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> Yes. However, Arch Linux means you need to spend time, probably several times per year, to fix stuff that worked yesterday but doesn't work anymore. Largely

> Yes. However, Arch Linux means you need to spend time, probably several times per year, to fix stuff that worked yesterday but doesn't work anymore. Largely a myth and config-dependent. I used to have this issue 10 years ago but now most of my troubles are self-inflicted. Things are as stable as they come when using software from the official repos.

piyh 6y ago
I feel like a fairly competent Linux user and within 2 months had my Arch install broken to a point where I didn't want to invest the time to go down that "why is right click broken along with all these dependencies" rabbit hole. I went back to my mint/debian/Ubuntu safe space.
- loudmax 6y ago
  I installed Arch Linux on a ThinkPad in 2011 and it's literally running the same OS today, nearly 10 years later. I won't say I've never had anything break, but never anything major like audio or video or wifi. In my experience, Arch is one of the most stable OS's I've seen. But I suspect a lot of it has to do with what you're doing with it. First, ThinkPads are generally well supported in Linux. Also, I've never seen any reason to use GNOME as a desktop. I used to run XFCE on Compiz, then i3 as Compiz stopped being updated. More recently, I've switched to sway, and I've finally started using PulseAudio because it's required for Zoom. Obviously, i3 and sway aren't for everyone. YMMV.
  - gautamcgoel 6y ago
    I've been thinking about leaving Fedora and your comment intrigues me. Does Zoom work well with i3? Can you share your screen? Regarding PulseAudio, I didn't realize Linux users had a choice about whether to use it - is there an alternate audio subsystem available?
    - namibj 6y ago
      Alsa and JACK are major forces aside from PulseAudio.
    - tuankiet65 6y ago
      > Does Zoom work well with i3? Can you share your screen? Yes and yes. Source: I run Zoom with i3.
      - gautamcgoel 6y ago
        Do you happen to know if Zoom is available on FreeBSD?
    - mixedCase 6y ago
      You've already been told about ALSA (which Pulse uses and organizes, for its the low-level audio subsystem the kernel offers) and Jack, which specializes in low-latency audio. There's also sndio ported from OpenBSD. But the one you might want to consider instead is called PipeWire. It implements the ALSA, Pulse and Jack APIs with a single implementation and it's pretty much the future of audio (and video casting) on Linux. If you're using Wayland, you're already using PipeWire, but likely not for audio. On Fedora you can follow the instructions here https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/DefaultPipeWire https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/DefaultPipeWire which basically boil down as "uninstall pulse and install these packages" and you'll be using PipeWire for your audio. I had tried several times to switch to it and it was not ready, but about a week ago I've been able to make the move with no loss in functionality and even got a fix to an old bug that affected my sound card, so at least with version 0.3.22 I can recommend giving it a go. Switching back to Pulse if bugs arise is trivial anyway.
    - loudmax 6y ago
      I never had any problem with Zoom on i3, but I never tried to share my screen. Zoom on sway works, but since sway runs on top of Wayland and Zoom doesn't have the bindings to communicate with Wayland, I'm fairly positive screen sharing would not work. At least, not out of the box ... it might be possible to connect it to some other screen capture process if you're adventurous. PulseAudio runs on top of ALSA. Traditionally, Linux desktop applications connect with ALSA and you can still manage ALSA directly. More recent applications, such as Zoom, expect to connect with Pulse and don't support connecting directly to ALSA. From a user perspective, Pulse offers some advantages like being able to manage audio levels for different applications independently. In early releases, Pulse was unstable and difficult to troubleshoot, so it was easier just to use ALSA directly. Pulse has gotten a lot better in recent versions.
tuankiet65 6y ago
I used to believe that a properly configured Arch Linux setup is super stable, until one day when I upgraded the Linux kernel and there was multiple GPU hangs and graphics glitches. It's fixed upstream now, but it does make me think again about running close to the bleeding edge. On the same line, I don't realize that my Bluetooth driver was broken until I checked dmesg. This one wasn't fixed upstream yet, but I don't need Bluetooth on my laptop anyway.

piyh 6y ago

I feel like a fairly competent Linux user and within 2 months had my Arch install broken to a point where I didn't want to invest the time to go down that "why is right click broken along with all these dependencies" rabbit hole. I went back to my mint/debian/Ubuntu safe space.

loudmax 6y ago
I installed Arch Linux on a ThinkPad in 2011 and it's literally running the same OS today, nearly 10 years later. I won't say I've never had anything break, but never anything major like audio or video or wifi. In my experience, Arch is one of the most stable OS's I've seen. But I suspect a lot of it has to do with what you're doing with it. First, ThinkPads are generally well supported in Linux. Also, I've never seen any reason to use GNOME as a desktop. I used to run XFCE on Compiz, then i3 as Compiz stopped being updated. More recently, I've switched to sway, and I've finally started using PulseAudio because it's required for Zoom. Obviously, i3 and sway aren't for everyone. YMMV.
- gautamcgoel 6y ago
  I've been thinking about leaving Fedora and your comment intrigues me. Does Zoom work well with i3? Can you share your screen? Regarding PulseAudio, I didn't realize Linux users had a choice about whether to use it - is there an alternate audio subsystem available?
  - namibj 6y ago
    Alsa and JACK are major forces aside from PulseAudio.
  - tuankiet65 6y ago
    > Does Zoom work well with i3? Can you share your screen? Yes and yes. Source: I run Zoom with i3.
    - gautamcgoel 6y ago
      Do you happen to know if Zoom is available on FreeBSD?
  - mixedCase 6y ago
    You've already been told about ALSA (which Pulse uses and organizes, for its the low-level audio subsystem the kernel offers) and Jack, which specializes in low-latency audio. There's also sndio ported from OpenBSD. But the one you might want to consider instead is called PipeWire. It implements the ALSA, Pulse and Jack APIs with a single implementation and it's pretty much the future of audio (and video casting) on Linux. If you're using Wayland, you're already using PipeWire, but likely not for audio. On Fedora you can follow the instructions here https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/DefaultPipeWire https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/DefaultPipeWire which basically boil down as "uninstall pulse and install these packages" and you'll be using PipeWire for your audio. I had tried several times to switch to it and it was not ready, but about a week ago I've been able to make the move with no loss in functionality and even got a fix to an old bug that affected my sound card, so at least with version 0.3.22 I can recommend giving it a go. Switching back to Pulse if bugs arise is trivial anyway.
  - loudmax 6y ago
    I never had any problem with Zoom on i3, but I never tried to share my screen. Zoom on sway works, but since sway runs on top of Wayland and Zoom doesn't have the bindings to communicate with Wayland, I'm fairly positive screen sharing would not work. At least, not out of the box ... it might be possible to connect it to some other screen capture process if you're adventurous. PulseAudio runs on top of ALSA. Traditionally, Linux desktop applications connect with ALSA and you can still manage ALSA directly. More recent applications, such as Zoom, expect to connect with Pulse and don't support connecting directly to ALSA. From a user perspective, Pulse offers some advantages like being able to manage audio levels for different applications independently. In early releases, Pulse was unstable and difficult to troubleshoot, so it was easier just to use ALSA directly. Pulse has gotten a lot better in recent versions.

tuankiet65 6y ago

I used to believe that a properly configured Arch Linux setup is super stable, until one day when I upgraded the Linux kernel and there was multiple GPU hangs and graphics glitches. It's fixed upstream now, but it does make me think again about running close to the bleeding edge. On the same line, I don't realize that my Bluetooth driver was broken until I checked dmesg. This one wasn't fixed upstream yet, but I don't need Bluetooth on my laptop anyway.