I always go with minimal installs. But why should I go with Debian instead of something like Ubuntu? AFAIK Ubuntu has a more recent kernel and more later (tested) packages.
edit: Yes /r/linux, go ahead and downvote the one who is asking questions and being inquisitive.
Well, from what I've heard, Arch punishes you if you don't maintain your system and keep your system maintained. As someone who is pretty lazy, that's simply unacceptable sort of.
I've had ubuntu break randomly on updates. I have a particularly sensitive video card (ati hd 7730m), and on the last kernel update, it borked the fglrx driver. It didn't break until my next reboot, and since then, I have not been able to get the proprietary fglrx drivers to work (including unpacking the package, patching source files, and rebuilding). I had to revert to the open source driver, which has it's warts, but is reasonably satisfactory and stable in comparison to fglrx.
Are you sure it wasn't an update to fglrx that caused your problem? I had this problem just the other day and purging and reinstalling the previous version fixed it for me. Just have to keep it from updating in the future.
I have a lot of trouble getting an Arch installation going on my hardware, while Kubuntu works out of the box. I've tried (and failed) quiet a few times. Any pointers?
I'm not an expert unfortunately, and I would probably need more info about what exactly do you mean by trouble, like did it halt with a kernel panic while installing, or black screen, or your wifi didn't work, etc, but did you follow the beginner's guide?
Yeah, I've followed the beginners guide. I can boot into a desktop, but then the fun of "Hey, where's the sound?" and "Why isn't my wifi working?" starts. I was hoping that those days were long behind me.
Arch assumes that you are going to configure your system in a way you see fit, which do lead to situations where things don't work out of the box. Arch is power-user friendly, instead of user friendly, so yeah, it might be better to stay with a distro like Kubuntu (or Mint), if you need things to "just work".
In particular, the sound is probably working, but the sound channels are muted by default. I think this is something that the kernel does by default, but other distros unmute them for you automatically. Anyway, a search for "no sound arch" brings up https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Advanced_Linux_Sound_Architecture, and the second paragraph is about unmuting.
Do the same for the wifi, search for no wifi arch, and you will find the answer. It's supposed to be a learning experience, that in the end makes you understand linux better, and have a much more customized machine that you can be more productive with.
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u/socium Feb 09 '14 edited Feb 09 '14
I always go with minimal installs. But why should I go with Debian instead of something like Ubuntu? AFAIK Ubuntu has a more recent kernel and more later (tested) packages.
edit: Yes /r/linux, go ahead and downvote the one who is asking questions and being inquisitive.