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One of the unsung praises of Arch is that it's turned thousands of users into testers. Before someone says "that shouldn't be the user's responsibility" I'm goi

by WD-42 1y ago

One of the unsung praises of Arch is that it's turned thousands of users into testers. Before someone says "that shouldn't be the user's responsibility" I'm going to say I'm not so sure. We're all in this together. I'd rather deal with a bug or two on my desktop at home if it means it gets fixed before appearing in a distro that gets used for servers at work and causes issues there where the consequences are much higher.

porridgeraisin 1y ago
I have a similar experience. My not-so-tech-savvy brother also has the same laptop setup I do (arch+XFCE). He knows to yay -Syyu and it's usually never a problem. The recent upgrade there was the vlc package split problem so I told him to hold on upgrading and that I'd come and do it. While I needed to sit and filter and install the optional dependencies myself for my upgrade, a week later it was already figured out (based on user feedback I assume) and the usual yay -Syyu installed just the right optional dependencies.
- specproc 1y ago
  I don't consider myself particularly adept with linux. I've only been running it daily on the desktop for the last few years and, aside from mucking around with TWMs, I've not done much poking about with the internals. Despite the reputations, I've had far fewer issues on Arch-based desktop distros than back when I was rolling Ubuntu and Debian. That said, Debian on a server every time.
  - porridgeraisin 1y ago
    Yeah same. I think the release cycle actually doesn't matter at all. The reason for it is that the majority of breakage are caused by components/extensions of gnome and kde and non-DE-yet-complex software in distros with a lot of those present out of the box, like manjaro, breaking backwards compatibility every other week. When people switch to arch they typically set things up from scratch, end up choosing simple tools and avoid most of the unstable stuff distros push onto you.
zozbot234 1y ago
> One of the unsung praises of Arch is that it's turned thousands of users into testers. You can do that well enough with Debian's "testing" and "unstable" release channels. Aside from the few months leading up to a new "stable" release, which usually isn't a big deal (and fixing regressions in "stable" should then be a higher priority anyway). Just don't install it on systems that you actually depend on to keep working. But running it on your desktop at home that you only use to play and experiment with is just fine.

by WD-42 1y ago

porridgeraisin 1y ago

I have a similar experience. My not-so-tech-savvy brother also has the same laptop setup I do (arch+XFCE). He knows to yay -Syyu and it's usually never a problem. The recent upgrade there was the vlc package split problem so I told him to hold on upgrading and that I'd come and do it. While I needed to sit and filter and install the optional dependencies myself for my upgrade, a week later it was already figured out (based on user feedback I assume) and the usual yay -Syyu installed just the right optional dependencies.

specproc 1y ago
I don't consider myself particularly adept with linux. I've only been running it daily on the desktop for the last few years and, aside from mucking around with TWMs, I've not done much poking about with the internals. Despite the reputations, I've had far fewer issues on Arch-based desktop distros than back when I was rolling Ubuntu and Debian. That said, Debian on a server every time.
- porridgeraisin 1y ago
  Yeah same. I think the release cycle actually doesn't matter at all. The reason for it is that the majority of breakage are caused by components/extensions of gnome and kde and non-DE-yet-complex software in distros with a lot of those present out of the box, like manjaro, breaking backwards compatibility every other week. When people switch to arch they typically set things up from scratch, end up choosing simple tools and avoid most of the unstable stuff distros push onto you.

zozbot234 1y ago

> One of the unsung praises of Arch is that it's turned thousands of users into testers. You can do that well enough with Debian's "testing" and "unstable" release channels. Aside from the few months leading up to a new "stable" release, which usually isn't a big deal (and fixing regressions in "stable" should then be a higher priority anyway). Just don't install it on systems that you actually depend on to keep working. But running it on your desktop at home that you only use to play and experiment with is just fine.