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> I think the benefits of saving disk space by sharing libraries do not justify the inconveniences we, desktop BSD and Linux users, obtain from being forced to

> I think the benefits of saving disk space by sharing libraries do not justify the inconveniences we, desktop BSD and Linux users, obtain from being forced to disrupt and upgrade hundreds of installed software packages, just because one single desired upgrade requires to pull its dependencies It's funny, from your point of view having a centralized repository with a (usually) single (usually) latest version of a library is a bad thing that may be (and probably isn't) justified by the goal of saving space. From my point of view having a centralized repository with a (usually) single (usually) latest version of a library is an awesome thing that I would leave any other ecosystem to get, and the space savings is just a bonus that doesn't much matter. Most dependency maintainers don't provide updates for more than a few versions of their software. When one piece of software depends on -latest and another piece of software depends on -legacy, you can ship both with the central repository model. In the Linux distributions I've used this is a solved problem. Arch Linux has five different versions of the JRE that are separately installable.

celticmusic 7y ago
I left arch linux because I got tired of all the breakages, so not a great example.
- bscphil 7y ago
  Unless Arch Linux broke for you because they ship multiple versions of some packages, that's not really relevant. This is a thing all the popular Linux distributions do as far as I know. Also, personally I've stuck with Arch Linux for 6-7 years now because it's the first distribution I found that consistently works for me, so I don't know that anecdotes will get us very far either way.
- chmln 7y ago
  This has to be one of the most inaccurate memes of all time. To counter with anecdata: I've been running Arch Linux testing repositories for over a year now with no issues whatsoever.
  - celticmusic 7y ago
    https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Frequently_asked_questions#Is_Arch_Linux_a_stable_distribution?_Will_I_get_frequent_breakage https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Frequently_asked_questi...? > It is the user who is ultimately responsible for the stability of their own rolling release system. The user decides when to upgrade, and merges necessary changes when required. If the user reaches out to the community for help, it is often provided in a timely manner. The difference between Arch and other distributions in this regard is that Arch is truly a 'do-it-yourself' distribution; __complaints of breakage are misguided and unproductive, since upstream changes are not the responsibility of Arch devs__. Even their wiki is very clear to inform you that you're at the whims of the package upgrades. But I also want to point out that "it hasn't broke in a year" is cute, but I ran arch for probably 10+ years until I finally got tired of it and moved to Ubuntu. The last straw was me sitting down to get paying work done and spending half my day trying to recover my work environment. In the 2-3 years since I moved to Ubuntu I've never once sat down at my PC and had something stop working that was working before. This defense of your favorite distro is especially silly when you think about it logically. Of course a rolling release system is going to have more breakages. The sensible response isn't "it never breaks!", but is instead "that's the nature of rolling release, you opt into it when you choose Arch".
    - tobias2014 7y ago
      This is funny, I could tell exactly the same story the other way around. I came as a 10+ year Debian user to Archlinux because it did too much automagic under the hood that broke and took a lot of time to fix. No breakage on arch because no automagic behind your back. For a long time before using arch I thought too that rolling release might be more unstable, but I have come to the conclusion that quite the opposite might be true.
      - rascul 7y ago
        Could you give some examples of the automagic stuff Debian does under the hood?
- swsieber 7y ago
  Oh man. This seems to have spawned an anecdota war. I think the main issue/benefit with arch linux is that it wont try to do anything for you, except give you extra instructions for when a package change requires "manual intervention". I put that in quotes because I don't think of that as breakage, I think of that as normal upkeep. We'll, as long as it's listed. Anyway, the implications are that things can be stable longer on arch because there is no magic under the hood. But there will be times (though I haven't experienced it myself), where something unexpectedly breaks, and it'll be hard to recover unless you know what your doing... though maybe it's actually easy with the rolling back packages? The package manage does keep copies of old versions of packages, I've just never needed them. As an example if this, my co worker and I have very similar thinkpad laptops. His graphics start doing wierd things that hes has to go fix after every update (Fedora or Ubuntu, can't remember). I took 4+ hours to get mine working how I want, with research and experimentation, but nothing has broke it since.
  - mxmilkb 7y ago
    Out-of-date software and related dependency hell is the breakage that rolling-release/Arch gets me away from. More UX anecdote; I use Arch (btw) but trying Manjaro just now for something so I grabed an image from osboxes.org; the system update fails after hitting enter on the default options https://i.imgur.com/OTNRMrH.png https://i.imgur.com/OTNRMrH.png 'y' for the last would have continued things, but "ugh, I have to think about something" is breakage to some.
  - bscphil 7y ago
    > But there will be times (though I haven't experienced it myself), where something unexpectedly breaks, and it'll be hard to recover unless you know what your doing... The thing is, my experience with Ubuntu is that there will be times when something unexpectedly breaks, and because of the added complexity, it will be nearly impossible to recover even if you know what you're doing.
- bibyte 7y ago
  Sometimes it feels like I am living in an alternate reality. After I started using Arch Linux as my main OS I was fully prepared for it to break every few months. But it's been more then 2 years (maybe even 3 or 4 ?) and not one breakage. Also keep in mind that I update it every single day. From time to time I check the Arch Linux news site to see if anything needs manual intervention. So far I haven't needed to do anything.
  - jcelerier 7y ago
    can confirm, went to arch linux due to constant breakage under Debian & Ubuntu, it's be so much more pleasant since then. No more everything exploding left and right as soon as I need a newer GCC or libav version.
    - kursus 7y ago
      That's funny because I've been running Debian Sid for 15 years as my main OS doing weekly updates and the two single cases of breakage I've seen were glibc6 transition (which was announced and expected) and proprietary video card drivers. You must be thinking of Ubuntu specifically.
      - wolrah 7y ago
        To keep the anecdotes going, I've been using a mix of Debian and Ubuntu, both stable/LTS and testing/biannual, for pretty much exactly the same 15 years as you've been running Sid and I've never had any breakage that wasn't caused by me fucking around with binary drivers. ndiswrapper was the main cause back in the day, shockingly giving Windows drivers access to the Linux kernel can cause problems. The most recent time was when VDPAU was new and I was trying to get HD video playback working on a mini-PC with an nVidia Ion GPU by running a version of the nVidia driver much newer than Ubuntu packaged. Now that I think about it that must have been around a full decade ago.
        bayindirh 7y ago
        I'm running Debian testing since 4.0 beta and never had an un-bootable system or something got broken due to normal updates. I've just reinstalled the system once to migrate it to 64 bit, since there was no proven procedure to migrate a running 32 bit system to 64 bit. There were rough patches along the way but, all distros were having the same problem in someway or another (vdpau, fglrx, multi-gpu support, ndiswrapper & wireless stuff, etc.) but it's a set it and forget it affair for a very very long time. ...and obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/963/ https://xkcd.com/963/
- otabdeveloper2 7y ago
  If we're honest: Arch is annoying, but the reason people (including me) run it is because they don't want their OS to explode in a shitstorm every time a 'major upgrade' cycle happens. (Looking at you, Ubuntu.) So, your comment is 180 degrees off the mark. Arch exists for people who don't want breakages to happen. (On the other hand, if you're conditioned by Windows to reinstall the system every year, then Ubuntu might work fine for you.)
  - alpaca128 7y ago
    > Arch exists for people who don't want breakages to happen. Or, for people who don't want breakages but also want/need current software versions. Debian-based stuff can be pretty nice and stable as well, but on Arch installing and setting up anything usually "just works" without missing dependencies, renamed packages etc.
  - celticmusic 7y ago
    The difference is I that I know the dist-upgrade is coming and can plan for it. With Arch it's on that one day that I really needed to get work done, but Arch decided it wasn't happening. I think I'll take the planned upgrade, thanks.
- scalableUnicon 7y ago
  Docker to the rescue! For development, docker is godsend. It is a developer must have just like git, I regret I didn't learn it sooner.
- ekianjo 7y ago
  Strange, the story has been quite the opposite for me, Since I moved to Arch Linux I only had one minor breakage (bluetooth) that was fixed in a day, whereas in Ubuntu I cannot count how many times an update or a PPA broke something.
  - mekster 7y ago
    It depends if your Ubuntu is LTS or not. I'd say LTS Ubuntu > Arch > non LTS Ubuntu as Arch tries to be stable on its only version but Ubuntu can be more aggressive between LTS. PPA breaking is apparently not Ubuntu's fault.
enriquto 7y ago
> From my point of view having a centralized repository with a (usually) single (usually) latest version of a library is an awesome thing This reasoning assumes that future versions of software are always better. This is certainly not the case. I would like that a working program does not spontaneusly break because a third party "upgrades", thus introducing a new bug. I am willing to give up anything else to be assured that working programs continue to work no matter what.
- bscphil 7y ago
  I suppose I should clarify by "latest" that I mean a version of a piece of software that is actively supported and has all the security patches. Like it or not, the ecosystem is currently built around the assumption that you do want to have this, that nobody should still be running e.g. Firefox 34. The question is what the best way of shipping it is. The conversation in the two posts you replied to isn't about whether you always want to be on the bleeding edge all the time, it's about whether it makes sense to have a centralized repository that contains the latest version on some supported channel, which isn't necessarily the same thing as the latest -nightly. I take the position that it is; that shipping a (potentially) different version of a library with every application is a bad approach which is often less secure and harder to maintain.
  - xg15 7y ago
    But didn't the OP show exactly a situation where this system broke down? There is a new version of the Rust library. In theory, either anything that supports it should be updated selectively (i.e. Firefox) or all consumers should be updated in lockstep. Yet in practice the maintener decided that neither option was feasible so nothing was updated at all. What went wrong here?
LorenPechtel 7y ago
What they should do is have a centralized repository of packages but allow multiple versions that function independently. That way nothing breaks when one program installs a newer version.
- floriol 7y ago
  That would require exponential amounts of binaries.

celticmusic 7y ago

I left arch linux because I got tired of all the breakages, so not a great example.

bscphil 7y ago
Unless Arch Linux broke for you because they ship multiple versions of some packages, that's not really relevant. This is a thing all the popular Linux distributions do as far as I know. Also, personally I've stuck with Arch Linux for 6-7 years now because it's the first distribution I found that consistently works for me, so I don't know that anecdotes will get us very far either way.
chmln 7y ago
This has to be one of the most inaccurate memes of all time. To counter with anecdata: I've been running Arch Linux testing repositories for over a year now with no issues whatsoever.
- celticmusic 7y ago
  https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Frequently_asked_questions#Is_Arch_Linux_a_stable_distribution?_Will_I_get_frequent_breakage https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Frequently_asked_questi...? > It is the user who is ultimately responsible for the stability of their own rolling release system. The user decides when to upgrade, and merges necessary changes when required. If the user reaches out to the community for help, it is often provided in a timely manner. The difference between Arch and other distributions in this regard is that Arch is truly a 'do-it-yourself' distribution; __complaints of breakage are misguided and unproductive, since upstream changes are not the responsibility of Arch devs__. Even their wiki is very clear to inform you that you're at the whims of the package upgrades. But I also want to point out that "it hasn't broke in a year" is cute, but I ran arch for probably 10+ years until I finally got tired of it and moved to Ubuntu. The last straw was me sitting down to get paying work done and spending half my day trying to recover my work environment. In the 2-3 years since I moved to Ubuntu I've never once sat down at my PC and had something stop working that was working before. This defense of your favorite distro is especially silly when you think about it logically. Of course a rolling release system is going to have more breakages. The sensible response isn't "it never breaks!", but is instead "that's the nature of rolling release, you opt into it when you choose Arch".
  - tobias2014 7y ago
    This is funny, I could tell exactly the same story the other way around. I came as a 10+ year Debian user to Archlinux because it did too much automagic under the hood that broke and took a lot of time to fix. No breakage on arch because no automagic behind your back. For a long time before using arch I thought too that rolling release might be more unstable, but I have come to the conclusion that quite the opposite might be true.
    - rascul 7y ago
      Could you give some examples of the automagic stuff Debian does under the hood?
swsieber 7y ago
Oh man. This seems to have spawned an anecdota war. I think the main issue/benefit with arch linux is that it wont try to do anything for you, except give you extra instructions for when a package change requires "manual intervention". I put that in quotes because I don't think of that as breakage, I think of that as normal upkeep. We'll, as long as it's listed. Anyway, the implications are that things can be stable longer on arch because there is no magic under the hood. But there will be times (though I haven't experienced it myself), where something unexpectedly breaks, and it'll be hard to recover unless you know what your doing... though maybe it's actually easy with the rolling back packages? The package manage does keep copies of old versions of packages, I've just never needed them. As an example if this, my co worker and I have very similar thinkpad laptops. His graphics start doing wierd things that hes has to go fix after every update (Fedora or Ubuntu, can't remember). I took 4+ hours to get mine working how I want, with research and experimentation, but nothing has broke it since.
- mxmilkb 7y ago
  Out-of-date software and related dependency hell is the breakage that rolling-release/Arch gets me away from. More UX anecdote; I use Arch (btw) but trying Manjaro just now for something so I grabed an image from osboxes.org; the system update fails after hitting enter on the default options https://i.imgur.com/OTNRMrH.png https://i.imgur.com/OTNRMrH.png 'y' for the last would have continued things, but "ugh, I have to think about something" is breakage to some.
- bscphil 7y ago
  > But there will be times (though I haven't experienced it myself), where something unexpectedly breaks, and it'll be hard to recover unless you know what your doing... The thing is, my experience with Ubuntu is that there will be times when something unexpectedly breaks, and because of the added complexity, it will be nearly impossible to recover even if you know what you're doing.
bibyte 7y ago
Sometimes it feels like I am living in an alternate reality. After I started using Arch Linux as my main OS I was fully prepared for it to break every few months. But it's been more then 2 years (maybe even 3 or 4 ?) and not one breakage. Also keep in mind that I update it every single day. From time to time I check the Arch Linux news site to see if anything needs manual intervention. So far I haven't needed to do anything.
- jcelerier 7y ago
  can confirm, went to arch linux due to constant breakage under Debian & Ubuntu, it's be so much more pleasant since then. No more everything exploding left and right as soon as I need a newer GCC or libav version.
  - kursus 7y ago
    That's funny because I've been running Debian Sid for 15 years as my main OS doing weekly updates and the two single cases of breakage I've seen were glibc6 transition (which was announced and expected) and proprietary video card drivers. You must be thinking of Ubuntu specifically.
    - wolrah 7y ago
      To keep the anecdotes going, I've been using a mix of Debian and Ubuntu, both stable/LTS and testing/biannual, for pretty much exactly the same 15 years as you've been running Sid and I've never had any breakage that wasn't caused by me fucking around with binary drivers. ndiswrapper was the main cause back in the day, shockingly giving Windows drivers access to the Linux kernel can cause problems. The most recent time was when VDPAU was new and I was trying to get HD video playback working on a mini-PC with an nVidia Ion GPU by running a version of the nVidia driver much newer than Ubuntu packaged. Now that I think about it that must have been around a full decade ago.
      - bayindirh 7y ago
        I'm running Debian testing since 4.0 beta and never had an un-bootable system or something got broken due to normal updates. I've just reinstalled the system once to migrate it to 64 bit, since there was no proven procedure to migrate a running 32 bit system to 64 bit. There were rough patches along the way but, all distros were having the same problem in someway or another (vdpau, fglrx, multi-gpu support, ndiswrapper & wireless stuff, etc.) but it's a set it and forget it affair for a very very long time. ...and obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/963/ https://xkcd.com/963/
otabdeveloper2 7y ago
If we're honest: Arch is annoying, but the reason people (including me) run it is because they don't want their OS to explode in a shitstorm every time a 'major upgrade' cycle happens. (Looking at you, Ubuntu.) So, your comment is 180 degrees off the mark. Arch exists for people who don't want breakages to happen. (On the other hand, if you're conditioned by Windows to reinstall the system every year, then Ubuntu might work fine for you.)
- alpaca128 7y ago
  > Arch exists for people who don't want breakages to happen. Or, for people who don't want breakages but also want/need current software versions. Debian-based stuff can be pretty nice and stable as well, but on Arch installing and setting up anything usually "just works" without missing dependencies, renamed packages etc.
- celticmusic 7y ago
  The difference is I that I know the dist-upgrade is coming and can plan for it. With Arch it's on that one day that I really needed to get work done, but Arch decided it wasn't happening. I think I'll take the planned upgrade, thanks.
scalableUnicon 7y ago
Docker to the rescue! For development, docker is godsend. It is a developer must have just like git, I regret I didn't learn it sooner.
ekianjo 7y ago
Strange, the story has been quite the opposite for me, Since I moved to Arch Linux I only had one minor breakage (bluetooth) that was fixed in a day, whereas in Ubuntu I cannot count how many times an update or a PPA broke something.
- mekster 7y ago
  It depends if your Ubuntu is LTS or not. I'd say LTS Ubuntu > Arch > non LTS Ubuntu as Arch tries to be stable on its only version but Ubuntu can be more aggressive between LTS. PPA breaking is apparently not Ubuntu's fault.

enriquto 7y ago

> From my point of view having a centralized repository with a (usually) single (usually) latest version of a library is an awesome thing This reasoning assumes that future versions of software are always better. This is certainly not the case. I would like that a working program does not spontaneusly break because a third party "upgrades", thus introducing a new bug. I am willing to give up anything else to be assured that working programs continue to work no matter what.

bscphil 7y ago
I suppose I should clarify by "latest" that I mean a version of a piece of software that is actively supported and has all the security patches. Like it or not, the ecosystem is currently built around the assumption that you do want to have this, that nobody should still be running e.g. Firefox 34. The question is what the best way of shipping it is. The conversation in the two posts you replied to isn't about whether you always want to be on the bleeding edge all the time, it's about whether it makes sense to have a centralized repository that contains the latest version on some supported channel, which isn't necessarily the same thing as the latest -nightly. I take the position that it is; that shipping a (potentially) different version of a library with every application is a bad approach which is often less secure and harder to maintain.
- xg15 7y ago
  But didn't the OP show exactly a situation where this system broke down? There is a new version of the Rust library. In theory, either anything that supports it should be updated selectively (i.e. Firefox) or all consumers should be updated in lockstep. Yet in practice the maintener decided that neither option was feasible so nothing was updated at all. What went wrong here?

LorenPechtel 7y ago

What they should do is have a centralized repository of packages but allow multiple versions that function independently. That way nothing breaks when one program installs a newer version.

floriol 7y ago
That would require exponential amounts of binaries.