5 ms·

> Why did I switch just before school? Because I didn’t want the stress of trying to troubleshoot breakage from updates when I was in the middle of assignments

> Why did I switch just before school? Because I didn’t want the stress of trying to troubleshoot breakage from updates when I was in the middle of assignments and midterms etc. I am certain your experience was as your describe but I do wonder if the community is making a mistake by continuing to recommend Ubuntu or the like as I've always heard most stories of this nature from there. Which is kind of funny considering Arch is generally considered not stable, but I am was able to depend on it during my uni years as well as now when I am a full-time software dev, running close to a decade without major issues in fact.

pmontra 6y ago
To add a data point, I upgraded Ubuntu from 19.10 to 20.04 a week ago. It was 99% uneventful maybe for the first time in 10 years. I didn't have to reconfigure even the dozen Gnome Shell extensions I use. The missing 1% is the new openssl. It didn't let me connect to a few servers with old ciphers. I had to google how to enable them again. Hardly Ubuntu's fault and I don't have control on those servers or I would have upgraded them too and solved the problem in the right way.
Leherenn 6y ago
I would tend to agree. I think the issue is the LTS model, it's great for servers, but not so much for users. As the LTS version gets older, most of your software starts to get seriously out of date, so every time you need something newer, it's easy to make a mess because you will have multiple versions of the same thing, as well as the dependencies and so on. Upgrades are also quite scary, and often results in broken systems. Rolling releases like Arch are much more user friendly in that regard, and breakage are uncommon. Installing older versions of already installed software is also much less frequent, and with the AUR it's really easy (at least compared to PPAs).
chongli 6y ago
I deliberately omitted the distribution from my comment in order to avoid having the discussion head down this path. Now that I see that it was unavoidable, I will mention that Arch was my distribution of choice throughout the bulk of my time with Linux (it’s still installed on my desktop), apart from some brief forays into NixOS. I think this is just more evidence of the problem. There is so much infighting between the distributions that the community is unable to come together to create a solution. Linux is a tool for developers, not users, and its values put the convenience of developers ahead of the needs of users.
- AsyncAwait 6y ago
  The only reason I mentioned Arch specifically is because from personal experience it plays nicer with more hardware than other distros I've tried, probably because of bleeding edge components and I generally had success with it when things didn't work otherwise. > I think this is just more evidence of the problem. There is so much infighting between the distributions that the community is unable to come together to create a solution. With all due respect, but I think this completely misses the mark, the various distros do in fact do things in different ways, I know to Windows/macOS users this may seem baffling but even if we were to come together and create a single distro I think many Linux users, myself included, would reject that. You see, there's a certain philosophy that is behind most major distros and is whichever philosophy you sync up most with, that's the distro you tend to sick with. Windows/macOS suffer from the lowest common denominator problem for many power users and that's fine as long as there's an out for them, like Linux provides right now. If you're just going to have a single distro, you recreated exactly the same problems current Linux users ran away from originally. I don't know why everybody has to conform to a singular interface or vision, it seems wrong to me. If Linux is just for developers because of that, fine. Developers are users too and if they're not well served by the proprietary platforms, I think it's pretty legitimate for Linux to be what primarily speaks to them. I do have plenty of stories of non-developers, (even digital artists), being happy with Linux, but that's for another time. As for "the community is unable to come together to create a solution", looking at major cross distro projects like GNOME, KDE, GNU etc. nothing can be further from the truth. There's a great amount of cross-distro collaboration happening there. That does not mean one cannot compare or contrast the distros, that's not immediately 'infighting'. For example even if I prefer Arch, I do use CentOS on some of my server deployments and I certainly appreciate it and by extension what the Fedora folks are doing. This push to be uniform everywhere, in terms of interfaces, opinions, consensus etc. is not healthy nor sophisticated in my opinion. If you look at the world of politics, all that gets you is two parties who both agree to launch offensive wars. Some healthy, principled differences aren't a bad thing per se.
  - chongli 6y ago
    Windows and macOS make allowances for power users who aren’t developers. To the Linux community this makes no sense. That is the difference. The term “power user”, from the perspective of the Linux philosophy, is synonymous with a person who customizes every aspect of their workflow, often writing lots of code and scripts, to arrive at something unique and specific to them. This is not what a typical Mac or Windows power user does. Instead, on those platforms, being a power user can also be marked by being a user of powerful productivity software, whether it be graphics or audio or video production, or even advanced usage of business productivity software such as Excel. These users do not typically customize their workflow very much. They insist that their computer be as powerful, low latency, and reliable as possible. They have neither the knowledge nor inclination to delve into the operating system internals in order to troubleshoot issues of latency or performance or reliability. Yet they get far more out of their computers than a typical user, who merely use them for browsing and social media. Linux users do not consider these users to be power users but Apple and Microsoft do. This is what I meant when I said that “Linux is a tool for developers, not users, and its values put the convenience of developers ahead of the needs of users.”
alfalfasprout 6y ago
I do like Arch and use it on my desktop, but the fact is there are so many great productivity apps on OSX that I'm not willing to give it up. Eg; Things.
- AsyncAwait 6y ago
  That's fair. Coincidentally I just saw this article about using org-mode + mobile apps for task management [1]. 1 - https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/825837/068043ae2c5657be https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/825837/068043ae2c5657be

pmontra 6y ago

To add a data point, I upgraded Ubuntu from 19.10 to 20.04 a week ago. It was 99% uneventful maybe for the first time in 10 years. I didn't have to reconfigure even the dozen Gnome Shell extensions I use. The missing 1% is the new openssl. It didn't let me connect to a few servers with old ciphers. I had to google how to enable them again. Hardly Ubuntu's fault and I don't have control on those servers or I would have upgraded them too and solved the problem in the right way.

Leherenn 6y ago

I would tend to agree. I think the issue is the LTS model, it's great for servers, but not so much for users. As the LTS version gets older, most of your software starts to get seriously out of date, so every time you need something newer, it's easy to make a mess because you will have multiple versions of the same thing, as well as the dependencies and so on. Upgrades are also quite scary, and often results in broken systems. Rolling releases like Arch are much more user friendly in that regard, and breakage are uncommon. Installing older versions of already installed software is also much less frequent, and with the AUR it's really easy (at least compared to PPAs).

chongli 6y ago

I deliberately omitted the distribution from my comment in order to avoid having the discussion head down this path. Now that I see that it was unavoidable, I will mention that Arch was my distribution of choice throughout the bulk of my time with Linux (it’s still installed on my desktop), apart from some brief forays into NixOS. I think this is just more evidence of the problem. There is so much infighting between the distributions that the community is unable to come together to create a solution. Linux is a tool for developers, not users, and its values put the convenience of developers ahead of the needs of users.

AsyncAwait 6y ago
The only reason I mentioned Arch specifically is because from personal experience it plays nicer with more hardware than other distros I've tried, probably because of bleeding edge components and I generally had success with it when things didn't work otherwise. > I think this is just more evidence of the problem. There is so much infighting between the distributions that the community is unable to come together to create a solution. With all due respect, but I think this completely misses the mark, the various distros do in fact do things in different ways, I know to Windows/macOS users this may seem baffling but even if we were to come together and create a single distro I think many Linux users, myself included, would reject that. You see, there's a certain philosophy that is behind most major distros and is whichever philosophy you sync up most with, that's the distro you tend to sick with. Windows/macOS suffer from the lowest common denominator problem for many power users and that's fine as long as there's an out for them, like Linux provides right now. If you're just going to have a single distro, you recreated exactly the same problems current Linux users ran away from originally. I don't know why everybody has to conform to a singular interface or vision, it seems wrong to me. If Linux is just for developers because of that, fine. Developers are users too and if they're not well served by the proprietary platforms, I think it's pretty legitimate for Linux to be what primarily speaks to them. I do have plenty of stories of non-developers, (even digital artists), being happy with Linux, but that's for another time. As for "the community is unable to come together to create a solution", looking at major cross distro projects like GNOME, KDE, GNU etc. nothing can be further from the truth. There's a great amount of cross-distro collaboration happening there. That does not mean one cannot compare or contrast the distros, that's not immediately 'infighting'. For example even if I prefer Arch, I do use CentOS on some of my server deployments and I certainly appreciate it and by extension what the Fedora folks are doing. This push to be uniform everywhere, in terms of interfaces, opinions, consensus etc. is not healthy nor sophisticated in my opinion. If you look at the world of politics, all that gets you is two parties who both agree to launch offensive wars. Some healthy, principled differences aren't a bad thing per se.
- chongli 6y ago
  Windows and macOS make allowances for power users who aren’t developers. To the Linux community this makes no sense. That is the difference. The term “power user”, from the perspective of the Linux philosophy, is synonymous with a person who customizes every aspect of their workflow, often writing lots of code and scripts, to arrive at something unique and specific to them. This is not what a typical Mac or Windows power user does. Instead, on those platforms, being a power user can also be marked by being a user of powerful productivity software, whether it be graphics or audio or video production, or even advanced usage of business productivity software such as Excel. These users do not typically customize their workflow very much. They insist that their computer be as powerful, low latency, and reliable as possible. They have neither the knowledge nor inclination to delve into the operating system internals in order to troubleshoot issues of latency or performance or reliability. Yet they get far more out of their computers than a typical user, who merely use them for browsing and social media. Linux users do not consider these users to be power users but Apple and Microsoft do. This is what I meant when I said that “Linux is a tool for developers, not users, and its values put the convenience of developers ahead of the needs of users.”

alfalfasprout 6y ago

I do like Arch and use it on my desktop, but the fact is there are so many great productivity apps on OSX that I'm not willing to give it up. Eg; Things.

AsyncAwait 6y ago
That's fair. Coincidentally I just saw this article about using org-mode + mobile apps for task management [1]. 1 - https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/825837/068043ae2c5657be https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/825837/068043ae2c5657be