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>My experience with Linux has been that you have the same install running for 10+ years (this is especially true for Arch because you have fewer risky distribut

by dTal 5y ago

>My experience with Linux has been that you have the same install running for 10+ years (this is especially true for Arch because you have fewer risky distribution upgrades), Arch is needy; it commits seppuku if you abandon it for too long. Every update on Arch is a "risky distribution upgrade", and it insists that you update every day. On the other hand, I have kept Debian installs going for a great many years, with dist-upgrades never failing, and I know that some people have maintained the same Debian install since they first installed it in the 90s.

prima-facie 5y ago
I've been running basically the same Arch install since 2009: > zcat /var/log/pacman.log.1.gz-2018010214.backup | head [2009-02-23 18:14] installed filesystem (2009.01-1) You can hedge against any distro breaking by using a volume manager which allows snapshots of the root volume, or even better, creates these snapshots automatically before a distro upgrade. Both LVM and Btrfs can do this. I use LVM because I love boring tech.
hnlmorg 5y ago
> Arch is needy; it commits seppuku if you abandon it for too long. It's certainly introducing more risk but these days I only update my Arch systems a maximum of once every 6 months (usually less than that) and never have an issue. This meme largely came about from ~10 years ago with the filesystem changes and migration to systemd. But it's been a pretty smooth ride since. > Every update on Arch is a "risky distribution upgrade", In theory it is a possibility but in practice that's not really the case. I mean you're not going to get breaking changes every week ;) Arch's package manager has really improved in recent years too so a lot of occasions that might have needed manual intervention can be handled automatically by the package manager (which wasn't the case back when this meme was true). Also there is a news section on Arch's website so if you're genuinely nervous about running `pacman` you can check there first (this is the recommended best practice but most people don't bother these days because it's rare to have an issue). > and it insists that you update every day. Only if you kick off your package manager everyday. But this is true for any Linux distro since they're all pushing updated packages everyday so I don't really see how Arch differs in that regard. > On the other hand, I have kept Debian installs going for a great many years, with dist-upgrades never failing, and I know that some people have maintained the same Debian install since they first installed it in the 90s. I've had a Debian dist-upgrade fail before but that's just once out of a dozen(?) of successful dist-upgrades so I do agree Debian is solid. Never had an issue with upgrading CentOS either. Nor FreeBSD. The only thing Arch does better than the above is you don't have an hour(s) of downtime during the upgrade. But as you said, that's paired with the risk that you might run into a breaking change at any point in the future. For that reason alone I wouldn't run Arch on servers (or at least not professionally -- thrown Arch on some personal servers in the past)
- dTal 5y ago
  >This meme largely came about from ~10 years ago with the filesystem changes and migration to systemd. But it's been a pretty smooth ride since. It's not a meme. Just this week I attempted to update an Arch system that had been left unattended for only a couple years. It got caught in some kind of cycle where it didn't have the GPG keys required to download the latest GPG keys. Then there was some package conflict issue. Finally after much wailing and gnashing of teeth I completed the update and rebooted... "kernel not found". I gave up on it. And lest I be accused of incompetence, here's another Arch user's 3-year update story, only a few weeks ago, on our very own HN: "Somehow the upgrade didn't completely hose everything. It just took a bit of finagling in the form of looking through any packages that gave errors (errors like cyclic dependency stuff and conflicts from bad use of pip) and uninstalling those that I didn't see a need for or switching them to the package manager instead of pip. About an hour of babysitting it and I had a completely updated and working Arch setup." -- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29872053 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29872053 So I'm sorry, but "pretty smooth ride" my ass.
  - hnlmorg 5y ago
    A minute ago you were complaining about updating Arch every day and now you're talking about not updating it over time spans lasting years! Talk about hopping from one extreme to another... Yeah, if you're not going to update Arch in 3 years then I'd expect some issues but in fairness to Arch, the duration you're talking about here is literally the entire support life for some distros. So I certainly wouldn't call Arch "needy" for that. I mean there does need to be a cut off point somewhere and the fact that it's still possible to recover from that state at all -- even if it isn't a smooth ride -- is pretty fscking impressive in my opinion. So yeah, I agree that if you're the kind of person to install an OS and then not touch it again for three(!!!) years and expect it to still update then a bleeding edge rolling release distro isn't going to be your best choice. But nobody was suggesting that Arch (or any distro for that matter) is perfectly suited for every edge case out there. And while I'm sorry you've been burnt in the past, I do think the way you've presented your arguments here is rather disingenuous.

by dTal 5y ago

prima-facie 5y ago

I've been running basically the same Arch install since 2009: > zcat /var/log/pacman.log.1.gz-2018010214.backup | head [2009-02-23 18:14] installed filesystem (2009.01-1) You can hedge against any distro breaking by using a volume manager which allows snapshots of the root volume, or even better, creates these snapshots automatically before a distro upgrade. Both LVM and Btrfs can do this. I use LVM because I love boring tech.

hnlmorg 5y ago

> Arch is needy; it commits seppuku if you abandon it for too long. It's certainly introducing more risk but these days I only update my Arch systems a maximum of once every 6 months (usually less than that) and never have an issue. This meme largely came about from ~10 years ago with the filesystem changes and migration to systemd. But it's been a pretty smooth ride since. > Every update on Arch is a "risky distribution upgrade", In theory it is a possibility but in practice that's not really the case. I mean you're not going to get breaking changes every week ;) Arch's package manager has really improved in recent years too so a lot of occasions that might have needed manual intervention can be handled automatically by the package manager (which wasn't the case back when this meme was true). Also there is a news section on Arch's website so if you're genuinely nervous about running `pacman` you can check there first (this is the recommended best practice but most people don't bother these days because it's rare to have an issue). > and it insists that you update every day. Only if you kick off your package manager everyday. But this is true for any Linux distro since they're all pushing updated packages everyday so I don't really see how Arch differs in that regard. > On the other hand, I have kept Debian installs going for a great many years, with dist-upgrades never failing, and I know that some people have maintained the same Debian install since they first installed it in the 90s. I've had a Debian dist-upgrade fail before but that's just once out of a dozen(?) of successful dist-upgrades so I do agree Debian is solid. Never had an issue with upgrading CentOS either. Nor FreeBSD. The only thing Arch does better than the above is you don't have an hour(s) of downtime during the upgrade. But as you said, that's paired with the risk that you might run into a breaking change at any point in the future. For that reason alone I wouldn't run Arch on servers (or at least not professionally -- thrown Arch on some personal servers in the past)

dTal 5y ago
>This meme largely came about from ~10 years ago with the filesystem changes and migration to systemd. But it's been a pretty smooth ride since. It's not a meme. Just this week I attempted to update an Arch system that had been left unattended for only a couple years. It got caught in some kind of cycle where it didn't have the GPG keys required to download the latest GPG keys. Then there was some package conflict issue. Finally after much wailing and gnashing of teeth I completed the update and rebooted... "kernel not found". I gave up on it. And lest I be accused of incompetence, here's another Arch user's 3-year update story, only a few weeks ago, on our very own HN: "Somehow the upgrade didn't completely hose everything. It just took a bit of finagling in the form of looking through any packages that gave errors (errors like cyclic dependency stuff and conflicts from bad use of pip) and uninstalling those that I didn't see a need for or switching them to the package manager instead of pip. About an hour of babysitting it and I had a completely updated and working Arch setup." -- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29872053 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29872053 So I'm sorry, but "pretty smooth ride" my ass.
- hnlmorg 5y ago
  A minute ago you were complaining about updating Arch every day and now you're talking about not updating it over time spans lasting years! Talk about hopping from one extreme to another... Yeah, if you're not going to update Arch in 3 years then I'd expect some issues but in fairness to Arch, the duration you're talking about here is literally the entire support life for some distros. So I certainly wouldn't call Arch "needy" for that. I mean there does need to be a cut off point somewhere and the fact that it's still possible to recover from that state at all -- even if it isn't a smooth ride -- is pretty fscking impressive in my opinion. So yeah, I agree that if you're the kind of person to install an OS and then not touch it again for three(!!!) years and expect it to still update then a bleeding edge rolling release distro isn't going to be your best choice. But nobody was suggesting that Arch (or any distro for that matter) is perfectly suited for every edge case out there. And while I'm sorry you've been burnt in the past, I do think the way you've presented your arguments here is rather disingenuous.