Package Signing Comes To Pacman and Arch Linux 103
fwarren writes "One of the main complaints heard around here on why some Slashdotters don't run Arch Linux is that the packages are not signed. Fear no more: Arch Linux and Pacman now allow for package signing."
Late to the party... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Arch Linux: what's the differentiating factor? (Score:3, Insightful)
Read: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Arch_Compared_to_Other_Distributions [archlinux.org]
I don't think you have a clue tbh. I've tried most well known Linuxes (all that you mentioned and a few others), and I can tell you that there are two major differences that distros have, as far as users are concerned: 1) GUI/CLI based (which is also complex/minimalistic), 2) Regular/rolling release based.
1) Ubuntu, Fedora, OpenSUSE and so on are GUI based systems, coming with fully installed DEs and offering people little choice on the initial install. Sure you can remove stuff and install simple WMs, but that just makes it harder to configure than Arch/Gentoo and even Slackware, who are made for ground-up installation. The reason I use Arch regularly is because I can configure it to do pretty much exactly what I want.
2) Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian, OpenSUSE, Slackware, and a whole lot of others are using the regular (once, twice a year) release cycle. It's fine if you're using it in the office/classroom/servers, or you just don't use computers much. But often, software updates come a lot more regularly than that (Windows _software_ is rolling release!, the OS itself isn't of course), and it's always good to in the bleeding edge - unless it's you who's bleeding, and that's a potential problem (much like this update required some meddling before it would just work). And even if you do get problems every once in a while when you do rolling release updates, the huge amount of problems whenever I do a full update every 6 month on Ubuntu makes me want to do a clean install (I'm using an uptodate Arch from 2008~, did some experimenting with other linuxes). In the rolling release field it's quite similar to Gentoo (that's another power of Gentoo, it isn't just people compiling stuff for the laughs).
Re:Arch Linux: what's the differentiating factor? (Score:5, Insightful)
That to me has been the most important feature for me as I found it would get old to have to reinstall Fedora every 6 to 12 months to get access to the latest bleeding edge software.
As one reviewer said, this OS is always fresh.