7 ms·

Arch shares its wiki strategy with Debian

387 points by lemper 1y ago

krunck 1y ago
It's great to see such inter-project information sharing and cooperation!
blueflow 1y ago
Look at the "ArchWiki active users per month" graph. What happened in 2013? With the exception of the lockdown period, it has been decreasing since then.
- Macha 1y ago
  A spike in pages needing updates for the systemd migration which started in 2012 returned to a more normal level. In recent years, NixOS has probably taken some of their enthusiast base too
  - polivier 1y ago
    I switched from Arch to NixOS and I know many others who did too. For users inclined to use a distro such as Arch, NixOS feels like the natural next step.
    - mapotofu 1y ago
      I’ve had to do very, very little to my Artix desktop since setting it up that I don’t think I’ll ever switch unless my life constraints changed significantly. NixOS seems like a lot to learn. I’m happy to be proven otherwise and know I’m not alone in becoming very complacent to my setup once getting to Arch.
- homebrewer 1y ago
  The baseline has been covered and there's not as much to write about anymore?
- aeonik 1y ago
  2013 is around the time Manjaro got popular. Arch also locked down their forum posts due to popularity in 2011. https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=113819 https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=113819
- xdfgh1112 1y ago
  Many people used Arch for its status as "the pro Linux distribution" i.e. not beginner friendly, but secretly still easy enough that you don't need much effort. That's how "I use Arch btw" became a meme. These people have now moved to NixOS.
  - Imustaskforhelp 1y ago
    I mean, I was using nobara and my brother had showed me arch once and it looked so cool and he used to say, " that I have ran arch" and so I was watching a lot more arch content / linux too so I decided to try it to be "good at linux" Not many regrets aside from the times that I accidentally deleted my hard drives so many times that I can't count on fingers lol, its still a little fun lol. Ricing it with hyprland and I am truly happy with my system. I also have nix but I couldn't really love it aside from the fact that nix-env is really really cool.
  - Foxboron 1y ago
    > That's how "I use Arch btw" became a meme. Not really. The meme is from 4chan and the /g/ board that had some origins around 2011/2012. Gentoo was the main meme before this. After 2012'ish the meme-culture from 4chan became mainstream internet culture with the popularity of reddit. Nothing has really progressed beyond that. > These people have now moved to NixOS. [citation needed]
  - zozbot234 1y ago
    > "the pro Linux distribution" i.e. not beginner friendly, but secretly still easy enough that you don't need much effort. That's a common perception of Debian, perhaps even more than Arch. One difference being that Debian actually has a lot of notable use in production. It's also just as stable as any "LTS" distro, which is a welcome convenience for many beginners as well as more experienced users.
LadyCailin 1y ago
Documentation is super important for complex things. I feel like it’s highly underrated by many otherwise great open source projects, to the severe detriment of the project. Nice to see an explicit focus on it.
- gary_0 1y ago
  Underrated in proprietary and non-software tech, too. It's horrible when infrequent tasks turn into bespoke shitshows every time they crop up because nobody wrote down how to solve the problem. Having to figure things out from scratch every time is ridiculously inefficient. Even worse if it leads to customers having slightly different copies of the same kind of software or device configuration because there's no documented process to follow. I know from experience.
homebrewer 1y ago
Instead of creating multiple wikis with probably 80% of duplicate information between them, it would be great to have a cross distribution wiki with separate sections for distribution-specific instructions where it makes sense. Gentoo had a fantastic wiki before they lost it to disk array failure (IIRC) around ten years ago, now pretty much everyone is going to the Arch wiki, why not try to turn it into a shared project?
- noirscape 1y ago
  In the case of Debian, they have a pretty different stance when it comes to what the role of a distro is compared to Arch. Arch is essentially completely freeform; you, the user, are going to be making a lot of technical decisions on what you want your system to look like. It's perfectly okay for Arch to ship 4 different versions of the same type of tool, as long as all 4 are being used. The Arch wiki reflects this; it's focused around giving you a lot of options, while not going too in-depth on what you'd want to do with them. Want to swap out NetworkManager for wpa_supplicant because wpa_supplicant is easier to configure from a terminal? Perfectly fine, go ahead. Most arch packages as a result don't heavily deviate from upstream unless it's absolutely necessary to get them running. Debian uh... isn't that. Debian still offers choice, but Debian has set the unenviable goal for themselves to provide a "stable" userland experience. This means Debian offers less options, but the options they do offer are also fixed on certain versions with sometimes pretty derivative versions compares to upstream. Their documentation as a result can get much more in-depth, just by virtue of having less to cover than Arch does. A basic example here is setting up a webserver stack (so webserver, php and mysql); on Debian, you pick between apache2(+mod_php) or nginx/php-fpm and install mysql. Debian takes care of wiring all the permissions, user groups and all that stuff and giving you a "sane" default folder capable of serving PHP scripts on port 80 that anyone can use. It's a lot easier and nginx' configuration is specifically changed to resemble the apache2 vhosts. Arch doesn't do this; arch gives you the upstream versions of all these packages and then asks you to wire them together so that they work. It means they attract pretty different audiences as a result; Debian users value stability/set and forget (also helped by Debian release cycles basically lasting the same length as most LTS releases of other distros), while Arch users are more conditioned to having to occasionally change their config files on updates. That's also reflected in what their wikis aim at. Debian wikis generally can be version locked to their release; Arch wiki needs constant updating as things change. They're different extremes here; most distros usually sit on one side or the other of this sorta thing (with the only real correlation being that dpkg-based distros usually lean more towards the Debian model), but there's also the pseudo-rolling release distros like Fedora, which try to offer similar stability to Debian but much shorter release cycles, so you'll always be running something at least close to the latest version.
nylonstrung 1y ago
Hopefully they share it with NixOS next
- dundarious 1y ago
  Nix in general has some of the worst documentation I've ever encountered.
  - samgranieri 1y ago
    I'm nix curious, and yeah, it's a bit of a challenge.
abhijeetpbodas 1y ago
For lwn.net articles, aren't these subscriber-only links meant to be used only by the subscriber? Is sharing them on HN sabotaging lwn?
- rmccue 1y ago
  https://lwn.net/op/FAQ.lwn#slinks https://lwn.net/op/FAQ.lwn#slinks > Where is it appropriate to post a subscriber link? > Almost anywhere. Private mail, messages to project mailing lists, and blog entries are all appropriate. As long as people do not use subscriber links as a way to defeat our attempts to gain subscribers, we are happy to see them shared.
- OJFord 1y ago
  They're usually shared links (note the 'share a free link' button at the bottom, above comments) ime - I've never seen it styled like this before. Weird that it's a subscriber-only link that doesn't require login, but does for other subscriber-only actions like sharing a free link or replying to a comment.
- stingraycharles 1y ago
  It’s a feature. I actually ended up subscribing to LWN precisely because of the quality of these types of articles.
- ThePowerOfFuet 1y ago
  >The following subscription-only content has been made available to you by an LWN subscriber. It's literally a feature.
- corbet 1y ago
  The occasional sharing of subscriber links in this way only does us good. If you enjoy the content, please subscribe and help ensure that there will be more of it!
- pessimizer 1y ago
  Joining lwn makes you a gatekeeper for lwn (and allows you to browse and comment on lwn), it doesn't simply allow you to be a reader of lwn. I'm sure their traffic has almost no relationship to their number of subscribers. Subscribers are just the people actively marketing the journalism. It's like a two-level pyramid scheme - you're spreading their journalism and looking smart, and 1/500 of the people you send it to become new subscribers.
ACS_Solver 1y ago
The Arch wiki is one of the best things the Linux community has produced. It's like a modern, improved and more complete version of TLDP. I haven't even used Arch on any of my machines but can't count how many times I've found their wiki useful for my workstations, servers and even custom Yocto-built systems. Arch supports many ways of doing a thing, so whatever tool I'm dealing with, Arch probably supports that and documents it on the wiki. And Arch makes few changes from upstream so the wiki instructions are often applicable on any distro. Sure, it takes some familiarity to recognize when something is e.g. Debian-specific and should be done in a Debian way, but as a user fairly familiar with Linux, I often find Arch to be the best source of documentation.
- _mlbt 1y ago
  After using FreeBSD and OpenBSD, it is frankly shocking how bad Linux documentation is in comparison. On the BSDs every command, every program, every system call, and every configuration file are thoroughly documented in man pages and other guides. The FreeBSD Handbook in particular is a treasure. It more than makes up for some of the more difficult aspects of the OS by providing thorough and approachable documentation.
  - bitwize 1y ago
    I learned how to do NetBSD kernel hacking from just the man pages. They're still my first-line documentation on the NetBSD file system work I'm doing. The state of Linux documentation is appalling by contrast.
    - hungmung 1y ago
      Came in here to say the same thing. NetBSD should get more love. Practically speaking ArchWiki has everything I'm likely to need as a poweruser, but it's not really all that comprehensive.
    - bombcar 1y ago
      GNU getting a burr up its ass that info pages were the future in whenever it happened did irreparable harm to Linux.
samgranieri 1y ago
I"m still absolutely floored with how good the archwiki is. I can't hype it up enough. I really did't know what I was doing with systemd until I read that wonderful article, and also, the link to why the arch maintainer switched that distro to systemd made my accept the change to it.
- bo1024 1y ago
  When I was starting with Linux (15 years ago) with Fedora, Ubuntu, etc., for all of my questions I kept finding answers on the Arch wiki. So eventually I just switched to Arch, so the answers would always work. That was an era when searching the Internet worked. Come to think of it, I haven't had Arch wiki pop up in my search results in years.
  - frantathefranta 1y ago
    Both Kagi and DuckDuckGo have search bangs (!aw) to search ArchWiki articles. I also have ArchWiki boosted in my Kagi settings.
- tempfile 1y ago
  Sounds worth reading. Is this the article you mean? https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Systemd https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Systemd
  - rdlw 1y ago
    That's the systemd article, and this is the forum post explaining why arch moved to systemd: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1149530#p1149530 https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1149530#p1149530
    - pkulak 1y ago
      https://archive.is/Mi9DP https://archive.is/Mi9DP Scroll down to the long post by tomegun. I kinda get the animosity now. I wasn't really using Linux at the time, but if I was, and my system was running great, and then I had a list of complicated instructions I had to perform to change my init system... I'd probably be peeved off.
ho_schi 1y ago
I shall edit more in the Wiki and post less here. The Wiki is the stronghold of Arch. As are the the packages. A lot of stuff makes good things good is a lot manual labor by all involved people. PS: Removing stuff or not accepting changes is also a significant part of the Wiki. It hurts, as usual. But necessary for readability.
IsTom 1y ago
> We are still quite a small wiki compared to Wikipedia A small intermediate goal for ArchWiki
smjburton 1y ago
This is really exciting. I've used the Arch Wiki countless times for setting up or configuring something in Debian but wanting a resource more native to the platform. I hope they're able to produce a comparable wiki for Debian-based OSes.
reedlaw 1y ago
I switched from Ubuntu to Arch because of the quality of the Arch wiki. Ubuntu search results were filled with so much misinformation that I realized it was a culture problem. Arch, with its higher barrier to entry, attracts users who maintain its standards.
zoobab 1y ago
Make a wiki with Markdown syntax and GIT backend.
- jxbsbdbd 1y ago
  These are a dime a dozen. Jet non of them has any significant share in the pure wiki space
  - aakkaakk 1y ago
    Name a few of them.
    - zahlman 1y ago
      https://duckduckgo.com/?q=markdown+based+wiki https://duckduckgo.com/?q=markdown+based+wiki People can't name them off the top of their heads, exactly because none of them have caught on. But they're easy to find.
- bawolff 1y ago
  I wonder how well git scales as a backend. Access patterns of wikis seem kind of different than software.
Gander5739 1y ago
> MediaWiki markup is different. It is weird and fragile; changing a single token can completely break a page. It is also, he said, difficult to write a proper or robust parser for the language. Good thing mwparserfromhell exists, then.
verdverm 1y ago
I went to install debian recently, but ended up with ubuntu because debian docs were so convoluted. Could not find the minimal iso I was looking for I hope debian sees improvement here with this announcement
mauvehaus 1y ago
The Arch wiki is the PostgreSQL documentation of Linux. Even if you're not using Arch or Postgres, it's a great starting point for how something is supposed to work and it covers enough details that you can extrapolate a bit.
Voultapher 1y ago
It's one the reasons I'm using Arch. Great features are worth little to me if I don't know about them. What I like particularly about the wiki is their why sections that explain why one would want to choose one way over another. A good example of this is the page on data-at-rest encryption [1]. [1] https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Data-at-rest_encryption https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Data-at-rest_encryption
w4rh4wk5 1y ago
On the topic of Arch wiki, I know there are a couple of offline and cli / tui solutions. Which do you use and recommend?
jbirer 1y ago
I found myself on Arch Wiki for so many non-Arch issues that I decided that I'll just install Arch and use it.
7bit 1y ago
The Arch Linux community is one of the most toxic I know. First and foremost, there are members with tens of thousands of posts who become condescending and insulting when other members don’t dance to their tune. The Code of Conduct exists only on paper and is not enforced by the Arch leadership. This results in such behavior not only being tolerated but actively encouraged. Shame on them and shame on Debian for further encouraging this behaviour by inviting them to the DebConf.
- umbra07 1y ago
  > First and foremost, there are members with tens of thousands of posts who become condescending and insulting when other members don't dance to their tune. Yes, there are some regulars on the forums that get might get snippy with you if you ask for troubleshooting help while refusing to read the forum rules, RTFM, or are incapable of following basic troubleshooting steps. I don't really see the issue.
- anonfordays 1y ago
  >The Code of Conduct exists only on paper and is not enforced by the Arch leadership. Based. The Arch Code of Conduct is also free from wokeisms. Never used Arch, but I may make the switch considering these things.
burnt-resistor 1y ago
This seems heavy on self-promotion. Meanwhile, Arch is still x86-centric (in spite of fragmented, unofficial forks) and doesn't do LTS, while Debian supports multiple architectures and stability. Debian does have a lot of rambling, aspirationally-unfinished, outdated, and duplicated wiki pages.
WhereIsTheTruth 1y ago
This obsession with changing what works for something else to please some shady people is annoying This conformism is painful to witness, it happens to everything internet related, and the goal here seems to be related to the idea that internet should require a digital ID/wallet to browse Sad era to live in
sam_bristow 1y ago
One feature I wish the Arch wiki had last time I used it was conditionally hiding sections. It presented various options throughout their guides and depending on which options you chose later sections weren't relevant. I often found I'd get partway through a step only to discover it wasn't relevant. It would be great if, when presented with different options, you could indicate which one you'd selected and have it hide the irrelevant stuff further down the page

387 points by lemper 1y ago

It's great to see such inter-project information sharing and cooperation!

Look at the "ArchWiki active users per month" graph. What happened in 2013? With the exception of the lockdown period, it has been decreasing since then.

Macha 1y ago
A spike in pages needing updates for the systemd migration which started in 2012 returned to a more normal level. In recent years, NixOS has probably taken some of their enthusiast base too
- polivier 1y ago
  I switched from Arch to NixOS and I know many others who did too. For users inclined to use a distro such as Arch, NixOS feels like the natural next step.
  - mapotofu 1y ago
    I’ve had to do very, very little to my Artix desktop since setting it up that I don’t think I’ll ever switch unless my life constraints changed significantly. NixOS seems like a lot to learn. I’m happy to be proven otherwise and know I’m not alone in becoming very complacent to my setup once getting to Arch.
homebrewer 1y ago
The baseline has been covered and there's not as much to write about anymore?
aeonik 1y ago
2013 is around the time Manjaro got popular. Arch also locked down their forum posts due to popularity in 2011. https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=113819 https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=113819
xdfgh1112 1y ago
Many people used Arch for its status as "the pro Linux distribution" i.e. not beginner friendly, but secretly still easy enough that you don't need much effort. That's how "I use Arch btw" became a meme. These people have now moved to NixOS.
- Imustaskforhelp 1y ago
  I mean, I was using nobara and my brother had showed me arch once and it looked so cool and he used to say, " that I have ran arch" and so I was watching a lot more arch content / linux too so I decided to try it to be "good at linux" Not many regrets aside from the times that I accidentally deleted my hard drives so many times that I can't count on fingers lol, its still a little fun lol. Ricing it with hyprland and I am truly happy with my system. I also have nix but I couldn't really love it aside from the fact that nix-env is really really cool.
- Foxboron 1y ago
  > That's how "I use Arch btw" became a meme. Not really. The meme is from 4chan and the /g/ board that had some origins around 2011/2012. Gentoo was the main meme before this. After 2012'ish the meme-culture from 4chan became mainstream internet culture with the popularity of reddit. Nothing has really progressed beyond that. > These people have now moved to NixOS. [citation needed]
- zozbot234 1y ago
  > "the pro Linux distribution" i.e. not beginner friendly, but secretly still easy enough that you don't need much effort. That's a common perception of Debian, perhaps even more than Arch. One difference being that Debian actually has a lot of notable use in production. It's also just as stable as any "LTS" distro, which is a welcome convenience for many beginners as well as more experienced users.

LadyCailin 1y ago

Documentation is super important for complex things. I feel like it’s highly underrated by many otherwise great open source projects, to the severe detriment of the project. Nice to see an explicit focus on it.

gary_0 1y ago
Underrated in proprietary and non-software tech, too. It's horrible when infrequent tasks turn into bespoke shitshows every time they crop up because nobody wrote down how to solve the problem. Having to figure things out from scratch every time is ridiculously inefficient. Even worse if it leads to customers having slightly different copies of the same kind of software or device configuration because there's no documented process to follow. I know from experience.

homebrewer 1y ago

Instead of creating multiple wikis with probably 80% of duplicate information between them, it would be great to have a cross distribution wiki with separate sections for distribution-specific instructions where it makes sense. Gentoo had a fantastic wiki before they lost it to disk array failure (IIRC) around ten years ago, now pretty much everyone is going to the Arch wiki, why not try to turn it into a shared project?

noirscape 1y ago
In the case of Debian, they have a pretty different stance when it comes to what the role of a distro is compared to Arch. Arch is essentially completely freeform; you, the user, are going to be making a lot of technical decisions on what you want your system to look like. It's perfectly okay for Arch to ship 4 different versions of the same type of tool, as long as all 4 are being used. The Arch wiki reflects this; it's focused around giving you a lot of options, while not going too in-depth on what you'd want to do with them. Want to swap out NetworkManager for wpa_supplicant because wpa_supplicant is easier to configure from a terminal? Perfectly fine, go ahead. Most arch packages as a result don't heavily deviate from upstream unless it's absolutely necessary to get them running. Debian uh... isn't that. Debian still offers choice, but Debian has set the unenviable goal for themselves to provide a "stable" userland experience. This means Debian offers less options, but the options they do offer are also fixed on certain versions with sometimes pretty derivative versions compares to upstream. Their documentation as a result can get much more in-depth, just by virtue of having less to cover than Arch does. A basic example here is setting up a webserver stack (so webserver, php and mysql); on Debian, you pick between apache2(+mod_php) or nginx/php-fpm and install mysql. Debian takes care of wiring all the permissions, user groups and all that stuff and giving you a "sane" default folder capable of serving PHP scripts on port 80 that anyone can use. It's a lot easier and nginx' configuration is specifically changed to resemble the apache2 vhosts. Arch doesn't do this; arch gives you the upstream versions of all these packages and then asks you to wire them together so that they work. It means they attract pretty different audiences as a result; Debian users value stability/set and forget (also helped by Debian release cycles basically lasting the same length as most LTS releases of other distros), while Arch users are more conditioned to having to occasionally change their config files on updates. That's also reflected in what their wikis aim at. Debian wikis generally can be version locked to their release; Arch wiki needs constant updating as things change. They're different extremes here; most distros usually sit on one side or the other of this sorta thing (with the only real correlation being that dpkg-based distros usually lean more towards the Debian model), but there's also the pseudo-rolling release distros like Fedora, which try to offer similar stability to Debian but much shorter release cycles, so you'll always be running something at least close to the latest version.

nylonstrung 1y ago

Hopefully they share it with NixOS next

dundarious 1y ago
Nix in general has some of the worst documentation I've ever encountered.
- samgranieri 1y ago
  I'm nix curious, and yeah, it's a bit of a challenge.

abhijeetpbodas 1y ago

For lwn.net articles, aren't these subscriber-only links meant to be used only by the subscriber? Is sharing them on HN sabotaging lwn?

rmccue 1y ago
https://lwn.net/op/FAQ.lwn#slinks https://lwn.net/op/FAQ.lwn#slinks > Where is it appropriate to post a subscriber link? > Almost anywhere. Private mail, messages to project mailing lists, and blog entries are all appropriate. As long as people do not use subscriber links as a way to defeat our attempts to gain subscribers, we are happy to see them shared.
OJFord 1y ago
They're usually shared links (note the 'share a free link' button at the bottom, above comments) ime - I've never seen it styled like this before. Weird that it's a subscriber-only link that doesn't require login, but does for other subscriber-only actions like sharing a free link or replying to a comment.
stingraycharles 1y ago
It’s a feature. I actually ended up subscribing to LWN precisely because of the quality of these types of articles.
ThePowerOfFuet 1y ago
>The following subscription-only content has been made available to you by an LWN subscriber. It's literally a feature.
corbet 1y ago
The occasional sharing of subscriber links in this way only does us good. If you enjoy the content, please subscribe and help ensure that there will be more of it!
pessimizer 1y ago
Joining lwn makes you a gatekeeper for lwn (and allows you to browse and comment on lwn), it doesn't simply allow you to be a reader of lwn. I'm sure their traffic has almost no relationship to their number of subscribers. Subscribers are just the people actively marketing the journalism. It's like a two-level pyramid scheme - you're spreading their journalism and looking smart, and 1/500 of the people you send it to become new subscribers.

ACS_Solver 1y ago

The Arch wiki is one of the best things the Linux community has produced. It's like a modern, improved and more complete version of TLDP. I haven't even used Arch on any of my machines but can't count how many times I've found their wiki useful for my workstations, servers and even custom Yocto-built systems. Arch supports many ways of doing a thing, so whatever tool I'm dealing with, Arch probably supports that and documents it on the wiki. And Arch makes few changes from upstream so the wiki instructions are often applicable on any distro. Sure, it takes some familiarity to recognize when something is e.g. Debian-specific and should be done in a Debian way, but as a user fairly familiar with Linux, I often find Arch to be the best source of documentation.

_mlbt 1y ago
After using FreeBSD and OpenBSD, it is frankly shocking how bad Linux documentation is in comparison. On the BSDs every command, every program, every system call, and every configuration file are thoroughly documented in man pages and other guides. The FreeBSD Handbook in particular is a treasure. It more than makes up for some of the more difficult aspects of the OS by providing thorough and approachable documentation.
- bitwize 1y ago
  I learned how to do NetBSD kernel hacking from just the man pages. They're still my first-line documentation on the NetBSD file system work I'm doing. The state of Linux documentation is appalling by contrast.
  - hungmung 1y ago
    Came in here to say the same thing. NetBSD should get more love. Practically speaking ArchWiki has everything I'm likely to need as a poweruser, but it's not really all that comprehensive.
  - bombcar 1y ago
    GNU getting a burr up its ass that info pages were the future in whenever it happened did irreparable harm to Linux.

samgranieri 1y ago

I"m still absolutely floored with how good the archwiki is. I can't hype it up enough. I really did't know what I was doing with systemd until I read that wonderful article, and also, the link to why the arch maintainer switched that distro to systemd made my accept the change to it.

bo1024 1y ago
When I was starting with Linux (15 years ago) with Fedora, Ubuntu, etc., for all of my questions I kept finding answers on the Arch wiki. So eventually I just switched to Arch, so the answers would always work. That was an era when searching the Internet worked. Come to think of it, I haven't had Arch wiki pop up in my search results in years.
- frantathefranta 1y ago
  Both Kagi and DuckDuckGo have search bangs (!aw) to search ArchWiki articles. I also have ArchWiki boosted in my Kagi settings.
tempfile 1y ago
Sounds worth reading. Is this the article you mean? https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Systemd https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Systemd
- rdlw 1y ago
  That's the systemd article, and this is the forum post explaining why arch moved to systemd: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1149530#p1149530 https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1149530#p1149530
  - pkulak 1y ago
    https://archive.is/Mi9DP https://archive.is/Mi9DP Scroll down to the long post by tomegun. I kinda get the animosity now. I wasn't really using Linux at the time, but if I was, and my system was running great, and then I had a list of complicated instructions I had to perform to change my init system... I'd probably be peeved off.

ho_schi 1y ago

I shall edit more in the Wiki and post less here. The Wiki is the stronghold of Arch. As are the the packages. A lot of stuff makes good things good is a lot manual labor by all involved people. PS: Removing stuff or not accepting changes is also a significant part of the Wiki. It hurts, as usual. But necessary for readability.

IsTom 1y ago

> We are still quite a small wiki compared to Wikipedia A small intermediate goal for ArchWiki

smjburton 1y ago

This is really exciting. I've used the Arch Wiki countless times for setting up or configuring something in Debian but wanting a resource more native to the platform. I hope they're able to produce a comparable wiki for Debian-based OSes.

reedlaw 1y ago

I switched from Ubuntu to Arch because of the quality of the Arch wiki. Ubuntu search results were filled with so much misinformation that I realized it was a culture problem. Arch, with its higher barrier to entry, attracts users who maintain its standards.

zoobab 1y ago

Make a wiki with Markdown syntax and GIT backend.

jxbsbdbd 1y ago
These are a dime a dozen. Jet non of them has any significant share in the pure wiki space
- aakkaakk 1y ago
  Name a few of them.
  - zahlman 1y ago
    https://duckduckgo.com/?q=markdown+based+wiki https://duckduckgo.com/?q=markdown+based+wiki People can't name them off the top of their heads, exactly because none of them have caught on. But they're easy to find.
bawolff 1y ago
I wonder how well git scales as a backend. Access patterns of wikis seem kind of different than software.

Gander5739 1y ago

> MediaWiki markup is different. It is weird and fragile; changing a single token can completely break a page. It is also, he said, difficult to write a proper or robust parser for the language. Good thing mwparserfromhell exists, then.

verdverm 1y ago

I went to install debian recently, but ended up with ubuntu because debian docs were so convoluted. Could not find the minimal iso I was looking for I hope debian sees improvement here with this announcement

mauvehaus 1y ago

The Arch wiki is the PostgreSQL documentation of Linux. Even if you're not using Arch or Postgres, it's a great starting point for how something is supposed to work and it covers enough details that you can extrapolate a bit.

Voultapher 1y ago

It's one the reasons I'm using Arch. Great features are worth little to me if I don't know about them. What I like particularly about the wiki is their why sections that explain why one would want to choose one way over another. A good example of this is the page on data-at-rest encryption [1]. [1] https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Data-at-rest_encryption https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Data-at-rest_encryption

w4rh4wk5 1y ago

On the topic of Arch wiki, I know there are a couple of offline and cli / tui solutions. Which do you use and recommend?

jbirer 1y ago

I found myself on Arch Wiki for so many non-Arch issues that I decided that I'll just install Arch and use it.

7bit 1y ago

The Arch Linux community is one of the most toxic I know. First and foremost, there are members with tens of thousands of posts who become condescending and insulting when other members don’t dance to their tune. The Code of Conduct exists only on paper and is not enforced by the Arch leadership. This results in such behavior not only being tolerated but actively encouraged. Shame on them and shame on Debian for further encouraging this behaviour by inviting them to the DebConf.

umbra07 1y ago
> First and foremost, there are members with tens of thousands of posts who become condescending and insulting when other members don't dance to their tune. Yes, there are some regulars on the forums that get might get snippy with you if you ask for troubleshooting help while refusing to read the forum rules, RTFM, or are incapable of following basic troubleshooting steps. I don't really see the issue.
anonfordays 1y ago
>The Code of Conduct exists only on paper and is not enforced by the Arch leadership. Based. The Arch Code of Conduct is also free from wokeisms. Never used Arch, but I may make the switch considering these things.

burnt-resistor 1y ago

This seems heavy on self-promotion. Meanwhile, Arch is still x86-centric (in spite of fragmented, unofficial forks) and doesn't do LTS, while Debian supports multiple architectures and stability. Debian does have a lot of rambling, aspirationally-unfinished, outdated, and duplicated wiki pages.

WhereIsTheTruth 1y ago

This obsession with changing what works for something else to please some shady people is annoying This conformism is painful to witness, it happens to everything internet related, and the goal here seems to be related to the idea that internet should require a digital ID/wallet to browse Sad era to live in

sam_bristow 1y ago

One feature I wish the Arch wiki had last time I used it was conditionally hiding sections. It presented various options throughout their guides and depending on which options you chose later sections weren't relevant. I often found I'd get partway through a step only to discover it wasn't relevant. It would be great if, when presented with different options, you could indicate which one you'd selected and have it hide the irrelevant stuff further down the page