While ArkLinux was great at some things, I never was able to get to my Windows drives. I have 2 NTFS drives, a system and data drive, and I didn't expect to be able to browse them, and I was right, I couldn't. I was surprised it didn't find my FAT32 drive, even after I played with the /etc/fstab. This is essential. In order for a user to transition, they're going to need to get to their files without using floppy discs. CD-ROMs do automount, but I don't use discs for quick and simple transitions. This goes high on my wishlist as well. On the other side of things, simply plugging in my Laser Jet 6L and choosing "add printer" was the extent of work need to get my printer working. ArkLinux, along with CUPS, did the rest for me.
While playing with ArkLinux, I purchased an 802.11b PCMCIA card and plunked it into my PCMCIA drive. Unfortunately, Ark didn't find it and I was unable to get it working. I tried adding a new network interface, but it didn't detect anything. I used the "Add New Hardware" applet in the Mission Control panel, and that froze my system, causing me to have to restart the X server. I'm not sure whether it even detects my PCMCIA drive at all, but I can say that it does show kernel messages stopping PCMCIA services when I shut down, leading me to believe it's not the drive that is a problem for ArkLinux. I did not do too much research into this, but suffice it to say, I tried all of the simple things. With the rise of wireless networks and the advent of 802.11g networks, wireless support is becoming mandatory.
I was unimpressed with the fonts in ArkLinux. While it is easy to add new fonts, as seen in the screenshot, the font quality was grainy and jagged for most of the OS. While the fonts are reportedly anti-aliased, they still don't compare to those that run under Gnome or Windows. It's hardly fair to blame this on ArkLinux, but with only graphical environment available, they become somewhat responsible for the sole implementation on their OS. While this screenshot from the ArkLinux site shows the fonts, notice the fonts everywhere besides the OpenOffice.org document. They are still subpar.
One drawback I noticed while using ArkLinux was a delay in window redrawing. I was unable to get the screen resolution above 800x600 with the default nv driver, so I changed to the nVidia Quadro 2, the closet thing to my Quadro 4. I cranked the size up to 1280 and had problems. As you can see in the above screenshot, when dragging windows, I found a gray streak left behind. This is almost certainly NOT my system - it's a dual 1.8 Ghz Xeons with 1.0 GB RAM and a 32 MB graphics card. These gray window shadows appeared with nearly every window drag. Going back to the nv driver, I was able to keep the resolution and the dragging improved, but is still jittery. This may be because AGPgart is not enabled -- either way, once again, a new user would be baffled. Though it may be the nature of the nVidia driver and Xfree, a user would likely attribute this to ArkLinux, and, indeed, they should be doing all they can to prevent it.
ArkLinux is attempting to do in a short cycle what took years for many other distributions - to be a complete distribution and solution. They are off to a great start. This version is an Alpha version, they make no bones about that. As an alpha version, you should expect certain things not to work. That said, this is a very nice piece of software for a work in progress, and could probably be used by most people as their main desktop environment. The issues I have are less complaints than just marks of an unfinished product. My guess is that when the polish is applied, ArkLinux will be in the same class as other new school desktop Linuxes.
Pros:
- Mission Control makes local system administration a breeze
- only real desktop distro to use KDE 3.1 as default environment
- super easy installation
Cons:
- wireless card didn't detect or setup
- couldn't mount Windows drives
- still has issues as alpha development release
- "Ark Linux Review, Page 1"
- "Ark Linux Review, Page 2"
