Mike and Jon's Bet

Posted at 11:17am on Friday November 25th 2011

Jon had never had a Pot Noodle. Mike was shocked.

Mike had never tried Arch Linux. Jon was shocked.

A bet followed...

Here's Jon eating his first ever Pot Noodle.

Jon's thoughts:

'It didn't taste that bad! I chose the curry flavour, thinking the spices would cover over any inherent badness. It wasn't exactly filling, though, and it only had 5 peas in - so it was mostly water and noodles. I won't be making it a regular meal.'

Here's Mike installing Arch Linux:

Mike's thoughts:

'Wow. That's what I call a fast distro. I expected to spend a good hour or so fiddling around at the command line - not that I cared, as I've done that a million times before. But Arch's installer got the base system, X and Xfce on my machine in less than 5 minutes, and the boot time is screamingly quick. You have to know what you're doing, as there isn't even XTerm or OpenSSH included in the default install, and I don't have anti-aliased fonts yet. But Jon reassures me that the Arch documentation will explain everything. Ultimately, I can see myself really liking Arch, as I tend to get frustrated with all the extra cruft included in many distros.'

That is all.

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Your comments

Just that

lumitoro (not verified) - November 25, 2011 @ 12:23pm

I changed to arch just because of the ever growing cruft and the many distributions need to change default installed apps every damned release. After installing and configuring everything, all I need to do now is the occasional "pacman -Syu". The thing is that now that I have a good, no cruft, stable system, I find myself doing all that is possible in order to break things and fix them without reinstalling, then I can say, like when playing fps, "nailed this hairy sucker, hehehehe, noob".

mike likes microsoft

steve the penguin (not verified) - November 25, 2011 @ 12:36pm

the picture is living proof - checkout his mice

Microsoft Mice

Paul Gideon Dann (not verified) - November 25, 2011 @ 3:16pm

Amusingly, the only thing that I'd say Microsoft does *really well* is mice. Their mice are excellent. We must give them that :)

I never looked back after installing Arch. I need an OS that allows me to be in control, that I can configure to work the way I want, and that I can fix when it goes wrong. The result isn't a wrinkle-free experience, but I'm happy to exchange a few rough edges for the freedom I get in return.

I've never eaten a pot noodle either; I've eaten other forms of instant dried noodle, though :)

Not Looking At Jon

Easily Distracted Penguin (not verified) - November 25, 2011 @ 6:45pm

No offence Jon, but the picture in the background of a certain young lady I can't identify caught my eye. I cannot prove it, but I would say she's hotter than your curry Pot Noodle.

Arch Love

Thameslink (not verified) - November 25, 2011 @ 10:39pm

All the coverage of Arch is great.
How about a little plug in the magazine of Parabola Linux, the fully-free Arch derivative for all the freedom lovers out there?
I'm running it on this Toshiba R830 and everything works out of the box with linux-libre (except the Bluetooth, but that doesn't work under anything)

This just made my afternoon

Hammeh (not verified) - November 26, 2011 @ 1:01am

I second the Microsoft mouse comment, they are fantastic! Best mice money can buy! The only Microsoft product I will ever buy though ;)
Your guys are awesome! Keep up the good work!

Microsoft is good

Morten Juhl-Johansen Zölde-Fejer (not verified) - November 26, 2011 @ 8:26am

Considering the Xbox, the mice and keyboards, I have to say Microsoft is a recommendable hardware company.

Back at the point, I run Slackware for the reason people run Arch: The frustration with the runs-out-of-the-box-except-when-it-doesn't-and-bombs-completely distributions.
By the way, I would assume that when he installs Xfce, Terminal comes with it? But of course, Xterm is (significantly) snappier.
I used Arch for a long time as well, but got annoyed with the dependency resolution - the logic being that when you use a binary distribution like that, the only way you can be sure that all areas of an app are covered is to compile in support for everything it has support for.
So the dependency-controlling package managers tend to bloat the system and make you lose track of what you have on it, because a lot was installed in support for something else. If I install the Claws Mail plugins, it will pull in some sort of Palm Pilot library because there is a plugin for that. I have never needed, nor will I ever need that. Slackware Slackbuilds are the solution to that, the same way that AUR lets you tune it a bit more.

pot noodle.....

zingyyellow - November 26, 2011 @ 9:09am

I've never tried Arch myself... but have tried any Pot noodle with a dash of Encona Hot Pepper sauce on toast...!

worth a try..... lush!

Not Poodle

heiowge (not verified) - November 26, 2011 @ 5:28pm

It's full of non-specific imitated meat goodness. I prefer the chicken & mushroom ones myself. My wife goes for the beef & tomato ones.

Arch - got the base system installed but fell down over wifi.

Nothing wrong with MS mice

Mohan (not verified) - November 27, 2011 @ 3:38am

MS ironically make really good mice, I prefer them to any other manufacturers. For me at least they are big enough where they feel comfortable when I use them with my big hands. Also their scroll wheel is really smooth and not jerky like Logitech's for example.

Microsoft = ace :O

Keine Ahnung (not verified) - November 27, 2011 @ 1:12pm

Well, I'll have to join in the MS (- Mike, damn you, you've even got the same initials!) love-in here and say the XBox360 controllers are absolutely brilliant and work out-of-the-box with Linux, though AFAIK minus the dual-shock.
Jon, you've clearly forgotten what they told you at school about Not Poodles: JUST SAY NO!

about microsoft hardware

Heinz (not verified) - November 29, 2011 @ 3:19pm

they're incredible!
I got a microsoft trackball optical in 2000 and it's still working good (the scroll wheel is a bit consumed but does his job).
I used it everyday, now my brother use it. He grown up with this trackball and now he finds very difficult to use classic mice.
The microsoft webcams look ok too. I got a cheap one, the vx700 and it works well with every OS I tried

Old hardware FTW and other such things

jarubyh (not verified) - November 29, 2011 @ 5:27pm

Microsoft Mice are really cool, I'm with Linus Torvalds on the pragmatism before idealism, if Microsoft makes good mice, use Microsofts mice. If Microsoft makes a good OS, pinch yourself.

By the way, Jon, I too noticed the exquisite photography in the background.

Posterize the Cheerleader, distract the Nerds.

Happy Archer (not verified) - December 1, 2011 @ 1:22am

I've been quite happy with Arch for over a year now with no major issues (running Openbox although I'm thinking of taking DWM for a spin as motivation to keep slogging through my copy of 'C Novice to Pro.')

BTW the poster in the background that's causing all the off topic comments is of actress Hayden Panettiere aka Claire Bennet from the TV show Heroes ...

"Posterize the Cheerleader, distract the Nerds."