4 ms·

I wonder - why isn't Arch the one distro to rule them all - especially if we talk about rolling release? I was distro hoping since 2008 - Ubuntu, Xubuntu, Cento

by suslik 3y ago

I wonder - why isn't Arch the one distro to rule them all - especially if we talk about rolling release? I was distro hoping since 2008 - Ubuntu, Xubuntu, Centos, Fedora, Mint, Slack - you name it. When I found Arch, after a couple of months I knew it was over. It really "just works" in the best sence.

hexfish 3y ago
Because in most enterprise environments it's a welcome property to keep security updates separate from feature updates, which is not something rolling distro's provide, as they just follow upstream as fast as possible. Say my enterprise application is built upon the API (in an abstract sense, if you will) of package xyz, version 1.0. And then xyz, version 2.0 comes out. I would have to rebuild my enterprise application to be compatible with API 2 and I don't have the resources nor the incentive for that because I don't need API 2. Then a vulnerability gets reported in both xyz version 1.0 and 2.0 but xyz's maintainers only patch 2.0 (as 2.0.1). In that case I am very happy that non-rolling (enterprisey) distro's like Ubuntu, CentOS, Redhat etc backport that security patch so I can keep running xyz version 1 (or rather 1.0.0-1 or something like that). Where most rolling distro's would just 'force' you to upgrade to 2.0.1. Hope my explanation makes sense.
- antioedipus 3y ago
  First of all, many rolling release distros don’t follow upstream as fast as possible—there’s often some testing window. People go on and on about backported security patches and stability, but I’ve had to handle so many buggy patches or issues that never got a backported fix that I now think this is basically a fantasy. The distro maintainers just don’t have the time (or experience with all the software they ship!) to backport patches for every single issue. I’d really rather get a fix by the actual software maintainer than a year-old mystery meat version that still has a bunch of known non security bugs fixed in upstream that the distro maintainers don’t care about. Even worse, being able to stay on essentially outdated software puts a lot of organizations into a tough spot when their LTS version finally becomes unsupported. Practice makes perfect, and I think lots of small, regular updates result in a lot less pain than a mega-update every few years (really: I’ve had to manage one of these more than once, and it’s a total nightmare figuring out which of 1000 changes in the new LTS version caused a performance regression or something).
  - hexfish 3y ago
    > distros don’t follow upstream as fast as possible Well yes, the testing is of course part of the 'as fast as possible' part. But I could've made that more clear indeed. > many buggy patches or issues that never got a backported I have yet to see those in CentOS. But I guess we won't be seeing a lot of CentOS at all in the foreseeable future :p > many buggy patches or issues that never got a backported I feel like thats mostly on them. There is a huge temporal overlap between LTS versions and you should have plenty of time to test. I think I'd rather dedicate one month every year to fully test and then roll out a new LTS version than be interupted by unexpected updates at random intervals. That being said: What a boring job it must be to backport security patches all day.
bee_rider 3y ago
Arch is a very popular rolling release distro with a great community, which has (I think) really kicked off interest in the (superior, IMO) rolling release paradigm. But, just like point release distros, people are going to want to try new things, and for some things they want to try, it’ll be easier to start a new project rather than somehow convincing the whole Arch community to try their thing. Arch is pretty conservative and sticks fairly close to upstream. So, we’ll keep seeing new rolling release distros, and some of them will have good ideas, so they’ll stick around. Which is great, diversity is a sign of a strong ecosystem.
lucideer 3y ago
Because it doesn't "just work" in the actual sense: namely, installing is an involved process. That's great for people who are into Linux, but that's not your audience if you're talking about growth. Manjaro may have some hope: it's received a lot of criticism for the odd way the maintainers have set up some aspects of the distro, especially from Arch users. I've seen HN threads full of comments saying things like "why on earth would anyone use Manjaro when you can use Arch?". Those commenters miss the selling point of Manjaro: it's a rolling release for Ubuntu's target audience, and that target audience want one important thing Arch does not offer: - an officially supported, opinionated installer of a fully configured Desktop environment
- jorvi 3y ago
  I would say OpenSUSE is the best rolling release by far: since they actually test packages instead of rawdogging it and putting bug notices in each package’s release notes.
- whalesalad 3y ago
  installing it is truthfully the easiest part. the hard part is dealing with breakages due to incompatibilities, particularly when you consider aur.
  - Espionage724 3y ago
    lolwut? Unless something major changed, you're dropped to a terminal as soon as you boot the install image, and have to either have advanced knowledge on what to do from there, or have the wiki side-by-side on another device. And unless you're taking incredible notes at the same time, good luck replicating the set-up if you need to reinstall. Ubuntu, openSUSE, Fedora, and most other mainstream distros at least boot you into a GUI to install.
    - imtringued 3y ago
      Replicating the setup when you need to reinstall? What? I once had my computer crash during a kernel update and this left the system unbootable. All you have to do is use the arch iso and arch-chroot into your system to rerun/undo the kernel update or whatever other update broke your system. The thing is, even a "reinstall" is merely about deleting packages and then rerunning pacman and reinstalling your bootloader. Your /home and /etc stay untouched. You can take the list of installed packages and then install those. I mostly needed that when moving from an old laptop to a new one.
fakedang 3y ago
Comments like these remind of me of how disconnected devs are from the real world noobs like me. Which means more real world problems to be potentially solved by startups who can deliver, even if there's a solution that "really just works".
Arnavion 3y ago
I use OpenSUSE (Tumbleweed, the rolling release version) over Arch because Arch has very little useful software outside the AUR whereas OpenSUSE has that in its official repo ("oss"). Anyone can upload anything they want to the AUR and there's no review or even any guarantee that it builds. It's basically equivalent to how Ubuntu users solve all their problems by adding random users' PPAs. But of course if you are okay with the AUR, then Arch has the benefit that the AUR has a lot more software than OpenSUSE's official repo, and there's a lot less bureaucracy involved with adding new software. Regardless, I solve all my OpenSUSE problems using the Arch wiki since they're both rolling-release, modern software stacks, systemd, etc distros, so I'm always grateful that Arch exists.
nicoty 3y ago
Personally prefer Void's runit and xbps to Arch's systemd and pacman. Although I mostly use packages from Nix too. Reckon my dream distro would be something barebones that uses s6 and Nix.
Espionage724 3y ago
Heck no; I reinstalled distros multiple times a week while I was distro hopping and Arch got reinstalled once before I quickly realized it didn't offer anything to make that install process worthwhile. I use Fedora primarily because of SELinux, and apparently Arch doesn't even use a MAC by-default and expects manual-setup. openSUSE Tumbleweed is a better rolling-release implementation imo and has even been more up-to-date than Arch when it came to some major GNOME, KDE and kernel updates.

by suslik 3y ago

hexfish 3y ago

Because in most enterprise environments it's a welcome property to keep security updates separate from feature updates, which is not something rolling distro's provide, as they just follow upstream as fast as possible. Say my enterprise application is built upon the API (in an abstract sense, if you will) of package xyz, version 1.0. And then xyz, version 2.0 comes out. I would have to rebuild my enterprise application to be compatible with API 2 and I don't have the resources nor the incentive for that because I don't need API 2. Then a vulnerability gets reported in both xyz version 1.0 and 2.0 but xyz's maintainers only patch 2.0 (as 2.0.1). In that case I am very happy that non-rolling (enterprisey) distro's like Ubuntu, CentOS, Redhat etc backport that security patch so I can keep running xyz version 1 (or rather 1.0.0-1 or something like that). Where most rolling distro's would just 'force' you to upgrade to 2.0.1. Hope my explanation makes sense.

antioedipus 3y ago
First of all, many rolling release distros don’t follow upstream as fast as possible—there’s often some testing window. People go on and on about backported security patches and stability, but I’ve had to handle so many buggy patches or issues that never got a backported fix that I now think this is basically a fantasy. The distro maintainers just don’t have the time (or experience with all the software they ship!) to backport patches for every single issue. I’d really rather get a fix by the actual software maintainer than a year-old mystery meat version that still has a bunch of known non security bugs fixed in upstream that the distro maintainers don’t care about. Even worse, being able to stay on essentially outdated software puts a lot of organizations into a tough spot when their LTS version finally becomes unsupported. Practice makes perfect, and I think lots of small, regular updates result in a lot less pain than a mega-update every few years (really: I’ve had to manage one of these more than once, and it’s a total nightmare figuring out which of 1000 changes in the new LTS version caused a performance regression or something).
- hexfish 3y ago
  > distros don’t follow upstream as fast as possible Well yes, the testing is of course part of the 'as fast as possible' part. But I could've made that more clear indeed. > many buggy patches or issues that never got a backported I have yet to see those in CentOS. But I guess we won't be seeing a lot of CentOS at all in the foreseeable future :p > many buggy patches or issues that never got a backported I feel like thats mostly on them. There is a huge temporal overlap between LTS versions and you should have plenty of time to test. I think I'd rather dedicate one month every year to fully test and then roll out a new LTS version than be interupted by unexpected updates at random intervals. That being said: What a boring job it must be to backport security patches all day.

bee_rider 3y ago

Arch is a very popular rolling release distro with a great community, which has (I think) really kicked off interest in the (superior, IMO) rolling release paradigm. But, just like point release distros, people are going to want to try new things, and for some things they want to try, it’ll be easier to start a new project rather than somehow convincing the whole Arch community to try their thing. Arch is pretty conservative and sticks fairly close to upstream. So, we’ll keep seeing new rolling release distros, and some of them will have good ideas, so they’ll stick around. Which is great, diversity is a sign of a strong ecosystem.

lucideer 3y ago

Because it doesn't "just work" in the actual sense: namely, installing is an involved process. That's great for people who are into Linux, but that's not your audience if you're talking about growth. Manjaro may have some hope: it's received a lot of criticism for the odd way the maintainers have set up some aspects of the distro, especially from Arch users. I've seen HN threads full of comments saying things like "why on earth would anyone use Manjaro when you can use Arch?". Those commenters miss the selling point of Manjaro: it's a rolling release for Ubuntu's target audience, and that target audience want one important thing Arch does not offer: - an officially supported, opinionated installer of a fully configured Desktop environment

jorvi 3y ago
I would say OpenSUSE is the best rolling release by far: since they actually test packages instead of rawdogging it and putting bug notices in each package’s release notes.
whalesalad 3y ago
installing it is truthfully the easiest part. the hard part is dealing with breakages due to incompatibilities, particularly when you consider aur.
- Espionage724 3y ago
  lolwut? Unless something major changed, you're dropped to a terminal as soon as you boot the install image, and have to either have advanced knowledge on what to do from there, or have the wiki side-by-side on another device. And unless you're taking incredible notes at the same time, good luck replicating the set-up if you need to reinstall. Ubuntu, openSUSE, Fedora, and most other mainstream distros at least boot you into a GUI to install.
  - imtringued 3y ago
    Replicating the setup when you need to reinstall? What? I once had my computer crash during a kernel update and this left the system unbootable. All you have to do is use the arch iso and arch-chroot into your system to rerun/undo the kernel update or whatever other update broke your system. The thing is, even a "reinstall" is merely about deleting packages and then rerunning pacman and reinstalling your bootloader. Your /home and /etc stay untouched. You can take the list of installed packages and then install those. I mostly needed that when moving from an old laptop to a new one.

fakedang 3y ago

Comments like these remind of me of how disconnected devs are from the real world noobs like me. Which means more real world problems to be potentially solved by startups who can deliver, even if there's a solution that "really just works".

Arnavion 3y ago

I use OpenSUSE (Tumbleweed, the rolling release version) over Arch because Arch has very little useful software outside the AUR whereas OpenSUSE has that in its official repo ("oss"). Anyone can upload anything they want to the AUR and there's no review or even any guarantee that it builds. It's basically equivalent to how Ubuntu users solve all their problems by adding random users' PPAs. But of course if you are okay with the AUR, then Arch has the benefit that the AUR has a lot more software than OpenSUSE's official repo, and there's a lot less bureaucracy involved with adding new software. Regardless, I solve all my OpenSUSE problems using the Arch wiki since they're both rolling-release, modern software stacks, systemd, etc distros, so I'm always grateful that Arch exists.

nicoty 3y ago

Personally prefer Void's runit and xbps to Arch's systemd and pacman. Although I mostly use packages from Nix too. Reckon my dream distro would be something barebones that uses s6 and Nix.

Espionage724 3y ago

Heck no; I reinstalled distros multiple times a week while I was distro hopping and Arch got reinstalled once before I quickly realized it didn't offer anything to make that install process worthwhile. I use Fedora primarily because of SELinux, and apparently Arch doesn't even use a MAC by-default and expects manual-setup. openSUSE Tumbleweed is a better rolling-release implementation imo and has even been more up-to-date than Arch when it came to some major GNOME, KDE and kernel updates.