Talk:Beginners Guide
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# 1.2 DON'T PANIC!
i changed this to "Don't Panic." but got reverted. The reason i made that change was that if you want someone NOT TO PANIC DON'T YELL AT THEM.
It is a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe reference and "Don't Panic" does not have the right effect. --DaveKong 03:55, 29 January 2009 (EST)
-This is a document, and atleast I didn't "get it", I suppose that's sacrilege considering i'm a nerd and it's mandatory to get every douglas adams reference as such but i'm sure there's some people in india or someplace else that have never even heard about douglas adams and many people who doesn't get every pop-reference to him available. As such "teh funniness" of the document might want to budge for the advantage of not looking like 12-year old, but you know, I don't care much either way and will leave it up to you people to decide.
I suggest that the first sentence in the paragraph after that sub-heading is:
No matter what happens, don't worry; mistakes can be easily fixed.
Or words to that affect. By adding this, one will remove any thought of cheesy humor or perceived "cuteness" by modifying the meaning of the sub-heading title, while maintaining the impact of the necessary statement contained in the title. - KitchM 12:23, 1 March 2009 (EST)
Why are there instructions on how to make snd_pcspkr load last?
There needs to be an explanation for this cited along with the instructions. (Alsa section) Misfit138 09:33, 3 January 2009 (EST) Fixed. Misfit138 08:22, 12 January 2009 (EST)
fam daemon not automatically installed with KDE4
In section "Useful KDE DAEMONS" it says "The hal, fam and kdm packages are installed when you install KDE, but must be invoked to become useful." but apparently the fam daemon is not automatically installed with KDE4... -- zZyXx 05:37, 31 December 2008 (EST)
Also, hal gets installed when you install xorg, IIRC. dav2dev 11:05, 4 January 2009 (EST)
Document too large to edit heading?
I seem unable to add a new il8n link to the Dutch translation of the beginner's guide (work in progress). Adding the link myself and hitting preview causes a blank page, leading me to assume both my browsers (firefox and epiphany) can't handle the document size. I've not tried to make the save for obvious reasons.--stefanwilkens 18:28, 2 January 2009 (EST)
- I took this into account when restoring the article. It should be no problem adding new translations. Just add them by editing the Preface section only. - Louipc 23:48, 21 January 2009 (EST)
Where is the Beginners' Guide Appendix?
Read more here: Talk:Beginners? Guide Appendix
This seems to be a bug in the wiki:
http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/12424
http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=60762
Removed apostrophe from Beginners' Guide Appendix, as workaround. Misfit138 09:33, 3 January 2009 (EST)
Restore this article
I tried to edit an older version to remove vandalism, but failed. What is the reason?
- I've tried in two other browsers and no cigar. It must be a server-side limitation. - Louipc 14:09, 21 January 2009 (EST)
- Well, I tried wikipediafs right now. That's a no-go. - Louipc 23:20, 21 January 2009 (EST)
- Alright. I restored the article piecewise by incrementing each section. It's my firm belief that this article needs to be trimmed and certain sections moved onto separate pages despite technical limitations. - Louipc 23:45, 21 January 2009 (EST)
Bright green warnings?
Whoever has added the bright green WARNINGs needs to have their eyes checked. Bright green on a white background = massive headache. Also, red/orange seems like a better colour for a WARNING to me. Green = good, or at least that's how I was raised. -- pointone 16:05, 27 January 2009 (EST)
Link to Advanced/Normal Guide
Should a link to the normal guide be provided near the end for more information? What about making it more clear to beginners about exactly how Arch works (IE Boot sequence, init system, etc) --Jaymes 10:57, 29 January 2009 (MST)
Tweaks and finishing touches not available
A section called Tweaks and finishing touches is being referenced in the article but doesn't exist.
Improve clarity
This article needs more clarity. (I used the static IP section.) For instance, the section that describes the hosts file syntax is not clear. If the computer is Boss and its address is 192.168.0.25, then is the proper syntax:
127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost Boss 192.168.0.25 Boss.domain.org Boss
or:
127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost Boss 192.168.0.25 Boss.localdomain Boss
or:
127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost BOSS 192.168.0.25 Boss Boss
By the way, are those spaces created with the tab key or are they three spaces? (Whenever there are directions, they must be complete.)
There really is no local domain on a simple LAN, making this more confusing. Also, there is a question as to why someone would actually use .org or any other dot ending. Finally, what is the purpose of the example using < > and then [ ]? This inconsistency is not explained.
I did not look at who wrote this and don't care. I consider this article an excellent start. Rather, this is actually about clarity and the Arch Way. Everything is in the details. -KitchM 12:15, 1 March 2009 (EST)
The whole section entitlted "E: Configure the System" is probably unnecessary for the most part. Since this is a beginner's guide, one should only include the absolute minimum to get the system running. A generous use of links to expanded, context-related information is beneficial. The danger in the way it has been done is sometimes giving too much information and sometimes too little.
While there is an example of using DHCP, there is not one for Static. Since they are both discussed while addressing the Networking section of rc.conf, they should both be there, for the purpose of clarity.
Or even better yet, there can be a link there to a page that only addresses network configuration, which would be a more appropriate location for such information. In that case, both examples would be moved to the other page.
We also read:
* DAEMONS section This array simply lists the names of those scripts contained in /etc/rc.d/ which are to be
started during the boot process, and the order in which they start.
Are daemons scripts? That is the implication there. I'm not sure that's correct. - KitchM 14:08, 2 March 2009 (EST)
4.3.5 C: Test X
When I got to this step, this test failed (I saw a black screen, but no hollow X and thus nothing responding to the touchpad). The next X test in the guide worked, however, and Gnome installed fine and seems to work fine. I had installed Arch already once before on the same machine a couple weeks ago, before the upgrade to Xorg 1.6 and the test worked okay. So I wonder if the failure of the test has something to do with Xorg 1.6 and this test is no longer valid. But I don't know enough about this to feel comfortable editing the wiki. Also, the instructions to use Ctrl-Alt-Backspace to exit the test are no longer valid, I believe. I read that a decision was made upstream to deprecate the Ctrl-Alt-Backspace command, so it no longer works in X. I don't know what the solution is. I found I had to switch to a different console, then back to the console running X, at which point I saw the dmesg from when X started up, and then I could use ^C to exit.
I had the exact same problem. Now it seems to show up with nvidia cards and the new Xorg 1.6 . I'll look into it some more and propose some changes. This seems to be the biggest issue right now?! At least I had no other hiccups during install. --user:oCfuu 21:14, 3 May 2009 (EDT)
I'm just going to put a note in there for now about this test not working and about Ctrl-Alt-Backspace being deprecated. Please edit if you have a better way to explain things. --cb474 03:25, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
DON'T PANIC!
I also think the capital letters cause an adverse effect. Perhaps a good compromise would be "Don't Panic!"
KDE: daemons: HAL
In the section [Beginners_Guide#Useful_KDE_DAEMONS|Usefull KDEE DAEMONS] it said both:
- KDE will require the hal (Hardware Abstraction Layer) daemon.
- Some users prefer to use the hal daemon.
So I edited that part a bit...
Small Pacman correction
When installing Python (for the repository ranking script) the command
# pacman -S python
is executed. Maybe it should be mentioned that before that you have to update the cache by running
# pacman -Sy
Without this the first command will not find python (at least for me)
--Dartagnan 18:14, 31 May 2009 (EDT) Dartagnan
Xorg keyboard and mouse
Whenever I tried to start Xorg the keyboard and mouse were not available. From the /var/log/Xorg.0.log file I found out that the kbd and mouse drivers were missing. In the arch forums I found posts stating that these drivers (xf86-input-mouse xf86-input-keyboard) have to be installed apart. Maybe this should be explicitly mentioned in the guide.
- Dartagnan 06:16, 18 June 2009 (EDT)