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> Arch is terrible due to their bare testing package release policy. It is NOT. This is biggest mystery I have about people's perception about Arch Linux. Arc

> Arch is terrible due to their bare testing package release policy. It is NOT. This is biggest mystery I have about people's perception about Arch Linux. Arch provides latest upstream stable packages unlike point releases. NOT developer branches of packages BUT STABLE versions of package as soon as it is available. Point releases like ubuntu gives you old versions of software. And backport security patches against that version from latest stable packages which again leads to possible bugs etc etc. Apart from Linux, you will never see anyone calling a latest stable version of a software as "bleeding edge". You don't say iOS 17 as bleeding edge. It is the latest stable version of the iOS. Windows 11 is not bleeding edge, it is the latest stable version of windows OS. I have a 5+ year installation Arch installation from which I am writing this comment. It is fast easier to use and predictable. Point releases always give you a easy jumpstart and it is often a pain to maintain in the longer run. Arch definitely requires initial time investment (It is after all a DIY distro, not a managed distro), but it is easier to maintain. I use Arch because I am lazy. I don't want unpredicatable changes. I don't think I am going to complain getting firefox 119 (which is the latest STABLE version at the time of writing) within a week or two. Especially in these times where we should be using latest packages for security and stability. Also repost for Linux distros (like stable/unstable/testing) is testing a package against the distro. It is NOT checking the stability of the software itself. It is checking the stability of a software/packages against a particular distro.

wing-_-nuts 3y ago
Not who you're replying to but I'm sorry, he's right. The GRUB incident last summer was the last straw for me. I found myself with an unbootable system. The r/arch sub was radio silent. r/EndevourOs posted a sticky about the grub issue. On researching it more, they were using a build of grub off master (not even a release!). When I asked an arch dev if he thought it was appropriate to do that given he'd just left thousands of people without a bootable system, he dismissed me with something to the effect of 'If you can't repair your bootloader maybe you should use an easier distribution' You know what? I agreed with him. I formatted my laptop and installed PopOs and it's been really nice running a system where the devs actually seem to care about stability.
- unsungNovelty 3y ago
  Oh no. I am sorry that happened to you. My experience have been pleasant from the community. But I understand that might not be everyone's experience. Might I suggest setting up timeshift or other things like BTRFS which have rolling back features? I never have to use it in my 5+ years old arch install, but I have used it once while using Manjaro (Arch derivative). If your system breaks, I just use Linux Mint live boot and revert it back to last working state from Linux Mint which bundles timeshift. And you just wait for a fix before you update again. I suggest this because my experience has been that point releases creates problems in the long term and hence is not without issue. So this might be helpful. PS: I have heard nice things about PopOS. Hope things are fun over there. :)
jorvi 3y ago
> It is NOT. It is. Arch has an explicit policy that if there are breaking issues with a package, they will push it regardless and it is your task to read about these yourself in the package update/release messages. No sane person is going to do that for the many many packages that their system is comprised of. SUSE holds fresh packages for a little bit and puts them through a more rigorous testing process, before pushing them onto Tumbeleweed. This leads to much much less breakage. Maybe you aren't aware, but Tumbleweed is also a rolling distro. This is why I specifically mention it as a replacement for Arch.
- unsungNovelty 3y ago
  Hi, This is an interesting point you make. I agree that this is a policy and I am not a fan as well. The solution is keeping an eye on the forums and news. But yeah, it can sound problematic. But like I mentioned just above in my comments, zero issues with just sudo pacman -Syu for the last 5 years. I have only done manual intervention twice, both times as per https://archlinux.org/news/ https://archlinux.org/news/. One was something I can't recall and recently JRE, JDK. It didn't break. Tumbleweed updates are big batches because of the way they update. Which I am not a fant of as well. Not to mention, I am a big fan of Arch community. More over, albeit only hearing good things about OpenSUSE (AUR is based on OpenSUSE tech IIRC), I would like to use only community led/oriented distros. They are always better for the end users. Especially Arch, whatever technical problems exists, they are always improving things. Look at the archinstall. Now I can have a new arch install in like <5 mins.

wing-_-nuts 3y ago

Not who you're replying to but I'm sorry, he's right. The GRUB incident last summer was the last straw for me. I found myself with an unbootable system. The r/arch sub was radio silent. r/EndevourOs posted a sticky about the grub issue. On researching it more, they were using a build of grub off master (not even a release!). When I asked an arch dev if he thought it was appropriate to do that given he'd just left thousands of people without a bootable system, he dismissed me with something to the effect of 'If you can't repair your bootloader maybe you should use an easier distribution' You know what? I agreed with him. I formatted my laptop and installed PopOs and it's been really nice running a system where the devs actually seem to care about stability.

unsungNovelty 3y ago
Oh no. I am sorry that happened to you. My experience have been pleasant from the community. But I understand that might not be everyone's experience. Might I suggest setting up timeshift or other things like BTRFS which have rolling back features? I never have to use it in my 5+ years old arch install, but I have used it once while using Manjaro (Arch derivative). If your system breaks, I just use Linux Mint live boot and revert it back to last working state from Linux Mint which bundles timeshift. And you just wait for a fix before you update again. I suggest this because my experience has been that point releases creates problems in the long term and hence is not without issue. So this might be helpful. PS: I have heard nice things about PopOS. Hope things are fun over there. :)

jorvi 3y ago

> It is NOT. It is. Arch has an explicit policy that if there are breaking issues with a package, they will push it regardless and it is your task to read about these yourself in the package update/release messages. No sane person is going to do that for the many many packages that their system is comprised of. SUSE holds fresh packages for a little bit and puts them through a more rigorous testing process, before pushing them onto Tumbeleweed. This leads to much much less breakage. Maybe you aren't aware, but Tumbleweed is also a rolling distro. This is why I specifically mention it as a replacement for Arch.

unsungNovelty 3y ago
Hi, This is an interesting point you make. I agree that this is a policy and I am not a fan as well. The solution is keeping an eye on the forums and news. But yeah, it can sound problematic. But like I mentioned just above in my comments, zero issues with just sudo pacman -Syu for the last 5 years. I have only done manual intervention twice, both times as per https://archlinux.org/news/ https://archlinux.org/news/. One was something I can't recall and recently JRE, JDK. It didn't break. Tumbleweed updates are big batches because of the way they update. Which I am not a fant of as well. Not to mention, I am a big fan of Arch community. More over, albeit only hearing good things about OpenSUSE (AUR is based on OpenSUSE tech IIRC), I would like to use only community led/oriented distros. They are always better for the end users. Especially Arch, whatever technical problems exists, they are always improving things. Look at the archinstall. Now I can have a new arch install in like <5 mins.