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Linux Discussion
- Thread starter maflynn
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I just finished watching the following video and it was very helpful regarding an Arch install
First it went through the archinstall app that semi-automates the installation
The traditional manual install is at 24:18 of the video. Its quite informative and eye opening in many ways.
I can see now why endeavos became a thing, because it provides a gui based install, since it predated the archinstall app.
Some differences within the video I noticed:
The archinstall used systemd-boot but the YTer doing the manual method opted for grub, he also took the defaults for archinstall but went with a LVM based install with encryption in the manual method.
First it went through the archinstall app that semi-automates the installation
The traditional manual install is at 24:18 of the video. Its quite informative and eye opening in many ways.
I can see now why endeavos became a thing, because it provides a gui based install, since it predated the archinstall app.
Some differences within the video I noticed:
The archinstall used systemd-boot but the YTer doing the manual method opted for grub, he also took the defaults for archinstall but went with a LVM based install with encryption in the manual method.
The whole Arch/EndeavourOS vs. CachyOs question has been bouncing around in my head for a few different reasons.
CachyOS approach is largely trying to squeeze as much performance out of the distro, and it largely succeeds but at a cost. Basically its claim to fame may largely be the reason why Arch and/or EndeavorOS might be a better fit for me.
If I can pull my thoughts together, I may post why CachyOS is a good option over Arch and EndeavorOS. I think there's a number of upsides that distro has to offer. But for now, here's some reasons why Arch/EndeavorOS may be a better choice for me.
The knocks against CachyOS that I've seen so far seem to fall into two categories, to be fair, I may agree with some of them and disagree with some. There could also be other pros and cons on CachyOS that I've not touched upon, these are what's in my pea sized brain at the moment.
1. Customization at the distro level (code, kernel, repos)
CachyOS goes beyond simply recompiling the kernel with different flags, it includes patches, changes, additions, and removals. For some this has introduced instability, particularly around the 7.0 kernel release. So far for me, I haven’t run into any instability (knocks on wood).
The customized repositories are another sticking point. They can fall out of sync with upstream Arch, which adds complexity and has caused headaches for some users.
2. Opinionated defaults (apps and configuration choices)
Some of the bundled apps and decisions like defaulting to the fish shel have rubbed people the wrong way (myself included). With that said, its an easy fix
More broadly, some of the configuration choices can feel a bit heavy-handed especially compared to Arch. Claude was able to summerize these changes, below is a screen shot of just a few. Again, take the image below with a gain of salt, but I think there's some truth what I see. It also helps paint of picture where CachyOS makes a lot of decisions for you at installation.
Many of the changes, that are built into CachyOS, I'll not see first hand given that my cpu is a zen 2 based processor
CachyOS approach is largely trying to squeeze as much performance out of the distro, and it largely succeeds but at a cost. Basically its claim to fame may largely be the reason why Arch and/or EndeavorOS might be a better fit for me.
If I can pull my thoughts together, I may post why CachyOS is a good option over Arch and EndeavorOS. I think there's a number of upsides that distro has to offer. But for now, here's some reasons why Arch/EndeavorOS may be a better choice for me.
The knocks against CachyOS that I've seen so far seem to fall into two categories, to be fair, I may agree with some of them and disagree with some. There could also be other pros and cons on CachyOS that I've not touched upon, these are what's in my pea sized brain at the moment.
1. Customization at the distro level (code, kernel, repos)
CachyOS goes beyond simply recompiling the kernel with different flags, it includes patches, changes, additions, and removals. For some this has introduced instability, particularly around the 7.0 kernel release. So far for me, I haven’t run into any instability (knocks on wood).
The customized repositories are another sticking point. They can fall out of sync with upstream Arch, which adds complexity and has caused headaches for some users.
2. Opinionated defaults (apps and configuration choices)
Some of the bundled apps and decisions like defaulting to the fish shel have rubbed people the wrong way (myself included). With that said, its an easy fix
More broadly, some of the configuration choices can feel a bit heavy-handed especially compared to Arch. Claude was able to summerize these changes, below is a screen shot of just a few. Again, take the image below with a gain of salt, but I think there's some truth what I see. It also helps paint of picture where CachyOS makes a lot of decisions for you at installation.
Many of the changes, that are built into CachyOS, I'll not see first hand given that my cpu is a zen 2 based processor
The post above talks about the advantages of going with Arch or EndeavourOS, but here's why I think I'll largely stick with what I have.
This article provides good insight in that with EOS, you gained an ease of installation, and with CachyOS, you gain eass of use. EndeavourOS made Arch easy to install—CachyOS made it easy to use
I think a good point in that article, is failure can breed frustration, which may eventually cause someone (myself?) to largely give up.
Is the hobby to build/install/configure the operating system or use the operating system? With my time being finite, what's my goal? To spend time constantly trying to figure out why my screen if flickering, or steam keeps crashing, or use the computer?
This article provides good insight in that with EOS, you gained an ease of installation, and with CachyOS, you gain eass of use. EndeavourOS made Arch easy to install—CachyOS made it easy to use
I guess at the end of the day, would I achieve a similar level of success that could come close to what CachyOS provides, and if so, how long will that take?
I think a good point in that article, is failure can breed frustration, which may eventually cause someone (myself?) to largely give up.
Is the hobby to build/install/configure the operating system or use the operating system? With my time being finite, what's my goal? To spend time constantly trying to figure out why my screen if flickering, or steam keeps crashing, or use the computer?
eltoslightfoot
macrumors 68040
This is always why when you gave me enough time (back in the day), I always ended up making a dual-boot Hackintosh and Windows PC.
Now I just accept that, for me, linux that works is called MacOS (and yes I know it is technically BSD Unix based).
Steve Adams
macrumors 68000
The linux that works for me is windows 11 ha ha ha!. Hate to say it but I am stuck there. It's home, I have all the shanannigans shut off, and it "just works".
Our workflow is centered around windows and it always will be. Colin and Kelly are both rooted in windows and we are done trying new stuff. I was looking at new laptops but I am sticking with what I have too. 15 min saved time on a video export is not worth 3000 dollars of new laptop while we are mobile.
Our workflow is centered around windows and it always will be. Colin and Kelly are both rooted in windows and we are done trying new stuff. I was looking at new laptops but I am sticking with what I have too. 15 min saved time on a video export is not worth 3000 dollars of new laptop while we are mobile.
eltoslightfoot
macrumors 68040
I haven’t exactly left windows either. 😀 I use it for gaming, remoting into my day job, and basically a bunch of other stuff too.
But I also can’t deny that Apple has some darn compelling apps made by third party developers. Ulysses, Omnifocus, even little stuff like Card Buddy. There is a much larger developer pool from which to draw. And in the era of BS vibe-coding that is even more important to me.
Steve Adams
macrumors 68000
BSDnostalgia
macrumors 6502
I was not familiar with Card Buddy or Ulysses. Have used Omni-- apps in the past. Excellent. Card Buddy is very explicit about privacy, Ulysses seemed slightly ambiguous. In this AI world, is there a list of apps that do, or, do not take your input and use it somehow, to train their AI or whatever else? This is mostly orthogonal to OS discussions, although, many people who care about privacy tend to gravitate to MacOS and/or Linux.
eltoslightfoot
macrumors 68040
With Ulysses, the reason they have to be slightly vague is due to the grammar check they have. It’s still okay to me because they are making sure nothing is saved. Here is the pertinent quotation from their Privacy Page:
“Advanced Check (Optional). For Advanced Check, the contents of the checked text are sent to our servers hosted by Hetzner Online, from which they are forwarded to the LanguageTool service for analysis. Your written text is kept on our servers and the servers of LanguageTool while the text is being processed. It will be deleted shortly after the text checking has been completed. - Legal basis Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR
To improve the quality and stability of Advanced Check, we collect pseudonymized data about the duration and frequency of text checks, as well as the language and length of a checked text. For information on how to disable analytics, please refer to the Usage Data section. In addition to the usage data we collect, anonymously, error messages returned by the LanguageTool service and errors that occur on our server. - Legal basis Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR”
Also, the data is stored in iCloud, but if you have ADP turned on, it is end-to-end encrypted, so it is pretty safe.
eltoslightfoot
macrumors 68040
throAU
macrumors G4
No its not good, patch when a patch is available, restrict access to only what is needed per best practice for the past 40 years.
For most end users this is a non issue as the only person logging into the machine is the administrator these days, but yes it could be chained from unprivileged local access if an attacker can get that.
Steve Adams
macrumors 68000
diamond.g
macrumors G5
From what I gather it is local only, or more accurately you have to have an account on the system to elevate. unauthenticated access isn't the problem.
It is still bad, and it looks like disabling IPSEC helps.
throAU
macrumors G4
Its local only but that doesn't mean you can ignore it, because getting local access unprivileged is halfway there.
But it DOES mean that if you aren't running a server for other users, its less of an issue.
If however you're like myself and responsible for a bunch of linux servers that have multiple users logging into them, its pretty critical to get it done ASAP (and we have).
eltoslightfoot
macrumors 68040
Yeah it looked relatively easy to mitigate from the shell of your choice, glad it wasn't too problematic for ya.
Steve Adams
macrumors 68000
Oh yes Roger that. Say if I had my server running for my wife and my son as well as myself that would be more of an issue.
eltoslightfoot
macrumors 68040
Slightly more of an issue, but I believe @throAU is more talking about like when I was running Horde/IMP, Sendmail, and Apache for a statewide network back in the early 2000s. Tons of users every day were logging in. (This was on Redhat--which eventually became Fedora.)
throAU
macrumors G4
Yeah I was specifically referring to our enterprise ERP solution that runs on linux and has a bunch of users logging in via a terminal, some of which may have shell access.
But yes, if you're a single user on a home linux box, not so critical.
If you're administering a proper server, especially if it grants many users a shell or runs software potentially exploitable to get a shell... super critical to patch.
throAU
macrumors G4
To give you an example of where this could be bad as a home user:
Your web browser runs as your user account. If there's some way for this to run code as your user account (e.g., browser bug), this local privilege escalation could then be called from your web browser.
So... combination of bugs = attacker gets root access from your browser.
- the browser gets exploited to run code within the user context it runs in
- the command run in that context elevates it to root.
But its super critical if you have untrusted users already logging into the box, e.g., my situation where we have 100 staff logging into the box that runs the company accounts 😀
Or if you're an internet provider for example, or way worse, running say, GitHub, where your users can literally tell GitHub to run code automatically for them.
I'm circling back to the EndeavourOS discussion. I've been trying EOS this past week and some of thoughts and opinions on using both. Obviously with only a week under my belt with EOS, I'm far from a seasoned vet, its more of my initial thoughts.
CachyOS is marketed as a windows gaming replacement, and its prime directive is performance. It uses its own customized kernel, recompiled with the required flags for modern cpus. They offer their own repos with a large set of apps recompiled for performance. Because its marketed as a windows replacement, they made decisions that some may call heavy handed but its with the inexperienced windows user in mind. These decisions can make the experience feel like you're not using your own computer - at least that's what some folks have stated.
EndeavourOS, claim to fame is is a GUI installer for Arch and it attempts to as close to Arch as possible. Unlike CachyOS, there's less installed, and its up to the user to figure out what to install. This makes it more customized to the individual Overall i found it to be very similar to Cachy. As some folks mentioned on other sites, at the end of the day both distros are Arch and they'll largely feel, act the same way. I was surprised that performance wise, I didn't see a big swing playing games. I only lost a few FPS on any given game, and the system feels just as snappy.
What could be the deciding factor for me is the EOS community. Their forums feels much more vibrant, welcoming, and helpful. I didn’t get the same impression from CachyOS. My guess is that they (cachyos) lean heavily on discord for their primary support, something that I don't use.
Will I stick with EOS? I already have it configured nicely, whereas with CachyOS I’d likely spend time undoing or reconfiguring. I actually have an instance of CachyOS running in Gnome Boxes, so I can compare/contrast the environments side by side.
CachyOS is marketed as a windows gaming replacement, and its prime directive is performance. It uses its own customized kernel, recompiled with the required flags for modern cpus. They offer their own repos with a large set of apps recompiled for performance. Because its marketed as a windows replacement, they made decisions that some may call heavy handed but its with the inexperienced windows user in mind. These decisions can make the experience feel like you're not using your own computer - at least that's what some folks have stated.
EndeavourOS, claim to fame is is a GUI installer for Arch and it attempts to as close to Arch as possible. Unlike CachyOS, there's less installed, and its up to the user to figure out what to install. This makes it more customized to the individual Overall i found it to be very similar to Cachy. As some folks mentioned on other sites, at the end of the day both distros are Arch and they'll largely feel, act the same way. I was surprised that performance wise, I didn't see a big swing playing games. I only lost a few FPS on any given game, and the system feels just as snappy.
What could be the deciding factor for me is the EOS community. Their forums feels much more vibrant, welcoming, and helpful. I didn’t get the same impression from CachyOS. My guess is that they (cachyos) lean heavily on discord for their primary support, something that I don't use.
Will I stick with EOS? I already have it configured nicely, whereas with CachyOS I’d likely spend time undoing or reconfiguring. I actually have an instance of CachyOS running in Gnome Boxes, so I can compare/contrast the environments side by side.
Yeah, no question but overall, I just want a functioning system to game and do my other activities. I'm largely happy with what I have. Of course I said the same thing regarding cachyos 🙂
lowendlinux
macrumors 603
I wonder if it's able to escalate if the browser is a Snap/Flatpak/Appimage since those aren't really running as your user and they're not linked to the machines libraries.