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I use Arch because of this: Having been an Ubuntu user, and watched my system break every 6 months Because Reasons, I despise magic: I want to know what my syst

I use Arch because of this: Having been an Ubuntu user, and watched my system break every 6 months Because Reasons, I despise magic: I want to know what my system is doing, because when it breaks, I'm the guy that's got to fix it.

Yhippa 10y ago
I think this is what always turns me off from using Linux on the desktop as my main. With Arch do you feel you have a better sense of why things break when they do? Tempted to try it out because of things like what you said.
- jjawssd 10y ago
  > With Arch do you feel you have a better sense of why things break when they do? Yes
  - qbrass 10y ago
    Because Arch makes you do everything, the answer to why it broke is always you. There was an unofficial motto to that effect at one time.
    - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
      Nowadays, the reason why it broke is either you, or Systemd. But the reason why your system has systemd is that you didn't uninstall it. Your system might have also broken because you didn't read the RSS feed, which warns of potentially breaking changes. When in doubt, blame yourself. Or Alan.
    - cosarara97 10y ago
      Except when it's not, and the answer is the maintainers [1]. [1] https://bugs.archlinux.org/index.php?do=details&task_id=50512 https://bugs.archlinux.org/index.php?do=details&task_id=5051... (hit this myself a couple days ago)
- jamessu 10y ago
  I've been using arch for about 3 years and I think that things break just as often (actually, probably more often) and you're generally not left with a better sense of what the root cause is. Sure, you have less software installed, but you're also usually running bleeding-edge versions of everything and things are noticeably less stable. I do think that from an educational standpoint, arch linux is a good OS to use, as you will probably get a lot more comfortable with the linux environment. This is largely out of necessity as you will spend a great deal of time setting up and fixing your system. If you have the time to debug the various components of your system, it can be quite fun and educational to use, but if you're interested in getting work done I cannot recommend arch linux at all.
  - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
    I find it plenty usable for work. And because you're usually hand-writing the configs, it's much easier to root-cause than ubuntu. And it doesn't break every 6 months.
  - gh02t 10y ago
    Huh, it seems people's experience varies a lot. I've been using Arch as my primary OS at work and home for something like 4 years now. It's been quite stable and low maintenance. It has broken a 3 or 4 times, but my Windows install that I play games on has broken more times than that.
    - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
      Yeah, that's been my experience as well. I tried ubuntu first, and that broke every 6 months. Finally, a kernel upgrade rendered my system unusable, and I switched to Fedora once it was fixed. Fedora didn't break as much, but it still broke. Finally, I switched to Arch. I've been able to fix any breakage, and my system's been fine ever since.
    - michaelmrose 10y ago
      Isn't it strange in 2016 that its considered ok to break at all?
- qwertyuiop924 10y ago
  Arch is all about user control. They have a fantastic package manager, the AUR (a user-supplied source build repo) the ABS (an official source build repo, akin to ports), and you can install yaourt (which can automate installation and updates from the AUR). But by far Arch's best asset is the Wiki. The Arch Wiki is a godsend: a large repository of documentation on just about everything you'd want to do, complete with instructions for the most common cases. Want to do a basic install? Go look. Want to configure pulseaudio (why you would, I don't know)? It's right there. Want to encrypt your disk? pick your poison, and get to it. X? Check. 3d cards? AMD or Nvidia, proprietary or open, if there's hangups, we'll tell you how to fix it. Games? From steam to just about anything else, there's documentation for getting then running. There's a reason many arch users will tell you to RTFM if you have a question. But if you've done that already, the forums are quite helpful. The only snag is that systemd is installed by default. However, like everything, the wiki has docs on how to switcg to another system, like sysvinit or openrc. Even more luckily, some very kind Arch users have gone above and beyond that, and created a repo with most of the openrc initscripts, and forks of necessary packages that are without systemd. These instructions are better, and can be found at http://systemd-free.org http://systemd-free.org, under 'installation' and 'configuration'.
  - koytch 10y ago
    So a tinkering person who has in the past used Slackware (at the end it looked like a bastardized Linux From Scratch), *BSD and after much meandering settled on a minimal Debian desktop, but still uses Mint at work, should probably feel at home, you say?
    - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
      Yeah. Arch borrows heavily from the BSDs. It even used to use their init system. Nowadays, OpenRC is the way to go if you don't want to deal with systemd.
      - koytch 10y ago
        Might try OpenRC just as well. I've always liked the NetBSD rcorder-based startup, and OpenRC reminds me of it in some ways. But to be fair, I'm not in a hurry to replace sysv-rc.
- feklar 10y ago
  There's always Antergos which is essentially Arch + magic (installer + scripted updates). It just works with little configuration. Problem with Arch or any rolling release is you will download a gigantic amount of updates every day it felt like I was rolling dice with my system stability everytime.
karma_vaccum123 10y ago
Arch has been consistently more breaky for me than Ubuntu. It is fashionable to bash Ubuntu but I have found it quite polished as long as you don't try to color outside the lines. I have used FreeBSD on the desktop since 1996. I am not a system guru. I have never used an install guide. I only ever used the guided installer and just let it run. It has always just worked. But there is also nothing to be gained by using FreeBSD...because coloring inside the lines on FreeBSD means using their polished tools to manage your system. I never ended up exploring my system much because I never had to...sysinstall did it for me. Indeed in the late 90s when Linux distros were immature, I recommended FreeBSD to people who wanted a "just works" approach that let them continue to be as systems-stupid as me. I see Ubuntu as the best current manifestation of what FreeBSD always was for me...the quickest, friendliest path to get a unix-like OS on your computer with lots of good defaults and hand-holding.
- qwertyuiop924 10y ago
  Yeah, Ubuntu was never like that for me: every 6 months my system would break in a new and exciting way, and I couldn't fix it. But that's just me. FBSD is a bit more like Arch with a nicer installer, IMHO: minimal, text-based, highly configurable, and well-documented.
  - koko775 10y ago
    Nitpick: Arch mimics FreeBSD. Or rather, mimics CRUX, which imitated BSD-style init scripts.
    - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
      True. Although Arch uses systemd now by default, which is bad. I've replaced it with OpenRC. http://systemd-free.org http://systemd-free.org has instructions if you want to do it yourself.
      - terminalcommand 10y ago
        Last month I installed OpenBSD on my laptop, and was frustrated with its boot time. I'm using an SSD. Debian 8 with KDE boots up in a matter of seconds. OpenBSD on the other hand needed at least 20 seconds to boot up. I had done some research at the time, and came to the conclusion that it was systemd that allowed Linux to boot up so fast. What is your experience with OpenRC?
ChuckMcM 10y ago
And I want the middle piece, full magic is fine but a detailed manual with all the magical relations identified and tools to inspect areas where the magic is having issues.
- qwertyuiop924 10y ago
  Yeah, that's impossible. Because then you don't have magic, you have the same nonmagicality of Arch, but with none of the simplicity, so you have to learn even more complex, distro-specific tooling. It's the worst of both worlds.
lvillani 10y ago
I still wonder why Canonical promotes non-LTS versions as stable releases. They are not. LTSes are and you only have to update once every two years, or 3-5 years if you wait for your current release to be EOL'ed. Non-LTS releases are really just development snapshots to give you a sneak-peek of features coming in the next LTS. At my company we used to upgrade our workstations with each and every Ubuntu release. It was a mess. As soon as we started to jump between LTS versions, every problem vanished. And upgrades are almost painless. We have a rock solid stable base and we can upgrade select packages through PPAs.
- qwertyuiop924 10y ago
  Well, that's nice.
- type0 10y ago
  The stability of non-LTS releases is comparable to somewhere in-between testing and unstable in Debian, despite of what Canonical wants everyone to believe.
  - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
    Debian Testing doesn't break your machine every few months.
gravypod 10y ago
I use Manjaro and my system just doesn't break. I've been in if for the better part of this year and ice not had to fix anything outside of a GUI.

Yhippa 10y ago

I think this is what always turns me off from using Linux on the desktop as my main. With Arch do you feel you have a better sense of why things break when they do? Tempted to try it out because of things like what you said.

jjawssd 10y ago
> With Arch do you feel you have a better sense of why things break when they do? Yes
- qbrass 10y ago
  Because Arch makes you do everything, the answer to why it broke is always you. There was an unofficial motto to that effect at one time.
  - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
    Nowadays, the reason why it broke is either you, or Systemd. But the reason why your system has systemd is that you didn't uninstall it. Your system might have also broken because you didn't read the RSS feed, which warns of potentially breaking changes. When in doubt, blame yourself. Or Alan.
  - cosarara97 10y ago
    Except when it's not, and the answer is the maintainers [1]. [1] https://bugs.archlinux.org/index.php?do=details&task_id=50512 https://bugs.archlinux.org/index.php?do=details&task_id=5051... (hit this myself a couple days ago)
jamessu 10y ago
I've been using arch for about 3 years and I think that things break just as often (actually, probably more often) and you're generally not left with a better sense of what the root cause is. Sure, you have less software installed, but you're also usually running bleeding-edge versions of everything and things are noticeably less stable. I do think that from an educational standpoint, arch linux is a good OS to use, as you will probably get a lot more comfortable with the linux environment. This is largely out of necessity as you will spend a great deal of time setting up and fixing your system. If you have the time to debug the various components of your system, it can be quite fun and educational to use, but if you're interested in getting work done I cannot recommend arch linux at all.
- qwertyuiop924 10y ago
  I find it plenty usable for work. And because you're usually hand-writing the configs, it's much easier to root-cause than ubuntu. And it doesn't break every 6 months.
- gh02t 10y ago
  Huh, it seems people's experience varies a lot. I've been using Arch as my primary OS at work and home for something like 4 years now. It's been quite stable and low maintenance. It has broken a 3 or 4 times, but my Windows install that I play games on has broken more times than that.
  - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
    Yeah, that's been my experience as well. I tried ubuntu first, and that broke every 6 months. Finally, a kernel upgrade rendered my system unusable, and I switched to Fedora once it was fixed. Fedora didn't break as much, but it still broke. Finally, I switched to Arch. I've been able to fix any breakage, and my system's been fine ever since.
  - michaelmrose 10y ago
    Isn't it strange in 2016 that its considered ok to break at all?
qwertyuiop924 10y ago
Arch is all about user control. They have a fantastic package manager, the AUR (a user-supplied source build repo) the ABS (an official source build repo, akin to ports), and you can install yaourt (which can automate installation and updates from the AUR). But by far Arch's best asset is the Wiki. The Arch Wiki is a godsend: a large repository of documentation on just about everything you'd want to do, complete with instructions for the most common cases. Want to do a basic install? Go look. Want to configure pulseaudio (why you would, I don't know)? It's right there. Want to encrypt your disk? pick your poison, and get to it. X? Check. 3d cards? AMD or Nvidia, proprietary or open, if there's hangups, we'll tell you how to fix it. Games? From steam to just about anything else, there's documentation for getting then running. There's a reason many arch users will tell you to RTFM if you have a question. But if you've done that already, the forums are quite helpful. The only snag is that systemd is installed by default. However, like everything, the wiki has docs on how to switcg to another system, like sysvinit or openrc. Even more luckily, some very kind Arch users have gone above and beyond that, and created a repo with most of the openrc initscripts, and forks of necessary packages that are without systemd. These instructions are better, and can be found at http://systemd-free.org http://systemd-free.org, under 'installation' and 'configuration'.
- koytch 10y ago
  So a tinkering person who has in the past used Slackware (at the end it looked like a bastardized Linux From Scratch), *BSD and after much meandering settled on a minimal Debian desktop, but still uses Mint at work, should probably feel at home, you say?
  - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
    Yeah. Arch borrows heavily from the BSDs. It even used to use their init system. Nowadays, OpenRC is the way to go if you don't want to deal with systemd.
    - koytch 10y ago
      Might try OpenRC just as well. I've always liked the NetBSD rcorder-based startup, and OpenRC reminds me of it in some ways. But to be fair, I'm not in a hurry to replace sysv-rc.
feklar 10y ago
There's always Antergos which is essentially Arch + magic (installer + scripted updates). It just works with little configuration. Problem with Arch or any rolling release is you will download a gigantic amount of updates every day it felt like I was rolling dice with my system stability everytime.

karma_vaccum123 10y ago

Arch has been consistently more breaky for me than Ubuntu. It is fashionable to bash Ubuntu but I have found it quite polished as long as you don't try to color outside the lines. I have used FreeBSD on the desktop since 1996. I am not a system guru. I have never used an install guide. I only ever used the guided installer and just let it run. It has always just worked. But there is also nothing to be gained by using FreeBSD...because coloring inside the lines on FreeBSD means using their polished tools to manage your system. I never ended up exploring my system much because I never had to...sysinstall did it for me. Indeed in the late 90s when Linux distros were immature, I recommended FreeBSD to people who wanted a "just works" approach that let them continue to be as systems-stupid as me. I see Ubuntu as the best current manifestation of what FreeBSD always was for me...the quickest, friendliest path to get a unix-like OS on your computer with lots of good defaults and hand-holding.

qwertyuiop924 10y ago
Yeah, Ubuntu was never like that for me: every 6 months my system would break in a new and exciting way, and I couldn't fix it. But that's just me. FBSD is a bit more like Arch with a nicer installer, IMHO: minimal, text-based, highly configurable, and well-documented.
- koko775 10y ago
  Nitpick: Arch mimics FreeBSD. Or rather, mimics CRUX, which imitated BSD-style init scripts.
  - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
    True. Although Arch uses systemd now by default, which is bad. I've replaced it with OpenRC. http://systemd-free.org http://systemd-free.org has instructions if you want to do it yourself.
    - terminalcommand 10y ago
      Last month I installed OpenBSD on my laptop, and was frustrated with its boot time. I'm using an SSD. Debian 8 with KDE boots up in a matter of seconds. OpenBSD on the other hand needed at least 20 seconds to boot up. I had done some research at the time, and came to the conclusion that it was systemd that allowed Linux to boot up so fast. What is your experience with OpenRC?

ChuckMcM 10y ago

And I want the middle piece, full magic is fine but a detailed manual with all the magical relations identified and tools to inspect areas where the magic is having issues.

qwertyuiop924 10y ago
Yeah, that's impossible. Because then you don't have magic, you have the same nonmagicality of Arch, but with none of the simplicity, so you have to learn even more complex, distro-specific tooling. It's the worst of both worlds.

lvillani 10y ago

I still wonder why Canonical promotes non-LTS versions as stable releases. They are not. LTSes are and you only have to update once every two years, or 3-5 years if you wait for your current release to be EOL'ed. Non-LTS releases are really just development snapshots to give you a sneak-peek of features coming in the next LTS. At my company we used to upgrade our workstations with each and every Ubuntu release. It was a mess. As soon as we started to jump between LTS versions, every problem vanished. And upgrades are almost painless. We have a rock solid stable base and we can upgrade select packages through PPAs.

qwertyuiop924 10y ago
Well, that's nice.
type0 10y ago
The stability of non-LTS releases is comparable to somewhere in-between testing and unstable in Debian, despite of what Canonical wants everyone to believe.
- qwertyuiop924 10y ago
  Debian Testing doesn't break your machine every few months.

gravypod 10y ago

I use Manjaro and my system just doesn't break. I've been in if for the better part of this year and ice not had to fix anything outside of a GUI.