4 ms·

Doesn't match my experience at all. I love that packages are always up to date. Also, in my experience, having a rolling release cycle leads to significantly fe

by imdoor 3y ago

Doesn't match my experience at all. I love that packages are always up to date. Also, in my experience, having a rolling release cycle leads to significantly fewer issues than having to upgrade everything at once. Using Arch has been a net time saver for me compared to something like Ubuntu where I've wasted a lot of time fighting package upgrade issues and trying to get newer package versions than the distro provides.

jwells89 3y ago
In my limited experience, how Arch works out depends on how you're using Linux. If it's your daily driver and you stay on top of updates it's probably going to be fine, but on the other hand if it's a secondary OS on a multiboot system or a VM or something that only gets updated occasionally, chances of things breaking are much higher and something like Fedora might make more sense.
- imdoor 3y ago
  There would definitely be issues with the keyring being outdated which you have to know/search how to work around. And from time to time Arch also requires some manual interventions in the package update process (that are posted on archlinux.org) – you'd have to deal with those all at once if Arch wouldn't have been updated for a very long time. But, other than that, I can't think of other reasons why having a less often used Arch installation would give you trouble. Then again, I haven't used Arch in such a manner, so you might as well be right.
  - c-hendricks 3y ago
    I use arch and update sporadically and this hasn't really failed me: sudo pacman -Sy archlinux-keyring && sudo pacman -Syu There were two times something went wrong: - when Arch moved plymouth to their main repos - when switching from a 1070 to a 4070 I needed to recompile my nvidia drivers
- semi-extrinsic 3y ago
  I dug some old computers out of the attic recently. The one that had not been updated since 2021 only took around half an hour to get up to speed, and that was with a metric ton of packages installed. The other one seemed to have been updated last time in 2015. It didn't even have updated certificates for https, so it couldn't sync the keyring. After trying for a while I just gave up and reinstalled Arch from a USB stick.
  - lor_louis 3y ago
    > old computers > not updated since 2021
    - semi-extrinsic 3y ago
      The computer itself was from 2011, and it was last used in 2021.
mistrial9 3y ago
good on you (or anyone) having a clean and efficient process on Arch - but really, this is not the same YMMV for everyone with all software stacks. can someone whose entire worklife came to a halt gradually over weeks on Arch, please add here?
kaba0 3y ago
These two are not the only two options: the nix model is clearly superior and is not as error prone as each.
- starlevel003 3y ago
  nix is so clearly superior and yet nobody uses it. curious!
  - petemir 3y ago
    I think that the learning curve for the nix ecosystem is a lot steeper compared to other distros.
    - kaba0 3y ago
      Well, arch is no ubuntu either.
  - kaba0 3y ago
    Sometimes the better solution takes time to reach the masses. Here we talk about a tiny percent of the tiny 3% of desktop users.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
    > nix is so clearly superior and yet nobody uses it. curious! If you're going to be snide, you should at least be correct - or are the 6300 users in the main matrix chat room just hanging out for fun? (sent from my nixos daily driver)
    - coldtea 3y ago
      It's not like 6300 is anything but statistical noise compared to the number of Linux users out there.
      - yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
        The number of Arch Linux users is nothing but statistical noise compared to the number of Windows users; would you say that nobody uses Arch?
celrod 3y ago
Fedora is better at keeping packages up to date than Arch. In particular, Fedora is much quicker to adopt the latest compiler toolchain releases.
bdavbdav 3y ago
I’ve done a lot of distro hopping in the last couple of years, and I always seemed to spend a lot longer managing the environment rather than doing the work (which was an issue when I was freelancing…). Indeed Arch is the only one that ended up with a massive folder in a notion notebook for guides and how tos.
jorvi 3y ago
> something like Ubuntu where I've wasted a lot of time fighting package upgrade issues The irony. You’re aware Arch its policy is to release packages in a broken state and just put it in the release log? They even very publicly state that. If you want an actually stable rolling release, stick with OpenSUSE.
- imdoor 3y ago
  > You’re aware Arch its policy is to release packages in a broken state and just put it in the release log? They even very publicly state that. Can you please provide some sources/examples?

by imdoor 3y ago

jwells89 3y ago

In my limited experience, how Arch works out depends on how you're using Linux. If it's your daily driver and you stay on top of updates it's probably going to be fine, but on the other hand if it's a secondary OS on a multiboot system or a VM or something that only gets updated occasionally, chances of things breaking are much higher and something like Fedora might make more sense.

imdoor 3y ago
There would definitely be issues with the keyring being outdated which you have to know/search how to work around. And from time to time Arch also requires some manual interventions in the package update process (that are posted on archlinux.org) – you'd have to deal with those all at once if Arch wouldn't have been updated for a very long time. But, other than that, I can't think of other reasons why having a less often used Arch installation would give you trouble. Then again, I haven't used Arch in such a manner, so you might as well be right.
- c-hendricks 3y ago
  I use arch and update sporadically and this hasn't really failed me: sudo pacman -Sy archlinux-keyring && sudo pacman -Syu There were two times something went wrong: - when Arch moved plymouth to their main repos - when switching from a 1070 to a 4070 I needed to recompile my nvidia drivers
semi-extrinsic 3y ago
I dug some old computers out of the attic recently. The one that had not been updated since 2021 only took around half an hour to get up to speed, and that was with a metric ton of packages installed. The other one seemed to have been updated last time in 2015. It didn't even have updated certificates for https, so it couldn't sync the keyring. After trying for a while I just gave up and reinstalled Arch from a USB stick.
- lor_louis 3y ago
  > old computers > not updated since 2021
  - semi-extrinsic 3y ago
    The computer itself was from 2011, and it was last used in 2021.

mistrial9 3y ago

good on you (or anyone) having a clean and efficient process on Arch - but really, this is not the same YMMV for everyone with all software stacks. can someone whose entire worklife came to a halt gradually over weeks on Arch, please add here?

kaba0 3y ago

These two are not the only two options: the nix model is clearly superior and is not as error prone as each.

starlevel003 3y ago
nix is so clearly superior and yet nobody uses it. curious!
- petemir 3y ago
  I think that the learning curve for the nix ecosystem is a lot steeper compared to other distros.
  - kaba0 3y ago
    Well, arch is no ubuntu either.
- kaba0 3y ago
  Sometimes the better solution takes time to reach the masses. Here we talk about a tiny percent of the tiny 3% of desktop users.
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
  > nix is so clearly superior and yet nobody uses it. curious! If you're going to be snide, you should at least be correct - or are the 6300 users in the main matrix chat room just hanging out for fun? (sent from my nixos daily driver)
  - coldtea 3y ago
    It's not like 6300 is anything but statistical noise compared to the number of Linux users out there.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
      The number of Arch Linux users is nothing but statistical noise compared to the number of Windows users; would you say that nobody uses Arch?

celrod 3y ago

Fedora is better at keeping packages up to date than Arch. In particular, Fedora is much quicker to adopt the latest compiler toolchain releases.

bdavbdav 3y ago

I’ve done a lot of distro hopping in the last couple of years, and I always seemed to spend a lot longer managing the environment rather than doing the work (which was an issue when I was freelancing…). Indeed Arch is the only one that ended up with a massive folder in a notion notebook for guides and how tos.

jorvi 3y ago

> something like Ubuntu where I've wasted a lot of time fighting package upgrade issues The irony. You’re aware Arch its policy is to release packages in a broken state and just put it in the release log? They even very publicly state that. If you want an actually stable rolling release, stick with OpenSUSE.

imdoor 3y ago
> You’re aware Arch its policy is to release packages in a broken state and just put it in the release log? They even very publicly state that. Can you please provide some sources/examples?