CTKArch

First of all, congratulations and thanks for this Arch setup. It became my main distribution.

My suggestion would be to change the default network manager to NetworkManager.
I agree Wicd may have a plus in performance and is more lightweight when it comes to dependencies but it doesn't support mobile broadband. Lacking such a feature makes it totally useful for the growing "mobile" user base. 

Nice to hear that ctkarch makes Arch Linux popular!

Do you mean getting an internet connection via a mobile phone connected to the computer?

You can install networkmanager if you want to, but I will never, ever, include it in the base iso of ctkarch.

It's absolutely inefficient, annoying, non-working and so on. (I'm staying polite there )
For instance, it regularly cuts your connection just to see if there's another one available. What the heck?

I agree it's buggy, but it's the only option for mobile broadband users out there. That's why NM is the manager of choice for all the popular distros out there ( even KDE-based ones ).

Anyway, I think a lot of Arch users choose to install NM so a natural move would be to put there at least a straightforward wiki with the steps needed.
Two reasons for that:
1. You already did it with the nVidia proprietary driver, a very popular choice among users;
2. NM is largely used and is the only user-friendly alternative to WICD.

I still am not sure about what is "mobile broadband". Can you explain that to me?

Why would we need a tutorial for networkmanager? The official wiki should be enough.
For nVidia cards, I did have to explain the trick, but with NM there is no trick. Install, replace wicd in rc.conf with it, period.

you don't need NM to use a mobile broadband connection...

in CTKArch you can use ppp directly (tuto here), and if you want to use a mobile phone with bluetooth tethering (tuto here), you can make an addon with bluez...
if you have installed CTKArch on your harddrive, there's no problem: "pacman -S <all software you want>"

Hi,

Even better an option that network manager or modem manager is to use SAKIS3G with USB modeswitch. After I setup CTK in my harddisk, I used SAKIS3G to configure my mobile broadband, and it got connected in few seconds. It works very well with my ZTE.

I heard that NM (networkmanager) had a smaller memory footprint, and larger dirver support, once it's loaded, than wicd ?
but, whatever is better, in the long run, right?

Well, networkmanager is intrusive. When it manages things right, it can be OK.

But when it doesn't, you can't try and fix your connection by hand; you have to kill it, for it prevents you from being able to do anything.
With wicd, it just sees that you've fixed it and doesn't do anything but display that it's all good.

There's also the problem I evoked above, about its routines that may disconnect you anytime.

I would be so happy if wicd was written in C.
Sorry, I have difficulties with NM.
Not that it won't improve enough one day; but for now, wicd feels just good to me: you choose a connection in the list, optionally fill the parameters and click Connect!

If you have any interesting news about any especially good connection manager, please let me know!

I was falling today to your "non-distribution" - very nice, but sad that there is no german transaltion

as you have installed qt for arora you could use umtsmon for UMTS - http://umtsmon.sourceforge.net/

but a better solution you could find in fluxflux - its a script that uses usb-modeswich

have a look here: http://flur.fluxflux.net/redirect.php?dlid=15&PHPSESSID=0i957oa372qrgql6fm6vkbj3t6

sorry, it there is only german localisation, but it easy to find under internet

generally, I think, you should not mix gtk and qt - either gtk- apps or qt-apps - as what I have seen you need qt only for Aroro and nothing else - Arora is buggy and quite fat.

I think midori is quite fine and everybody will install his browser afterwards - firefox, chrome, or I would install opera, because it is still the quickest on tiny machines - I find Opera even quicker than midori

the same I would do with the office packages - abiword is nice, extremly advanced in programming, but not usable when you work together with with mac and windows users - you can only do this with libre or softmaker office

The rest is really a very nice small distribution

UMTS looks indeed neat.
I wanted to test it, but it does not build there: "QMAKESPEC has not been set, so configuration cannot be deduced."

If it's very small I can include it. If it works and can be integrated, by the way.

About mixing GTK and Qt, no, Arora is not the only software to require Qt. SMPlayer and the battery monitor require it, notably. Run pacman -R qt, it will list the packages depending on it. (it won't uninstall it, btw)
I couldn't be more happy if there was *one* widespread GUI lib used by everybody, but as the world is split between Qt and GTK, I prefer to use them both and not be deprived from any interesting app.

you mean  UMTSMON does not compile?

so try the fluxflux script (attached) or sakis 3G - http://www.sakis3g.org/

it did not take the attachment - so I had to add .txt