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Yup. I switched from Ubuntu to Arch after I realised I was trying to make Ubuntu work like a rolling release distro. This lead to frequent breakage. Arch defini
by spangry 10y ago
Yup. I switched from Ubuntu to Arch after I realised I was trying to make Ubuntu work like a rolling release distro. This lead to frequent breakage. Arch definitely has a learning curve, but it also helps you realise that some things really are as simple as they appear (if that makes sense).
That said, if you're like me and prone to fits of 'mad science', you will find yourself breaking your OS from time to time. But I've yet to get myself into a situation I couldn't recover from, largely thanks the the excellent Arch wiki. The 'big jumps' (i.e. staged distro) leading to 'big breaks' can happen to Arch, mind you. It's not a distro you want to 'leave alone' for too long.
So I guess if you're going to use the machine daily, Arch should be fine. If we were talking about a server or something, or maybe a work laptop that would go unused for a few weeks from time to time, I'd probably suggest sticking with Ubuntu or the like. Trust me, I've attempted running Arch on my NAS and it was not very fun. Ubuntu/Debian is much better suited there.
I guess the other downside of Arch is that there's less official packaging for it (whereas there's an rpm and deb for everything, it seems). But I think the AUR more than makes up for that, and simplifies quite a lot of things that are complex to do on Ubuntu (e.g. compile FFmpeg with HW accel support, and with all the other fancy encoder dependencies etc.).
- icebraining 10y agoThe nice thing about Debian is that they have all your cases covered. Long-term release for my server (Stable), rolling release for my laptop (Unstable). And the latter serves as a learning stage for the former, especially during transition times (e.g. introduction of systemd).
- jcoffland 10y agoYou forgot the porridge that is just right, "testing".
- icebraining 10y agoI actually found Testing to have the drawbacks of both: it's neither well tested and rock-solid, nor up to date with bugfixes. I used Testing on my laptop for a year, and it was the only time I had serious bugs that lasted for more than a day.
- jcoffland 10y agoMaybe you were unlucky. I haven't had that problem.
- anotherevan 10y agoThis is a really good summary. I use and love Arch as my desktop. I've also used it as a server and for non-techie family members and in those situations you end up creating a bit of a rod for your own back. For those cases I use Kubuntu for destops and Ubuntu for servers, pick the current LTS release and install unattended-upgrades to ensure security updates get maintained.
- alfalfasprout 10y agoYeah, as a development distro Arch is fantastic. Nobody's mentioned the fact you get bleeding edge compilers, etc. as well. But I could not imagine running Arch on a server. Each week I forget to update Arch it's like 1GB of updates a few of which are kernel related and need a reboot.