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Arch Linux is amazing. The biggest surprise for me was that it's more stable than so-called stable distros, probably because the various packages don't end up d

by l0b0 5y ago

Arch Linux is amazing. The biggest surprise for me was that it's more stable than so-called stable distros, probably because the various packages don't end up drifting several months from each other when keeping up to date. Hopefully this eventually results in more user friendly Arch Linux installers. The learning curve is an absolute wall when installing, even after several years on Linux, but after that it's pretty standard. Based on this trajectory I expect they'll be migrating to NixOS (or maybe Nix on Arch) in about 5-10 years.

christophilus 5y ago
I share your feelings about Arch, but I'm still running Fedora mostly out of laziness. Still, I think Arch is an interesting choice for a console. I'd think you'd want stability (in the sense of very controlled changes / not requiring updates every day).
- gchamonlive 5y ago
  If you are conservative and thorough in your update routine, arch can be very stable.
  - awill 5y ago
    Agreed. I've used Arch for about 12 years. My system has been unbootable after an update maybe 3 times. That's not bad really, and that's just applying updates daily. Any additional rigour should improve this a lot.
    - gchamonlive 5y ago
      I myself had a couple of bricks when messing with grub. Nothing that a live boot and a mkinitcpio didn't solve.
- Jnr 5y ago
  My guess is that Valve will keep their own mirrors and update from upstream only once their relevant packages will be tested for compatibility. I have been using Archlinux for more than 10 years and from time to time some major upgrades can make things broken for a couple days until all the packages get updated and all the relevant compatibility fixes have been pushed upstream by the developers. But in most cases this happens with some 3rd party desktop related packages or closed source drivers. I bet that Valve won't have that many problems with AMD since their drivers are open source.
  - ThatPlayer 5y ago
    I could also see them running a read-only system partition with snapshots for updates. And with btrfs send/receive you could do 'system updates' with just incremental snapshots, and the ability to rollback. Or just use packages and make regular snapshots.
- whatshisface 5y ago
  The problem with Arch is that Arch needs to be tinkered with when Arch wants to be tinkered with, not when you want to spend an evening messing with your OS configuration. "This evening I want to learn about X," becomes "this evening I am learning about the linux userspace ecosystem," for every value of X.
  - xyproto 5y ago
    Not if you have a filesystem with snapshots.
    - IX-103 5y ago
      I was going to say that idea would have helped so much back when I ran Gentoo, but then I remembered how often my 40 GB hard drive was full.
- adrusi 5y ago
  Steam bundles its own runtime for games (it can be configured to use system libs instead, but that's not the default). Games will often also ship with copies of additional libraries not in steam's runtime. I bet that the underlying distribution doesn't matter much at all, and since this console is meant to also be a desktop (or living room) PC, might as well ship with a distribution that's good for that purpose. Arch makes more sense for desktops than Ubuntu, and has for a while tbh.
- beermonster 5y ago
  With just one hardware profile and their own upstream repos fed from Arch they’ll probably have best of both worlds.
mr_sturd 5y ago
Manjaro Linux provides a nice, easy installer for Arch. With different editions based on your preferred DE. https://manjaro.org/download/ https://manjaro.org/download/
- gchamonlive 5y ago
  For pure arch, there are some helpers, like Arcolinux and anarchy Linux. Only recommend using them for subsequent installations. You have to get the basics right first, so you can troubleshoot anything in the arch forums
  - OJFord 5y ago
    I used to use Anarchy (or.. I think they had to change name?) but Arch itself has an installer new (as of last month or so), so I'll just use that next time.
    - gchamonlive 5y ago
      I am testing it. Died on me when applying the desktop config, but I haven't been able to toy with it for long. It is very, very promising. It spits a JSON that can be used for reproducible installs. It is also very flexible in which you can use the API with custom python install scripts. Very impressive and ergonomic.
  - stjohnswarts 5y ago
    don't forget endeavor
- loufe 5y ago
  When I built a new PC a couple months ago, my first OS on it was Manjaro - coming only from an Ubuntu/debian background. Linux has its limits but the experience is pretty seamless.
- __jem 5y ago
  I just used the new arch installer script, even though I've gotten my install time down to under an hour over time. It took maybe 10 minutes. I don't have very complicated or unique needs, but it "just worked" on my 4 year old Thinkpad.
voxl 5y ago
I highly recommend staying away from Arch and NixOS if you're not ready to commit upwards of 30% of your work and free time fixing and tweaking your box. I've tried both, Arch Linux will routinely hose your entire install if you don't carefully read the update notes every time (even if most of the time there is no call to action for you). Unless it has changed, this is still the expectation of users. NixOS promises stability, you just walk back to a previous version! Alas, i've had NixOS hose _all_ of my previous versions because of X server issues. Not only that, but the community of NixOS is hostile to getting shit done, if its not the NixOS way please stay away,
- saghm 5y ago
  > I've tried both, Arch Linux will routinely hose your entire install if you don't carefully read the update notes every time (even if most of the time there is no call to action for you). Unless it has changed, this is still the expectation of users. I'm honestly not quite sure what you're talking about. I've been using Arch as my daily driver for maybe 5 or 6 years, and I don't recall ever having my installation messed up from an update. Arch is fair bit along the spectrum of being a "build your own system from the ground up" type of deal though (although not quite as far along as something like Gentoo), so I don't doubt your experience, given how much two Arch installations can differ.
  - zimpenfish 5y ago
    I've had Arch on 3 servers for 5-6 years also and only had a couple of incidents where Arch updates messed things up. But one of those was a big compatibility breaking one that I hadn't done the prep for (because I'd missed the whole lead up for various reasons and was months late on the update anyway) and I still can't really explain the other. Compared to Debian which I managed to break many times in the same time frame...
    - pizza234 5y ago
      > Compared to Debian which I managed to break many times in the same time frame... How did you exactly break Debian multiple times? I've read about people doing crazy stuff, like replacing the default compiler entirely (rather than setting an alternative one) or forcing apt to install incompatible packages... and then complaining that the distribution is not stable. Non-rolling distros are very very conservative with package upgrades, and they don't "just break", as little changes over a given version.
pxc 5y ago
Nix's existing support for Steam is pretty reliable as it is. Using Nix to distribute Steam would be awesome! I'm not sure how ready Valve would be to require not only their own game distribution mechamisms but a whole package manager, but Nix + NixGL would be a very reliable and low-overhead way to get cross-platform support and to make it easy for games that might depend on extra libraries or specific versions of them.
- bpye 5y ago
  If I can get my hands on one of these I definitely intend to try running NixOS on it…
pizza234 5y ago
> it's more stable than so-called stable distros, probably because the various packages don't end up drifting several months from each other when keeping up to date What are you precisely referring to with "packages drift from each other"? Stable distros like Ubuntu (and I suppose Debian) don't do release updates at all, only critical/security fixes only. Only some software has special treatment (browsers first of all) and get full updates.
qznc 5y ago
There are different kinds of stability. For Debian it means version numbers stay the same as much as possible. For Arch it means software does not crash because bugs get fixed in newer versions.
- hugosbaseball 5y ago
  > For Arch it means software does not crash because bugs get fixed in newer versions. ....what. That is not how OS stability works. Also, Arch is nearly impossible to use in production environments. Let's say there is a vulnerability discovered in the version of lighttpd you're running in your production environment. On Debian, you pull that package, do some testing, and you're done. On Arch? It's a rolling release distro. They're continuously updating everything, including system libraries. You can easily end up in a situation where getting a security bugfix means you have to update nearly the entire OS thanks to it being built against updated core system libraries. Like Gentoo it's one of those OSs that is cool for linux nerds and a headache for people who actually need to practice proper systems engineering.
  - sudosysgen 5y ago
    Actually, you don't have to do a full system upgrade, you can update a single package. People have used Arch in prod. But personally I'll still use Debian to be on the safe side despite all of the issues that comes with.
    - bwood 5y ago
      Just because it often works doesn't mean it's a good idea. Updating a single package is officially unsupported [0] and it's burned me personally on a number of occasions. [0] https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/System_maintenance#Partial_upgrades_are_unsupported https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/System_maintenance#Partial_...
      - thomastjeffery 5y ago
        Just because it isn't your good idea doesn't mean it's a bad idea.
Fnoord 5y ago
Arch Linux sucks. Its the default OS on the Pinephone which I use as a backup smartphone (main smartphone is Android). I'm used to running Debian, which is rock stable. Arch Linux? I get dependency issues when I'm running the software update installer. Not once or twice, all bloody time. I mean, WTF? How would anyone want such in production??? NixOS is more sane because it has roll backs, and declarative configuration is like a gigantic black hole eating everything which was known before it.
- xmprt 5y ago
  Sounds like a problem with the software update installer and not Arch Linux.
- bkallus 5y ago
  To be fair, that's Arch Linux ARM, which is technically a separate project. The pinephone arch linux arm repositories aren't even maintained by the official project. That said, I've had no such issues running Arch on my pinephone.
  - Fnoord 5y ago
    I think its Manjaro by default but that's based on Arch. It follow exactly the same principles. I've had the same problem on Arch Linux on my desktop. To be fair, I was using AUR, but without that there's far less software (less than Ubuntu I suppose). So what I did was trying out Arch Linux on a separate NVMe during some free time, learning some specific tools (it also has NixOS installed on another partition for the same purpose). I come back after a while, want to update my OS first because that is the first thing I do when I use any computer. What ya know? Boom, dependency issues. I really do not want to deal with that before I can use a tool. And every time I bring this up I get these replies "I never have issues with Arch". Sure thing, I must be special. Look, I ran Debian Testing and Unstable for a while before Arch was cool (1999 - 2003 era). That way I could run Linux with tools such as a decent package manager, while running recent software. But this was a different time, and not mission critical computers.
    - 5y ago
kfajdsl 5y ago
Ha, I went from Ubuntu > Arch > NixOS and I think I'm finally happy (famous last words, I know). This rings true for me.
- Ericson2314 5y ago
  I really want to sell Valve on the Nixpkgs cross compilation work we've done someday. If anyone knows anyone there that would be interested in flawless Linux <-> Windows builds with all toolchain combinations, do let me know! Thanks for playing games on NixOS!
  - bpye 5y ago
    Have you a link to a specific project?
    - Ericson2314 5y ago
      https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/lib/systems/examples.nix https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/lib/systems/exa... for examples of the platforms we support today. https://nix.dev/tutorials/cross-compilation#cross-compilation https://nix.dev/tutorials/cross-compilation#cross-compilatio... for an approachable introduction. Currently we just support Unix -> Windows via MinGW. That's not good enough for AAA games. But in the works is: - https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/72366 https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/72366 Windows cross via LLVM and auto-downloaded MSVC runtime (you do need to indicate you signed the license, but that's it). I've heard of running cl.exe in Wine, and we could do that too - https://github.com/nix-windows/nix https://github.com/nix-windows/nix Windows port of Nix We finish these things up, and then we have the flawless Unix <-> Windows I advertised.
      - bpye 5y ago
        I’ve been following the nix-windows project, has there been any recent progress there? I already run NixOS on my home server, Nix and home-manager on my MacBook. It would be great to replace scoop on Windows with Nix too.
seba_dos1 5y ago
> Hopefully this eventually results in more user friendly Arch Linux installers. Pretty sure it won't. I bet it's going to use a self-made system upgrade facility and not rely directly on pacman either. pacman is great for its intended use-cases, but it's not a package manager you want to use with no supervision of an experienced user. It may even silently leave a package in broken state just because the rootfs went full during the upgrade. And at the very least, pretty sure they're not going to use actual Arch system repos but roll their own.
- all2 5y ago
  Because Valve's target is deterministic (relatively, hardware revisions not-withstanding) pacman is actually perfect for their use-case. You can nail down a new release on your local hardware using a bash script that calls pacman against specific packages and specific package versions. Once your local dev works, push that to the update tool. Hopefully you caught all the bugs. :)
  - bpye 5y ago
    Surely Valve would be better served by having some immutable system partition and maybe even A/B image based updates?
    - schmorptron 5y ago
      We're about 2 years out from having that work with most packages though, aren't we?
      - bpye 5y ago
        I'm not convinced packages need to care. Most config users care about on a SteamDeck is going to be Steam or game specific, so Valve are in a good position to put that on some mutable partition. For the system data, which could be immutable, they could either take an A/B approach with two different partitions, or perhaps use either btrfs or ZFS to allow the new version to be applied over the old version as a 'diff' of the system partition. On a failed update, or to rollback for any other reason the system partition would simply be rolled back to the last snapshot.
Alupis 5y ago
Ubuntu was likely too difficult for Valve to keep modified and up to date for their needs. Canonical doesn't have any reason to be friendly towards the specific features Valve needs to make SteamOS a thing, and Valve probably doesn't want to maintain their own fork of the entire Ubuntu distro. Not to mention, a default install of Arch is tiny and minimalist. It's the perfect base to apply your own packages on top of without having to worry too much about conflicts with system packages, or anything else that might break between Ubuntu LTS version updates. It means Valve can mostly have their own custom distro without having to do most of the work required to maintain a custom distro. It also means Valve can deploy the latest package of something that boosts gaming performance (like some new graphics driver or whatever), again, without jeopardizing the core os. Arch is well known for being "bleeding edge" and getting the latest packages out immediately which is something gamers (the target audience for SteamOS) want (every single extra FPS matters, etc).
- lugged 5y ago
  It also means more games will run on my PC and Ill less likely run into Linux only issues in games though they're pretty rare anyway.
- account42 5y ago
  > Ubuntu was likely too difficult for Valve to keep modified and up to date for their needs. SteamOS was based on Debian directly, not Ubuntu. Ubuntu is just what they officially support for the desktop Steam client.
- beermonster 5y ago
  > Not to mention, a default install of Arch is tiny and minimalist. I wonder if they considered alpine? Though arch is a fine choice and makes me want one all the more!
rizpanjwani 5y ago
This brings back so many memories from around 17 years ago when I would try to do a dual install of arch linux with windows XP using the GRUB bootloader. Fun times! Can't believe it's been so long!
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Rd6n6 5y ago
Manjaro is nice, but last time I hit update the computer became un bootable until I found an afternoon to fix it. Kernel or grub iirc, not a big deal but still a bit disruptive. Ubuntu does this less a little less often
j-james 5y ago
> Hopefully this eventually results in more user friendly Arch Linux installers. Funny you say that! Arch images now ship with an official installer as of a couple of months ago - which is comparable to the Ubuntu or Fedora installers in ease-of-use. https://github.com/archlinux/archinstall https://github.com/archlinux/archinstall
- Accacin 5y ago
  I'm a big fan of Arch, but that installer is pretty dodgy. I wouldn't use it (at least in the state it was in a few months back) personally. However I do welcome an installer, it's fun to install Arch a couple of times, but after that I'm not really learning anything new.
- l0b0 5y ago
  Cool, I had no idea! Does it have my required minimal set of features? - Able to connect to WiFi from within the installer. - Full-disk encryption setup, ideally with a single checkbox like Ubuntu. - Interactive partitioning. - Auto-detects or allows choosing between BIOS/UEFI. - Supports creating a NetworkManager-based network setup, so that I don't have to switch network managers after installation.
  - j-james 5y ago
    No to connecting to WiFi from the installer: this is currently done with iwd before installation. Yes to everything else.
globular-toast 5y ago
That may be true now, but things have settled down a lot in general these last ten years or so. Before that things were often in a state of flux and things definitely broke on Arch regularly. The point is, Arch itself does nothing to give you stability. What you're seeing is just that the packages you're using are stable and bleeding edge doesn't mean what it once did.
pinguin7 5y ago
Fun fact: the "learning curve" was initially meant as having time on the x-axis and knowledge on the y-axis. Thus your expression "an absolute wall" would mean that you immediately grasp everything there is to know. But since the meaning since has unintentionally shifted and the original meaning is universally ignored, we all understand you.
- andruc 5y ago
  Not "knowledge required to do well" on the y-axis?
  - nhooyr 5y ago
    That wouldn't change over time. The knowledge required to do well would be a constant.
- uh-quan 5y ago
  I think the thrust of sayings like "the learning curve is a wall" is to indicate that there is little to no slope, which is to say you don't get the benefit of time spent learning easier parts step by step until you know a lot of the system and can handle the more difficult aspects of it. Instead it feels like you either know how it all works or nothing about how it works, and it's hard to figure out how to start and get a foothold, so to speak.
fouc 5y ago
> The learning curve is an absolute wall when installing, even after several years on Linux, but after that it's pretty standard. I'm surprised, I found it very easy to get into Arch linux. But I came from distributions like Slackware & Gentoo where it was common to do the installation almost entirely from commands in the terminal. IMO distributions that keep the installation primarily command-line focused are a good way for beginners to get started, it gives them a real grasp of how linux works, and how to change things to suit.
- eb0la 5y ago
  I second this: Command-line and text files are more user friendly than it seems. 1/ You can search for stuff on the internet and get quick results (not a video) 2/ You can _paste_ a command and send it to someone to run it instead of a word document with instructions and screenshots. 3/ Once you learn to find and search for stuff in files, it is easy to discover where stuff is configured. 4/ Manual pages are great once you know how to read (I mean skim) them.
eb0la 5y ago
And now 1) I am googling NixOS and 2) cursing why the #@! I didn't knew about after looking at the page. Thanks!
ekianjo 5y ago
> The learning curve is an absolute wall when installing, Not really, unless you did everything with a GUI in other distros before and refused to learn anything about the underlying guts of the OS.
- WindyLakeReturn 5y ago
  If we consider the average consumer of these products and not the average HN reader, doesn't that qualify as an absolute wall?

by l0b0 5y ago

christophilus 5y ago

I share your feelings about Arch, but I'm still running Fedora mostly out of laziness. Still, I think Arch is an interesting choice for a console. I'd think you'd want stability (in the sense of very controlled changes / not requiring updates every day).

gchamonlive 5y ago
If you are conservative and thorough in your update routine, arch can be very stable.
- awill 5y ago
  Agreed. I've used Arch for about 12 years. My system has been unbootable after an update maybe 3 times. That's not bad really, and that's just applying updates daily. Any additional rigour should improve this a lot.
  - gchamonlive 5y ago
    I myself had a couple of bricks when messing with grub. Nothing that a live boot and a mkinitcpio didn't solve.
Jnr 5y ago
My guess is that Valve will keep their own mirrors and update from upstream only once their relevant packages will be tested for compatibility. I have been using Archlinux for more than 10 years and from time to time some major upgrades can make things broken for a couple days until all the packages get updated and all the relevant compatibility fixes have been pushed upstream by the developers. But in most cases this happens with some 3rd party desktop related packages or closed source drivers. I bet that Valve won't have that many problems with AMD since their drivers are open source.
- ThatPlayer 5y ago
  I could also see them running a read-only system partition with snapshots for updates. And with btrfs send/receive you could do 'system updates' with just incremental snapshots, and the ability to rollback. Or just use packages and make regular snapshots.
whatshisface 5y ago
The problem with Arch is that Arch needs to be tinkered with when Arch wants to be tinkered with, not when you want to spend an evening messing with your OS configuration. "This evening I want to learn about X," becomes "this evening I am learning about the linux userspace ecosystem," for every value of X.
- xyproto 5y ago
  Not if you have a filesystem with snapshots.
  - IX-103 5y ago
    I was going to say that idea would have helped so much back when I ran Gentoo, but then I remembered how often my 40 GB hard drive was full.
adrusi 5y ago
Steam bundles its own runtime for games (it can be configured to use system libs instead, but that's not the default). Games will often also ship with copies of additional libraries not in steam's runtime. I bet that the underlying distribution doesn't matter much at all, and since this console is meant to also be a desktop (or living room) PC, might as well ship with a distribution that's good for that purpose. Arch makes more sense for desktops than Ubuntu, and has for a while tbh.
beermonster 5y ago
With just one hardware profile and their own upstream repos fed from Arch they’ll probably have best of both worlds.

mr_sturd 5y ago

Manjaro Linux provides a nice, easy installer for Arch. With different editions based on your preferred DE. https://manjaro.org/download/ https://manjaro.org/download/

gchamonlive 5y ago
For pure arch, there are some helpers, like Arcolinux and anarchy Linux. Only recommend using them for subsequent installations. You have to get the basics right first, so you can troubleshoot anything in the arch forums
- OJFord 5y ago
  I used to use Anarchy (or.. I think they had to change name?) but Arch itself has an installer new (as of last month or so), so I'll just use that next time.
  - gchamonlive 5y ago
    I am testing it. Died on me when applying the desktop config, but I haven't been able to toy with it for long. It is very, very promising. It spits a JSON that can be used for reproducible installs. It is also very flexible in which you can use the API with custom python install scripts. Very impressive and ergonomic.
- stjohnswarts 5y ago
  don't forget endeavor
loufe 5y ago
When I built a new PC a couple months ago, my first OS on it was Manjaro - coming only from an Ubuntu/debian background. Linux has its limits but the experience is pretty seamless.
__jem 5y ago
I just used the new arch installer script, even though I've gotten my install time down to under an hour over time. It took maybe 10 minutes. I don't have very complicated or unique needs, but it "just worked" on my 4 year old Thinkpad.

voxl 5y ago

I highly recommend staying away from Arch and NixOS if you're not ready to commit upwards of 30% of your work and free time fixing and tweaking your box. I've tried both, Arch Linux will routinely hose your entire install if you don't carefully read the update notes every time (even if most of the time there is no call to action for you). Unless it has changed, this is still the expectation of users. NixOS promises stability, you just walk back to a previous version! Alas, i've had NixOS hose _all_ of my previous versions because of X server issues. Not only that, but the community of NixOS is hostile to getting shit done, if its not the NixOS way please stay away,

saghm 5y ago
> I've tried both, Arch Linux will routinely hose your entire install if you don't carefully read the update notes every time (even if most of the time there is no call to action for you). Unless it has changed, this is still the expectation of users. I'm honestly not quite sure what you're talking about. I've been using Arch as my daily driver for maybe 5 or 6 years, and I don't recall ever having my installation messed up from an update. Arch is fair bit along the spectrum of being a "build your own system from the ground up" type of deal though (although not quite as far along as something like Gentoo), so I don't doubt your experience, given how much two Arch installations can differ.
- zimpenfish 5y ago
  I've had Arch on 3 servers for 5-6 years also and only had a couple of incidents where Arch updates messed things up. But one of those was a big compatibility breaking one that I hadn't done the prep for (because I'd missed the whole lead up for various reasons and was months late on the update anyway) and I still can't really explain the other. Compared to Debian which I managed to break many times in the same time frame...
  - pizza234 5y ago
    > Compared to Debian which I managed to break many times in the same time frame... How did you exactly break Debian multiple times? I've read about people doing crazy stuff, like replacing the default compiler entirely (rather than setting an alternative one) or forcing apt to install incompatible packages... and then complaining that the distribution is not stable. Non-rolling distros are very very conservative with package upgrades, and they don't "just break", as little changes over a given version.

pxc 5y ago

Nix's existing support for Steam is pretty reliable as it is. Using Nix to distribute Steam would be awesome! I'm not sure how ready Valve would be to require not only their own game distribution mechamisms but a whole package manager, but Nix + NixGL would be a very reliable and low-overhead way to get cross-platform support and to make it easy for games that might depend on extra libraries or specific versions of them.

bpye 5y ago
If I can get my hands on one of these I definitely intend to try running NixOS on it…

pizza234 5y ago

> it's more stable than so-called stable distros, probably because the various packages don't end up drifting several months from each other when keeping up to date What are you precisely referring to with "packages drift from each other"? Stable distros like Ubuntu (and I suppose Debian) don't do release updates at all, only critical/security fixes only. Only some software has special treatment (browsers first of all) and get full updates.

qznc 5y ago

There are different kinds of stability. For Debian it means version numbers stay the same as much as possible. For Arch it means software does not crash because bugs get fixed in newer versions.

hugosbaseball 5y ago
> For Arch it means software does not crash because bugs get fixed in newer versions. ....what. That is not how OS stability works. Also, Arch is nearly impossible to use in production environments. Let's say there is a vulnerability discovered in the version of lighttpd you're running in your production environment. On Debian, you pull that package, do some testing, and you're done. On Arch? It's a rolling release distro. They're continuously updating everything, including system libraries. You can easily end up in a situation where getting a security bugfix means you have to update nearly the entire OS thanks to it being built against updated core system libraries. Like Gentoo it's one of those OSs that is cool for linux nerds and a headache for people who actually need to practice proper systems engineering.
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  Actually, you don't have to do a full system upgrade, you can update a single package. People have used Arch in prod. But personally I'll still use Debian to be on the safe side despite all of the issues that comes with.
  - bwood 5y ago
    Just because it often works doesn't mean it's a good idea. Updating a single package is officially unsupported [0] and it's burned me personally on a number of occasions. [0] https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/System_maintenance#Partial_upgrades_are_unsupported https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/System_maintenance#Partial_...
    - thomastjeffery 5y ago
      Just because it isn't your good idea doesn't mean it's a bad idea.

Fnoord 5y ago

Arch Linux sucks. Its the default OS on the Pinephone which I use as a backup smartphone (main smartphone is Android). I'm used to running Debian, which is rock stable. Arch Linux? I get dependency issues when I'm running the software update installer. Not once or twice, all bloody time. I mean, WTF? How would anyone want such in production??? NixOS is more sane because it has roll backs, and declarative configuration is like a gigantic black hole eating everything which was known before it.

xmprt 5y ago
Sounds like a problem with the software update installer and not Arch Linux.
bkallus 5y ago
To be fair, that's Arch Linux ARM, which is technically a separate project. The pinephone arch linux arm repositories aren't even maintained by the official project. That said, I've had no such issues running Arch on my pinephone.
- Fnoord 5y ago
  I think its Manjaro by default but that's based on Arch. It follow exactly the same principles. I've had the same problem on Arch Linux on my desktop. To be fair, I was using AUR, but without that there's far less software (less than Ubuntu I suppose). So what I did was trying out Arch Linux on a separate NVMe during some free time, learning some specific tools (it also has NixOS installed on another partition for the same purpose). I come back after a while, want to update my OS first because that is the first thing I do when I use any computer. What ya know? Boom, dependency issues. I really do not want to deal with that before I can use a tool. And every time I bring this up I get these replies "I never have issues with Arch". Sure thing, I must be special. Look, I ran Debian Testing and Unstable for a while before Arch was cool (1999 - 2003 era). That way I could run Linux with tools such as a decent package manager, while running recent software. But this was a different time, and not mission critical computers.
  - 5y ago

kfajdsl 5y ago

Ha, I went from Ubuntu > Arch > NixOS and I think I'm finally happy (famous last words, I know). This rings true for me.

Ericson2314 5y ago
I really want to sell Valve on the Nixpkgs cross compilation work we've done someday. If anyone knows anyone there that would be interested in flawless Linux <-> Windows builds with all toolchain combinations, do let me know! Thanks for playing games on NixOS!
- bpye 5y ago
  Have you a link to a specific project?
  - Ericson2314 5y ago
    https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/lib/systems/examples.nix https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/lib/systems/exa... for examples of the platforms we support today. https://nix.dev/tutorials/cross-compilation#cross-compilation https://nix.dev/tutorials/cross-compilation#cross-compilatio... for an approachable introduction. Currently we just support Unix -> Windows via MinGW. That's not good enough for AAA games. But in the works is: - https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/72366 https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/72366 Windows cross via LLVM and auto-downloaded MSVC runtime (you do need to indicate you signed the license, but that's it). I've heard of running cl.exe in Wine, and we could do that too - https://github.com/nix-windows/nix https://github.com/nix-windows/nix Windows port of Nix We finish these things up, and then we have the flawless Unix <-> Windows I advertised.
    - bpye 5y ago
      I’ve been following the nix-windows project, has there been any recent progress there? I already run NixOS on my home server, Nix and home-manager on my MacBook. It would be great to replace scoop on Windows with Nix too.

seba_dos1 5y ago

> Hopefully this eventually results in more user friendly Arch Linux installers. Pretty sure it won't. I bet it's going to use a self-made system upgrade facility and not rely directly on pacman either. pacman is great for its intended use-cases, but it's not a package manager you want to use with no supervision of an experienced user. It may even silently leave a package in broken state just because the rootfs went full during the upgrade. And at the very least, pretty sure they're not going to use actual Arch system repos but roll their own.

all2 5y ago
Because Valve's target is deterministic (relatively, hardware revisions not-withstanding) pacman is actually perfect for their use-case. You can nail down a new release on your local hardware using a bash script that calls pacman against specific packages and specific package versions. Once your local dev works, push that to the update tool. Hopefully you caught all the bugs. :)
- bpye 5y ago
  Surely Valve would be better served by having some immutable system partition and maybe even A/B image based updates?
  - schmorptron 5y ago
    We're about 2 years out from having that work with most packages though, aren't we?
    - bpye 5y ago
      I'm not convinced packages need to care. Most config users care about on a SteamDeck is going to be Steam or game specific, so Valve are in a good position to put that on some mutable partition. For the system data, which could be immutable, they could either take an A/B approach with two different partitions, or perhaps use either btrfs or ZFS to allow the new version to be applied over the old version as a 'diff' of the system partition. On a failed update, or to rollback for any other reason the system partition would simply be rolled back to the last snapshot.

Alupis 5y ago

Ubuntu was likely too difficult for Valve to keep modified and up to date for their needs. Canonical doesn't have any reason to be friendly towards the specific features Valve needs to make SteamOS a thing, and Valve probably doesn't want to maintain their own fork of the entire Ubuntu distro. Not to mention, a default install of Arch is tiny and minimalist. It's the perfect base to apply your own packages on top of without having to worry too much about conflicts with system packages, or anything else that might break between Ubuntu LTS version updates. It means Valve can mostly have their own custom distro without having to do most of the work required to maintain a custom distro. It also means Valve can deploy the latest package of something that boosts gaming performance (like some new graphics driver or whatever), again, without jeopardizing the core os. Arch is well known for being "bleeding edge" and getting the latest packages out immediately which is something gamers (the target audience for SteamOS) want (every single extra FPS matters, etc).

lugged 5y ago
It also means more games will run on my PC and Ill less likely run into Linux only issues in games though they're pretty rare anyway.
account42 5y ago
> Ubuntu was likely too difficult for Valve to keep modified and up to date for their needs. SteamOS was based on Debian directly, not Ubuntu. Ubuntu is just what they officially support for the desktop Steam client.
beermonster 5y ago
> Not to mention, a default install of Arch is tiny and minimalist. I wonder if they considered alpine? Though arch is a fine choice and makes me want one all the more!

rizpanjwani 5y ago

This brings back so many memories from around 17 years ago when I would try to do a dual install of arch linux with windows XP using the GRUB bootloader. Fun times! Can't believe it's been so long!

deleted 5y ago

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Rd6n6 5y ago

Manjaro is nice, but last time I hit update the computer became un bootable until I found an afternoon to fix it. Kernel or grub iirc, not a big deal but still a bit disruptive. Ubuntu does this less a little less often

j-james 5y ago

> Hopefully this eventually results in more user friendly Arch Linux installers. Funny you say that! Arch images now ship with an official installer as of a couple of months ago - which is comparable to the Ubuntu or Fedora installers in ease-of-use. https://github.com/archlinux/archinstall https://github.com/archlinux/archinstall

Accacin 5y ago
I'm a big fan of Arch, but that installer is pretty dodgy. I wouldn't use it (at least in the state it was in a few months back) personally. However I do welcome an installer, it's fun to install Arch a couple of times, but after that I'm not really learning anything new.
l0b0 5y ago
Cool, I had no idea! Does it have my required minimal set of features? - Able to connect to WiFi from within the installer. - Full-disk encryption setup, ideally with a single checkbox like Ubuntu. - Interactive partitioning. - Auto-detects or allows choosing between BIOS/UEFI. - Supports creating a NetworkManager-based network setup, so that I don't have to switch network managers after installation.
- j-james 5y ago
  No to connecting to WiFi from the installer: this is currently done with iwd before installation. Yes to everything else.

globular-toast 5y ago

That may be true now, but things have settled down a lot in general these last ten years or so. Before that things were often in a state of flux and things definitely broke on Arch regularly. The point is, Arch itself does nothing to give you stability. What you're seeing is just that the packages you're using are stable and bleeding edge doesn't mean what it once did.

pinguin7 5y ago

Fun fact: the "learning curve" was initially meant as having time on the x-axis and knowledge on the y-axis. Thus your expression "an absolute wall" would mean that you immediately grasp everything there is to know. But since the meaning since has unintentionally shifted and the original meaning is universally ignored, we all understand you.

andruc 5y ago
Not "knowledge required to do well" on the y-axis?
- nhooyr 5y ago
  That wouldn't change over time. The knowledge required to do well would be a constant.
uh-quan 5y ago
I think the thrust of sayings like "the learning curve is a wall" is to indicate that there is little to no slope, which is to say you don't get the benefit of time spent learning easier parts step by step until you know a lot of the system and can handle the more difficult aspects of it. Instead it feels like you either know how it all works or nothing about how it works, and it's hard to figure out how to start and get a foothold, so to speak.

fouc 5y ago

> The learning curve is an absolute wall when installing, even after several years on Linux, but after that it's pretty standard. I'm surprised, I found it very easy to get into Arch linux. But I came from distributions like Slackware & Gentoo where it was common to do the installation almost entirely from commands in the terminal. IMO distributions that keep the installation primarily command-line focused are a good way for beginners to get started, it gives them a real grasp of how linux works, and how to change things to suit.

eb0la 5y ago
I second this: Command-line and text files are more user friendly than it seems. 1/ You can search for stuff on the internet and get quick results (not a video) 2/ You can _paste_ a command and send it to someone to run it instead of a word document with instructions and screenshots. 3/ Once you learn to find and search for stuff in files, it is easy to discover where stuff is configured. 4/ Manual pages are great once you know how to read (I mean skim) them.

eb0la 5y ago

And now 1) I am googling NixOS and 2) cursing why the #@! I didn't knew about after looking at the page. Thanks!

ekianjo 5y ago

> The learning curve is an absolute wall when installing, Not really, unless you did everything with a GUI in other distros before and refused to learn anything about the underlying guts of the OS.

WindyLakeReturn 5y ago
If we consider the average consumer of these products and not the average HN reader, doesn't that qualify as an absolute wall?