4 ms·

and breaks constantly, which is why I stopped using it.

jolmg 7y ago
"brake" makes it sound like one would have to reinstall the whole thing. I don't think I've ever had that happen in the 10 years since I started using it for nearly everything. I've had my drive fail, but that was the drive's fault, and even in that case I also didn't need to reinstall everything. I just copied the good files and reinstalled only the packages whose files got corrupted.
- celticmusic 7y ago
  That's a semantic point. If I sit down in front of my PC and can't do work, it's broken. That I can spend an hour or two fixing it rather than reinstalling is irrelevant.
  - jolmg 7y ago
    I see, when you said "break", I thought you meant because of a bug or other error, but now I guess the fact that it needs configuration and learning how to do that configuration is what you're calling broken. Certainly, Arch is definitely not a "it just works" OS. It's a tinkerer's OS. Different distros favor different types of users. By what you said, probably something like Ubuntu or Mint is better, something that "just works" with minimal learning curve for someone not familiar with Linux in general and that does not wish to invest the time in learning it. (Not saying that you're not at least familiar with it, but that's what these distros optimize for, I believe.)
    - chousuke 7y ago
      Arch is not an easy distro to use even if you know what you're doing. Every Arch user essentially creates their own distribution which can break at any point depending on their particular environment. You need to take care of all the little things yourself. Personally I didn't experience all that much breakage, but eventually got frustrated by kernel updates breaking hotplug kernel module loading until reboot because Arch removes kernel modules for the running kernel. This breaks random things like plugging in a USB drive unless you happened to load the module previously, so you're essentially forced to reboot every time you upgrade the kernel or take care to manually exclude it. I'm grateful for Arch because their wiki is beyond excellent, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone unless they just want to tinker.
      - dzsekijo 7y ago
        Once you understand this, it seems to me to be a very simple step to align your kernel upgrades with reboots. I fail to see this as an usability issue.
        chousuke 7y ago
        Well, I still had to manually exclude the kernel every time I wanted to update other packages. It's a minor issue, but an annoying one.
    - celticmusic 7y ago
      Why respond in this dishonest manner? When I left Arch I had been using it for over 10 years. I probably still understand it better than you do. Is your supposition that a "misconfiguration" just "happened" randomly over night? No, it's a rolling release distribution, software on it will break randomly on updates. You need to read their FAQ, even their official document will tell you this happens and it's not their responsibility due to the rolling release nature of the distribution.
      - fao_ 7y ago
        My main computer was an arch box for about 7 years (I moved computers after 3 years, hence why my other comment says 4, I just remembered my old tower from around 2014 that also runs arch). In that time, the only breaking updates that occurred always had clear solutions on the homepage, with something you could paste in and fix. I stopped using it because systemd randomly hung on boot, for no clear reason (even after debugging it and trying to speed up boot), but I've had that with several other systemd-related distributions, too.
      - jolmg 7y ago
        What's dishonest about it? I'm trying to understand the issues that you mean, and the need to configure before getting to work is what I understood you to mean as broken. I'm not talking about misconfiguration; that's different. You emphasized that if you couldn't get straight to work then it was broken. When I can't get straight to work, it's because I need to configure something. I'm using "configure" to mean any sort of maintenance on the machine itself that doesn't involve "real work". If that's not it, then I've no clue anymore about what you mean as broken.
        celticmusic 7y ago
        no one else in this conversation has the same "misunderstanding" that you do. Go ask them for clarification.

"brake" makes it sound like one would have to reinstall the whole thing. I don't think I've ever had that happen in the 10 years since I started using it for nearly everything. I've had my drive fail, but that was the drive's fault, and even in that case I also didn't need to reinstall everything. I just copied the good files and reinstalled only the packages whose files got corrupted.

celticmusic 7y ago
That's a semantic point. If I sit down in front of my PC and can't do work, it's broken. That I can spend an hour or two fixing it rather than reinstalling is irrelevant.
- jolmg 7y ago
  I see, when you said "break", I thought you meant because of a bug or other error, but now I guess the fact that it needs configuration and learning how to do that configuration is what you're calling broken. Certainly, Arch is definitely not a "it just works" OS. It's a tinkerer's OS. Different distros favor different types of users. By what you said, probably something like Ubuntu or Mint is better, something that "just works" with minimal learning curve for someone not familiar with Linux in general and that does not wish to invest the time in learning it. (Not saying that you're not at least familiar with it, but that's what these distros optimize for, I believe.)
  - chousuke 7y ago
    Arch is not an easy distro to use even if you know what you're doing. Every Arch user essentially creates their own distribution which can break at any point depending on their particular environment. You need to take care of all the little things yourself. Personally I didn't experience all that much breakage, but eventually got frustrated by kernel updates breaking hotplug kernel module loading until reboot because Arch removes kernel modules for the running kernel. This breaks random things like plugging in a USB drive unless you happened to load the module previously, so you're essentially forced to reboot every time you upgrade the kernel or take care to manually exclude it. I'm grateful for Arch because their wiki is beyond excellent, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone unless they just want to tinker.
    - dzsekijo 7y ago
      Once you understand this, it seems to me to be a very simple step to align your kernel upgrades with reboots. I fail to see this as an usability issue.
      - chousuke 7y ago
        Well, I still had to manually exclude the kernel every time I wanted to update other packages. It's a minor issue, but an annoying one.
  - celticmusic 7y ago
    Why respond in this dishonest manner? When I left Arch I had been using it for over 10 years. I probably still understand it better than you do. Is your supposition that a "misconfiguration" just "happened" randomly over night? No, it's a rolling release distribution, software on it will break randomly on updates. You need to read their FAQ, even their official document will tell you this happens and it's not their responsibility due to the rolling release nature of the distribution.
    - fao_ 7y ago
      My main computer was an arch box for about 7 years (I moved computers after 3 years, hence why my other comment says 4, I just remembered my old tower from around 2014 that also runs arch). In that time, the only breaking updates that occurred always had clear solutions on the homepage, with something you could paste in and fix. I stopped using it because systemd randomly hung on boot, for no clear reason (even after debugging it and trying to speed up boot), but I've had that with several other systemd-related distributions, too.
    - jolmg 7y ago
      What's dishonest about it? I'm trying to understand the issues that you mean, and the need to configure before getting to work is what I understood you to mean as broken. I'm not talking about misconfiguration; that's different. You emphasized that if you couldn't get straight to work then it was broken. When I can't get straight to work, it's because I need to configure something. I'm using "configure" to mean any sort of maintenance on the machine itself that doesn't involve "real work". If that's not it, then I've no clue anymore about what you mean as broken.
      - celticmusic 7y ago
        no one else in this conversation has the same "misunderstanding" that you do. Go ask them for clarification.