packages.  Actually need a terminal app with kde - need to add
konsole.  Want screenshots with spectacle or music with banshee?  Need to
figure out AUR, or yaourt as I did.

Thankfully I've already learned their stupid app names for linux software
to even begin to find most (like baobab, my favorite disk space utility
with the most horrid name), but I don't expect most would/could but the
most diehard linux users to get a moderately complete desktop back.  At
least versus kubuntu giving you an adequate base to start with that I'm
more used to.

Any windoze person would have run away screaming long ago, and I think even
most moderately skilled linux folks - it really shouldn't be this hard, yet
here I am too.  Neither debian or ubuntu are good long-term with upgrades
obliterating my system, so here's to hoping change is worth it in the long
run for rolling releases and adding a new distribution to achievements
earned.

-mb
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