This makes me sad, but not completely unexpected. I worked on Antergos a while early on and had a lot of fun. That said, at least 2 of the core devs went more or less MIA for months at a time as they got busy with life, counting myself. My hats off to the team but specifically Gustau and Dustin, who trudged along the entire journey through the years. Seriously great developers to work with.
As an aside, I just checked the geolocation server I'd setup for the installer.
Unless you have untrusted users with SSH you can get away with a lot. I've reviewed many major Linux patches for the past several years and found we weren't actually impacted by most of them.
For example, I don't need Zombieload/MDS patches as I don't have anyone running untrusted code on the servers, I didn't need the rds_tcp vulnerability patch from last week because I don't have RDS modules loaded on any of my servers. I didn't need client side OpenSSH patches on these servers either, nor OpenSSL patches for UDP SSL. Typically a quick check with ansible is all it takes to confirm if these things are or aren't real risks for you.
EDIT:
Just looking at some CVE lists... It looks like assuming that the entire attack surface is the kernel and pre-auth openssh you may be in the clear running stock Ubuntu Server Minimal 14.04, a 5 year old OS today.
Kernel vulnerabilities resulting in code execution in the TCP stack or related code resulting in code execution are few and far between. OpenSSH vulnerabilities... well, the last pre-auth OpenSSH vulnerability, one of the two in it's entire lifetime had the severe consequence of... being able to check usernames too fast.
Please let me know if I've missed a big one, but I don't see anything that could even be used to do more than DoS a system like this running an old kernel and openssh server.
I don't think Scaleway has upgraded their bare metal ARM kernel (their 1st ARM gen) for a very long time. So if you don't build your own one, there are no kernel patches.
(Please correct me if I'm wrong. Being wrong here would be good news.)
Uptime is bad, mmkay. I don’t tolerate uptimes longer than 90 days. Always have planned reboots as part of your scheduled maintenance. One day, one of those high uptime machines will go down, and won’t come back up.
I have been using antergos for over 4 years, having dual booted it on with windows on 3 different computers. I always liked the fact that it took just 15-20 minutes for me to start working.
Arch purists may scoff on these spin offs, but they miss the point. The appeal was that even though I know how to set up arch on my own, it takes about 2 hours or so. Setting up nvidia was also a pain. With antergos, you can just sit back, and get a nice working system quickly.
> The appeal was that even though I know how to set up arch on my own, it takes about 2 hours or so.
I've used Arch on and off for about eight years. The first time I set it up, it took about 2 hours. I just tried again last week, and it took all day.
They used to have a super-basic installer, but it sped things. They removed that in favor of detailed instructions on archwiki. Now, they've basically obliterated the install instructions. Whereas it was once a step-by-step guide with call outs to more detailed pages, now it is just a set of stubs that send you to other detail pages. And it is not opinionated at all.
Want a full-disk encryption setup, but haven't installed arch in couple years? Be prepared to spend a lot of time researching everything that goes into that stack, with very little guidance as to what is typical practice.
The "hard" parts of installing Arch are partitions and boot loaders. The old walkthrough gave you a basic method that many people just copied to get a working system, but they had no idea how those areas functioned leaving them screwed should they encounter any problems.
If you want community chosen presets, why are you opting for Arch? And if you don't want presets, knowing how partitions and boot loaders function is necessary. This is also why encryption is a bitch, it adds tons of complexity to partitions and boot loaders.
Arch is basically made for Linux experts, and the installation process is the barrier to entry, to prove your worth (or at least drive).
Fundamentally, installing Arch really isn't any different for us that install Debian or Fedora from scratch, from within another environment, without using the hand-holding installers. The only difference is using `pacman` instead of `apt` or `dnf`.
This is true. Though to be fair a brief Google does reveal some turnkey full disk encryption instructions noted by others. Just would be nice to have them on the wiki. Of course there's nothing stopping us adding those ourselves.
I never used Antergos but last I used Manjaro it seemed pretty good.
Personally, I’m looking to see concepts like GuixSD and NixOS be extended and remixed. I’m imagining a world where you have a control panel that changes declarative settings then commits them by rebuilding the system...
Manjaro is the one linux distro that recommended users set their clocks back in the past because they f....d up big time with their HSTS+HTTPS cert. [0]
Ok, that was 4 years ago, but still, I wouldn't dare use it.
And for those who will use Manjaro, please don't ask for support on the Arch forums/subreddit/IRC chan.
Manjaro is fine, but I preferred Antergos because it used the Arch Linux packages, meaning I always had the latest ones. AFAIK, Manjaro is behind by like a month? In which case, why even bother with rolling release?
Manjaro was a gateway drug for me. Used Ubuntu from when it came out to ~2014. Switched to Manjaro, but after the SSL cert fiasco I switched to Arch proper. When I started my job, Gentoo is our office distro for workstations and servers, so I switched all my home machines over to make sure I understood it. Then I ended up liking it more than Arch...
Opposite to Antergos Manjaro is a) using solely their own repos, not also Arch's and b) come bloated (far too many applications installed by default) and themed out of the box.
Similar situation here I have Antergos on 3 diff systems and being using it for past 3 years longest I have used any distro before switching to new one. It was such a good arch spinoff.
That's a picture-perfect exit. They have honestly disclosed the reasons and, most importantly, the continuance plan for loyal users. It's a shame they shined the brightest at the end.
As a long time Arch user, what's the attraction to these spinoffs?
Seems to me they are mainly pitching being easier to install, but the Arch installer (or lack thereof) is perfectly fine in my opinion. You get the benefit of understanding a little better how your system is installed as well.
I've done many full Arch installs (but never antegros), but it's always the little things that I forget to do, then look into what's the new best way to do it, then fall down the ricing rabbit hole. Although it's fun it's also nice just to have a full system installed with no fuss. Ubuntu is fine for that, but I inevitably get the itch for something different. These spin offs let me cheat into a full setup desktop that works great from day one. No more 'I forgot to Auto Mount USB drives' or whatever. Plus it's fun to see how someone else sets it up and get some fresh ideas.
My $.02: As others have noted, there is some level of intimidation that contributed to me using Antergos. That being said, I did a reinstall a few months ago and decided I would do it "for real" this time. I followed the Arch wiki for each step, learned a huge amount about the way the OS installs, the drive partitioning works, and made it to the bootloader step. And that's where I ran into issues.
Once I rebooted, I couldn't get the bootloader to load arch. I spent about two days trying different methods from the Arch Wiki before I decided that a) I had learned a huge amount and b) I didn't need the "geek cred" that came with a vanilla install of Arch.
I went back to Antergos and am quite happy. I manually build packages from AUR, read the wiki when I need to setup something and am happy with it.
I use i3 currently, so perhaps I'll give the install another go, but I may just switch to Manjaro.
The bootloader is the part I dread EVERY time I set up a new Arch install (basically every couple of years) I have to relearn it every stinking time! I'm using rEFInd these days so that either helps or hurts the cause.
At least for Antergos its a super fast way to get a "real" Arch install.
Sure I know the process of creating partition tables, formatting drives, bootstrapping wireless and what not, setting up system time, adding a bunch of services I want, etc. But for anyone that likes the Arch release process (and thus isn't interested in Manjaro) and AUR it was a place to point them without the massive learning curve because nowadays it generally just works.
As a moderately technical user, I’ve run Arch VMs for school work for the past 3 years, but when it came time for me to dual boot my laptop, I really didn’t want to have to be as hands-on involved with a device I actually use frequently. I picked Manjaro instead so I can still enjoy the rolling release cycle but with an already working system out of the box.
One reason is that I learned how to install a system that way with Gentoo 15 years ago and I don't need to learn it again now. It's still a slow process even when you know what you're doing (though I still usually do it the slow way)
One counterpoint to this is (back when I used Arch), I found Arch to be the fastest-to-install distro if you already knew how to do it.
No need to wait 2 minutes to boot a graphical installer that doesn't let you pick what packages you want (this is significant if you don't have Australian internet speeds), or forces you to set up your partitions in a certain way, and so on. You just partition your disk, pacstrap, chroot, run a few setup commands and reboot.
The last time I installed arch I had a working system in 15 minutes -- other distributions took 40 minutes to bootstrap and reboot so I could start configuring them (mostly because of how long it took to download the 3000 packages I didn't need).
Obviously there is a level of "it only takes 3 commands to install gentoo" here, but I personally long for the minimalism you get from Arch's no-bs installation.
I, too learned how to Linux with Gentoo ~20 years ago, and while that semi-from-scratch approach still appeals to me, Arch 2019 is not Gentoo 2002.
I find myself doing an Arch install once a year or so, and I'd say it takes about 20 minutes to get to my prefered desktop from completely un-initialized hardware - I remember Gentoo taking days!
I'm an Arch user who come from Manjaro. Arch Linux seems kinda scary beast to begin with, especially when you are newbie in the Linux world.
There is a huge difference between having good GUI for both installation and management (Manjaro) and having text-based Wiki for everything (Arch). I did not need to read anything when I install Manjaro, though it it true that I learned a lot after I switched to Arch. Not everyone want to experience pain of learning at the beginning. Also, Manjaro provides GUI that let you switch different versions of Kernel and GPU drivers with a few click.
Lastly Manjaro has complete Desktop Environments for Gnome, KDE, and Xfce. These DEs have pretty cool tricks and packages alongside with their default packages. They are something hard to figure out when you use Arch.
As another Arch user, you get a working quasi-Arch on your home theater system in something like half an hour. Arch is great if you want to do anything interesting, but for a PC that is just supposed to run youtube and mpv, it is not supposed to do anything interesting.
This is for me huge news... I think of Antergos very fondly. I donated when I first installed it and was constantly amazed by it.
Showing Antergos off at work, people was also impressed and almost everyone on the team switched to Antergos from Ubuntu (and this is no small feat). It lowered the entry bar into arch without lowering quality and this is something that is really valuable. It made switching to an arguably a better distro for development (latest packages, the vast aur repository, incredible Arch wiki support...) time-effective: where before I couldn't imagine myself as SysOps recommending arch to the frontent designer, now I can just go "oh, try this, installation is almost as easy as Ubuntu".
I had a small share of grief with Antergos too. With my laptop I had to disable "nouveau" drivers so that I could boot to a stable installation environment using Nvidia 150M GPU and upgrading my home setup to Nvidia from a Radeon GPU killed my previous arch installation and now it won't boot from their live iso.
But what it enabled me to do at work, prompting this switch from ubuntu to arch, is something I can't measure in value. I would love to be able to maintain this project (is it open for public fork?), but I have neither time (maybe a workday a week) nor the preparation to do so, and the community would also have to create momentum in the direction of adopting this project...
Anyway this is sad, but in no way I could hang this over antergos team's heads. I can only be grateful and wish them good luck in their lives, they deserve all the internets they can get.
Manually installing and managing Archlinux years ago was the best Linux tutorial I could have asked for.
Before switching to Archlinux I started with Ubuntu and other Debian based distros. The problem with using those is that it wraps many things in nice automated packages and scripts and you don't learn much. And understanding how Linux works can be quite useful at times.
That is unfortunately not scalable. It is nice to have for example a team of devs using the same distro. It makes it easier to help one another, debug the system and install packages. I at work couldn't have prompted the team's switch from ubuntu to arch without Antergos. It basically made widespread adoption of Arch with little compromises possible.
If your team is not ready to deal with the occasional problems that come from using Archlinux then just stick to Ubuntu. It is perfectly usable distribution and you can always get the latest development software using custom repos, Snap packages or even running it from some Archlinux lxc container.
Readit News
As an aside, I just checked the geolocation server I'd setup for the installer.
03:14:51 up 1357 days, 3:43, 1 user, load average: 0.00, 0.01, 0.05
It's been up 4 years continuously on a Scaleway ARM box. I can't recommend them enough for such projects.
OS uptime gave me pride in the 90s. Today it's usually a bad sign.
For example, I don't need Zombieload/MDS patches as I don't have anyone running untrusted code on the servers, I didn't need the rds_tcp vulnerability patch from last week because I don't have RDS modules loaded on any of my servers. I didn't need client side OpenSSH patches on these servers either, nor OpenSSL patches for UDP SSL. Typically a quick check with ansible is all it takes to confirm if these things are or aren't real risks for you.
EDIT: Just looking at some CVE lists... It looks like assuming that the entire attack surface is the kernel and pre-auth openssh you may be in the clear running stock Ubuntu Server Minimal 14.04, a 5 year old OS today.
Kernel vulnerabilities resulting in code execution in the TCP stack or related code resulting in code execution are few and far between. OpenSSH vulnerabilities... well, the last pre-auth OpenSSH vulnerability, one of the two in it's entire lifetime had the severe consequence of... being able to check usernames too fast.
Please let me know if I've missed a big one, but I don't see anything that could even be used to do more than DoS a system like this running an old kernel and openssh server.
(Please correct me if I'm wrong. Being wrong here would be good news.)
What a serious flip in what we think about there.
Arch purists may scoff on these spin offs, but they miss the point. The appeal was that even though I know how to set up arch on my own, it takes about 2 hours or so. Setting up nvidia was also a pain. With antergos, you can just sit back, and get a nice working system quickly.
Will definitely miss it
I've used Arch on and off for about eight years. The first time I set it up, it took about 2 hours. I just tried again last week, and it took all day.
They used to have a super-basic installer, but it sped things. They removed that in favor of detailed instructions on archwiki. Now, they've basically obliterated the install instructions. Whereas it was once a step-by-step guide with call outs to more detailed pages, now it is just a set of stubs that send you to other detail pages. And it is not opinionated at all.
Want a full-disk encryption setup, but haven't installed arch in couple years? Be prepared to spend a lot of time researching everything that goes into that stack, with very little guidance as to what is typical practice.
If you want community chosen presets, why are you opting for Arch? And if you don't want presets, knowing how partitions and boot loaders function is necessary. This is also why encryption is a bitch, it adds tons of complexity to partitions and boot loaders.
Fundamentally, installing Arch really isn't any different for us that install Debian or Fedora from scratch, from within another environment, without using the hand-holding installers. The only difference is using `pacman` instead of `apt` or `dnf`.
https://manjaro.org/
I never used Antergos but last I used Manjaro it seemed pretty good.
Personally, I’m looking to see concepts like GuixSD and NixOS be extended and remixed. I’m imagining a world where you have a control panel that changes declarative settings then commits them by rebuilding the system...
Ok, that was 4 years ago, but still, I wouldn't dare use it.
And for those who will use Manjaro, please don't ask for support on the Arch forums/subreddit/IRC chan.
[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/31yayt/manjaro_forgo... https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:NTDcUS...
Using the architect installer it's also fast and trivial to make your own custom install that's as minimal or fully loaded as you like.
I will surely miss Antergos
Edit: found this script at least. https://github.com/MatMoul/archfi
It’s right there on the tin
You can't. Manjaro uses its own repos. It'd be like calling Ubuntu a wizard for installing Debian.
Seems to me they are mainly pitching being easier to install, but the Arch installer (or lack thereof) is perfectly fine in my opinion. You get the benefit of understanding a little better how your system is installed as well.
Once I rebooted, I couldn't get the bootloader to load arch. I spent about two days trying different methods from the Arch Wiki before I decided that a) I had learned a huge amount and b) I didn't need the "geek cred" that came with a vanilla install of Arch.
I went back to Antergos and am quite happy. I manually build packages from AUR, read the wiki when I need to setup something and am happy with it.
I use i3 currently, so perhaps I'll give the install another go, but I may just switch to Manjaro.
Happy to hear any tips, though!
Sure I know the process of creating partition tables, formatting drives, bootstrapping wireless and what not, setting up system time, adding a bunch of services I want, etc. But for anyone that likes the Arch release process (and thus isn't interested in Manjaro) and AUR it was a place to point them without the massive learning curve because nowadays it generally just works.
No need to wait 2 minutes to boot a graphical installer that doesn't let you pick what packages you want (this is significant if you don't have Australian internet speeds), or forces you to set up your partitions in a certain way, and so on. You just partition your disk, pacstrap, chroot, run a few setup commands and reboot.
The last time I installed arch I had a working system in 15 minutes -- other distributions took 40 minutes to bootstrap and reboot so I could start configuring them (mostly because of how long it took to download the 3000 packages I didn't need).
Obviously there is a level of "it only takes 3 commands to install gentoo" here, but I personally long for the minimalism you get from Arch's no-bs installation.
I find myself doing an Arch install once a year or so, and I'd say it takes about 20 minutes to get to my prefered desktop from completely un-initialized hardware - I remember Gentoo taking days!
There is a huge difference between having good GUI for both installation and management (Manjaro) and having text-based Wiki for everything (Arch). I did not need to read anything when I install Manjaro, though it it true that I learned a lot after I switched to Arch. Not everyone want to experience pain of learning at the beginning. Also, Manjaro provides GUI that let you switch different versions of Kernel and GPU drivers with a few click.
Lastly Manjaro has complete Desktop Environments for Gnome, KDE, and Xfce. These DEs have pretty cool tricks and packages alongside with their default packages. They are something hard to figure out when you use Arch.
Well I guess we are all not you. Different people have different opinions and use cases.
Showing Antergos off at work, people was also impressed and almost everyone on the team switched to Antergos from Ubuntu (and this is no small feat). It lowered the entry bar into arch without lowering quality and this is something that is really valuable. It made switching to an arguably a better distro for development (latest packages, the vast aur repository, incredible Arch wiki support...) time-effective: where before I couldn't imagine myself as SysOps recommending arch to the frontent designer, now I can just go "oh, try this, installation is almost as easy as Ubuntu".
I had a small share of grief with Antergos too. With my laptop I had to disable "nouveau" drivers so that I could boot to a stable installation environment using Nvidia 150M GPU and upgrading my home setup to Nvidia from a Radeon GPU killed my previous arch installation and now it won't boot from their live iso.
But what it enabled me to do at work, prompting this switch from ubuntu to arch, is something I can't measure in value. I would love to be able to maintain this project (is it open for public fork?), but I have neither time (maybe a workday a week) nor the preparation to do so, and the community would also have to create momentum in the direction of adopting this project...
Anyway this is sad, but in no way I could hang this over antergos team's heads. I can only be grateful and wish them good luck in their lives, they deserve all the internets they can get.
Before switching to Archlinux I started with Ubuntu and other Debian based distros. The problem with using those is that it wraps many things in nice automated packages and scripts and you don't learn much. And understanding how Linux works can be quite useful at times.