So I was playing on a Linux laptop for a few weeks and didn't have a single problem (apart from the dreaded LWJGL), everything worked pretty much out of the box. The laptop was only lent though and I'm going to give it back soon. Of course I want to continue playing on Alice, so I downloaded the Windows .exe and fired up the installin'... when suddenly I am presented with this: ...actually it was in the appdata folder before, so I thought the launcher was unable to access the directory for some obscure reason. I then made my own config and added the Alice update server. Still the same error. It says "unexpected end of ZLIB input stream", so I guess it might be the server not giving me data anymore. It could also be the Launcher - I dunno much about Java but if ZLIB is the library that adds the download functionality then it can be a launcher problem as well. Now I'll try fixing it by copying Alice from Ubuntu and then replacing the linux-specific stuff with windows stuff. (Wouldn't have this problem if I had Ubuntu on this PC as well but this PC is going to be replaced soon anyway... no use putting another OS on there. Also other people could have this problem too.)
The current one. Beta might have more functions but the current launcher is more stable - I prefer that.
More stable, how so? I haven't had any problems with using the beta launcher. But it will be required for later client updates, since it allows you to only download incremental of what has been changed/added. I'm not sure how the normal (not beta) launcher will handle it.
I have bad experience with beta programs... but since the current launcher seems to be acting up I should at least try it. Hopefully it works.