5 ms·

>I am going back to Arch. My computer is my computer, and I don’t care anymore how much work it takes, I’m going to take charge so nothing like this ever happen

>I am going back to Arch. My computer is my computer, and I don’t care anymore how much work it takes, I’m going to take charge so nothing like this ever happens again. From my experience the only real work load with Arch was the set up. Once I installed it and configured everything to my liking there has been nearly 0 work with maintaining the system. I've been running my installation of Arch since 2016 and the system didn't break even once.

manchmalscott 4y ago
I recently switched back to arch, and when I updated my xorg a few days later, a few things started crashing (notably godot) with a “[xcb] Unknown sequence number while processing queue”, so as much as I love arch I definitely wouldn’t call it “nearly 0 work” unless you just never update.
- stevenhuang 4y ago
  Unlucky, looks like it was an libx11 upstream bug. Has since been fixed as of a few hours ago at least.
  - manchmalscott 4y ago
    That’s what I figured, yeah. I wish the Arch team used their news feed more often for things like this.
silisili 4y ago
Same. I love their archiso, you can build your own little custom live ISO. I put Gnome and networking on mine, then install via a terminal shell window. The only reason I reinstall is when I upgrade my box every 2 or 3 years. Years ago Arch was a bit more finicky, but today it's been perfectly stable for me, doing updates every Friday.
mort96 4y ago
I agree, Arch is amazing. I haven't been using it for a few years, I've been on Ubuntu in an attempt to be closer to how a "normal computer user" would experience Linux. But every single time Ubuntu Softwate messed something up, every single time I get a notification to close Firefox in <13 days to avoid disruptions, every time I click the "update all" button on Ubuntu Software and it tells me it can't because the Snap Store is running (as a background process which I can't close through the UI), I get the urge to go back. At this point, it's only inertia which keeps me on Ubuntu, I don't want to take the time to set stuff up anew. But at this rate, I'm sure I'll finally make the switch sooner rather than later. I'm not philosophically against Snap as an idea. But what I am against is all the absolutely terrible UX decisions and bugs which Canonical evidently considers "acceptable". It makes the whole Linux desktop look like a joke. Maybe it's time to realise it is a joke. That Linux will remain a programmer OS and an OS for locked-down consumer devices, but not a general consumer desktop-style OS. And maybe we should recognise that in such a world, there is no space for Ubuntu Desktop.
- emj 4y ago
  I never have a problem with this, but I do shutdown my computer everyday. I do actually use arch as well but a lot less than Ubuntu and Debian, my feeling is that Arch is a lot more trouble than Ubuntu and Debian. I am very conservative with my desktop I always want to be able to work, I've had zero problems with that attitude running Ubuntu since it was just an idea. All problems I've had were self inflicted and there are many foot guns for sure.
  - mort96 4y ago
    I also shut down my computer every night. If it works for you I'm happy for you, but it's more trouble than Arch was for me. The stability is nice while it lasts, but I've had way too many major things break when upgrading to a new release. The most extreme case was the time Ubuntu 19.10 broke GDM, so anyone with an nvidia card and auto-login enabled had their system bricked. This is even though I reported the issue a long time before the release, and there were very reasonable workarounds proposed in the issue discussion in good time to fix the issues before release. Ubuntu 21.04 released with a nextcloud-desktop application which segfaulted on launch. I also reported this a long time before release, and it was ignored because they had already frozen the packages they import from Debian, so I had to deal with a desktop which couldn't sync my files. I haven't experienced similar huge issues in Arch, but more importantly, when an issue does occur, I can expect a fix to be out in days, not weeks or months.
Enginerrrd 4y ago
Same experience. Arch has been nearly maintenance free, and it's been the one distribution where when I did break something, I was able to fix it 100% without nuking and starting over. I still can't bring myself to run it on servers for some reason, and I go back to Debian stable for those, but honestly, I'm not sure why. I'm starting to feel that a rolling release would make for a lower maintenance server because it's always a PITA when the inevitable end-of-life comes into play and the upgrade inevitably fails and I have to reconfigure everything anyways. Ubuntu in contrast would ALWAYS find new and bizarre ways to break. ESPECIALLY when snap came into play.
choward 4y ago
Might I suggest NixOS. Same benefits. Auto-updates are disabled by default. But even if they do happen it's not going to try to mess with currently running processes. In fact, the old version will still be installed just no longer to default. You could even run both simultaneously (using two separate config directories otherwise you get warnings). Snap seems like a huge regression in the Linux ecosystem.
rendaw 4y ago
Jumping on this bandwagon, running it for 10 years now and the last 5 years or so I've touched more or less nothing (aside from updates) and had no issues.
tsukurimashou 4y ago
same here, I've been using arch for years both at home and for work, I love rolling release! I'm using bspwm no DE, but I'm considering trying Arch+GNOME now that I've been forced to move to Ubuntu for work with my new job.
aaaa4444 4y ago
The update process broke a few times for me in Arch. Only been using it for a couple of years.
timbit42 4y ago
If you want to keep dpkg, apt, DEBs, etc., you can use Linux Mint, which doesn't have Snaps, unless you add it. This also lets you download and install DEBs manually from projects that support Debian or Ubuntu DEBs but aren't in the official repos yet.

manchmalscott 4y ago

I recently switched back to arch, and when I updated my xorg a few days later, a few things started crashing (notably godot) with a “[xcb] Unknown sequence number while processing queue”, so as much as I love arch I definitely wouldn’t call it “nearly 0 work” unless you just never update.

stevenhuang 4y ago
Unlucky, looks like it was an libx11 upstream bug. Has since been fixed as of a few hours ago at least.
- manchmalscott 4y ago
  That’s what I figured, yeah. I wish the Arch team used their news feed more often for things like this.

silisili 4y ago

Same. I love their archiso, you can build your own little custom live ISO. I put Gnome and networking on mine, then install via a terminal shell window. The only reason I reinstall is when I upgrade my box every 2 or 3 years. Years ago Arch was a bit more finicky, but today it's been perfectly stable for me, doing updates every Friday.

mort96 4y ago

I agree, Arch is amazing. I haven't been using it for a few years, I've been on Ubuntu in an attempt to be closer to how a "normal computer user" would experience Linux. But every single time Ubuntu Softwate messed something up, every single time I get a notification to close Firefox in <13 days to avoid disruptions, every time I click the "update all" button on Ubuntu Software and it tells me it can't because the Snap Store is running (as a background process which I can't close through the UI), I get the urge to go back. At this point, it's only inertia which keeps me on Ubuntu, I don't want to take the time to set stuff up anew. But at this rate, I'm sure I'll finally make the switch sooner rather than later. I'm not philosophically against Snap as an idea. But what I am against is all the absolutely terrible UX decisions and bugs which Canonical evidently considers "acceptable". It makes the whole Linux desktop look like a joke. Maybe it's time to realise it is a joke. That Linux will remain a programmer OS and an OS for locked-down consumer devices, but not a general consumer desktop-style OS. And maybe we should recognise that in such a world, there is no space for Ubuntu Desktop.

emj 4y ago
I never have a problem with this, but I do shutdown my computer everyday. I do actually use arch as well but a lot less than Ubuntu and Debian, my feeling is that Arch is a lot more trouble than Ubuntu and Debian. I am very conservative with my desktop I always want to be able to work, I've had zero problems with that attitude running Ubuntu since it was just an idea. All problems I've had were self inflicted and there are many foot guns for sure.
- mort96 4y ago
  I also shut down my computer every night. If it works for you I'm happy for you, but it's more trouble than Arch was for me. The stability is nice while it lasts, but I've had way too many major things break when upgrading to a new release. The most extreme case was the time Ubuntu 19.10 broke GDM, so anyone with an nvidia card and auto-login enabled had their system bricked. This is even though I reported the issue a long time before the release, and there were very reasonable workarounds proposed in the issue discussion in good time to fix the issues before release. Ubuntu 21.04 released with a nextcloud-desktop application which segfaulted on launch. I also reported this a long time before release, and it was ignored because they had already frozen the packages they import from Debian, so I had to deal with a desktop which couldn't sync my files. I haven't experienced similar huge issues in Arch, but more importantly, when an issue does occur, I can expect a fix to be out in days, not weeks or months.

Enginerrrd 4y ago

Same experience. Arch has been nearly maintenance free, and it's been the one distribution where when I did break something, I was able to fix it 100% without nuking and starting over. I still can't bring myself to run it on servers for some reason, and I go back to Debian stable for those, but honestly, I'm not sure why. I'm starting to feel that a rolling release would make for a lower maintenance server because it's always a PITA when the inevitable end-of-life comes into play and the upgrade inevitably fails and I have to reconfigure everything anyways. Ubuntu in contrast would ALWAYS find new and bizarre ways to break. ESPECIALLY when snap came into play.

choward 4y ago

Might I suggest NixOS. Same benefits. Auto-updates are disabled by default. But even if they do happen it's not going to try to mess with currently running processes. In fact, the old version will still be installed just no longer to default. You could even run both simultaneously (using two separate config directories otherwise you get warnings). Snap seems like a huge regression in the Linux ecosystem.

rendaw 4y ago

Jumping on this bandwagon, running it for 10 years now and the last 5 years or so I've touched more or less nothing (aside from updates) and had no issues.

tsukurimashou 4y ago

same here, I've been using arch for years both at home and for work, I love rolling release! I'm using bspwm no DE, but I'm considering trying Arch+GNOME now that I've been forced to move to Ubuntu for work with my new job.

aaaa4444 4y ago

The update process broke a few times for me in Arch. Only been using it for a couple of years.

timbit42 4y ago

If you want to keep dpkg, apt, DEBs, etc., you can use Linux Mint, which doesn't have Snaps, unless you add it. This also lets you download and install DEBs manually from projects that support Debian or Ubuntu DEBs but aren't in the official repos yet.