> >> Lastly, are there any Arch Linux specific gui tools I should be >> aware of? Like >> for package config, etc.. > > > Get to know the AUR, abs, and the makepkg tool. You'll be using makepkg a > lot, as there's a pretty sizable number of packages in Arch that the devs > don't maintain in the "core" or "extra" repos. In these cases, although > sometimes it might still be available as a binary package in the "community" > repo (which is maintained by Arch Trusted Users), more often than not it'll > be available as a PKGBUILD script in the AUR, in which case you'll need to > build the package yourself from source using "makepkg". Many packages are > available from source only like this, and it's really not a big deal to deal > with, once you get used to it. (Plus once you get comfortable with Arch, > you'll probably want to start creating your own PKGBUILDs for packages that > don't exist yet anywhere in Arch.) > > > As far as other Arch-specific tools, there's really not many. But I do use > these from time to time: > > netcfg - a command-line utility that takes care of much of the hard work of > connecting to a network. You set up a profile for, for example, a wifi > network, and you can then connect to it with a simple command "sudo netcfg > <your_wifi_network_profile>" > > hwdetect - very useful in auto-detecting the correct kernel modules for your > hardware. e.g. "sudo hwdetect --show-modules" > > > You probably need to install them; I don't think they come preinstalled: > > sudo pacman -S netcfg hwdetect abs fakeroot There are a couple GUI pacman frontends[1], but honestly, I can't really see the value. The CLI for pacman is excellent. I also like pkg tools, which has useful stuff like pkgfile. pkgfile is an add-on that lets you find "which package provides this file". For example, if I didn't know what package provides "kate", I could do "pkgfile bin/kate" and it would tell me that it's from extra/kdesdk. [1] http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pacman_GUI_Frontends Cheers, -AT
