There are liveusb (for macbooks as well) - really encourage everyone to give it a spin without installing. This is really the future of the Linux desktop.
For the actual changes go here: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/23/ChangeSet
you are right, it is not the first release to have access to each... but IMHO the first release where everything works seamlessly. YMMV.
For example, one in which packages do not conflict because they are installed in a directory for each package, and there is an "alternatives" mechanism for any global choice.
Feature changes are ok on release upgrades.
* http://cr.yp.to/slashpackage.html
* http://cr.yp.to/slashcommand.html
Their major problem was the idea that one had to register things with what was to most of the world just some bloke on another continent. But they had concepts like a hierarchical package naming scheme ("admin/", "mail/", &c.), self-contained build trees with versioned names, symbolic links to denote "currently selected version", and an "index"/"alternatives" directory full of symbolic links.
I'm one of the Guix hackers, and we're about to make a new release announcement today, so I encourage you to check it out: http://gnu.org/software/guix
is there something cool that you get from Arch ? I mean, I pretty much installed Fedora over Ubuntu because I wanted bleeding edge Gnome and Wayland to play with.
The install experience is still entirely manual. However, the hardest part is deciding on the more contentious components, such as the choice of filesystem(s), partition scheme, and bootloader.
The actual install process is simply following the install guide, typing commands, and occasionally delving into the wiki to learn how to configure the more esoteric components, should you choose to use them.
Granted, this is far above what most normal people can or want to do, and that's fine. Other distros exist, with real installers, and they make mostly-sane choices for you.
> is there something cool that you get from Arch ?
- A system completely customized to your software tastes. You can do this with Fedora and Ubuntu after the fact, but you're not building those systems from the ground up.
- Unadulterated software. Arch keeps downstream patching to an absolute minimum. I'm running Gnome, not Gnome patched hundreds of times over to work with hundreds of external dependencies.
- A huge and well-maintained repository of unofficial software packages. Again, you get this with the popular distros, but Arch has a very decent canonical experience compared to them. I personally did not like dealing with PPAs to get user-packaged software on Ubuntu, for example.
- Current software. I run mainline kernels and the latest open-source graphics drivers with what I consider to be a reasonable testing buffer. What I consider reasonable is most likely not what others consider reasonable.
I personally love Pacman. For some reason, Ubuntu always ends up creating conflicts that I can't manually resolve (when installing things outside of the official repositories). I never get those issues with AUR. If you have time, give it a try; otherwise, don't lose sleep over it. You always have Manjaro (albeit I think it uses different repositories) or Antergos (not sure about this, either. I remember reading about a distro that used the official Arch repos, but can't remember the name).
I have no idea, I installed my current Arch 3 or 4 years ago and kept it updated since then. I do not remember it being difficult at the time.
"is there something cool that you get from Arch ?"
Everything is up to date, I love the package manager and the AUR (the user contributed "packages" in the form of instructions to build a package) w/ devel packages (ie you can easily install git versions of some software.) I use yaourt as a front-end. I use it to manage configuration files (and manually merge upstream config files with my locally modified files.)
The distro feels lightweight (I'm not using any DE, only Xmonad, so that may help), and there's not too much "magic", in the sense that you can easily find everything in config files. It kinda feels like a BSD system in that regard.
I'm learning Haskell and lots of up to date packages are available in Arch, I would not be surprised if Arch is one of the most popular distros among Haskell devs.
The Arch wiki has every bit of information you need for the initial setup, then reading Arch's website main page before a "big" update should be enough (they post instructions for important migrations there, when the upgrade could require some manual intervention.)
It really depends on how you define "experience". For me, I like the manual installation procedure like everything else on Arch. Sure, it is not "easy". But the point is that you are taught to do things with standard Linux tools, save the package manager and a few straightforward shell scripts.
Arch doesn't give you all sorts of fancy, "automated", distro-specific tools to make your life easier, because easy life is a temporary illusion in the fast-changing -- and by consequence, always broken -- world that is Linux desktop. Automated tools that made you life easier yesterday will likely make your life harder tomorrow, due to all the changes in upstream software these tools try to hide. Keeping such tools up to date will require continued interest in the development, something Linux desktop community never really succeeded to deliver.
Arch just puts you in the real, wild landscape of Linux desktop. It may not be comfortable at first, but that's how Linux desktop is.
The software availability is the biggest reason I use it, pretty much everything that could be installed is available through the main repos or AUR.
Wayland is quite good in Fedora 23 now. The GNOME Maps app works now (it uses 3D) on my Radeon R9 290x. It didn't work in Fedora 22. I'm running Wayland now as my daily driver.
Worked fine. The Arch wiki has pages dedicated to Macbooks if you need help.
The only issue I had with macbooks was the wifi card was not detected by the installer after booting from USB. It works fine after installing a package using pacman once you get internet. So I always keep a cheap $10 Netgear USB wifi for installs which always works by default.
Most people who have issues with installing Arch are almost always just new to Arch or Linux. I had a lot of issues starting out with Arch but after the first 6 months learning curve I rarely had issues.
I have been using it for over two years now on a daily basis, across multiple Macbook and Thinkpads models and custom desktop build. It has been very stable and though most software versions are often 1-2 yrs ahead of Debian/Fedora.
I actually had way more problems while using Fedora for two years prior than I ever did with Arch. The Arch package library (AUR), wiki, and pacman provide a very strong foundation for using Linux as a desktop.
I had a painful experience a while ago trying to install Arch on my mac. It kept freezing up, so I had to give up as I had a load of other things to do.
I would really like to have another bash at getting Linux going on it.
Specific Mac images, or the main live USB image works on Macs?