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if you like Ubuntu and stability go debian. edit: the downvotes are fascinating. if you do LIVE performances and even remotely care about stability Arch is the

by modzu 6y ago

if you like Ubuntu and stability go debian. edit: the downvotes are fascinating. if you do LIVE performances and even remotely care about stability Arch is the last distro you should use. its a great distro but its bleeding edge by design. part of the fun of arch. contrarian views should be expressed with words if possible because id like to know what universe some of you are from..

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
daenz 6y ago
I didn't downvote you, but the appeal of Arch to me is the extreme customization. Sometimes I need to do really funky setups. That said, the stability of debian is also very appealing for the very reasons you stated.
maximente 6y ago
i saw it explained once to someone else that arch is more cutting edge, than bleeding edge. it's not like you're getting beta software or anything with arch - it just updates very frequently. it's a hacker's OS at the end of the day; the culture is that you're buying in to the high ownership/control of your machine, ergo you're going to put a higher effort into at least searching wiki/forums/main page for issues. you can actually get a very stable system in the same way you would any other OS: install only the packages you can live with. you can install, say, xmonad and no DE and have a slick, solid, low resource dev setup, whereas ubuntu comes with some goofy ubuntu software store that's not removable (or wasn't when i last used it) - one wonders what other "goodies" are in there, esp. after amazon search behavior change. remember that deleted code is debugged code: the more spartan, the less chance for issues. so arch's actually a plus there. FWIW my boomer parents run arch on 2 different desktops solidly, without much sysadmin work from me other than a few pacman upgrades whenever i remember to VPN back in, perhaps biweekly on average. yes the occasional breakage happens, see above re: website/forum/etc. debian stable was OK as firefox was fairly regularly updated for vulnerabilities, but the actual version number was lagging a fair bit behind. ubuntu LTS just seemed like a worse debian. ubuntu non-LTS is a non-starter: probably 50% of the dist-upgrades i ran ended up failing and basically needing a clean reinstall for anything not in /home, so it's fairly admin hostile in that sense.

by modzu 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

daenz 6y ago

I didn't downvote you, but the appeal of Arch to me is the extreme customization. Sometimes I need to do really funky setups. That said, the stability of debian is also very appealing for the very reasons you stated.

maximente 6y ago

i saw it explained once to someone else that arch is more cutting edge, than bleeding edge. it's not like you're getting beta software or anything with arch - it just updates very frequently. it's a hacker's OS at the end of the day; the culture is that you're buying in to the high ownership/control of your machine, ergo you're going to put a higher effort into at least searching wiki/forums/main page for issues. you can actually get a very stable system in the same way you would any other OS: install only the packages you can live with. you can install, say, xmonad and no DE and have a slick, solid, low resource dev setup, whereas ubuntu comes with some goofy ubuntu software store that's not removable (or wasn't when i last used it) - one wonders what other "goodies" are in there, esp. after amazon search behavior change. remember that deleted code is debugged code: the more spartan, the less chance for issues. so arch's actually a plus there. FWIW my boomer parents run arch on 2 different desktops solidly, without much sysadmin work from me other than a few pacman upgrades whenever i remember to VPN back in, perhaps biweekly on average. yes the occasional breakage happens, see above re: website/forum/etc. debian stable was OK as firefox was fairly regularly updated for vulnerabilities, but the actual version number was lagging a fair bit behind. ubuntu LTS just seemed like a worse debian. ubuntu non-LTS is a non-starter: probably 50% of the dist-upgrades i ran ended up failing and basically needing a clean reinstall for anything not in /home, so it's fairly admin hostile in that sense.