8 ms·

I've always found Arch to be among the easiest distros to keep tidy. There's people that have been running the same install for many years. On the other hand, w

by nextos 11y ago

I've always found Arch to be among the easiest distros to keep tidy. There's people that have been running the same install for many years. On the other hand, whenever I try dist-upgrade in Debian et al. I always end up blowing up something.

creshal 11y ago
Debian can be configured to be quite tidy, and apt less suicidal, but it requires far more effort than on Arch. However, once set up, you can slap unattended-upgrades on top and have a (usually…) self-updating and self-maintaining system, which is quite neat.
- nextos 11y ago
  Oh yes. Well, Debian is very nice too, but they have completely antagonic philosophies. Probably the way to go is Nix/Guix. Transactional upgrades and declarative configuration.
- skrause 11y ago
  On Debian-based systems you can simply use debfoster (https://packages.debian.org/debfoster https://packages.debian.org/debfoster) to remove unwanted packages.
  - shared4you 11y ago
    What does this do that `apt-get autoremove` doesn't?
    - onli 11y ago
      I remember this having existed before autoremove. It shouldn't help much now.
    - skrause 11y ago
      apt-get autoremove only removes now unused packages that were previously installed automatically as a dependency. debfoster explicitly asks you which packages you want to keep and removes everything else. You can use it to strip down an existing Debian installation to just the base packages.
- fit2rule 11y ago
  In my opinion, the only real effort that is required to keep Debian clean is to remember to do the updates regularly, and dist-upgrade semi-regularly. If you get far behind, then there are going to be headaches, but if you stay relatively current as you move along with new updates, and upgrades to packages, Debian is very smooth sailing. So smooth that I instantly thought to myself "huh, who needs spring-cleaning? My debian-systems pretty much keep themselves clean all along.." and was subsequently surprised about how Arch Linux seems to do things .. (Nevertheless, its also prompted me to put "try Arch out" on the TODO list for the next down-time period..)
  - creshal 11y ago
    > In my opinion, the only real effort that is required to keep Debian clean is to remember to do the updates regularly, and dist-upgrade semi-regularly. The beauty of Debian is that unattended-upgrades works well enough that most of the time you can defer updates (within one release) to it and don't have to bother at all. My only gripe is that if it breaks, it breaks hard. Botched Arch installations are much easier to fix.
ne0phyte 11y ago
Indeed. The installation on my laptop is now 4.5 years old and was on 3 different laptops and 2 different SSDs and yet there is absolutely no need to reinstall. I maintain my system every now and then and never exceeded 1000 installed packages. If you have some time to spend on your system and the occasional hickups after/during updates then Arch is very easy to keep clean imo.
mikekchar 11y ago
One of the biggest differences between Arch and Debian is that the configuration in Arch is left up to you. This dramatically simplifies the dependencies. In Debian you often run into circumstances where a very large number of people want related apps to be set up to communicate with each other. Even if you don't want the dependency you are kind of stuck with it because otherwise the configuration is broken. Then the dependencies bring in other popular dependencies and in the end you can get a bit of a mess.
UserRights 11y ago
This is BS. I am using debian since many years and apt-get dist-upgrade never blows up anything. Debian is one of the distros I use for long term installations because it is the only distro that gets release upgrades right, it is no problem using the same installation for several years and jump across several releases. Of course you should read the release notes, but what you are saying is the opposite of my real life experience. Of course it is also very easy to just reinstall. Writing "every dist-upgrade blows something up" is an indication that you must be doing something very wrong with that computer in front of you. Please provide some bug reports.
- favadi 11y ago
  It is clearly a lie. Another lie, "Arch is as stable as you make it".
  - biggerbob 11y ago
    I don't know about Debian, it's probably fine, but Arch is stable. It's the most stable distro I've ever used.
  - baldfat 11y ago
    I LOVE LOVE ARCH. I use OpenSUSE at work. It is 100% my choice and I always feel that Arch is great, in production I have to many little things that just need a few moments of attention. I find Debian and Ubuntu to be also problematic for dist-upgrades and have been using my main work computer for 3.5 years with the same install. It is not unique to Arch to keep a system clean. Zypper in SUSE is also very capable of keeping things clean by just doing a zypper dup to go back to vanilla install again. If you read the forums of SUSE and the forums of Debian you will see a historical issue with Debian which I heard has gotten MUCH better.
- burntsushi 11y ago
  > This is BS. No, it's not. The parent is reporting a personal experience. Just like you. Back in 2009 when I switched to Arch, one of the reasons why I switched was because dist-upgrade frequently blew up on me and I didn't know how to fix it. Maybe it was user error. Maybe I didn't know what I was doing. Maybe Arch just empowered me to understand my system better. I don't really know what the reason is, but nevertheless, the experience isn't bullshit. It really happens.
dtech 11y ago
Did you add non-standard repositories? In my experience dist-upgrade is absolutely fine, unless you installed updated version from alternate repositories. That can blow up in your face during dist-upgrade.
fensipens 11y ago
whenever I try dist-upgrade in Debian et al. I always end up blowing up something. Back this up with examples, please. I use Debian since potato and can't remember dist-upgrade failing me once.
- creshal 11y ago
  One example I vividly remember was Lenny → Squeeze. • Apache was installed, but stopped for the upgrade (resource-constrained device, I figured I'd better free up the memory up front). • Apache's preinstall script tried to stop it anyway • The old init script returned exit code 1 when trying to stop an already stopped service (PID not found, well duh) • …and the preinstall script used set -e • …and was called in the middle of a full dist-upgrade, that among other things installed binary-incompatible library upgrades, so after apt bailed out, it wouldn't start any more. In the end I just wiped the machine. Haven't seen it happening since, but apt/dpkg is way, way more anal than pacman when it detects problems, which usually gets in the way of fixing them (ex.: package didn't list a dependency it needs in its pre-/post-install-script → dpkg gets in an endless loop where it tries to re-execute said script and dies before it gets to installing the dependency).
- vacri 11y ago
  I'm an aptitude user, but I learned the hard way that you need to switch to apt-get to do a dist-upgrade. Something broke. Can't recall what it was - I think I was dist-upgrading to Squeeze, so it was a while back.
- Borealid 11y ago
  One time I had MIT Kerberos installed. The /etc/krb5.conf file had been edited. The dist-upgrade included an upgrade of the mit-krb5 RPMs. One of those RPMs had a %postinstall that ran a sed command on the krb5.conf, to try to change a setting. The sed command, run on the krb5.conf I had in place, blew away half the file. That krb5.conf was necessary for users to log in; after the dist-upgrade, neither SSH nor local logins worked properly because the pam module bailed out entirely.
tacojuan 11y ago
Upgrading to a different release of Ubuntu has always broken things for me as well. That's why I have Arch on my laptop now.
Macha 11y ago
I switched to Arch after Ubuntu blew up upgrading from 8.10 to 9.04 and 9.04 to 9.10 on my main device.
WalterGR 11y ago
I've always found Arch to be among the easiest distros to keep tidy. There's people that have been running the same install for many years. Is this uncommon for desktop Linux?
- Schiphol 11y ago
  It is very uncommon for Ubuntu and derivatives, so I guess the answer's yes.
- dhruvmittal 11y ago
  Many linux distros release a new version every 6-12 months, depending on the distro. While ubuntu offers 5 years of support on long-term support (lts) releases, desktop users tend to like the latest version and reinstall or upgrade every 6 months. A lot of the time, upgrading to a new release causes packages to skip forward by several versions. This often breaks packages with kernel dependencies, like graphics drivers, so it's common to advocate a fresh install every release. If you choose to remain on a lts release, you can easily run the same install for many years-- the price you pay is not necessarily having the latest shiny packages in return for a fairly stable system. Archlinux, as a rolling distribution, does not have new release versions. Packages upgrade continuously-- as long as you pacman -Syu somewhat frequently, you avoid skipping package versions, reducing general breakage. Of course, most frequent maintenance is the cost you pay for a smoothly running archlinux system, but it's nice not to worry about reinstalling while still having the shiniest new packages. I've used archlinux on my personal laptop for roughly 4 years now, and I've only reinstalled once when I upgrade to an ssd about two years ago. Prior to that, I used to install the latest fedora every 6 months.
- oldpond 11y ago
  Well, if you are on a rolling distro like Gentoo or Arch you are going to run into breakage eventually because you are out on the leading edge. The tools are evolving quite steadily, so it's the price you pay to run the latest and greatest. Package dependency management is the trickiest part of package management, especially the reverse dependencies.
  - 11y ago
nickysielicki 11y ago
I've been using linux + gnu since I was about 14. I cargo-culted almost exclusively for the first 4 years of my using of linux. Things broke constantly. I would install a new distro just to try out a different DE, not realizing that the differences between kubuntu and ubuntu could be exchanged with a simple apt-get command. Everything I ran in a shell was copy pasted. Then one summer I installed gentoo. I used it for about a year. If something broke, I made sure to understand why, and to not just fix it. I learned more in that year than I had in the first 4 combined. Now I use debian and arch linux, it's not worth the hassle of running a gentoo system. But oddly, nothing seems to break anymore. I don't feel like I'm doing anything differently. That leads me to the conclusion that not breaking installations is more about uncovering the unknown unknowns of your understanding of your system than anything. Just my $0.02.
- stinkytaco 11y ago
  Is it also possible that in the intervening year the distributions improved as well? I don't know what your timeline is looking like, but I've also just found linux is much less likely to break since I started using it (~1997) because it has better packaging, more reliable contribution for hardware drivers, improved init, etc. It's a bigger business and thus the stakes to keep it running reliably are higher.

by nextos 11y ago

creshal 11y ago

Debian can be configured to be quite tidy, and apt less suicidal, but it requires far more effort than on Arch. However, once set up, you can slap unattended-upgrades on top and have a (usually…) self-updating and self-maintaining system, which is quite neat.

nextos 11y ago
Oh yes. Well, Debian is very nice too, but they have completely antagonic philosophies. Probably the way to go is Nix/Guix. Transactional upgrades and declarative configuration.
skrause 11y ago
On Debian-based systems you can simply use debfoster (https://packages.debian.org/debfoster https://packages.debian.org/debfoster) to remove unwanted packages.
- shared4you 11y ago
  What does this do that `apt-get autoremove` doesn't?
  - onli 11y ago
    I remember this having existed before autoremove. It shouldn't help much now.
  - skrause 11y ago
    apt-get autoremove only removes now unused packages that were previously installed automatically as a dependency. debfoster explicitly asks you which packages you want to keep and removes everything else. You can use it to strip down an existing Debian installation to just the base packages.
fit2rule 11y ago
In my opinion, the only real effort that is required to keep Debian clean is to remember to do the updates regularly, and dist-upgrade semi-regularly. If you get far behind, then there are going to be headaches, but if you stay relatively current as you move along with new updates, and upgrades to packages, Debian is very smooth sailing. So smooth that I instantly thought to myself "huh, who needs spring-cleaning? My debian-systems pretty much keep themselves clean all along.." and was subsequently surprised about how Arch Linux seems to do things .. (Nevertheless, its also prompted me to put "try Arch out" on the TODO list for the next down-time period..)
- creshal 11y ago
  > In my opinion, the only real effort that is required to keep Debian clean is to remember to do the updates regularly, and dist-upgrade semi-regularly. The beauty of Debian is that unattended-upgrades works well enough that most of the time you can defer updates (within one release) to it and don't have to bother at all. My only gripe is that if it breaks, it breaks hard. Botched Arch installations are much easier to fix.

ne0phyte 11y ago

Indeed. The installation on my laptop is now 4.5 years old and was on 3 different laptops and 2 different SSDs and yet there is absolutely no need to reinstall. I maintain my system every now and then and never exceeded 1000 installed packages. If you have some time to spend on your system and the occasional hickups after/during updates then Arch is very easy to keep clean imo.

mikekchar 11y ago

One of the biggest differences between Arch and Debian is that the configuration in Arch is left up to you. This dramatically simplifies the dependencies. In Debian you often run into circumstances where a very large number of people want related apps to be set up to communicate with each other. Even if you don't want the dependency you are kind of stuck with it because otherwise the configuration is broken. Then the dependencies bring in other popular dependencies and in the end you can get a bit of a mess.

UserRights 11y ago

This is BS. I am using debian since many years and apt-get dist-upgrade never blows up anything. Debian is one of the distros I use for long term installations because it is the only distro that gets release upgrades right, it is no problem using the same installation for several years and jump across several releases. Of course you should read the release notes, but what you are saying is the opposite of my real life experience. Of course it is also very easy to just reinstall. Writing "every dist-upgrade blows something up" is an indication that you must be doing something very wrong with that computer in front of you. Please provide some bug reports.

favadi 11y ago
It is clearly a lie. Another lie, "Arch is as stable as you make it".
- biggerbob 11y ago
  I don't know about Debian, it's probably fine, but Arch is stable. It's the most stable distro I've ever used.
- baldfat 11y ago
  I LOVE LOVE ARCH. I use OpenSUSE at work. It is 100% my choice and I always feel that Arch is great, in production I have to many little things that just need a few moments of attention. I find Debian and Ubuntu to be also problematic for dist-upgrades and have been using my main work computer for 3.5 years with the same install. It is not unique to Arch to keep a system clean. Zypper in SUSE is also very capable of keeping things clean by just doing a zypper dup to go back to vanilla install again. If you read the forums of SUSE and the forums of Debian you will see a historical issue with Debian which I heard has gotten MUCH better.
burntsushi 11y ago
> This is BS. No, it's not. The parent is reporting a personal experience. Just like you. Back in 2009 when I switched to Arch, one of the reasons why I switched was because dist-upgrade frequently blew up on me and I didn't know how to fix it. Maybe it was user error. Maybe I didn't know what I was doing. Maybe Arch just empowered me to understand my system better. I don't really know what the reason is, but nevertheless, the experience isn't bullshit. It really happens.

dtech 11y ago

Did you add non-standard repositories? In my experience dist-upgrade is absolutely fine, unless you installed updated version from alternate repositories. That can blow up in your face during dist-upgrade.

fensipens 11y ago

whenever I try dist-upgrade in Debian et al. I always end up blowing up something. Back this up with examples, please. I use Debian since potato and can't remember dist-upgrade failing me once.

creshal 11y ago
One example I vividly remember was Lenny → Squeeze. • Apache was installed, but stopped for the upgrade (resource-constrained device, I figured I'd better free up the memory up front). • Apache's preinstall script tried to stop it anyway • The old init script returned exit code 1 when trying to stop an already stopped service (PID not found, well duh) • …and the preinstall script used set -e • …and was called in the middle of a full dist-upgrade, that among other things installed binary-incompatible library upgrades, so after apt bailed out, it wouldn't start any more. In the end I just wiped the machine. Haven't seen it happening since, but apt/dpkg is way, way more anal than pacman when it detects problems, which usually gets in the way of fixing them (ex.: package didn't list a dependency it needs in its pre-/post-install-script → dpkg gets in an endless loop where it tries to re-execute said script and dies before it gets to installing the dependency).
vacri 11y ago
I'm an aptitude user, but I learned the hard way that you need to switch to apt-get to do a dist-upgrade. Something broke. Can't recall what it was - I think I was dist-upgrading to Squeeze, so it was a while back.
Borealid 11y ago
One time I had MIT Kerberos installed. The /etc/krb5.conf file had been edited. The dist-upgrade included an upgrade of the mit-krb5 RPMs. One of those RPMs had a %postinstall that ran a sed command on the krb5.conf, to try to change a setting. The sed command, run on the krb5.conf I had in place, blew away half the file. That krb5.conf was necessary for users to log in; after the dist-upgrade, neither SSH nor local logins worked properly because the pam module bailed out entirely.

tacojuan 11y ago

Upgrading to a different release of Ubuntu has always broken things for me as well. That's why I have Arch on my laptop now.

Macha 11y ago

I switched to Arch after Ubuntu blew up upgrading from 8.10 to 9.04 and 9.04 to 9.10 on my main device.

WalterGR 11y ago

I've always found Arch to be among the easiest distros to keep tidy. There's people that have been running the same install for many years. Is this uncommon for desktop Linux?

Schiphol 11y ago
It is very uncommon for Ubuntu and derivatives, so I guess the answer's yes.
dhruvmittal 11y ago
Many linux distros release a new version every 6-12 months, depending on the distro. While ubuntu offers 5 years of support on long-term support (lts) releases, desktop users tend to like the latest version and reinstall or upgrade every 6 months. A lot of the time, upgrading to a new release causes packages to skip forward by several versions. This often breaks packages with kernel dependencies, like graphics drivers, so it's common to advocate a fresh install every release. If you choose to remain on a lts release, you can easily run the same install for many years-- the price you pay is not necessarily having the latest shiny packages in return for a fairly stable system. Archlinux, as a rolling distribution, does not have new release versions. Packages upgrade continuously-- as long as you pacman -Syu somewhat frequently, you avoid skipping package versions, reducing general breakage. Of course, most frequent maintenance is the cost you pay for a smoothly running archlinux system, but it's nice not to worry about reinstalling while still having the shiniest new packages. I've used archlinux on my personal laptop for roughly 4 years now, and I've only reinstalled once when I upgrade to an ssd about two years ago. Prior to that, I used to install the latest fedora every 6 months.
oldpond 11y ago
Well, if you are on a rolling distro like Gentoo or Arch you are going to run into breakage eventually because you are out on the leading edge. The tools are evolving quite steadily, so it's the price you pay to run the latest and greatest. Package dependency management is the trickiest part of package management, especially the reverse dependencies.
- 11y ago

nickysielicki 11y ago

I've been using linux + gnu since I was about 14. I cargo-culted almost exclusively for the first 4 years of my using of linux. Things broke constantly. I would install a new distro just to try out a different DE, not realizing that the differences between kubuntu and ubuntu could be exchanged with a simple apt-get command. Everything I ran in a shell was copy pasted. Then one summer I installed gentoo. I used it for about a year. If something broke, I made sure to understand why, and to not just fix it. I learned more in that year than I had in the first 4 combined. Now I use debian and arch linux, it's not worth the hassle of running a gentoo system. But oddly, nothing seems to break anymore. I don't feel like I'm doing anything differently. That leads me to the conclusion that not breaking installations is more about uncovering the unknown unknowns of your understanding of your system than anything. Just my $0.02.

stinkytaco 11y ago
Is it also possible that in the intervening year the distributions improved as well? I don't know what your timeline is looking like, but I've also just found linux is much less likely to break since I started using it (~1997) because it has better packaging, more reliable contribution for hardware drivers, improved init, etc. It's a bigger business and thus the stakes to keep it running reliably are higher.