4 ms·

''By the way, I use Arch''

by W3zzy 8mo ago

bee_rider 8mo ago
The meme was “I use Arch, BTW,” but I think it has mostly died as enough people have pointed out that Arch isn’t really hard-mode Linux or something. It is a barebones start but 1) very stable due to rolling-release producing small changes 2) the skill barrier to getting a full system is “basic literacy, to read the wiki” Eventually I switched to Ubuntu for some reason, it has given me more headaches than Arch.
- W3zzy 8mo ago
  I've started my Linux journey a decent year ago. It's been fun but I'm happy that they're such a great community to troubleshoot along with me. Never tried Arch but I do love a barebones no fuzz system.
- GeoAtreides 8mo ago
  >the skill barrier to getting a full system is “basic literacy, to read the wiki” if GenZ knew how to read they would be very disappointed right now in the age of tablets and tiktok, basic literacy is quite a big ask
  - piperswe 8mo ago
    That's what they said about GenX, Millennials, and probably every other generation before them. Something something, "OK boomer."
    - GeoAtreides 8mo ago
      they absolutely did not say that tiktok and tablets are destroying basic literacy about GenX or Millenials if anything, they said the kids were good with technology
      - _vqpz 8mo ago
        Yeah cause that's what he was talking about
        GeoAtreides 8mo ago
        I know. I was emphasising that this time is not like before. That there are major differences, and things look similar only on a very superficial level.
  - zvqcMMV6Zcr 8mo ago
    It really is nothing new. People quickly close windows with errors, they go out of they way to avoid reading actual message.
- friendzis 8mo ago
  > very stable due to rolling-release producing small changes Can you elaborate on the chain of thought here? The small changes at high frequency means that something is nearly constantly in a <CHANGED> state, quite opposite from stable. Rolling release typically means that updates are not really snapshotted, therefore unless one does pull updates constantly they risk pulling a set of incompatible updates. Again, quite different from stable.
  - roer 8mo ago
    I think op meant the subjective feeling of having a system that runs in a stable manner. I don't quite follow their reasoning either (maybe the smaller changesets expose compatibility bugs before affecting general ux?), but I agree that arch was a joy for me to use and felt "stable".
  - bri3d 8mo ago
    It's the same train of thought as the modern cloud software notion that deploying small changes more often is safer than bundling "releases"; if you upgrade 3 packages 3x a week (or deploy 50 lines of code 3x a week), you catch small issues quickly and resolve them immediately, rather than upgrading 400 packages 1x a year (or deploying 50,000 lines of code 2x a year), where when things break you have a rather tall order just to triage what failed. I think there are advantages to both, but I will say that I've found modern Arch to be quite good. The other huge benefit of Arch is the general skill level present in the user base and openness of the forums; when something breaks it's usually easy to google "arch + package name broken" and immediately find a forum thread with a real fix. I don't think I'd use Arch for a corporate production server for change management reasons alone, but for a home desktop and my home server, it's actually the distribution that's required me to do the _least_ "Linux crap" to keep it going.
  - bee_rider 8mo ago
    It’s stable in the way that a person taking small predictable steps at a time is stable compared to somebody who making large random lurching steps. Sure, the system is often changed, but if only a few packages have changed, should there be a problem it is easy to identify the culprit. Although it is hard to say. Ubuntu also has, I guess, intentional behavior that is hard to distinguish from a bug, like packages switching from apt to snap. So it might just be that my subjective experience feels more buggy.
- Levitating 8mo ago
  > 1) very stable due to rolling-release producing small changes Having very frequent updates to bleeding edge software versions, often requiring manual intervention is not "stable". An arch upgrade may, without warning, replace your config files and update software to versions incompatible with the previous. That's fine if you're continuously maintaining the system, maybe even fun. But it's not stable. Other distributions are perfectly capable of updating themselves without ever requiring human intervention. > 2) the skill barrier to getting a full system is “basic literacy, to read the wiki” As well as requiring you to be comfortable with the the linux command line as well as have plenty of time. My mom has basic literacy, she can't install ArchLinux. ArchLinux is great but it's not a beginner-friendly operating system in the same way that Fedora/LinuxMint/OpenSUSE/Pop!_OS/Ubuntu/ElementOS are.
  - Macha 8mo ago
    > Having very frequent updates to bleeding edge software versions, often requiring manual intervention is not "stable". An arch upgrade may, without warning, replace your config files and update software to versions incompatible with the previous. 12 in the last year if you used all the software (I don’t many people are running dovecot and zabbix), so probably actually like 3 for most users: https://archlinux.org/ https://archlinux.org/ That’s not too dissimilar from what you’d get running stable releases of Ubuntu or Windows. And of course plenty of windows software will auto upgrade itself in potentially undesired ways, windows users just don’t blame the OS for that
    - Levitating 8mo ago
      I don't just mean the types of manual intervention mentioned in the news. ArchLinux ships bleeding edge software to users with very little downstream changes. ArchLinux also replaces config files when upgrading. This is inherently different behavior from stable release distributions like Ubuntu. ArchLinux is not an operating system where you can do an unattended upgrade and forget about it. That's not "bad" or "good", that's just a design choice. https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Frequently_asked_questions#Is_Arch_Linux_a_stable_distribution?_Will_I_get_frequent_breakage https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Frequently_asked_questions#...?
- pdntspa 8mo ago
  If ubuntu had stuck with APT for software installs instead of snap and whatever else, it would be a lock less headachey

''By the way, I use Arch''

by W3zzy 8mo ago

''By the way, I use Arch''

The meme was “I use Arch, BTW,” but I think it has mostly died as enough people have pointed out that Arch isn’t really hard-mode Linux or something. It is a barebones start but 1) very stable due to rolling-release producing small changes 2) the skill barrier to getting a full system is “basic literacy, to read the wiki” Eventually I switched to Ubuntu for some reason, it has given me more headaches than Arch.

W3zzy 8mo ago
I've started my Linux journey a decent year ago. It's been fun but I'm happy that they're such a great community to troubleshoot along with me. Never tried Arch but I do love a barebones no fuzz system.
GeoAtreides 8mo ago
>the skill barrier to getting a full system is “basic literacy, to read the wiki” if GenZ knew how to read they would be very disappointed right now in the age of tablets and tiktok, basic literacy is quite a big ask
- piperswe 8mo ago
  That's what they said about GenX, Millennials, and probably every other generation before them. Something something, "OK boomer."
  - GeoAtreides 8mo ago
    they absolutely did not say that tiktok and tablets are destroying basic literacy about GenX or Millenials if anything, they said the kids were good with technology
    - _vqpz 8mo ago
      Yeah cause that's what he was talking about
      - GeoAtreides 8mo ago
        I know. I was emphasising that this time is not like before. That there are major differences, and things look similar only on a very superficial level.
- zvqcMMV6Zcr 8mo ago
  It really is nothing new. People quickly close windows with errors, they go out of they way to avoid reading actual message.
friendzis 8mo ago
> very stable due to rolling-release producing small changes Can you elaborate on the chain of thought here? The small changes at high frequency means that something is nearly constantly in a <CHANGED> state, quite opposite from stable. Rolling release typically means that updates are not really snapshotted, therefore unless one does pull updates constantly they risk pulling a set of incompatible updates. Again, quite different from stable.
- roer 8mo ago
  I think op meant the subjective feeling of having a system that runs in a stable manner. I don't quite follow their reasoning either (maybe the smaller changesets expose compatibility bugs before affecting general ux?), but I agree that arch was a joy for me to use and felt "stable".
- bri3d 8mo ago
  It's the same train of thought as the modern cloud software notion that deploying small changes more often is safer than bundling "releases"; if you upgrade 3 packages 3x a week (or deploy 50 lines of code 3x a week), you catch small issues quickly and resolve them immediately, rather than upgrading 400 packages 1x a year (or deploying 50,000 lines of code 2x a year), where when things break you have a rather tall order just to triage what failed. I think there are advantages to both, but I will say that I've found modern Arch to be quite good. The other huge benefit of Arch is the general skill level present in the user base and openness of the forums; when something breaks it's usually easy to google "arch + package name broken" and immediately find a forum thread with a real fix. I don't think I'd use Arch for a corporate production server for change management reasons alone, but for a home desktop and my home server, it's actually the distribution that's required me to do the _least_ "Linux crap" to keep it going.
- bee_rider 8mo ago
  It’s stable in the way that a person taking small predictable steps at a time is stable compared to somebody who making large random lurching steps. Sure, the system is often changed, but if only a few packages have changed, should there be a problem it is easy to identify the culprit. Although it is hard to say. Ubuntu also has, I guess, intentional behavior that is hard to distinguish from a bug, like packages switching from apt to snap. So it might just be that my subjective experience feels more buggy.
Levitating 8mo ago
> 1) very stable due to rolling-release producing small changes Having very frequent updates to bleeding edge software versions, often requiring manual intervention is not "stable". An arch upgrade may, without warning, replace your config files and update software to versions incompatible with the previous. That's fine if you're continuously maintaining the system, maybe even fun. But it's not stable. Other distributions are perfectly capable of updating themselves without ever requiring human intervention. > 2) the skill barrier to getting a full system is “basic literacy, to read the wiki” As well as requiring you to be comfortable with the the linux command line as well as have plenty of time. My mom has basic literacy, she can't install ArchLinux. ArchLinux is great but it's not a beginner-friendly operating system in the same way that Fedora/LinuxMint/OpenSUSE/Pop!_OS/Ubuntu/ElementOS are.
- Macha 8mo ago
  > Having very frequent updates to bleeding edge software versions, often requiring manual intervention is not "stable". An arch upgrade may, without warning, replace your config files and update software to versions incompatible with the previous. 12 in the last year if you used all the software (I don’t many people are running dovecot and zabbix), so probably actually like 3 for most users: https://archlinux.org/ https://archlinux.org/ That’s not too dissimilar from what you’d get running stable releases of Ubuntu or Windows. And of course plenty of windows software will auto upgrade itself in potentially undesired ways, windows users just don’t blame the OS for that
  - Levitating 8mo ago
    I don't just mean the types of manual intervention mentioned in the news. ArchLinux ships bleeding edge software to users with very little downstream changes. ArchLinux also replaces config files when upgrading. This is inherently different behavior from stable release distributions like Ubuntu. ArchLinux is not an operating system where you can do an unattended upgrade and forget about it. That's not "bad" or "good", that's just a design choice. https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Frequently_asked_questions#Is_Arch_Linux_a_stable_distribution?_Will_I_get_frequent_breakage https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Frequently_asked_questions#...?
pdntspa 8mo ago
If ubuntu had stuck with APT for software installs instead of snap and whatever else, it would be a lock less headachey