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Yes, all of this is definitely true and I'm not actually complaining about it, I have used arch on all my machines for 7 or 8 years and don't plan to change tha

Yes, all of this is definitely true and I'm not actually complaining about it, I have used arch on all my machines for 7 or 8 years and don't plan to change that anytime soon, but these problems are actually unique to using arch and other rolling distros. Ubuntu, Fedora, etc have coordinated releases with some level of testing that things are compatible with each other. On arch, these are problems one must deal with though. I don't mind dealing with it, I live for Linux stuff, but the point is that it does happen to real users and it's not for everyone. > Partial upgrades are explicitly unsupported by the distro. Pacman allows you to do this, but you're on your own. Definitely correct, the issue is when you're trying to install a package to get something done, and suddenly your faced with the proposition of either upgrading your whole system while trying to get work done or attempting to upgrade just the required libraries. The latter often carries less risk, but occasionally is very problematic. > And this is why as an Arch user you will be nudged by experience to use software that gives a crap about quality. The issue is that this is true of so many very major pieces of linux software. Upstream vendors don't necessarily test their stuff in a ton of contexts, plenty of bugs occur in the kernel/xorg/wayland/gnome/glibc/python/etc. All of these are very mainstream projects that are difficult to avoid.

lern_too_spel 5y ago
The problem with rolling release distros like Arch is that I don't actually care about running the latest version of all my software. For most of software on my system, I only care that it works. The few things I do want on the bleeding edge, I'll just build myself.
- paulfurtado 5y ago
  That said, the ABS tree and the AUR in arch, combined with the general avoidance of patches, do make arch one of the easiest places to play with bleeding edge software. With the toolchain in place, so many packages are just a one line version number change to get any particular version building. Whereas building packages from source on ubuntu/fedora/etc can be an uphill battle depending how entrenched the distro's patches and inter version dependencies are. (Though most of the time, building things via make and sticking them in some directory is acceptable, arch really does make building packages easier than other distros)
- waheoo 5y ago
  Arch isn't bleeding edge, its latest stable. If the software you get isn't stable that's on the software authors you've chosen to rely on, not arch, not rolling releases. I found more problems using e.g. debian stable. Upgrades were totally black box and anything could break spectacularly. This was most commonly caused by mixing up to date software you build yourself and the stable repos. Arch on the other hand updates happen daily, and for me, unattended. If I ever do find issues (rare to never), backups fix it.
  - hutrdvnj 5y ago
    > Arch isn't bleeding edge, its latest stable. For any definition of stable.
boomboomsubban 5y ago
>Definitely correct, the issue is when you're trying to install a package to get something done, and suddenly your faced with the proposition of either upgrading your whole system while trying to get work done or attempting to upgrade just the required libraries. The latter often carries less risk, but occasionally is very problematic. I may be wrong, as my default is to -Syu any package I install, but doesn't -S install the version of the package compatible with the last time you updated your repos? It's -Sy that can cause problems.
- paulfurtado 5y ago
  Package versions don't remain in the repo for long so if you don't update the package index you'll find that many packages are not installable. There isn't really a snapshot of compatible versions at a given point in time as far as I know, though this might work for a couple of weeks.

lern_too_spel 5y ago

The problem with rolling release distros like Arch is that I don't actually care about running the latest version of all my software. For most of software on my system, I only care that it works. The few things I do want on the bleeding edge, I'll just build myself.

paulfurtado 5y ago
That said, the ABS tree and the AUR in arch, combined with the general avoidance of patches, do make arch one of the easiest places to play with bleeding edge software. With the toolchain in place, so many packages are just a one line version number change to get any particular version building. Whereas building packages from source on ubuntu/fedora/etc can be an uphill battle depending how entrenched the distro's patches and inter version dependencies are. (Though most of the time, building things via make and sticking them in some directory is acceptable, arch really does make building packages easier than other distros)
waheoo 5y ago
Arch isn't bleeding edge, its latest stable. If the software you get isn't stable that's on the software authors you've chosen to rely on, not arch, not rolling releases. I found more problems using e.g. debian stable. Upgrades were totally black box and anything could break spectacularly. This was most commonly caused by mixing up to date software you build yourself and the stable repos. Arch on the other hand updates happen daily, and for me, unattended. If I ever do find issues (rare to never), backups fix it.
- hutrdvnj 5y ago
  > Arch isn't bleeding edge, its latest stable. For any definition of stable.

boomboomsubban 5y ago

>Definitely correct, the issue is when you're trying to install a package to get something done, and suddenly your faced with the proposition of either upgrading your whole system while trying to get work done or attempting to upgrade just the required libraries. The latter often carries less risk, but occasionally is very problematic. I may be wrong, as my default is to -Syu any package I install, but doesn't -S install the version of the package compatible with the last time you updated your repos? It's -Sy that can cause problems.

paulfurtado 5y ago
Package versions don't remain in the repo for long so if you don't update the package index you'll find that many packages are not installable. There isn't really a snapshot of compatible versions at a given point in time as far as I know, though this might work for a couple of weeks.