7 ms·

When I was an intern there was this old dude who had an ancient computer with the same Debian on it for like 7 years. He never got excited about new stuff, and

When I was an intern there was this old dude who had an ancient computer with the same Debian on it for like 7 years. He never got excited about new stuff, and just didn't want to break anything. I thought that was kind of funny and un-hip, back then, but now I'm like that. It's like Dad OS. :)

burntsushi 5y ago
I'm a Dad and I use Arch. I can't stand non-rolling release Linux distros. They are constantly getting in my way because they don't track upstream. I have multiple machines running Arch (some over a decade) with no problems. In constrast, doing dist upgrades on Ubuntu has put me into states that I could not figure out how to get out of, and thus had to do a clean install. (Granted, it's been a long time since this has happened, but mostly because I very specifically avoid non-rolling release distros.)
- zozbot234 5y ago
  Ubuntu upgrades are extremely messy compared to Debian. If you want a rolling-like experience, the testing channel of Debian is pretty good for that - though it does get frozen when approaching a stable release.
  - burntsushi 5y ago
    The dist upgrade is more of an example meant to dispel the myth that non-rolling release distros break less frequently than rolling release. Or at least, an anecdote anyway. Jumping down from the meta level of rolling vs non-rolling, I personally find Archlinux style of packaging much much simpler than Debian's. I've writte numerous PKGBUILD files over the years and it's been dead simple. But my eyes gloss over whenever I look at Debian packages. I'm sure the complexity in Debian is warranted for one reason or another. But it ain't for me.
    - e12e 5y ago
      Note that, Ubuntu had some rough times, and did some odd things (I distinctly remember changing gid of system groups, for example) - but it has gotten a lot better. I don't think I can remember Debian ever having any serious issues on dist upgrade. Well, there was a bit of hairpulling with the change from lilo to grub - but I think that was because I tried it early, before grub became the new standard..). But of course, there are no perfect tradeoffs. I'm inclined to believe GNU guix (or nixos) might be the next best thing(tm) - but I've yet to put that to the test..
  - MonaroVXR 5y ago
    But what about Pop!_OS?
- pengaru 5y ago
  I've been using debian full-time for decades, but recently ended up switching to a spare Arch laptop I'd installed Arch on long ago just for poking at. As something to make it easier to install latest-and-greatest junk it's certainly better than rolling your own like an LFS, and feels a bit less annoying than gentoo so far. But it's nowhere near as comfortable to use as-is as debian, and definitely requires more time-wasting to figure out why things aren't configured correctly after simply installing a package w/`pacman -Su $foo` or some dependency is wrong or missing. Hell, just the other day I thought to try building something with clang instead of gcc, after not using clang in a while, and this is what (still) happens: $ clang clang: error while loading shared libraries: libffi.so.6: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory $ This kind of garbage just doesn't happen on debian. At this moment I have the impression that the average Arch install is always at least partially broken in some way. Furthermore, the tooling in Arch isn't particularly great either. On my first week using this Arch laptop full-time, I tripped over a `pacman -Sc` bug where it was opening every single file in /var/cache/pacman/pkg via libarchive, even .part files which hadn't been completely downloaded (which means their signatures weren't yet verified) and spitting out liblzma library errors like "no progress is possible" because it's attempting to open an .xz.part file. This is arguably a security risk (in a root process no less) in addition to a stupid bug producing a confusing error message. And I haven't even started going deep into this distro yet, frankly it's already left me with bad enough taste to not be interested in wasting more time on it. Edit: just wanted to give props for the Arch Wiki, that has been a great resource for ages.
  - the_pwner224 5y ago
    Your clang error can probably be fixed by a pacman -Syu. Usually that sort of error is related to some libraries on your system being old and other programs being new (and compiled against new libraries), so the packages can't load the libraries properly when you execute them on your system. Doing a full update brings the libraries up to date so the programs can load them and run properly.
    - pengaru 5y ago
      Oh I'm aware of this, and I'll get around to doing just that as soon as I'm in the mood to waste more of my life chasing other breakages after pacman turns my entire world upside down just so clang can run again.
- jorvi 5y ago
  > I have multiple machines running Arch (some over a decade) with no problems. This sounds extremely unlikely. Rolling vs versioned release both have breakage, but with rolling its in constant tiny ways so it's less memorable. It's also a point Arch evangelists consistently fail to bring up.
  - burntsushi 5y ago
    I'm not evangelizing Arch. I'm pushing back on the bullshit that "dads don't have time for rolling release shenanigans." Either you're calling me a liar or you're saying my memory is bad. Great talk. Thanks.
- petre 5y ago
  OpenSuSE Tumbleweed is also rolling release and stuff works out if the box. It is rpm based, but it's the most tolerable rpm distribution imho.
jaimie 5y ago
I feel fortunate to have learned this lesson right before grad school… I used to run Gentoo with all kinds of optimization flags. The day of a conference deadline, I mucked up my /etc/ pretty bad. Switched to Debian and never looked back - sometimes you just need something that works.
- raegis 5y ago
  I have the same story. I ran Gentoo on all my machines for 5 years (2002-2007) and after the umpteenth update which broke printing, I switched to Debian stable and never looked back.
- keyb0ardninja 5y ago
  You should use btrfs with snapshots. You won't be in that situation ever again. Just a suggestion.
  - wongarsu 5y ago
    That's solving the problem by adding complexity. Switching to Debian is solving the problem by taking away complexity. I know which one I'd prefer
    - carlhjerpe 5y ago
      I disagree, using a filesystem with snapshot support is hardly adding complexity (to the problem, sure the kernel code for btrfs might be more complex, but It's mainline since years and won't eat your data). I interpret your comment to suggest unwise practices for data management. Being able to do snapshots and send them off to wherever is important. This fills the void on your system that git fills for your source-code.
- Taek 5y ago
  Same. And I loved Gentoo so much. Made me feel like a car mechanic, upgrading his machine with all the custom parts. I would go back to running Gentoo if I had the time to mess around, it was a ton of fun and it really did give you a system that was truly yours. But it also needed a lot of love to keep running smoothly. And I don't miss those compile times.
Liskni_si 5y ago
I have a non-ancient computer with the same Debian (testing with a bit of unstable mixed in) on it for over 16 years now. I still get excited about new stuff, I just don't want that new stuff to break anything. :-)

burntsushi 5y ago

I'm a Dad and I use Arch. I can't stand non-rolling release Linux distros. They are constantly getting in my way because they don't track upstream. I have multiple machines running Arch (some over a decade) with no problems. In constrast, doing dist upgrades on Ubuntu has put me into states that I could not figure out how to get out of, and thus had to do a clean install. (Granted, it's been a long time since this has happened, but mostly because I very specifically avoid non-rolling release distros.)

zozbot234 5y ago
Ubuntu upgrades are extremely messy compared to Debian. If you want a rolling-like experience, the testing channel of Debian is pretty good for that - though it does get frozen when approaching a stable release.
- burntsushi 5y ago
  The dist upgrade is more of an example meant to dispel the myth that non-rolling release distros break less frequently than rolling release. Or at least, an anecdote anyway. Jumping down from the meta level of rolling vs non-rolling, I personally find Archlinux style of packaging much much simpler than Debian's. I've writte numerous PKGBUILD files over the years and it's been dead simple. But my eyes gloss over whenever I look at Debian packages. I'm sure the complexity in Debian is warranted for one reason or another. But it ain't for me.
  - e12e 5y ago
    Note that, Ubuntu had some rough times, and did some odd things (I distinctly remember changing gid of system groups, for example) - but it has gotten a lot better. I don't think I can remember Debian ever having any serious issues on dist upgrade. Well, there was a bit of hairpulling with the change from lilo to grub - but I think that was because I tried it early, before grub became the new standard..). But of course, there are no perfect tradeoffs. I'm inclined to believe GNU guix (or nixos) might be the next best thing(tm) - but I've yet to put that to the test..
- MonaroVXR 5y ago
  But what about Pop!_OS?
pengaru 5y ago
I've been using debian full-time for decades, but recently ended up switching to a spare Arch laptop I'd installed Arch on long ago just for poking at. As something to make it easier to install latest-and-greatest junk it's certainly better than rolling your own like an LFS, and feels a bit less annoying than gentoo so far. But it's nowhere near as comfortable to use as-is as debian, and definitely requires more time-wasting to figure out why things aren't configured correctly after simply installing a package w/`pacman -Su $foo` or some dependency is wrong or missing. Hell, just the other day I thought to try building something with clang instead of gcc, after not using clang in a while, and this is what (still) happens: $ clang clang: error while loading shared libraries: libffi.so.6: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory $ This kind of garbage just doesn't happen on debian. At this moment I have the impression that the average Arch install is always at least partially broken in some way. Furthermore, the tooling in Arch isn't particularly great either. On my first week using this Arch laptop full-time, I tripped over a `pacman -Sc` bug where it was opening every single file in /var/cache/pacman/pkg via libarchive, even .part files which hadn't been completely downloaded (which means their signatures weren't yet verified) and spitting out liblzma library errors like "no progress is possible" because it's attempting to open an .xz.part file. This is arguably a security risk (in a root process no less) in addition to a stupid bug producing a confusing error message. And I haven't even started going deep into this distro yet, frankly it's already left me with bad enough taste to not be interested in wasting more time on it. Edit: just wanted to give props for the Arch Wiki, that has been a great resource for ages.
- the_pwner224 5y ago
  Your clang error can probably be fixed by a pacman -Syu. Usually that sort of error is related to some libraries on your system being old and other programs being new (and compiled against new libraries), so the packages can't load the libraries properly when you execute them on your system. Doing a full update brings the libraries up to date so the programs can load them and run properly.
  - pengaru 5y ago
    Oh I'm aware of this, and I'll get around to doing just that as soon as I'm in the mood to waste more of my life chasing other breakages after pacman turns my entire world upside down just so clang can run again.
jorvi 5y ago
> I have multiple machines running Arch (some over a decade) with no problems. This sounds extremely unlikely. Rolling vs versioned release both have breakage, but with rolling its in constant tiny ways so it's less memorable. It's also a point Arch evangelists consistently fail to bring up.
- burntsushi 5y ago
  I'm not evangelizing Arch. I'm pushing back on the bullshit that "dads don't have time for rolling release shenanigans." Either you're calling me a liar or you're saying my memory is bad. Great talk. Thanks.
petre 5y ago
OpenSuSE Tumbleweed is also rolling release and stuff works out if the box. It is rpm based, but it's the most tolerable rpm distribution imho.

jaimie 5y ago

I feel fortunate to have learned this lesson right before grad school… I used to run Gentoo with all kinds of optimization flags. The day of a conference deadline, I mucked up my /etc/ pretty bad. Switched to Debian and never looked back - sometimes you just need something that works.

raegis 5y ago
I have the same story. I ran Gentoo on all my machines for 5 years (2002-2007) and after the umpteenth update which broke printing, I switched to Debian stable and never looked back.
keyb0ardninja 5y ago
You should use btrfs with snapshots. You won't be in that situation ever again. Just a suggestion.
- wongarsu 5y ago
  That's solving the problem by adding complexity. Switching to Debian is solving the problem by taking away complexity. I know which one I'd prefer
  - carlhjerpe 5y ago
    I disagree, using a filesystem with snapshot support is hardly adding complexity (to the problem, sure the kernel code for btrfs might be more complex, but It's mainline since years and won't eat your data). I interpret your comment to suggest unwise practices for data management. Being able to do snapshots and send them off to wherever is important. This fills the void on your system that git fills for your source-code.
Taek 5y ago
Same. And I loved Gentoo so much. Made me feel like a car mechanic, upgrading his machine with all the custom parts. I would go back to running Gentoo if I had the time to mess around, it was a ton of fun and it really did give you a system that was truly yours. But it also needed a lot of love to keep running smoothly. And I don't miss those compile times.

Liskni_si 5y ago

I have a non-ancient computer with the same Debian (testing with a bit of unstable mixed in) on it for over 16 years now. I still get excited about new stuff, I just don't want that new stuff to break anything. :-)