100%. I’ve got servers running arch for the past 5 years or so and they’re the most stable systems I’ve got. I got so tired of the painful upgrade paths on “stable” distros so decided to switch a server to a rolling release.
After I found arch got security patches into the repos faster than the stable distros could backport, I decided to switch them all over.
I’m even a mad man and have them self update with a script that checks informant (or something, can’t actually remember) for installed packages against news. If no installed packages are found in news, it continues with the scheduled update.
Especially when customizing the kernel is the default experience with Gentoo, reducing the theoretical attack surface even more if you know what you're doing.
If you want to have at least some thrill, use testing repos.
I had to fix GitLab two (2) times due to the main package not being linked against testing libraries (it took 10 seconds to ln -s the new to the old version), and had one breakage due to dovecot revamping their whole config system, but publishing no example/useful docs.
You're confusing two different meanings of stable. When people refer to "stable" distros such as Debian, they are referring to the meaning of stable as "unchanging," not the meaning of stable as "doesn't crash."
A rolling release distro by that definition cannot be stable.
Sure bcachefs sounds like a pretty good idea, especially since the author thinks his AI coding assistant is sentient and a "her". What is it with file system maintainers and mental illness....
From what I know, the AI Assistant is the least of Kent Overstreet's problems. If anything it's a blessing he's fixanting on a random number generator instead of risking becoming Hans Raiser 2.0.
it seems there’s elevated adverse behavior in people who work on things that combine deep hardware and software in general. see jailbreaking, emulation, hyprland, something
Fair, I'm always scared to upgrade to a new Debian release and the process is always painful. But that happens every couple years and I can take a week or two to look into it before doing it.
Every time I did pacman -Syu it was a Russian roulette. Most of the times everything was fine, but often enough there was a problem and something was broken and I had to spend a couple days figuring out what was the problem.
I’m always scared to upgrade to a new Debian release and the process is always painful.
At least in my personal experience this is one of the big triggers for distro hopping. Most of the people I know that stuck to one distro for years and years are on a rolling release.
I mostly run Debian on servers. I do not want a rolling release on a server, at all.
I don't care how well they check their packages, I just want the thing to work. I do not care about new features, I just want it to work.
I wonder how many Arch haters have actually used Arch and ever ran into a breaking issue.
In my 8 years of daily driving Arch, I have had 1 ever, and it was only bad bc I didn't know of BTRFS yet.
That happened 3 years in, and I went on a new distro-hopping spree in between, trying Fedora, NixOS, and others, and they had actual problems. Not "oh an update broke my system and was fixed in a day."
So now I've been back on Arch for more years.
This whole "Arch is always breaking and takes so much maintenance" is a myth. In reality, Arch is the most stable, because it packages everything Vanilla. Everything works the "standard" way. On Debian, things decay, and then some stuff that's new breaks with some stuff that's old. On Fedora, there is a Red-Hat tax: configs in weird places, strange scripts, software missing from main repos (COPR sucks btw). On Arch, it's just "normal" Linux; and that works
Yeah, I've noticed there's this subsection of people that have a completely wrong understanding of what the term "stable" means in the world of distros, and that it often creates as many problems as it solves, particularly on a desktop PC, or even worse, a gaming PC.
And for there record: Stable just means that things don't change. That doesn't mean it contains less bugs, is easier to use or is more secure. And on the flip side it doesn't mean that distros that are not "stable" are necessarily "unstable" in any shape or form.
Well... because of longer testing periods and a lot of stuff never even considered until stale the stable distros indeed have less bugs. The ones that still slip through however will basically not get fixes for years.
On the other hand I have seen a lot of bugs on Arch... but I usually don't care and just assume (rightfully so in 99% of the cases) that they get fixed within hours.
Stable distros are great as targets for development, such as for containers. It also works great for end user environments because developers aren't trying to hit a moving target in terms of core libraries.
For a home user, having something more stable isn't very beneficial. If you want to have things stay the same for the next 2 years or so, then go for it.
It's one of the reasons why fedora works well, it has just a 6 month release cycle, so nothing gets too stale. More modern packaging formats like flatpak and appimage are changing things a bit since they don't rely on the system packages and can use something newer.
I wonder how many Arch haters have actually used Arch and ever ran into a breaking issue.
A lot... they install it, screw up because they didn't bother to read the instructions, then did the usual... a new install.
Those who pass the first basic barrier to just chroot into the system and fix a simple mistake or roll back a package for the few hours it takes to get fixed instead of starting fresh usually stay for a long time...
In fact with the people I know there is a correlation between either "oh, I don't bother to fix anything and just do a fresh install (that idea is especially persistent in Windows users)" or "there's a big distro upgrade that had issues" and distro hopping. Once you settled on a rolling release and learned the basics in terms of fixing stuff the urge to hop yet another time vanishes for many.
“oh, I don’t bother to fix anything and just do a fresh install (that idea is especially persistent in Windows users)”
In fairness, not everyone who did that was just trying to avoid looking into things and learning the correct way. I can't be the only one who had Arch on a system before getting a smartphone, so early days, that was my sole means of accessing the internet, so if it went down hard and I didn't immediately understand enough of the error message to at least have an idea of man pages to give a read, I didn't really have a whole heck of a lot else available to continue trouble shooting. These days, worst case, I can turn on my laptop or grab my phone and search things until I understand the issue and find a solution.
That said, nearly all of my system breaking issues were self-inflicted by trying to do things I didn't fully understand, just because I thought the end result sounded cool, or not checking the news and unwittingly doing the exact thing the latest post was warning people to be aware of and not do with some sort of major upgrade/change in the base system.
I can’t be the only one who had Arch on a system before getting a smartphone
But that issue is solved for many years now. Although it makes a certain kind of sense: a lot of the Arch hate and memes causes we to question if that person has actually used Arch in years. So a lot of those ideas may be indeed ancient experiences surviving purely in memes and stories.
Oh, I wasn't trying to excuse it now, just saying there was a time where it was a reasonable approach if you found yourself out of your depth and really just needed to have your machine up and running again, rather than stemming from someone having no desire to learn a better way.
Debian decays? Can't relate, I've often been running Debian releases until they almost fell out of support (happens on servers) and they were always rock solid after I set them up. It's only ever an issue if you want to run new software versions without some kind of virtual environment, and generally I just don't care about that.
I think you can get problems once you are a full release cycle behind the last supported one.
Funnily enough it's mostly an issue with mirrors and signing keys, so basically the same fix Arch users need if they are behind for many months: update the packages for keys and mirrors first, everyting else afterwards.
I've used my current install for at least that long (going back further with Antergos) and you're correct about non-rolling options... I definitely would've had more pain with system upgrades and PPAs etc in those years.
That said, I think the Tamagotchi comparison probably makes sense in a way if it "dies" you probably did something "wrong" as on-paper it's also not difficult to maintain a digital pet either.
I'm using an outdated system, it's on three strikes:
Slow, shared internet for me. This adds friction to updates, and when I don't update as frequently as Arch expects this is the breakage you won't see.
I hate that updating today vs days-from-now might yield drastically different results. Admittedly the actual problem with my last few updates is that the reason-I-updated issues persisted.
The AUR is the biggest reason to use Arch. But use the AUR very carefully and not for system dependencies! Your graphics card is now legacy, so we put the driver on the AUR* ;)
Though I don't think these sort of problems are unfixable**, and other rolling distros probably do fix some of them but may also not have as good of a packaging system as Arch.
For instance I'm trying Void Linux on an old machine and have already ran into 2 (non-default) applications missing dependencies (which might be an issue with package maintainers, but also Void doesn't seem to track optional dependencies).
Tumbleweed/Slowroll would probably be a better fit for me, if not for Patterns.
* also if you update without switching, blank screen for you
** internet+GPU are also material problems as well, but those cannot get fixed today and probably will not be fixed next month either
Once I learned to make separate partitions for root, home, EFI, and then make routine backup of my package list, the update fears evaporate. Though with how CachyOS sets up btrfs snapshots by default now, it'd be pretty hard to deep fry an install beyond repair.
My machines got borked every time I tried to do a Debian or Fedora dist-upgrade following the official guide, like 4 times total. Rolling updates on Arch require manual intervention once in a blue moon and haven't broken my system since I got rid of Nvidia
Ubuntu will actively break itself via snapd at like 2am on a Sunday.
Fedora could not do a fully system update on a 1GB VPS because dnf would OOM.
The dumbest thing I've seen Arch do in over a decade of using it is put RabbitMQ in its official repos while also rolling the latest version of Erlang which RabbitMQ doesn't support.
I have Arch (btw) on my laptop which is the tinkering machine that only I use, and a Win10/Linux dual-boot desktop which is the one other people use that I'm not allowed to break. I had Fedora Silverblue on there originally because I figured it would be pretty stable, but it honestly gave me nothing but trouble. I switched that one over to CachyOS and it's been smooth sailing ever since.
I had nothing but trouble with Suse, Fedora and Debían on my nightmare of a machine (laptop with AMD/nvidia GPUs) and honestly thought that was my lot until I hit upon Arch, which I have been more than happy with for over 3 years now.
All I know is I was ready to go through the process to go from 12 to 13 and their documentation was full of disclaimers saying that it's not officially supported.
I'm 99% sure I was going with their official documentation, which you linked just there.
I can't speak for what I read or how I interpreted it ~6 months ago, other than to say I understood upgrading was not supported and I was SOL that mine broke.
No, I've never used "sloppy backports" (as the only warning of lack of support I can currently find lists as a problem) and I knew that back then too, so that wasn't the issue.
All I know is I was ready to go through the process to go from 12 to 13 and their documentation was full of disclaimers saying that it's not officially supported.
nixCraft (at cyberciti biz) is a site that has been slop publishing tutorials for everything ever possible with common unixy commands. And also shit like "30 Cool Open Source Software I Discovered in 2013". It often calls Unix "Linux", other times it uses both "Unix/Linux" for some reason, and sometimes it even says "on BSD, MacOS" for flags that only function on GNU coreutils. It started pre-AI, so it's like clickhole but for "installed Fedora yesterday" people (although I would imagine most traffic being "I've been using this for 24 years and forgot some flag").
I use EndeavourOS for my primary gaming setup and will sometimes go a month or more before I remember to update again. Even with a relatively modern nVidia card, it seems to keep up just fine.
That being said, every vanilla Arch experience has been a disaster by the end and while it’s not the same situation as the meme, you very much have to have a ton of prior knowledge to get a system that actually feels personal and by the point it’s personal enough, getting support for your setup is nigh impossible because it’s so bespoke.
Linux Mint user here, I have no idea if Arc is that complicated, I don't care really. All I need is a rock stable system where I can do things like developing, or just use it as "a computer".
I reboot every month or three, and feel extra happy after any interaction with m$ windows.
What about you? When did you choose stability over the rolling release?
This is such sloppy engagement baiting. If it was just a hot take shitting all over one of the larger linux communities, that would be one thing, but to follow it up with a "let me know in the comments" just makes it all feel disingenuous and like somebody is being sponsored by NordVPN or Incogni to post their ragebait
This is a bit like saying "Honda Civics are Tamagotchis for car people" because there's a community of people who enjoy modifying them. The rest of us just drive, and they run perfectly fine if you're not doing a lot of invasive customization.
Arch is great for tweaking and customization, but it's also fine for a simpler use case.
Sadly yes. I do write python code myself but in the end C/C++ is my home. When I talk to python friends they are like: I can either use this library and make it work or spend hours to make inferior version of the same thing. Bitch I told you to look at queue and that a circular buffer could be an option of it were not JavaScript for faster stack allocation, and they chose to cache it. Sure let's spend time on reading somebody's documentation instead of using one of the well known data structure and have "object's" lifetime being time based rather than as needed. The program requires data of 10 objects loaded at all times. Never less never more with first in first out and once it's out it never returns.
I've made ~6 Arch systems at this point. None of them have randomly broken on me, none of them have broken after an update and to be honest have been solid. I have no idea where the narrative of Arch being able to destroy itself at any point came from, but I don't think it's true at all.
Its because people grab it randomly and then blindly install off the AUR
I was nervous to switch to arch at first because of all the jokes, but it's honestly been pretty slick. My servers are all on Debian but I put arch on my daily driver and the most "tomogachi tinkering" I've done has been Bluetooth nonsense, which is a general problem on most distros.
But the AUR is (was?) the much tauted reason to use it! I had a pretty bad time with Arch and its derivatives, but I wonder if Arch + flatpak + distrobox (steamOS, basically?) could be great these days. Probably.
Isn't this exactly what OP is saying though? Some people don't want to have to read docs to use their computer. When was the last time a MacOS user opened the MacOS docs (whatever the hell that is)
I imagine a lot of people have spiderwebs of dependancies and obscure abandoned projects that collect dust and eventually break everything. If you stick to maintained projects or learn anything about package management at all, youll likely have no issues ever.
I just type "yay" into terminal every month or so when im bored
Every time I do a point release upgrade on Debian the whole system breaks. It's so smooth until that point, but if I have to reinstall the OS anyway then I'm going back to EndeavourOS (which is what I'm using now)
No weird config at all. I love the Debian experience specifically because it gets out of your way and I don't have to jump through any hoops. But then they release a new version, I do the massive scary upgrade, and it just stops working. It happened a few times, so I just don't do it anymore.
That's not a point release, though. A point release upgrade is like going from 13.5 to 13.6. That's usually so few packages that you'd have to do something extreme to break it.
Man, I tried Sabayon twice (both a long time ago) and quickly regretted it both times. In my experience, it was extremely fragile. I had used Gentoo at the time and had a mostly good time with it, and wanted to try something that set it up easily.
I've done 'real work' on computer with arch my whole professional career. I need a working computer with reasonably up to date programs not 3 to 10 years out of date because debian maintainers can't be bothered. On servers it's another story and there i would prefer rhel any day i would use debian.
Unpopular opinion, but how about we take Linux seriously? Arch is a solid OS, unlike Ubuntu, but it's still much more manageable than say Gentoo or LFS. Get off your high horses.
I will preface this comment by saying I genuinely consider myself to be rather dumb, and slow to learn many things. With that being said, I've never had a single issue with the one arch based distro I have used (Cachy). I never had to really look up any docs, but to learn to install some specific programs. Overall it...just kinda worked? Only reason I switched to Fedora was for that extra peace of mind knowing its a bit more stable than rolling release, but still has more updated software than Debian based distros.
hm yeah good point I guess. I kinda always though of cachy as arch with an installer and optimizations but there is probably much more going on under the hood. might look into it at some point on a vm.
Cachy is my intro to linux distro world and so far I love it. I spent an hour to set it up, then a day to host all that I wantrd, then maybe... 30 minutes maintenance since April?
My only gripe is that I don't know the Linux too well, so I sometimes struggle with it - e. g. I selfhost on my minipc a dedicated Satisfactory server ans I had to turn off wifi power protection mode (or smthing like that) to have stable ping.
I am pretty sure that this is something that Linux could've detected for me and asked me "hi, I've noticed you have regular long term many sources incoming/outgoing sessions, with your wifi power settings the connection quality might be suffering".
CachyOS are Arch have very different philosophies. On Cachy everything is made to be smooth. Arch is, as the post said, a Tamagotchi. But that is what we like about it : build your own ecosystem
Started with Tumbleweed. Got a little tired with the daily GBs of updates and slow zypper downloading everything piece meal. Settled to Fedora but if I had to switch again and Slowroll came out of beta I'd give it a good look.
Arch really isn't that bad when you're not mucking around with the AUR. Debian is a little overkill for most normal users in respect to stability but it's good people have the freedom to do whatever the heck they want with their machines.
I think if I was running a server at home for anything more than just wanting to tinker, I'd probably use Debian. But even then, I think if I had a server at home it'd be just to have a server lol.
CachyOS + Flathub (Bazaar) = not a single problem since I've started using it. But if I had to go to something more "stable", I think I'd go for Bazzite.
No and neither does Manjaro which is less stable than Arch in my experience.
SteamOS uses an immutable system with A/B partitions. One partition is live but read only. Updates apply to the other partition which is hidden. Which partition gets mounted is swapped on a reboot after an update.
Manjaro which is less stable than Arch in my experience.
That's because their whole concept is bullshit. Delaying updates for two weeks would make sense, when they actually used that time frame for testing and to fix bugs before release. In reality they just delay everything without sense, so you actually get the same bugs, just 2 weeks later because the fixes are also delayed.
And then they add access to the AUR (by default even, where Arch warns people about the risks) which assumes an up-to-date system, not one lagging 2 weeks behind. Which is a big shiny invitation to dependency hell.
The AUR with delayed official repos was precisely my issue with them. Then they put GUI helpers ontop of both pacman and the AUR which auto update and now you've got a real recipe for disaster.
I've been running Debian-based servers and desktops for a fuck ton of time. I've never had a single upgrade break on Debian. Not sure what the hell you were doing, but that's definitely not the norm.
My biggest problem with Arch over the last 3 years (after skill issues, of course) has been the roughly 2 days when some lib package was rewritten in Rust, breaking a bunch of depancies, so i had to rely on a flatpak.
My biggest problem with Ubuntu has been the 2 or 3 times Canonical decided to uninstall my wifi drivers on my headless server or obliterate my kernel or just decide randomly to never update a package again (even though theyve shipped said updates)
My issues with Arch have always been solvable in under and hour or my fault. My issues with Debian (specifically ubuntu) have been catastrophic.
Ubuntu is based on Debian, but it differs in quite a lot of ways.
Probably, they didn't use dkms to install their custom wifi driver. If that was the case, Debian and Ubuntu behave identically and the driver isn't added if a newer updated kernel is installed.
Especially if you use Ubuntu's 6-monthly releases.
If their driver was included in a user PPA, it's gone after a Ubuntu release upgrade and the sources.list of the PPA is deleted.
I may be wrong in that point.
However, the point I wanted to make is; all third party packages are uninstalled so reinstalling them without internet connection is quite challenging.
I found Arch Linux to be less maintenance that Debian/Ubuntu, but then again I need to tweak every aspect of my system and both Debian and Ubuntu keep getting in my way. For example Firefox now requires snap on Ubuntu systems, and Debian requires that I maintain my own version of Pipewire if I want decent sound on my earbuds. Also Apt/dpkg does seem to break a lot.
I also had issues with Manjaro and SteamOS due to system packages being a version or two behind vanilla Arch, which breaks things when you install AUR packages. That being said I have used both Garuda Linux and CachyOS and I've liked both. They get that balance between not requiring that I setup everything myself, while not getting in my way when I want to tinker.
Most of my Arch experience is with SteamOS, but thankfully it does seem that once you get your desktop environment running it's pretty easy to deal with software there via the graphical package manager, though I'm not really doing anything crazy other than some add-on packages for Minecraft, Emu and the like.
I've been a pretty strong supporter of Debian, but I've definately run into issues where Stable = behind on the packages needed for the hardware/software I want, whereas Ubuntu's continual pushing of Snap and intrusive BS is just irritating. I often end up with Mint for the more-decent-than-Debian but mostly snap-free experience, but for my next hardware cycle I am considering Arch given most of the "support" documentation mentions running on such.
SteamOS is easy to deal with if you stick to using Flatpak. I found out the hard way when installing yay that since their packages are a little behind, it wouldn't compile. The problem was either pacman or one of it's dependencies was out of date according to makepkg. So I tried to update them manually and broke the whole system. Plus SteamOS overrides changes to the root filesystem when it updates, which undos all my hard work tweaking the system, which I find infuriating.
Yeah the base OS seems pretty much centered around pretty fixed images etc for updates, but thankfully most of what I need can live happily in user-land either under the homedir or detachable storage
Been using CachyOS as a daily driver for a year now, for dev work, office work and some media work. It's helped to eek out some extra performance thanks to using build flags for system packages that are built according to modern CPUs.
Would I recommend or for newcomers? Not really. But that's because it still does require using the terminal for system management. But they're also working on fixing that.
Mint is perfect for exactly that purpose. There's a daunting marketplace of alternatives all with different specialties. Mint's specialty is being as easy and newbie friendly as possible. Out of the box - it just works - etc.
It's easier just recommending the distro rather than Linux in general.
I know someone who was starting to dislike windows, I sent them the Linux mint site. Had a much more positive interaction compared to when I had just previously said "what about using Linux?"
I actually think this is a similar way to push the fediverse. Just recommend a good instance instead of trying to sell them on federated technology. The federated technology will show them content and "how does this actually work" could be a conversation for later.
Mint is meant for beginners and folk who just want an OS, not a hobby.
Another to check out is ZorinOS. Same deal as Mint, but looks wise is closer to modern Windows and is also designed to make it very easy to run windows programs in Linux.
I use zorin on a desktop and Mint on a laptop. Both are fantastic. I also use Ubuntu server (no GUI) for my home webserver, and it's really good (but I'll never use uwubuntu for a desktop OS again)
My setups are complicated (from a new user's perspective, anyway) because I want to have things work in very specific ways. I used to use Mint, it's pretty great at what it does and you can still do hacky stuff with it if you so choose.
I think Fedora is best of both worlds, if you want something closer to current Linux kernels/mesa for things like gaming, but don't want to run a rolling release distro like Arch. Been running Fedora for about a year now and couldn't be happier with the transition.
That said, if you aren't gaming and just want absolute stability, no matter what, Mint or Debian ARE the go-to solutions to use. They are the Toyota Hilux of distros.
Mint and Debian are fine for gaming, too, if you're the patient type who doesn't buy games unless they're severely discounted.
!patientgamers@sh.itjust.works
@chronicledmonocle@cannedtuna every time i've tried to install Fedora on a 4 year old PC with AMD Ryzen 9 and AMD GPU, either the graphics glitch during the install and i cant do anything, or it locks up on the desktop (both gnome and KDE). I havnt tried it in about 6 months but debian always just works.
Now Im not a intense gamer, I play Factorio and DeeRock Galactic almost exclusively
I‘ve been using Arch for round about 13 years now, and, depending on your setup, manual interventions after an update are only required very rarely + they are usually documented on the arch website, so you get an exact step-by-step guide on what to do (which has always been super easy and quick to do). I would consider arch to be a very stable experience in the long term.
That being said, I really don’t get where people are getting their information from that arch is a heavy time consuming unstable mess.
Early on in Linux journey rolling distros are great.
I started my Linux journey with a rolling distro and I'm thankful for that. It broke every other day I spend hours upon hours on stackoverflow and other forums trying to find solutions and to fix it. That led to understanding linux in general to a greater depth. I'm now on a stable distro because I've a job now but I was only able to land that job because I knew Linux well enough. I know even after 10+ years I'm nowhere near the level others are at but it's about the journey and not the destination. I've grown along the way.
I was on Arch for two years, then on nix for another two (to be fair, now I can say I liked Arch better). After that I recently went back to fedora (which I used before I switched to arch), because I decided that if any problems show up on my pc I want it to be 99% not my fault. I basically learned to value stability over versitality, even though that's kind of the opposite of why I started using linux in the first place lol
Arch Linux isn’t actually hard to use, just a pain to set up, but still of you want an arch set up but the convenience like anyone else then use a fork of arch. We’re use Cachy mostly cuz we enjoy the plug and play. No hassle no issues. Though think pads are peak.
What has never worked for us was Ubuntu, haven’t tried Debian tho
I've used debian and arch. Only on debian have I discovered my wifi driver wasn't yet supported. Only on debian have I turned on a server that I'd left off for a bit and abruptly discovered packages and updates no longer worked due to end of support and that I couldn't run dist-upgrade without them. I've had to do more major surgery on apt then I've ever done with pacman.
abruptly discovered packages and updates no longer worked
This happens when you're at least an entire release cycle behind and haven't updated the archive signing keys. You need to install them, and possibly modify your sources.list to point at archive.debian.org instead. No major surgery required.
I have been running rolling release with openSUSE Tumbleweed for +7 years, almost 0 issues when updating anything, I even had more troubles when I was running Ubuntu or PopOS.
That post is just pure rage bait to get interactions/clicks and he succeded, now he appeared on Lemmy.
I didn't know that nixCraft was stupid, but now I will keep that in mind, so thank you for the heads up.
I love the openSUSE team for making the snapper utility. Snapshot rollbacks bring me such a peace of mind that I honestly think it should be the standard for any rolling release distro
If I need to spin up a VM on FreeBSD or on a Linux Distro I'll use Debian. it's a quick install and I know it'll work. that's it. that's all I use it for. I would never daily drive it.
I don't use Arch anymore but when I did I would maybe run -Syu every 2 to 3 weeks or so when I got bored.
There's a lot of people posting their own stories about how their flavor "just works", which is great, but all just anecdotes. The reality is, statistically, anything that changes often is more likely to fail.
Any anything that changes barely is more often stuck with the bugs that still slip through for years.
If everyone understood the actual meaning of "stable" and that there are up- and downsides you have to weigh against each other, we would lose so many memes.
Gentoo's all about choice. You can choose to configure it so it does not require hand holding, and running it like a tamagochi. Or you can choose to fiddle with it so much it's very time demanding... not the compiling, so much as the system configuration management. There's official binhost now anyway. But then, if you're fiddling around alot, you'll send emerge to compile rather than just get a binary, to meet all your exacting nuances of configuration.
I have one gentoo that's been rock solid for ... about 17 years, with only one blip of downtime when there was a fire. No hand-holding.
Arch is indeed a different beast. In my experience, it's only a matter of (relatively short) time before Arch eats its kernel or some other catastrophe that requires rescue or abandon.
Respect to Manjaro for what they try do, offer arch with more stability (and conveniences).
On a whim, just now, I made this
But, then, I hear many things have changed in arch, since I last used arch (just before the switch to systemd).... and maybe things have changed, and it does not do that any more...?
::: spoiler `
And then also, can haz arch/artix/etc in a bedrock stratum... then it can carry on in its bloody rolling risky churn, in a safe space, where the more stable strata can pick up the slack when arch tries to faceplant itself again.
Went the other way, moved from Mint 22.3 to OpenSuSE Tumbleweed. Rolling release with solid testing before updates are pushed, any breakage during testing and they don't push that day's update, and if something does slip through and break things, just boot into the pre-update snapshot and wait a day to try again with the next patches.
Up to date packages with low hassle, so as long as I don't need stable-as-in-never-changes, it's great.
Also, nice to have KDE 6 finally and to have KDE not be a forgotten afterthought (Cinnamon is nice but I always feel like I'm limited compared to KDE)
I actually tried Tumbleweed briefly before settling on fedora. I got the nvidia drivers and everything, but it was just an oddly buggy and slow experience for me. Kinda made me sad cause I've heard so many good things about it. Not blaming the distro at all don't get me wrong, I know I'm a bit dumb so I always assume its a me problem before I start throwing blame at the distro. I might try it again when I get an amd gpu maybe.
Arch user (btw) here. I use xorg and a custom tiling window manager. I had 0 breakage regarding my config. Nvidie fked me 2 times and grub was broken 1 time. Thats it. 10 years 3 chroot. Pacman runs when I feel like it. I used two weeks to configure my setup, and I hardly ever change a thing nowdays.
Tried Hyperland on an "old" thinkpad, each update broke something. So no thanks, I'll stick to mature, battle tested components, where my config and sanity will remain stable, and leave the tamagotchi for ricers/thinkerers.
I use Debian at work, and need to do 3-5x the amount of troubleshooting than I need to do on my private Arch box. And I'm not doing anything crazy on either. I would even argue my work use cases are less crazy.
I also don't think it's about the release model. I think the biggest differentiator is that Arch focuses on KISS, and stuff just keeps working.
I use Debian on my homelab servers (Ubuntu when I have to for some reason) and Ubuntu LTS on desktop. And more or less ignore everything else outside of as a curiosity.
My main workhorse VM is Ubuntu LTS because when I set it up I just picked it instead of spending another week researching and trying different distros. I could look into swapping it out but nothing has annoyed me about it once I figured out to disable snaps.
It feels like every time I finally have something set up and running I find some article telling me that what I chose is dumb for reason xyz and I really should be using something different, but refactoring at this point is a pita so why mess with something that isn’t broken?
I've been on Garuda for a few years (Arch based) and honestly, it's been super easy. Once Pamac was installed to handle software and updates, learning about AUR and how to access it was the only remotely technical thing I had to learn.
Yeah, some things are in different places than on Windows, but we all had to learn Windows at one point too.
I don't know where my Linux journey takes me next yet, but I only half way agree with this post. Arch is not quite as bad as this post makes it out to be, but there's definitely always a bit of russian roulette involved in whether your system boots tomorrow or not (most of the time it does).
I just had my EndeavourOS (which is just a thin layer on top of Arch) kill itself and some weird-ass hyperspecific flags in the initrd build process brought it back to life.
Tho in the ~10 years of using arch now I'd say it was still preferable to the extremely stable experience, and I don't think recommending Debian Stable is such a good idea either.
Yeah I could unfuck my EOS system with a bit of trickery, but once you get a good franken debian going, when that thing breaks there's no rescue.
I've had some stuff on Arch break after an upgrade too because some config variable names changed. I rember when I had KDE with i3 going and one day the desktop was gone. Was just because the variable names in KDE had changed and a quick i3 config change was all that was needed.
Having to selectively install packages from other sources because the main repo will keep you on a too outdated version for 6 months is just not a viable idea in today's world.
but once you get a good franken debian going, when that thing breaks there’s no rescue.
I found that since Flatpak and Docker became a thing, there's really not much reason to do frankendebian nowadays. My desktop runs Debian oldstable and it's just fine.
IDK TBH, I have some of those vendor-specific repos too. They usually get disabled on a major release upgrade and then I forget to reenable them ... but I think most of these are too self-contained to cause major issues with Debian.
I was gonna mention docker because I have a feeling it was created partly just to solve this issue, but it really only works for CLI tools and not GUI ones, so I decided against it.
Docker is a bit of a overkill solution but tbf it works really well.
Have to say it's manageable.
Unless you are FOMO-bound, no one demands you to upgrade daily. I do it weekly, rather.
95% of functionality loss/breaks/etc. I've experienced were from bad commits which were passed into projects, packages are being compiled from.
I chose Arch as my first and only distro 13 years ago. Only had system breaking problems a handful of times in that span. They were all because I fucked something up playing with files I shouldn't have. These are all tired memes from old reputations. Pay attention to what you're doing and you'll be fine.
I can vouch for MX Linux. It supports both systemd and sysvinit, letting you choose which one you'd like to install on your machine. Daily drove it on my old laptop with the XFCE desktop and I was very happy with it.
One of my devices is an offline device that I bring online every few months for updates (my VPN only gives me limited spots, so some devices take turns using the VPN). I guarantee you updates this infrequent would break most distros, including Arch. But since I use an atomic/immutable distro, it works every time.
This is what's so great about atomic distros. Super reliable and hard to break. Just set and forget.
I guarantee you updates this infrequent would break most distros
This is a complete non-issue for any fixed-release distro I've ever heard of. You're supposed to update more often for security reasons (on internet-connected devices, anyway), not because it would break on updates.
You're right, somehow I forgot about point releases. I was thinking Fedora, which has broken on my before when I waited too long to update (multiple months). And yeah updates are good for security. I just keep my device offline 99% of the time
Damn that's ugly. Definitely not a thing I've experienced on Debian-derivatives, I recently logged into a Debian desktop install that I didn't access for like a year, updating it was completely smooth.
Debian might be good for servers, but try using it for work other than server-side stuff. Try installing a productivity application, so you're not 2 years behind with it! Try plugging in new hardware! Now the tables have turned.
I will admit that a week ago I unplugged one of my hard drives and the PC booted into emergency recovery mode, and I had to edit fstab via a series of commands to make it work again, but it only took about 5min.
My browser works fine, got it off flathub.
My graphics drivers work better than they did on Windows by a longshot, I used to get BSOD because Windows didn't like exclusive audio control ever changing. I'm assuming because of constant advancements in things like Vulkan, Wayland, and xWayland.
May I introduce you guys to Debian Sid? It's the worst of both worlds, I used it as a daily driver for several years. That said, I switched over to Debian stable once the old laptop was downgraded to purely a web browser.
This is verifiably not true because of the amount of devs that use arch and the fact that the arch wiki exists and there's an entire set of AUR packages for custom bugfix patches on top of bleeding-edge software.
Debian is too dated with packages if you want to mess with practically anything new, otherwise its okay for something not concerned with new libs. Ubuntu repos are a joke and you will never find all the libs you need without some wacky tacky 3rd party downloads.
I don't use Debian on work machines. It packages much of the software I use a year out of date!
Rolling release is essential for me to use a system as my own. I acknowledge that Debian may be better for servers. Although, if you're a reproducibility and servers person, why not use NixOS?
As a side note, I do not use Arch. I use Artix because I prefer OpenRC over systemd.
Yes. It misses features I depend on, forcing me to compile things. I'm not a Gentoo user. I only compile mesa because my hardware is obscure garbage and I need weird feature flags. I try to avoid other compilation, given that my main PC is almost two decades old. The other one is old enough to drink.
Arch teaches you to exercise muscles that would otherwise atrophy. Understanding how your system is put together, how to diagnose and fix problems, how to handle upgrades safely. It becomes just as easy as any other OS and you're better off for it.
257 Comments
bloogoose@lemmy.zip · 245 pts · 2d
I'm not one of those Arch evangelicals, but this isn't true at all now.
fartsparkles@lemmy.world · 65 pts · 2d
100%. I’ve got servers running arch for the past 5 years or so and they’re the most stable systems I’ve got. I got so tired of the painful upgrade paths on “stable” distros so decided to switch a server to a rolling release.
After I found arch got security patches into the repos faster than the stable distros could backport, I decided to switch them all over.
I’m even a mad man and have them self update with a script that checks informant (or something, can’t actually remember) for installed packages against news. If no installed packages are found in news, it continues with the scheduled update.
It’s glorious.
redsand@infosec.pub · 22 pts · 2d
I fully endorse gentoo and arch in prod
metallic_z3r0@infosec.pub · 2 pts · 10h
Especially when customizing the kernel is the default experience with Gentoo, reducing the theoretical attack surface even more if you know what you're doing.
Ooops@feddit.org · 10 pts · 2d
I was too lazy for scripting the update to check the news and just get a mail when the update has issues... or should get one.
In reality I check if the email process still works once every blue moon because I didn't get one from a failed update in years.
30p87@feddit.org · 2 pts · 2d
If you want to have at least some thrill, use testing repos. I had to fix GitLab two (2) times due to the main package not being linked against testing libraries (it took 10 seconds to ln -s the new to the old version), and had one breakage due to dovecot revamping their whole config system, but publishing no example/useful docs.
hansolo@lemmy.today · 14 pts · 2d
But it says this screenshot post happened 4h ago.
Did the internet lie to me?
Trail@lemmy.world · 20 pts · 2d
It still says 4h ago. I checked a while ago, still the same. What the heck? Is it moving in time? Always four hours away? How is this possible?!
nightofmichelinstars@sopuli.xyz · 7 pts · 2d
There might be a bug in your time, check the logs
Tlaloc_Temporal@lemmy.ca · 5 pts · 2d
Ask fusion researchers, they've been maintaining a 30 year difference for decades.
caseyweederman@lemmy.ca · 1 pts · 13h
I am, and you're right, but my server's still running Debian
shweddy@lemmy.world · 118 pts · 2d
Why should my pc be stable if I'm not stable
wanda.jpg
Eggymatrix@sh.itjust.works · 13 pts · 2d
I have questions now, about myself
DeLancre@piefed.social · 7 pts · 2d
Nothing is stable in this world nowadays.
::: spoiler So neither my distro nor my orientation.
:::
Sanctus@anarchist.nexus · 102 pts · 2d
I boot my arch laptop once in a blue moon and update it. Its not 2002 anymore.
sanpo@sopuli.xyz · 86 pts · 2d
Ironically, it's the rolling release that's much more stable for me.
"Stable" distros often had a long and risky process of upgrading to the next major release.
Meanwhile, my Arch install has been pretty damn stable for over 10 years and went through several different PCs.
eleijeep@piefed.social · 11 pts · 2d
You're confusing two different meanings of stable. When people refer to "stable" distros such as Debian, they are referring to the meaning of stable as "unchanging," not the meaning of stable as "doesn't crash."
A rolling release distro by that definition cannot be stable.
rumschlumpel@feddit.org · 9 pts · 2d
TBF "doesn't crash" is generally why LTS-distros do "unchanging".
jatone@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 9 pts · 2d
Same, and next year when bcachefs has nailed down the kinks it'll be basically bullet proof with snapshotting prior to its daily updates.
Eggymatrix@sh.itjust.works · 36 pts · 2d
Sure bcachefs sounds like a pretty good idea, especially since the author thinks his AI coding assistant is sentient and a "her". What is it with file system maintainers and mental illness....
ViatorOmnium@piefed.social · 23 pts · 2d
From what I know, the AI Assistant is the least of Kent Overstreet's problems. If anything it's a blessing he's fixanting on a random number generator instead of risking becoming Hans Raiser 2.0.
Aatube@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 2 pts · 2d
it seems there’s elevated adverse behavior in people who work on things that combine deep hardware and software in general. see jailbreaking, emulation, hyprland, something
jatone@lemmy.dbzer0.com · -8 pts · 2d
proof is in the pudding as they say. sounds like you have your own issues.
Linearity@piefed.zip · 14 pts · 2d
Why bcachefs over btrfs?
daggermoon@piefed.world · 6 pts · 2d
I've been on ZFS since CachyOS made it easy to use.
jatone@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 2 pts · 2d
https://bartosz.fenski.pl/modern-fs-benchmark/ benchmarks say it all.
Ooops@feddit.org · 2 pts · 2d
Sadly those benchmarks only tell me that they did test only two file systems on LUKS...
ranzispa@mander.xyz · 6 pts · 2d
Fair, I'm always scared to upgrade to a new Debian release and the process is always painful. But that happens every couple years and I can take a week or two to look into it before doing it.
Every time I did pacman -Syu it was a Russian roulette. Most of the times everything was fine, but often enough there was a problem and something was broken and I had to spend a couple days figuring out what was the problem.
StumblingWasabi@lemmy.today · 5 pts · 2d
I always just rollback then wait until I feel like they might've pushed an update to fix it.
Ooops@feddit.org · 3 pts · 2d
At least in my personal experience this is one of the big triggers for distro hopping. Most of the people I know that stuck to one distro for years and years are on a rolling release.
ranzispa@mander.xyz · 3 pts · 1d
I mostly run Debian on servers. I do not want a rolling release on a server, at all. I don't care how well they check their packages, I just want the thing to work. I do not care about new features, I just want it to work.
taj@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1d
I'm only still on tumbleweed because I'm too lazy to reinstall...
Ooops@feddit.org · 1 pts · 1d
That's my point. A version upgrade having issues would have forced you to do it by now.
JoMiran@lemmy.ml · 1 pts · 2d
You upgrade?
KindaABigDyl@programming.dev · 58 pts · 2d
I wonder how many Arch haters have actually used Arch and ever ran into a breaking issue.
In my 8 years of daily driving Arch, I have had 1 ever, and it was only bad bc I didn't know of BTRFS yet.
That happened 3 years in, and I went on a new distro-hopping spree in between, trying Fedora, NixOS, and others, and they had actual problems. Not "oh an update broke my system and was fixed in a day."
So now I've been back on Arch for more years.
This whole "Arch is always breaking and takes so much maintenance" is a myth. In reality, Arch is the most stable, because it packages everything Vanilla. Everything works the "standard" way. On Debian, things decay, and then some stuff that's new breaks with some stuff that's old. On Fedora, there is a Red-Hat tax: configs in weird places, strange scripts, software missing from main repos (COPR sucks btw). On Arch, it's just "normal" Linux; and that works
Badabinski@kbin.earth · 16 pts · 2d
This mirrors my experience. I -Syu on a weekly basis, spend about 3 minutes doing pacnews, and then I'm done.
nekusoul@lemmy.nekusoul.de · 14 pts · 2d
Yeah, I've noticed there's this subsection of people that have a completely wrong understanding of what the term "stable" means in the world of distros, and that it often creates as many problems as it solves, particularly on a desktop PC, or even worse, a gaming PC.
And for there record: Stable just means that things don't change. That doesn't mean it contains less bugs, is easier to use or is more secure. And on the flip side it doesn't mean that distros that are not "stable" are necessarily "unstable" in any shape or form.
Ooops@feddit.org · 6 pts · 2d
Well... because of longer testing periods and a lot of stuff never even considered until stale the stable distros indeed have less bugs. The ones that still slip through however will basically not get fixes for years.
On the other hand I have seen a lot of bugs on Arch... but I usually don't care and just assume (rightfully so in 99% of the cases) that they get fixed within hours.
voytrekk@sopuli.xyz · 2 pts · 1d
Stable distros are great as targets for development, such as for containers. It also works great for end user environments because developers aren't trying to hit a moving target in terms of core libraries.
For a home user, having something more stable isn't very beneficial. If you want to have things stay the same for the next 2 years or so, then go for it.
It's one of the reasons why fedora works well, it has just a 6 month release cycle, so nothing gets too stale. More modern packaging formats like flatpak and appimage are changing things a bit since they don't rely on the system packages and can use something newer.
Baleine@jlai.lu · 8 pts · 2d
Interesting, my two friends with Arch keep breaking their system 😅 They say its not their fault though!
Ooops@feddit.org · 6 pts · 2d
A lot... they install it, screw up because they didn't bother to read the instructions, then did the usual... a new install.
Those who pass the first basic barrier to just chroot into the system and fix a simple mistake or roll back a package for the few hours it takes to get fixed instead of starting fresh usually stay for a long time...
In fact with the people I know there is a correlation between either "oh, I don't bother to fix anything and just do a fresh install (that idea is especially persistent in Windows users)" or "there's a big distro upgrade that had issues" and distro hopping. Once you settled on a rolling release and learned the basics in terms of fixing stuff the urge to hop yet another time vanishes for many.
hraegsvelmir@ani.social · 6 pts · 2d
In fairness, not everyone who did that was just trying to avoid looking into things and learning the correct way. I can't be the only one who had Arch on a system before getting a smartphone, so early days, that was my sole means of accessing the internet, so if it went down hard and I didn't immediately understand enough of the error message to at least have an idea of man pages to give a read, I didn't really have a whole heck of a lot else available to continue trouble shooting. These days, worst case, I can turn on my laptop or grab my phone and search things until I understand the issue and find a solution.
That said, nearly all of my system breaking issues were self-inflicted by trying to do things I didn't fully understand, just because I thought the end result sounded cool, or not checking the news and unwittingly doing the exact thing the latest post was warning people to be aware of and not do with some sort of major upgrade/change in the base system.
Ooops@feddit.org · 2 pts · 2d
But that issue is solved for many years now. Although it makes a certain kind of sense: a lot of the Arch hate and memes causes we to question if that person has actually used Arch in years. So a lot of those ideas may be indeed ancient experiences surviving purely in memes and stories.
hraegsvelmir@ani.social · 2 pts · 1d
Oh, I wasn't trying to excuse it now, just saying there was a time where it was a reasonable approach if you found yourself out of your depth and really just needed to have your machine up and running again, rather than stemming from someone having no desire to learn a better way.
rumschlumpel@feddit.org · 4 pts · 2d
Debian decays? Can't relate, I've often been running Debian releases until they almost fell out of support (happens on servers) and they were always rock solid after I set them up. It's only ever an issue if you want to run new software versions without some kind of virtual environment, and generally I just don't care about that.
Ooops@feddit.org · 5 pts · 2d
I think you can get problems once you are a full release cycle behind the last supported one.
Funnily enough it's mostly an issue with mirrors and signing keys, so basically the same fix Arch users need if they are behind for many months: update the packages for keys and mirrors first, everyting else afterwards.
insomniac_lemon@lemmy.cafe · 2 pts · 1d
I've used my current install for at least that long (going back further with Antergos) and you're correct about non-rolling options... I definitely would've had more pain with system upgrades and PPAs etc in those years.
That said, I think the Tamagotchi comparison probably makes sense in a way if it "dies" you probably did something "wrong" as on-paper it's also not difficult to maintain a digital pet either.
I'm using an outdated system, it's on three strikes:
Slow, shared internet for me. This adds friction to updates, and when I don't update as frequently as Arch expects this is the breakage you won't see.
I hate that updating today vs days-from-now might yield drastically different results. Admittedly the actual problem with my last few updates is that the reason-I-updated issues persisted.
The AUR is the biggest reason to use Arch. But use the AUR very carefully and not for system dependencies! Your graphics card is now legacy, so we put the driver on the AUR* ;)
Though I don't think these sort of problems are unfixable**, and other rolling distros probably do fix some of them but may also not have as good of a packaging system as Arch.
For instance I'm trying Void Linux on an old machine and have already ran into 2 (non-default) applications missing dependencies (which might be an issue with package maintainers, but also Void doesn't seem to track optional dependencies).
Tumbleweed/Slowroll would probably be a better fit for me, if not for Patterns.
* also if you update without switching, blank screen for you
** internet+GPU are also material problems as well, but those cannot get fixed today and probably will not be fixed next month either
BurgerBaron@quokk.au · 1 pts · 1d
Once I learned to make separate partitions for root, home, EFI, and then make routine backup of my package list, the update fears evaporate. Though with how CachyOS sets up btrfs snapshots by default now, it'd be pretty hard to deep fry an install beyond repair.
floquant@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 37 pts · 2d
My machines got borked every time I tried to do a Debian or Fedora dist-upgrade following the official guide, like 4 times total. Rolling updates on Arch require manual intervention once in a blue moon and haven't broken my system since I got rid of Nvidia
sudo@programming.dev · 10 pts · 2d
Ubuntu will actively break itself via
snapdat like 2am on a Sunday.Fedora could not do a fully system update on a 1GB VPS because
dnfwould OOM.The dumbest thing I've seen Arch do in over a decade of using it is put RabbitMQ in its official repos while also rolling the latest version of Erlang which RabbitMQ doesn't support.
CrabAndBroom@lemmy.ml · 3 pts · 2d
I have Arch (btw) on my laptop which is the tinkering machine that only I use, and a Win10/Linux dual-boot desktop which is the one other people use that I'm not allowed to break. I had Fedora Silverblue on there originally because I figured it would be pretty stable, but it honestly gave me nothing but trouble. I switched that one over to CachyOS and it's been smooth sailing ever since.
airgapped@piefed.social · 2 pts · 1d
I had nothing but trouble with Suse, Fedora and Debían on my nightmare of a machine (laptop with AMD/nvidia GPUs) and honestly thought that was my lot until I hit upon Arch, which I have been more than happy with for over 3 years now.
Ooops@feddit.org · 1 pts · 2d
Same, but with an ancient Nvidia card even...
HCSOThrowaway@lemmy.world · -4 pts · 2d
Isn't Debian pretty clear that they don't support upgrades and it's likely to break if you try?
floquant@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 6 pts · 1d
So I should just reinstall my system every two years? What is this, Windows?
HCSOThrowaway@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1d
🤷
I felt the same way and held my nose to dive in to rolling release as a result.
pmk@piefed.ca · 5 pts · 1d
No, you may be thinking about combining repos from different releases aka frankendebian? That isn't supported. Upgrades are definitely supported.
HCSOThrowaway@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1d
All I know is I was ready to go through the process to go from 12 to 13 and their documentation was full of disclaimers saying that it's not officially supported.
I did my best, and it broke.
pmk@piefed.ca · 1 pts · 1d
Can you show me this documentation? Debian famously takes great care to ensure a good upgrade path with thorough instructions, like here https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/release-notes/upgrading.en.html but a typical desktop user would just edit apt repos and dist-upgrade.
HCSOThrowaway@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1d
I'm 99% sure I was going with their official documentation, which you linked just there.
I can't speak for what I read or how I interpreted it ~6 months ago, other than to say I understood upgrading was not supported and I was SOL that mine broke.
No, I've never used "sloppy backports" (as the only warning of lack of support I can currently find lists as a problem) and I knew that back then too, so that wasn't the issue.
AudaciousArmadillo@piefed.blahaj.zone · 1 pts · 1d
I remember them having this in the docs in the past, recommending a reinstall instead. But it seems that is no longer the case.
HCSOThrowaway@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1d
All I know is I was ready to go through the process to go from 12 to 13 and their documentation was full of disclaimers saying that it's not officially supported.
I did my best, and it broke.
TootSweet@lemmy.world · 35 pts · 2d
Sincerely, a Gentoo user.
lonesomeCat@lemmy.ml · 31 pts · 1d
OP never finished an Arch install
nonentity@sh.itjust.works · 6 pts · 1d
This implies an Arch install can ever legitimately be considered finished.
lonesomeCat@lemmy.ml · 3 pts · 1d
You could argue that the first boot into an installed kernel is a finished install
nonentity@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 1d
What a chaotically turbulent take.
Why is a ‘finished’ install framed as an universally superior goal?
FiskFisk33@startrek.website · 30 pts · 1d
wtf is this bullshit
and more importantly, why is it so condescending?!
sobchak@programming.dev · 21 pts · 1d
It's meant to be an attempt at humor/sarcasm/engagement bait I think.
Bazoogle@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 1d
Why would someone do that on the internet? I thought this was a safe place Q.Q
diaphragmwp@discuss.tchncs.de · 14 pts · 1d
nixCraft (at cyberciti biz) is a site that has been slop publishing tutorials for everything ever possible with common unixy commands. And also shit like "30 Cool Open Source Software I Discovered in 2013". It often calls Unix "Linux", other times it uses both "Unix/Linux" for some reason, and sometimes it even says "on BSD, MacOS" for flags that only function on GNU coreutils. It started pre-AI, so it's like clickhole but for "installed Fedora yesterday" people (although I would imagine most traffic being "I've been using this for 24 years and forgot some flag").
otacon239@lemmy.world · 30 pts · 2d
I use EndeavourOS for my primary gaming setup and will sometimes go a month or more before I remember to update again. Even with a relatively modern nVidia card, it seems to keep up just fine.
That being said, every vanilla Arch experience has been a disaster by the end and while it’s not the same situation as the meme, you very much have to have a ton of prior knowledge to get a system that actually feels personal and by the point it’s personal enough, getting support for your setup is nigh impossible because it’s so bespoke.
sentient_loom@sh.itjust.works · 15 pts · 2d
I love EndeavourOS. It's easily the most stable Linux experience I've had.
Aceofspades@lemmy.ca · 12 pts · 2d
I use EndeavourOS as my main as well and never have issues as long as I stay away from the AUR.
pizza_the_hutt@sh.itjust.works · 4 pts · 2d
Endeavouros is great! Just use Flatpack before the AUR. AUR is basically the Wild West and should only be used as a last resort.
Machindo@lemmy.ml · 27 pts · 2d
Has nix in their profile name and doesn't use NixOS 🤔 /s
Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 26 pts · 2d
Linux Mint user here, I have no idea if Arc is that complicated, I don't care really. All I need is a rock stable system where I can do things like developing, or just use it as "a computer".
I reboot every month or three, and feel extra happy after any interaction with m$ windows.
Life's good 😊
Skullgrid@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 2d
Lmde best stable and normie.
Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 3 pts · 2d
Only normie in Linux world :-)
freeman@sh.itjust.works · 24 pts · 2d
Arch really is the "Linux" of Linux users, complete with non users making shit up about it.
mrmanager@lemmy.today · 22 pts · 1d
My arch system is so stable it's boring. Year after year, just runs. Doesn't slow down, doesn't install crapware.
So I dont know. I'm happy with it.
Nowtayneicangetinto@thelemmy.club · 4 pts · 1d
The beauty of Linux
renegadespork@lemmy.jelliefrontier.net · 22 pts · 1d
Hilariously outdated take.
GaumBeist@lemmy.ml · 21 pts · 1d
This is such sloppy engagement baiting. If it was just a hot take shitting all over one of the larger linux communities, that would be one thing, but to follow it up with a "let me know in the comments" just makes it all feel disingenuous and like somebody is being sponsored by NordVPN or Incogni to post their ragebait
e8d79@discuss.tchncs.de · 20 pts · 2d
Fedora Immutable Desktop users when Arch and Debian users fight about whose system is more stable. (I use Fedora Kinoite btw)
cannedtuna@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 2d
How is it?
e8d79@discuss.tchncs.de · 7 pts · 2d
I like it, its been my main system for the last 2 years. For my use case (software development & some gaming) it works very well.
owenfromcanada@lemmy.ca · 18 pts · 2d
This is a bit like saying "Honda Civics are Tamagotchis for car people" because there's a community of people who enjoy modifying them. The rest of us just drive, and they run perfectly fine if you're not doing a lot of invasive customization.
Arch is great for tweaking and customization, but it's also fine for a simpler use case.
Miaou@jlai.lu · 18 pts · 1d
This tells you everything you need to know about who wrote this.
That's not a meme BTW, why is this even here.
KernelTale@programming.dev · -2 pts · 1d
Sadly yes. I do write python code myself but in the end C/C++ is my home. When I talk to python friends they are like: I can either use this library and make it work or spend hours to make inferior version of the same thing. Bitch I told you to look at queue and that a circular buffer could be an option of it were not JavaScript for faster stack allocation, and they chose to cache it. Sure let's spend time on reading somebody's documentation instead of using one of the well known data structure and have "object's" lifetime being time based rather than as needed. The program requires data of 10 objects loaded at all times. Never less never more with first in first out and once it's out it never returns.
sunglocto@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 16 pts · 1d
I've made ~6 Arch systems at this point. None of them have randomly broken on me, none of them have broken after an update and to be honest have been solid. I have no idea where the narrative of Arch being able to destroy itself at any point came from, but I don't think it's true at all.
dragonlover@lemmy.zip · 3 pts · 17h
Its because people grab it randomly and then blindly install off the AUR
I was nervous to switch to arch at first because of all the jokes, but it's honestly been pretty slick. My servers are all on Debian but I put arch on my daily driver and the most "tomogachi tinkering" I've done has been Bluetooth nonsense, which is a general problem on most distros.
fdnomad@programming.dev · 15 pts · 2d
In the past 3 years of using arch daily I've had to remove some renamed packages after an update once, thats about it
muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works · 15 pts · 1d
Stay away from the AUR and arch is fine. Calm down
bilb@lemmy.ml · 3 pts · 1d
But the AUR is (was?) the much tauted reason to use it! I had a pretty bad time with Arch and its derivatives, but I wonder if Arch + flatpak + distrobox (steamOS, basically?) could be great these days. Probably.
muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works · 16 pts · 1d
Fuck the AUR. The documentation is the reason to use arch.
myotheraccount@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 1d
The Arch docs are great, I read them all the time. But I don't even use arch, they are pretty universal.
hirihit640@sh.itjust.works · 3 pts · 1d
Isn't this exactly what OP is saying though? Some people don't want to have to read docs to use their computer. When was the last time a MacOS user opened the MacOS docs (whatever the hell that is)
Flax_vert@feddit.uk · 2 pts · 1d
I use ubuntu and I don't think I ever read docs
Actually, I had to remove snap once.
Granted, I am and was familiar with the basics of linux due to having a raspberry pi.
illusionist@lemmy.zip · 15 pts · 2d
Sadly that tells you something about the linux knowledge of the nixcraft guy.
If he would've stopped at making fun with pacman -Syu, it would've been ok. You forgot a y and arch is not less usable than debian ..
I'm on opensuse aeon btw, I don't interact with the OS anymore. It's just there and works, like atomic fedora, I don't care.
dismay3915@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 2d
It's been proved to me before that this guy (people?) Really have no idea what their talking about.
They installed ubuntu one day and decided to make it their whole personality.
naevaTheRat@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 14 pts · 1d
15 year old install, one issue with crashes because of a regression in nvidia drivers that was solved after a month, I just rolled back till then.
Idk wtf you imagine people doing.
Funkt4st1c@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 1d
I imagine a lot of people have spiderwebs of dependancies and obscure abandoned projects that collect dust and eventually break everything. If you stick to maintained projects or learn anything about package management at all, youll likely have no issues ever.
I just type "yay" into terminal every month or so when im bored
sentient_loom@sh.itjust.works · 14 pts · 2d
Every time I do a point release upgrade on Debian the whole system breaks. It's so smooth until that point, but if I have to reinstall the OS anyway then I'm going back to EndeavourOS (which is what I'm using now)
Linearity@piefed.zip · 6 pts · 2d
This was my experience with Linux Mint. I love stable distros n all but these OS updates are scary.
eleijeep@piefed.social · 3 pts · 2d
You must have a very strange apt config to break Debian with a point-release upgrade.
sentient_loom@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 1d
No weird config at all. I love the Debian experience specifically because it gets out of your way and I don't have to jump through any hoops. But then they release a new version, I do the massive scary upgrade, and it just stops working. It happened a few times, so I just don't do it anymore.
eleijeep@piefed.social · 2 pts · 1d
That's not a point release, though. A point release upgrade is like going from 13.5 to 13.6. That's usually so few packages that you'd have to do something extreme to break it.
spitfire@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 2d
Anyone remembers Gentoo? ;)
kirk781@discuss.tchncs.de · 6 pts · 1d
Arch Linux also stands for I can't configure Gentoo. :p
tomkatt@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 1d
I remember Sabayon, which was Gentoo based. I liked it at the time, but compiling everything got old really fast.
bilb@lemmy.ml · 2 pts · 1d
Man, I tried Sabayon twice (both a long time ago) and quickly regretted it both times. In my experience, it was extremely fragile. I had used Gentoo at the time and had a mostly good time with it, and wanted to try something that set it up easily.
ragas@lemmy.ml · 1 pts · 1d
Gentoo now gives you the option to either compile or install a binary.
spitfire@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1d
Yup, I remember that too
ragas@lemmy.ml · 3 pts · 1d
Why remember? Its my daily driver.
spitfire@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1d
I don’t think it’s as popular as it used to be.
bilb@lemmy.ml · 2 pts · 1d
Yes! I used it as my main distro for a period. These days I'm all about Aurora/Bazzite, but I think I'd like to try it again.
esc@piefed.social · 12 pts · 2d
I've done 'real work' on computer with arch my whole professional career. I need a working computer with reasonably up to date programs not 3 to 10 years out of date because debian maintainers can't be bothered. On servers it's another story and there
i would prefer rhel any dayi would use debian.ruuster13@lemmy.zip · 12 pts · 2d
I'm just chiming in to not announce which distro I'm using.
-sent from Voyager on Android
moonburster@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 2d
Android, ew. Should be a Linux phone
-sent from Boost for Lemmy
phraxen@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 2d
Unpopular opinion, but how about we take Linux seriously? Arch is a solid OS, unlike Ubuntu, but it's still much more manageable than say Gentoo or LFS. Get off your high horses.
UnityDevice@lemmy.zip · 9 pts · 2d
Yeah, the arch installation on my desktop is about a decade old at this point. It was installed on a completely different computer. No issues.
vividspecter@aussie.zone · 6 pts · 1d
I know this wasn't your main point, but I never found Gentoo to be unmanageable, just that compiling everything can get a bit tiresome.
I'd still be using it were it not for NixOS, and declarative system management in particular.
Asonyxi@sh.itjust.works · 11 pts · 1d
I will preface this comment by saying I genuinely consider myself to be rather dumb, and slow to learn many things. With that being said, I've never had a single issue with the one arch based distro I have used (Cachy). I never had to really look up any docs, but to learn to install some specific programs. Overall it...just kinda worked? Only reason I switched to Fedora was for that extra peace of mind knowing its a bit more stable than rolling release, but still has more updated software than Debian based distros.
Fizz@lemmy.nz · 3 pts · 1d
You can't compare arch to cachy. They're completely different experiences with different expectations.
Asonyxi@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 1d
hm yeah good point I guess. I kinda always though of cachy as arch with an installer and optimizations but there is probably much more going on under the hood. might look into it at some point on a vm.
ThirdConsul@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 1d
Same.
Cachy is my intro to linux distro world and so far I love it. I spent an hour to set it up, then a day to host all that I wantrd, then maybe... 30 minutes maintenance since April?
My only gripe is that I don't know the Linux too well, so I sometimes struggle with it - e. g. I selfhost on my minipc a dedicated Satisfactory server ans I had to turn off wifi power protection mode (or smthing like that) to have stable ping.
I am pretty sure that this is something that Linux could've detected for me and asked me "hi, I've noticed you have regular long term many sources incoming/outgoing sessions, with your wifi power settings the connection quality might be suffering".
Ashiette@lemmy.world · -2 pts · 1d
CachyOS are Arch have very different philosophies. On Cachy everything is made to be smooth. Arch is, as the post said, a Tamagotchi. But that is what we like about it : build your own ecosystem
Miaou@jlai.lu · 3 pts · 1d
Cachy is built on top of arch. There's no fundamental difference between the two
mrcleanup@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1d
Yes! Honestly, this argument is so dumb. Is like arguing that a Honda Accord isn't the same car unless it has a manual transmission.
Yeah, automatic and manual do drive differently, but it doesn't stop being the same type of car just because they made shifting easier.
Ashiette@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 14h
Et une partie du nouveau Paris a été construite sur les catacombes. Ça ne fait pas de Paris un ossuaire pour autant.
RickyRigatoni@piefed.zip · 11 pts · 1d
i genuinely wonder where people are getting their information when they talk about linux. mass schizophrenic hysteria?
Hudell@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 10 pts · 2d
And then there's Fedora in the corner, quietly getting the best of both worlds.
cRazi_man@europe.pub · 5 pts · 2d
OpenSUSE Tumbleweed..... my first love
DaddleDew@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 2d
Started with Tumbleweed. Got a little tired with the daily GBs of updates and slow zypper downloading everything piece meal. Settled to Fedora but if I had to switch again and Slowroll came out of beta I'd give it a good look.
bizzle@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 1d
Ok so at first I thought it was actually kind of cute and endearing but by the end I think that guy is an asshole
Zephyr@sh.itjust.works · 10 pts · 1d
Arch really isn't that bad when you're not mucking around with the AUR. Debian is a little overkill for most normal users in respect to stability but it's good people have the freedom to do whatever the heck they want with their machines.
JackbyDev@programming.dev · 3 pts · 1d
I think if I was running a server at home for anything more than just wanting to tinker, I'd probably use Debian. But even then, I think if I had a server at home it'd be just to have a server lol.
Eyck_of_denesle@lemmy.zip · 9 pts · 2d
Never had a system breaking update. Idk what arch people be using.
helvetpuli@sopuli.xyz · 9 pts · 1d
Code is a mass noun, and as such it's a shibboleth. People who "open a code" have no idea what they are doing.
Kolanaki@pawb.social · 2 pts · 1d
What if I write all my .cpp files in Notepad instead of directly into a compiler?
BaraCoded@literature.cafe · 9 pts · 1d
CachyOS + Flathub (Bazaar) = not a single problem since I've started using it. But if I had to go to something more "stable", I think I'd go for Bazzite.
Evotech@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1d
Same. It’s been good for me since i swapped about 8 months ago.
Magnum@infosec.pub · 2 pts · 1d
Isn't Bazaar the storefront from Bazzite?
BaraCoded@literature.cafe · 2 pts · 1d
Yesss indeed! Bazzite use flatpaks to add non-system apps, and Bazaar as an interface (and it's a masterpiece)
sudo@programming.dev · 9 pts · 2d
Tell that to Valve.
Linearity@piefed.zip · 2 pts · 2d
Doesn’t SteamOS have a stable release model like Manjaro?
sudo@programming.dev · 6 pts · 2d
No and neither does Manjaro which is less stable than Arch in my experience.
SteamOS uses an immutable system with A/B partitions. One partition is live but read only. Updates apply to the other partition which is hidden. Which partition gets mounted is swapped on a reboot after an update.
Ooops@feddit.org · 3 pts · 2d
That's because their whole concept is bullshit. Delaying updates for two weeks would make sense, when they actually used that time frame for testing and to fix bugs before release. In reality they just delay everything without sense, so you actually get the same bugs, just 2 weeks later because the fixes are also delayed.
And then they add access to the AUR (by default even, where Arch warns people about the risks) which assumes an up-to-date system, not one lagging 2 weeks behind. Which is a big shiny invitation to dependency hell.
sudo@programming.dev · 1 pts · 1d
The AUR with delayed official repos was precisely my issue with them. Then they put GUI helpers ontop of both pacman and the AUR which auto update and now you've got a real recipe for disaster.
dadarobot@lemmy.ml · 6 pts · 2d
manjaro is rolling release. ive had the same install on my desktop for 6 years.
mazzilius_marsti@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 11h
ex arch user for 5 yrs
current fedora user since 2024
i've been getting a lot of "recommended" youtube videos on gentoo and nixos
send help plezz
TheEighthDoctor@lemmy.zip · 8 pts · 1d
I've had infinitely more issues with "apt upgrade" than "pacman -Syu"
Kazel@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 0 pts · 1d
apt would fuck up every debian system of me sooner or later. worst package manager i ever used
chronicledmonocle@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1d
I've been running Debian-based servers and desktops for a fuck ton of time. I've never had a single upgrade break on Debian. Not sure what the hell you were doing, but that's definitely not the norm.
Funkt4st1c@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1d
My biggest problem with Arch over the last 3 years (after skill issues, of course) has been the roughly 2 days when some lib package was rewritten in Rust, breaking a bunch of depancies, so i had to rely on a flatpak.
My biggest problem with Ubuntu has been the 2 or 3 times Canonical decided to uninstall my wifi drivers on my headless server or obliterate my kernel or just decide randomly to never update a package again (even though theyve shipped said updates)
My issues with Arch have always been solvable in under and hour or my fault. My issues with Debian (specifically ubuntu) have been catastrophic.
rumschlumpel@feddit.org · 2 pts · 1d
Well there's your problem. Ubuntu is based on Debian, but it differs in quite a lot of ways. Especially if you use Ubuntu's 6-monthly releases.
Successful_Try543@feddit.org · 1 pts · 17h
Probably, they didn't use dkms to install their custom wifi driver. If that was the case, Debian and Ubuntu behave identically and the driver isn't added if a newer updated kernel is installed.
If their driver was included in a user PPA, it's gone after a Ubuntu release upgrade and the sources.list of the PPA is deleted.
rumschlumpel@feddit.org · 1 pts · 12h
IME PPA-sources.lists get disabled, not deleted.
Successful_Try543@feddit.org · 1 pts · 11h
I may be wrong in that point.
However, the point I wanted to make is; all third party packages are uninstalled so reinstalling them without internet connection is quite challenging.
cyberfae@piefed.social · 8 pts · 2d
I found Arch Linux to be less maintenance that Debian/Ubuntu, but then again I need to tweak every aspect of my system and both Debian and Ubuntu keep getting in my way. For example Firefox now requires snap on Ubuntu systems, and Debian requires that I maintain my own version of Pipewire if I want decent sound on my earbuds. Also Apt/dpkg does seem to break a lot.
I also had issues with Manjaro and SteamOS due to system packages being a version or two behind vanilla Arch, which breaks things when you install AUR packages. That being said I have used both Garuda Linux and CachyOS and I've liked both. They get that balance between not requiring that I setup everything myself, while not getting in my way when I want to tinker.
phx@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 2d
Most of my Arch experience is with SteamOS, but thankfully it does seem that once you get your desktop environment running it's pretty easy to deal with software there via the graphical package manager, though I'm not really doing anything crazy other than some add-on packages for Minecraft, Emu and the like.
I've been a pretty strong supporter of Debian, but I've definately run into issues where Stable = behind on the packages needed for the hardware/software I want, whereas Ubuntu's continual pushing of Snap and intrusive BS is just irritating. I often end up with Mint for the more-decent-than-Debian but mostly snap-free experience, but for my next hardware cycle I am considering Arch given most of the "support" documentation mentions running on such.
cyberfae@piefed.social · 1 pts · 2d
SteamOS is easy to deal with if you stick to using Flatpak. I found out the hard way when installing yay that since their packages are a little behind, it wouldn't compile. The problem was either pacman or one of it's dependencies was out of date according to makepkg. So I tried to update them manually and broke the whole system. Plus SteamOS overrides changes to the root filesystem when it updates, which undos all my hard work tweaking the system, which I find infuriating.
phx@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1d
Yeah the base OS seems pretty much centered around pretty fixed images etc for updates, but thankfully most of what I need can live happily in user-land either under the homedir or detachable storage
thorhop@sopuli.xyz · 8 pts · 1d
Been using CachyOS as a daily driver for a year now, for dev work, office work and some media work. It's helped to eek out some extra performance thanks to using build flags for system packages that are built according to modern CPUs.
Would I recommend or for newcomers? Not really. But that's because it still does require using the terminal for system management. But they're also working on fixing that.
ur_dad@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 1d
And if I'm a windows normie that's sick of windows windowing, I'll be fine using mint... Right? Y'all are good at making this sound very complex.
sudo@programming.dev · 10 pts · 1d
Mint is perfect for exactly that purpose. There's a daunting marketplace of alternatives all with different specialties. Mint's specialty is being as easy and newbie friendly as possible. Out of the box - it just works - etc.
Flax_vert@feddit.uk · 9 pts · 1d
It's easier just recommending the distro rather than Linux in general.
I know someone who was starting to dislike windows, I sent them the Linux mint site. Had a much more positive interaction compared to when I had just previously said "what about using Linux?"
I actually think this is a similar way to push the fediverse. Just recommend a good instance instead of trying to sell them on federated technology. The federated technology will show them content and "how does this actually work" could be a conversation for later.
BaraCoded@literature.cafe · 3 pts · 1d
That sounds like a good approach, actually.
ThreeKnew@lemdro.id · 8 pts · 1d
Probably! Best way to find out, is to just try it out :)
Fwiw, this isn't really aimed at people who are just dipping their toes in. Enthusiasts in any field can sound insane from the outside in
M0oP0o@mander.xyz · 5 pts · 1d
Mint is super nice for people that don't like linux stuff. I use it in my workstations and most don't even know they are on linux.
Contextual_Idiot@sh.itjust.works · 3 pts · 1d
Mint is meant for beginners and folk who just want an OS, not a hobby.
Another to check out is ZorinOS. Same deal as Mint, but looks wise is closer to modern Windows and is also designed to make it very easy to run windows programs in Linux.
Agent641@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1d
I use zorin on a desktop and Mint on a laptop. Both are fantastic. I also use Ubuntu server (no GUI) for my home webserver, and it's really good (but I'll never use uwubuntu for a desktop OS again)
rumschlumpel@feddit.org · 2 pts · 1d
My setups are complicated (from a new user's perspective, anyway) because I want to have things work in very specific ways. I used to use Mint, it's pretty great at what it does and you can still do hacky stuff with it if you so choose.
chronicledmonocle@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 1d
I think Fedora is best of both worlds, if you want something closer to current Linux kernels/mesa for things like gaming, but don't want to run a rolling release distro like Arch. Been running Fedora for about a year now and couldn't be happier with the transition.
That said, if you aren't gaming and just want absolute stability, no matter what, Mint or Debian ARE the go-to solutions to use. They are the Toyota Hilux of distros.
rumschlumpel@feddit.org · 2 pts · 1d
Mint and Debian are fine for gaming, too, if you're the patient type who doesn't buy games unless they're severely discounted.
!patientgamers@sh.itjust.works
dewritoninja@pawb.social · 1 pts · 1d
Fedora lost me when I went to install and saw the partition manager , completely user hostile .
notsle@kzoo.to · 1 pts · 1d
@chronicledmonocle @cannedtuna every time i've tried to install Fedora on a 4 year old PC with AMD Ryzen 9 and AMD GPU, either the graphics glitch during the install and i cant do anything, or it locks up on the desktop (both gnome and KDE). I havnt tried it in about 6 months but debian always just works.
Now Im not a intense gamer, I play Factorio and DeeRock Galactic almost exclusively
dingleberrylover@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 1d
I‘ve been using Arch for round about 13 years now, and, depending on your setup, manual interventions after an update are only required very rarely + they are usually documented on the arch website, so you get an exact step-by-step guide on what to do (which has always been super easy and quick to do). I would consider arch to be a very stable experience in the long term. That being said, I really don’t get where people are getting their information from that arch is a heavy time consuming unstable mess.
AnnaFrankfurter@lemmy.ml · 7 pts · 1d
Early on in Linux journey rolling distros are great.
I started my Linux journey with a rolling distro and I'm thankful for that. It broke every other day I spend hours upon hours on stackoverflow and other forums trying to find solutions and to fix it. That led to understanding linux in general to a greater depth. I'm now on a stable distro because I've a job now but I was only able to land that job because I knew Linux well enough. I know even after 10+ years I'm nowhere near the level others are at but it's about the journey and not the destination. I've grown along the way.
radiouser@crazypeople.online · 7 pts · 1d
Someone struggled to install Arch (me).
halvar@lemy.lol · 7 pts · 1d
I was on Arch for two years, then on nix for another two (to be fair, now I can say I liked Arch better). After that I recently went back to fedora (which I used before I switched to arch), because I decided that if any problems show up on my pc I want it to be 99% not my fault. I basically learned to value stability over versitality, even though that's kind of the opposite of why I started using linux in the first place lol
GarboDog@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 2d
Arch Linux isn’t actually hard to use, just a pain to set up, but still of you want an arch set up but the convenience like anyone else then use a fork of arch. We’re use Cachy mostly cuz we enjoy the plug and play. No hassle no issues. Though think pads are peak.
What has never worked for us was Ubuntu, haven’t tried Debian tho
carpelbridgesyndrome@sh.itjust.works · 7 pts · 2d
I've used debian and arch. Only on debian have I discovered my wifi driver wasn't yet supported. Only on debian have I turned on a server that I'd left off for a bit and abruptly discovered packages and updates no longer worked due to end of support and that I couldn't run dist-upgrade without them. I've had to do more major surgery on apt then I've ever done with pacman.
dondelelcaro@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 2d
This happens when you're at least an entire release cycle behind and haven't updated the archive signing keys. You need to install them, and possibly modify your sources.list to point at archive.debian.org instead. No major surgery required.
admin@pylova-test.anarchistflotilla.org · 7 pts · 1d
This assumes that I update more than once in a lifetime.
llii@discuss.tchncs.de · 7 pts · 2d
I have my arch install on my home server running for over 10 years and update maybe once a month. It’s very stable.
sin_free_for_00_days@sopuli.xyz · 6 pts · 2d
These types of posts are such rage bait. It makes me sad that they actually work.
RiQuY@lemmy.zip · 6 pts · 1d
I have been running rolling release with openSUSE Tumbleweed for +7 years, almost 0 issues when updating anything, I even had more troubles when I was running Ubuntu or PopOS.
That post is just pure rage bait to get interactions/clicks and he succeded, now he appeared on Lemmy.
I didn't know that nixCraft was stupid, but now I will keep that in mind, so thank you for the heads up.
tomatoely@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 1d
I love the openSUSE team for making the snapper utility. Snapshot rollbacks bring me such a peace of mind that I honestly think it should be the standard for any rolling release distro
LBP321@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 1d
I love my EndeavourOS. 💜
rozodru@piefed.world · 5 pts · 2d
If I need to spin up a VM on FreeBSD or on a Linux Distro I'll use Debian. it's a quick install and I know it'll work. that's it. that's all I use it for. I would never daily drive it.
I don't use Arch anymore but when I did I would maybe run -Syu every 2 to 3 weeks or so when I got bored.
LiveLM@lemmy.zip · 5 pts · 1d
I did not expect a Linux outlet to post such an ignorant and outdated take. Disappointed 👎
nothanks@lemmy.4d2.org · 4 pts · 7h
The first time debian oldstable broke a package after an incremental update, i reconsidered my long running hard stance against arch
Updated my endeavour install last night from 6.18 to 7.1 without issue: daily -Syu is for the birds
blah3166@piefed.social · 4 pts · 2d
There's a lot of people posting their own stories about how their flavor "just works", which is great, but all just anecdotes. The reality is, statistically, anything that changes often is more likely to fail.
Ooops@feddit.org · 3 pts · 2d
Any anything that changes barely is more often stuck with the bugs that still slip through for years.
If everyone understood the actual meaning of "stable" and that there are up- and downsides you have to weigh against each other, we would lose so many memes.
Digit@lemmy.wtf · 4 pts · 15h
Stable over rolling release?
These are not mutually exclusive.
Can haz stable rolling.
E.g. use Gentoo, and avoid the ~ and ** keywords.
Gentoo's all about choice. You can choose to configure it so it does not require hand holding, and running it like a tamagochi. Or you can choose to fiddle with it so much it's very time demanding... not the compiling, so much as the system configuration management. There's official binhost now anyway. But then, if you're fiddling around alot, you'll send emerge to compile rather than just get a binary, to meet all your exacting nuances of configuration.
I have one gentoo that's been rock solid for ... about 17 years, with only one blip of downtime when there was a fire. No hand-holding.
Arch is indeed a different beast. In my experience, it's only a matter of (relatively short) time before Arch eats its kernel or some other catastrophe that requires rescue or abandon.
Respect to Manjaro for what they try do, offer arch with more stability (and conveniences).
On a whim, just now, I made this
But, then, I hear many things have changed in arch, since I last used arch (just before the switch to systemd).... and maybe things have changed, and it does not do that any more...?
::: spoiler ` And then also, can haz arch/artix/etc in a bedrock stratum... then it can carry on in its bloody rolling risky churn, in a safe space, where the more stable strata can pick up the slack when arch tries to faceplant itself again.
laurelraven@lemmy.zip · 4 pts · 19h
Went the other way, moved from Mint 22.3 to OpenSuSE Tumbleweed. Rolling release with solid testing before updates are pushed, any breakage during testing and they don't push that day's update, and if something does slip through and break things, just boot into the pre-update snapshot and wait a day to try again with the next patches.
Up to date packages with low hassle, so as long as I don't need stable-as-in-never-changes, it's great.
Also, nice to have KDE 6 finally and to have KDE not be a forgotten afterthought (Cinnamon is nice but I always feel like I'm limited compared to KDE)
Asonyxi@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 7h
I actually tried Tumbleweed briefly before settling on fedora. I got the nvidia drivers and everything, but it was just an oddly buggy and slow experience for me. Kinda made me sad cause I've heard so many good things about it. Not blaming the distro at all don't get me wrong, I know I'm a bit dumb so I always assume its a me problem before I start throwing blame at the distro. I might try it again when I get an amd gpu maybe.
librekitty@lemmy.today · 4 pts · 1d
i'm glad all my gentoo comrades are in these comments
i was gonna comment "this is gentoo, actually", but i guess it's unneeded 😹
NominatedNemesis@reddthat.com · 4 pts · 10h
Arch user (btw) here. I use xorg and a custom tiling window manager. I had 0 breakage regarding my config. Nvidie fked me 2 times and grub was broken 1 time. Thats it. 10 years 3 chroot. Pacman runs when I feel like it. I used two weeks to configure my setup, and I hardly ever change a thing nowdays.
Tried Hyperland on an "old" thinkpad, each update broke something. So no thanks, I'll stick to mature, battle tested components, where my config and sanity will remain stable, and leave the tamagotchi for ricers/thinkerers.
kamen@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 1d
You guys are using Thinpads? Come on, grow up and get a Thickpad.
Laser@feddit.org · 2 pts · 1d
Introducing the dummy thiccpad
faerbit@sh.itjust.works · 4 pts · 1d
I use Debian at work, and need to do 3-5x the amount of troubleshooting than I need to do on my private Arch box. And I'm not doing anything crazy on either. I would even argue my work use cases are less crazy. I also don't think it's about the release model. I think the biggest differentiator is that Arch focuses on KISS, and stuff just keeps working.
Nullpwn@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1d
Skill issue
Markus@organica.social · 1 pts · 1d
Markus@organica.social · 1 pts · 1d
Trampampoline@sh.itjust.works · 4 pts · 2d
Chaotic Neutral
Use whatever, you'll eventually break it either way.
Laser@feddit.org · 4 pts · 1d
I will roll into my grave
flop_leash_973@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 2d
I use Debian on my homelab servers (Ubuntu when I have to for some reason) and Ubuntu LTS on desktop. And more or less ignore everything else outside of as a curiosity.
SmoothLiquidation@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 2d
My main workhorse VM is Ubuntu LTS because when I set it up I just picked it instead of spending another week researching and trying different distros. I could look into swapping it out but nothing has annoyed me about it once I figured out to disable snaps.
It feels like every time I finally have something set up and running I find some article telling me that what I chose is dumb for reason xyz and I really should be using something different, but refactoring at this point is a pita so why mess with something that isn’t broken?
thisisbutaname@discuss.tchncs.de · 4 pts · 2d
I used to break my install quite often but it's been a while since I've done that
Hiro8811@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 2d
Arch isn't just an operating system but a way of life.
ShredderFeeder@shredderfood.net · 3 pts · 1d
Fedora here...I tried arch once...not for me.
erzerper@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 2d
fedora on main and debian on home server
it just works
buddascrayon@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1d
The drastically recontextualizes all of the "I use Arch BTW" memes. 😂
Jiral@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1d
That is why I use openSUSE Tumbleweed. Haven't updated in half a year? No problem, just do zypper dup and let it do its job.
mrcleanup@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1d
I've been on Garuda for a few years (Arch based) and honestly, it's been super easy. Once Pamac was installed to handle software and updates, learning about AUR and how to access it was the only remotely technical thing I had to learn.
Yeah, some things are in different places than on Windows, but we all had to learn Windows at one point too.
ThunderComplex@lemmy.today · 3 pts · 2d
I don't know where my Linux journey takes me next yet, but I only half way agree with this post. Arch is not quite as bad as this post makes it out to be, but there's definitely always a bit of russian roulette involved in whether your system boots tomorrow or not (most of the time it does).
I just had my EndeavourOS (which is just a thin layer on top of Arch) kill itself and some weird-ass hyperspecific flags in the initrd build process brought it back to life.
Tho in the ~10 years of using arch now I'd say it was still preferable to the extremely stable experience, and I don't think recommending Debian Stable is such a good idea either.
Yeah I could unfuck my EOS system with a bit of trickery, but once you get a good franken debian going, when that thing breaks there's no rescue.
I've had some stuff on Arch break after an upgrade too because some config variable names changed. I rember when I had KDE with i3 going and one day the desktop was gone. Was just because the variable names in KDE had changed and a quick i3 config change was all that was needed.
Having to selectively install packages from other sources because the main repo will keep you on a too outdated version for 6 months is just not a viable idea in today's world.
There are luckily more than just these 2 options.
rumschlumpel@feddit.org · 4 pts · 2d
I found that since Flatpak and Docker became a thing, there's really not much reason to do frankendebian nowadays. My desktop runs Debian oldstable and it's just fine.
BladeFederation@piefed.social · 1 pts · 2d
I do use Docker's own apt repository so it is up to date though... is that bad?
rumschlumpel@feddit.org · 1 pts · 1d
IDK TBH, I have some of those vendor-specific repos too. They usually get disabled on a major release upgrade and then I forget to reenable them ... but I think most of these are too self-contained to cause major issues with Debian.
ThunderComplex@lemmy.today · 1 pts · 1d
I was gonna mention docker because I have a feeling it was created partly just to solve this issue, but it really only works for CLI tools and not GUI ones, so I decided against it.
Docker is a bit of a overkill solution but tbf it works really well.
rumschlumpel@feddit.org · 1 pts · 1d
I think I saw some applications with web-GUIs distributed as docker images.
ThunderComplex@lemmy.today · 1 pts · 1d
Ye but that's easy I mean like full-on KDE apps
Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 2d
My job is doing sales engineering for an open source DB company and just last week I encountered a prospect running on Arch.
They also did backups to an external drive they kept in a safe.
Nullpwn@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1d
Debian <3
HugeNerd@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 1d
That's exactly what it is. I think most of modern computing is just severe OCD and digital hoarding.
djsiete@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 14h
Does this include Cachy? I've had it for months now after years of distro hopping and it's been great
wannabe_alarmist@mastodon.social · 2 pts · 2d
Have to say it's manageable.
Unless you are FOMO-bound, no one demands you to upgrade daily. I do it weekly, rather.
95% of functionality loss/breaks/etc. I've experienced were from bad commits which were passed into projects, packages are being compiled from.
Setting up the things is not flawless. "As is".
k0e3@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 1d
I chose Arch as my first distro last year and it's chugging along fine. It works just like any other computer imo.
JakoJakoJako13@piefed.social · 2 pts · 1d
I chose Arch as my first and only distro 13 years ago. Only had system breaking problems a handful of times in that span. They were all because I fucked something up playing with files I shouldn't have. These are all tired memes from old reputations. Pay attention to what you're doing and you'll be fine.
Brujones@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 2d
I mean, if you're worried about rolling release...
pacman -S linux-lts linux-lts-headers
LotusNightSky@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 1d
I wish there was a newbie-friendly distro that didn't use Systemd.
Laser@feddit.org · 6 pts · 1d
I think once you're at the level of caring about that stuff you're no longer considered a newbie
tomatoely@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 1d
I can vouch for MX Linux. It supports both systemd and sysvinit, letting you choose which one you'd like to install on your machine. Daily drove it on my old laptop with the XFCE desktop and I was very happy with it.
bus_factor@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1d
I think that ship has sailed. Too much stuff relies on it now.
son_of_darkness@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 2d
I've used Arch for more than 12 years, never once has it broken down
hirihit640@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 1d
One of my devices is an offline device that I bring online every few months for updates (my VPN only gives me limited spots, so some devices take turns using the VPN). I guarantee you updates this infrequent would break most distros, including Arch. But since I use an atomic/immutable distro, it works every time.
This is what's so great about atomic distros. Super reliable and hard to break. Just set and forget.
rumschlumpel@feddit.org · 1 pts · 1d
This is a complete non-issue for any fixed-release distro I've ever heard of. You're supposed to update more often for security reasons (on internet-connected devices, anyway), not because it would break on updates.
hirihit640@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 1d
You're right, somehow I forgot about point releases. I was thinking Fedora, which has broken on my before when I waited too long to update (multiple months). And yeah updates are good for security. I just keep my device offline 99% of the time
rumschlumpel@feddit.org · 1 pts · 12h
Damn that's ugly. Definitely not a thing I've experienced on Debian-derivatives, I recently logged into a Debian desktop install that I didn't access for like a year, updating it was completely smooth.
ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 2d
Debian might be good for servers, but try using it for work other than server-side stuff. Try installing a productivity application, so you're not 2 years behind with it! Try plugging in new hardware! Now the tables have turned.
hemko@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 2 pts · 2d
I've been working and gaming on Debian for the past few years after Ubuntu started getting annoying with snap, don't really see any issues with it
Only when I installed it on my new work laptop I had to be like 1 month on sid because of hardware compatibility
xyguy@startrek.website · 2 pts · 2d
Fedora baybee!
Maximum hardware enablement,
Minimum game breaking bugs.
New Kernals all the time.
Community focused distro with no corporate interferenceI can watch all of my "Linux Isos" I torrented out of the boxLogo is cool infinity F.
faith@lemmy.ml · 2 pts · 11h
ChatGPT-ass take
spicehoarder@lemmy.zip · 0 pts · 6h
The ChatGPT accent is real.
FiniteBanjo@feddit.online · 2 pts · 2d
I will admit that a week ago I unplugged one of my hard drives and the PC booted into emergency recovery mode, and I had to edit fstab via a series of commands to make it work again, but it only took about 5min.
My browser works fine, got it off flathub.
My graphics drivers work better than they did on Windows by a longshot, I used to get BSOD because Windows didn't like exclusive audio control ever changing. I'm assuming because of constant advancements in things like Vulkan, Wayland, and xWayland.
originaltnavn@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 1d
May I introduce you guys to Debian Sid? It's the worst of both worlds, I used it as a daily driver for several years. That said, I switched over to Debian stable once the old laptop was downgraded to purely a web browser.
mlg@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 2d
This is verifiably not true because of the amount of devs that use arch and the fact that the arch wiki exists and there's an entire set of AUR packages for custom bugfix patches on top of bleeding-edge software.
Debian is too dated with packages if you want to mess with practically anything new, otherwise its okay for something not concerned with new libs. Ubuntu repos are a joke and you will never find all the libs you need without some wacky tacky 3rd party downloads.
bold_omi@lemmy.today · 1 pts · 1d
I don't use Debian on work machines. It packages much of the software I use a year out of date!
Rolling release is essential for me to use a system as my own. I acknowledge that Debian may be better for servers. Although, if you're a reproducibility and servers person, why not use NixOS?
As a side note, I do not use Arch. I use Artix because I prefer OpenRC over systemd.
rumschlumpel@feddit.org · 2 pts · 1d
As a Debian user: That's supposed to be an issue?
bold_omi@lemmy.today · 1 pts · 1d
Yes. It misses features I depend on, forcing me to compile things. I'm not a Gentoo user. I only compile mesa because my hardware is obscure garbage and I need weird feature flags. I try to avoid other compilation, given that my main PC is almost two decades old. The other one is old enough to drink.
BuboScandiacus@mander.xyz · 1 pts · 2d
Debian never worked for me. Something was ALWAYS broken
kogasa@programming.dev · 1 pts · 1d
Arch teaches you to exercise muscles that would otherwise atrophy. Understanding how your system is put together, how to diagnose and fix problems, how to handle upgrades safely. It becomes just as easy as any other OS and you're better off for it.
UltraBlack@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1d
I update my systems like once a month maybe
magnue@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 1d
It's not x, it's y!
Impractical_Island@lemmy.world · -1 pts · 1d
I just use a phone. I don't know whst you retards are talking about.
vk6flab@lemmy.radio · -1 pts · 1d
26 years ago.
https://lists.debian.org/debian-sparc/2000/09/msg00038.html