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Introducing myself

Hi everyone. Just getting started with Artix here, really looking forward to getting away from Ubuntu.

I started programming for a living in 1982 - COBOL on a mainframe, but moved along mostly to minis - PDP and VAX for a while, but got introduced to Unix in 1995 working on Data General machines. Most of my development has been in FORTRAN and Macro-11. Along the way, I also did sysadmin, netadmin, and dba stuff. Most of my Unix time, I spent developing Oracle databases and applications. A bit later, I worked at HP's Linux lab, doing testing, which involved a whole lot of installs of RHEL and SLES.

I started running Linux in 1998, with RH 5.1. Such a huge relief from Win95. I found it really great to be able to just read shell scripts and rc files to see how my system was running. Switched to Ubuntu, then Mint, then back to Ubuntu. I do prefer apt/dpkg to rpm/yum. Maybe that's because back in the old days, I got into "rpm hell" too frequently.

I've also built from source, and used flatpak and pipx to bring in some things I use.

I'm a long-time user of Fvwm2. Back during KDE3.5 I was used that for a little while, but returned to Fvwm when KDE4 came out. I mostly use GTK stuff anyway. I start mate-session in my fvwmrc file.

So, given that I'm familiar with MATE, I chose the MATE/runit ISO for my Artix install. I have no particular reason to prefer that over any of the other alternatives to systemd, though after a bit more reading, maybe I should've chosen OpenRC. I'm inclined to stick with it, since I don't expect to fiddle much with that once I get everything all configured how I like it. I might be happier with something that resembles the old SysV "checkinstall" command, but I'm OK with doing symlinks myself too.

Mostly, so far, I'm doing OK with pamac. Yes, I'll get my  brain used to command line stuff eventually, but for now, I'm trying to get things done quickly, so the GUI works well.

One of the biggest problems is that I'm trying it out on a spare machine, which is not located in a good spot for typing, and has a screen that gives me eyestrain. In my small apartment, available spots for projects is a difficulty, so, for example, I have to move my bicycle to work on the Artix machine. Doesn't everyone keep their bicycle in their dining room? No, I don't have a dining room table.

My main task now is to identify, for programs I have here in Ubuntu-land, which are available in the repos / AUR, and which ones aren't. Progress there is hampered by the comm program complaining about files not being sorted - well, they are, but I assume it's an issue with LC_COLLATE, which I'll figure out. And how is it that I've been using Linux for so many years without knowing about the comm command?

For starters, I know that cw, gpa, and gmpc aren't there. Well, building from source is OK, though I'd rather have everything under package management, for purposes of keeping dependencies straight.

I also have a couple Python scripts to convert to v3. They run, but I have some byte-string UTF-8 issues to sort out. I'm hoping I won't have to run a Py2 environment going forward.

Thats' enough rambling. :D I do have specific things to post about, in the appropriate places.

Big thanks to the Artix team for putting all this together.
 

Re: Introducing myself

Reply #1 –
Welcome to Artix.  My cats 😺 think you will like it a lot.   I read hat you said about your hx to my cats and none of us understands why there’s no mention of catnip.  Catnip makes all things better in any case. 

i like mate also. Gnome 2 forever!  I have no experience in programming and never learned to type and never really graduated highschool despite some district issuing me one in spite of not living there.   Go figure.   If you need help I migh say something funny but probably not useful.  No worries, someone will sort you out. Once I built linux from scratch but while I completed all the steps my kernel wouldn’t boot.  I haven’t tried again since. 

basically the names in arch are different or are included in other packages. I haven’t missed anything I couldn’t find when switching from mint/lmde and other Debian based districts to arches.  So now you can tell people btw, I use artix linux which is arch Linux but without the systemd parasite strangling my linux.   😻😹😸😺
Cat Herders of Linux