5 ms·

This is kind of my story too. I stick with ubuntu LTS just for an added level of confidence things are compatible, but Arch might be a good idea to look into. T

This is kind of my story too. I stick with ubuntu LTS just for an added level of confidence things are compatible, but Arch might be a good idea to look into. The arch packages are a big plus. Do you find many compatibility issues?

nhumrich 6y ago
I have found that a lot of people _think_ Ubuntu is safe/stable. But because the Linux kernel is a little behind, it usually isn't. I have had way more stability and compatibility with arch because everything is always up to date.
- da_big_ghey 6y ago
  Yeah this always gets overlooked for some reason. Other distros I periodically hit issues with something out-of-date; on Arch, I almost never do. And on the rare occasion that I do, installing the `-git` package from the AUR fixes it.
- folkrav 6y ago
  I've had the exact same amount of major issues using either stable or rolling release distributions. Using one of the other just changes when/why I have to work around the distro. Arch usually has more small "papercuts" I have to fix myself - often problems around suspend/power management or drivers, in my experience. Ubuntu and the likes I usually struggle either when I encounter some bug OOTB (meaning that won't get fixed in a timely manner because "stable") or once I need some package that's just not there. Having to figure out what are the damn dependency equivalents for some program I'm trying to compile that only has Arch instructions is never fun. Obviously YMMV.
- simion314 6y ago
  With Ubuntu you have the choice to install newer kernels and video drivers if you need it and you are competent enough to read instructions. The advantage of stable distros is that you are not surprised with new bugs,feature removal or shiny redesigns. When I needed a new driver to play some game I just installed an official PPA and got the driver and if I did not like it I could install the older version.
- pqb 6y ago
  > I have found that a lot of people _think_ Ubuntu is safe/stable. As a 10+ years long user of Ubuntu and its derivatives (currently Pop_OS!) I would say I know it is stable. Ubuntu still feels like a polished Debian for a typical computer user, which has many of pre-configuration made that non-techies and not-that-much-knowledgable persons will love. I don't like many decision they have made, e.g. favouring snap over apt, complete lack of a proper GUI for managing installed software/packages, sometimes missing packages that are on Debian but not on Ubuntu (though, the deb file can be downloaded and installed with a single command). After tremendous work done by GNOME users to tweak gnome-shell I have never had a freeze / hang up since three years on Ubuntu. I am also happy having recent drivers from Nvidia that works good enough to also never see any problem in 5+ year history related to GPU card. I also didn't have a problem to install drivers for my printer and scanner, which have a dedicated installer (deb file). I am just a happy user. Calling kernel for a reason Ubuntu feels stable is wrong I think. I have tried many times Arch and I had many occasions to be not very convinced to its "stability". The most annoying issue I had on Arch was related to sound - when I was changing volume in Spotify client it was changing the system volume. Imagine the situation when you had a headphones with a volume level set at 3-4% and you have increased it by 20-50%, a nightmare for ears and hearth. After that "feature" I have completely removed Arch from my disk and I am not looking back to it nor other rolling distro. These days I also don't see any unique selling point that Arch had in the past. It is still known for a best documentation and the most recent software. During last 2-3 years I don't remember if I had been complaining on outdated software in Ubuntu. If I would do then there are awesome projects like flatpak, xbps[0] or nix[1] that can be installed without changing my OS and they provide everything what I probably can win using Arch. [0]: https://voidlinux.org/ https://voidlinux.org/ [1]: https://nixos.org/ https://nixos.org/
  - pimeys 6y ago
    For me, why I like Arch is its package system and how easy it is to have the most recent libraries and tools for gaming. I also like Ubuntu and I've used NixOS in the past. What I don't miss from Ubuntu are the PPA's, AUR is much much much nicer. If you plan to do any gaming in Linux, Arch is in the end much more convenient due to AUR. And, I'm biased a bit because my installation is always quite minimal. I only have i3 and my tools for programming, and whatever is needed to run proton games.
- mikevm 6y ago
  What I find annoying about the distro upgrade cycle is that it always automatically disables my 3rd party PPAs and then I have to go and manually re-enable and update them for the new distro version. This is a really poor experience.
- _emacsomancer_ 6y ago
  I generally prefer rolling distros, but while Ubuntu generally doesn't use the latest kernel, it's still providing security patched versions of the kernel regularly.
pimeys 6y ago
If you don't use the computer in a while, like my office workstation when needing to stay home, `pacman -Syyu` packet upgrade might be painful after six months. Otherwise it's the distro I'm having the least amount of problems. Specifically don't miss the PPA's from Ubuntu. With dist upgrades they are quite painful.
necrotic_comp 6y ago
My only/major beefs with Arch are the frequency with which they introduce breaking changes, the fact that your system may not work if you miss a news item, and the lack of humility in the community. It works, for sure, but I always felt a bit iffy when doing a massive update after a while, and I felt like I was being dragged along with their choices instead of making my own. I bought a beefy computer last year and installed Gentoo on it - it's obviously not for everyone, but its reputation as a hard to install distro is overstated, and if you have enough horsepower and ram, an emerge update isn't a big deal. Additionally, having the ability to tailor your builds to not include libraries you don't need AND to install the sources and debug information is huge. Mostly, though, it feels logically designed, and standard sysadmin tools allow you to do maintenance without much hassle. I'd recommend at least looking into it to see if it fits your use case.
- pimeys 6y ago
  It has been much better for the past 5+ years, but what I did with my workstation is I installed Arch into a btrfs file system. Now when I `pacman` whatever, it'll create a snapshot first and then run the updates. If anything breaks, I go to the grub menu, boot into the previous snapshot and rollback into that state. Never needed it yet, but it's good to have. I remember the problems in the past... You can also do it with zfs, but I wanted to not have the filesystem as DKMS.
  - pkulak 6y ago
    I do exactly the same thing. Snapper is amazing. I've used it once, but only because it was a bit more convenient than downgrading the one app that got messed up. I also used it recently when I tried to get the new Assassin's Creed to run. I knew it was a bit of a crap shoot, so I took a snapshot before I started compiling and installing the Git versions of graphics and translations libraries. After a couple hours I realized it wasn't going to work and just rolled my root directory back to before I started throwing packages all over my system. It was very satisfying. :D
- lbhdc 6y ago
  > My only/major beefs with Arch are the frequency with which they introduce breaking changes, the fact that your system may not work if you miss a news item, and the lack of humility in the community. It works, for sure, but I always felt a bit iffy when doing a massive update after a while, and I felt like I was being dragged along with their choices instead of making my own. This was my experience with Arch as well. It left me feeling like I needed to check the wiki to see if there were any new warnings before updating. I switched to distros that release ~6-12mo, and I have found my environment is much stable. Currently on Fedora, but considering trying out Suse Leap.
shirakawasuna 6y ago
I started on gentoo, went to arch, then to ubuntu LTS. Both switches were for the same basic reason: packages broke just often enough that it wasn't worth the benefits of having a simple/clean system or bleeding edge libraries. My switch to ubuntu was maybe 7-8 years ago, though, so I can't speak to whether this has changed. I just know that I used to need to spend 1-5 hours fixing an esoteric X.org problem (or similar) every few months on arch and that I don't need to do this on ubuntu. I stay on ubuntu because of its critical mass of users. If there's a prebuilt package for something, it's probably a .deb that's compatible with ubuntu and debian. And PPAs are nice. I don't like where they're going with snap at all (I disabled snap and added flatpak support instead) and would probably switch if I thought another distro offered the same benefits.

nhumrich 6y ago

I have found that a lot of people _think_ Ubuntu is safe/stable. But because the Linux kernel is a little behind, it usually isn't. I have had way more stability and compatibility with arch because everything is always up to date.

da_big_ghey 6y ago
Yeah this always gets overlooked for some reason. Other distros I periodically hit issues with something out-of-date; on Arch, I almost never do. And on the rare occasion that I do, installing the `-git` package from the AUR fixes it.
folkrav 6y ago
I've had the exact same amount of major issues using either stable or rolling release distributions. Using one of the other just changes when/why I have to work around the distro. Arch usually has more small "papercuts" I have to fix myself - often problems around suspend/power management or drivers, in my experience. Ubuntu and the likes I usually struggle either when I encounter some bug OOTB (meaning that won't get fixed in a timely manner because "stable") or once I need some package that's just not there. Having to figure out what are the damn dependency equivalents for some program I'm trying to compile that only has Arch instructions is never fun. Obviously YMMV.
simion314 6y ago
With Ubuntu you have the choice to install newer kernels and video drivers if you need it and you are competent enough to read instructions. The advantage of stable distros is that you are not surprised with new bugs,feature removal or shiny redesigns. When I needed a new driver to play some game I just installed an official PPA and got the driver and if I did not like it I could install the older version.
pqb 6y ago
> I have found that a lot of people _think_ Ubuntu is safe/stable. As a 10+ years long user of Ubuntu and its derivatives (currently Pop_OS!) I would say I know it is stable. Ubuntu still feels like a polished Debian for a typical computer user, which has many of pre-configuration made that non-techies and not-that-much-knowledgable persons will love. I don't like many decision they have made, e.g. favouring snap over apt, complete lack of a proper GUI for managing installed software/packages, sometimes missing packages that are on Debian but not on Ubuntu (though, the deb file can be downloaded and installed with a single command). After tremendous work done by GNOME users to tweak gnome-shell I have never had a freeze / hang up since three years on Ubuntu. I am also happy having recent drivers from Nvidia that works good enough to also never see any problem in 5+ year history related to GPU card. I also didn't have a problem to install drivers for my printer and scanner, which have a dedicated installer (deb file). I am just a happy user. Calling kernel for a reason Ubuntu feels stable is wrong I think. I have tried many times Arch and I had many occasions to be not very convinced to its "stability". The most annoying issue I had on Arch was related to sound - when I was changing volume in Spotify client it was changing the system volume. Imagine the situation when you had a headphones with a volume level set at 3-4% and you have increased it by 20-50%, a nightmare for ears and hearth. After that "feature" I have completely removed Arch from my disk and I am not looking back to it nor other rolling distro. These days I also don't see any unique selling point that Arch had in the past. It is still known for a best documentation and the most recent software. During last 2-3 years I don't remember if I had been complaining on outdated software in Ubuntu. If I would do then there are awesome projects like flatpak, xbps[0] or nix[1] that can be installed without changing my OS and they provide everything what I probably can win using Arch. [0]: https://voidlinux.org/ https://voidlinux.org/ [1]: https://nixos.org/ https://nixos.org/
- pimeys 6y ago
  For me, why I like Arch is its package system and how easy it is to have the most recent libraries and tools for gaming. I also like Ubuntu and I've used NixOS in the past. What I don't miss from Ubuntu are the PPA's, AUR is much much much nicer. If you plan to do any gaming in Linux, Arch is in the end much more convenient due to AUR. And, I'm biased a bit because my installation is always quite minimal. I only have i3 and my tools for programming, and whatever is needed to run proton games.
mikevm 6y ago
What I find annoying about the distro upgrade cycle is that it always automatically disables my 3rd party PPAs and then I have to go and manually re-enable and update them for the new distro version. This is a really poor experience.
_emacsomancer_ 6y ago
I generally prefer rolling distros, but while Ubuntu generally doesn't use the latest kernel, it's still providing security patched versions of the kernel regularly.

pimeys 6y ago

If you don't use the computer in a while, like my office workstation when needing to stay home, `pacman -Syyu` packet upgrade might be painful after six months. Otherwise it's the distro I'm having the least amount of problems. Specifically don't miss the PPA's from Ubuntu. With dist upgrades they are quite painful.

necrotic_comp 6y ago

My only/major beefs with Arch are the frequency with which they introduce breaking changes, the fact that your system may not work if you miss a news item, and the lack of humility in the community. It works, for sure, but I always felt a bit iffy when doing a massive update after a while, and I felt like I was being dragged along with their choices instead of making my own. I bought a beefy computer last year and installed Gentoo on it - it's obviously not for everyone, but its reputation as a hard to install distro is overstated, and if you have enough horsepower and ram, an emerge update isn't a big deal. Additionally, having the ability to tailor your builds to not include libraries you don't need AND to install the sources and debug information is huge. Mostly, though, it feels logically designed, and standard sysadmin tools allow you to do maintenance without much hassle. I'd recommend at least looking into it to see if it fits your use case.

pimeys 6y ago
It has been much better for the past 5+ years, but what I did with my workstation is I installed Arch into a btrfs file system. Now when I `pacman` whatever, it'll create a snapshot first and then run the updates. If anything breaks, I go to the grub menu, boot into the previous snapshot and rollback into that state. Never needed it yet, but it's good to have. I remember the problems in the past... You can also do it with zfs, but I wanted to not have the filesystem as DKMS.
- pkulak 6y ago
  I do exactly the same thing. Snapper is amazing. I've used it once, but only because it was a bit more convenient than downgrading the one app that got messed up. I also used it recently when I tried to get the new Assassin's Creed to run. I knew it was a bit of a crap shoot, so I took a snapshot before I started compiling and installing the Git versions of graphics and translations libraries. After a couple hours I realized it wasn't going to work and just rolled my root directory back to before I started throwing packages all over my system. It was very satisfying. :D
lbhdc 6y ago
> My only/major beefs with Arch are the frequency with which they introduce breaking changes, the fact that your system may not work if you miss a news item, and the lack of humility in the community. It works, for sure, but I always felt a bit iffy when doing a massive update after a while, and I felt like I was being dragged along with their choices instead of making my own. This was my experience with Arch as well. It left me feeling like I needed to check the wiki to see if there were any new warnings before updating. I switched to distros that release ~6-12mo, and I have found my environment is much stable. Currently on Fedora, but considering trying out Suse Leap.

shirakawasuna 6y ago

I started on gentoo, went to arch, then to ubuntu LTS. Both switches were for the same basic reason: packages broke just often enough that it wasn't worth the benefits of having a simple/clean system or bleeding edge libraries. My switch to ubuntu was maybe 7-8 years ago, though, so I can't speak to whether this has changed. I just know that I used to need to spend 1-5 hours fixing an esoteric X.org problem (or similar) every few months on arch and that I don't need to do this on ubuntu. I stay on ubuntu because of its critical mass of users. If there's a prebuilt package for something, it's probably a .deb that's compatible with ubuntu and debian. And PPAs are nice. I don't like where they're going with snap at all (I disabled snap and added flatpak support instead) and would probably switch if I thought another distro offered the same benefits.