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Arch Linux isnβt actually hard to use, just a pain to set up, but still of you want an arch set up but the convenience like anyone else then use a fork of arch. Weβre use Cachy mostly cuz we enjoy the plug and play. No hassle no issues. Though think pads are peak.
What has never worked for us was Ubuntu, havenβt tried Debian tho
Debian might be good for servers, but try using it for work other than server-side stuff. Try installing a productivity application, so you're not 2 years behind with it! Try plugging in new hardware! Now the tables have turned.
Unpopular opinion, but how about we take Linux seriously? Arch is a solid OS, unlike Ubuntu, but it's still much more manageable than say Gentoo or LFS. Get off your high horses.
My machines got borked every time I tried to do a Debian or Fedora dist-upgrade following the official guide, like 4 times total. Rolling updates on Arch require manual intervention once in a blue moon and haven't broken my system since I got rid of Nvidia
Same, but with an ancient Nvidia card even...
Ubuntu will actively break itself via snapd at like 2am on a Sunday.
Fedora could not do a fully system update on a 1GB VPS because dnf would OOM.
The dumbest thing I've seen Arch do in over a decade of using it is put RabbitMQ in its official repos while also rolling the latest version of Erlang which RabbitMQ doesn't support.
I will admit that a week ago I unplugged one of my hard drives and the PC booted into emergency recovery mode, and I had to edit fstab via a series of commands to make it work again, but it only took about 5min.
My browser works fine, got it off flathub.
My graphics drivers work better than they did on Windows by a longshot, I used to get BSOD because Windows didn't like exclusive audio control ever changing. I'm assuming because of constant advancements in things like Vulkan, Wayland, and xWayland.
Debian never worked for me. Something was ALWAYS broken
I'm just chiming in to not announce which distro I'm using.
-sent from Voyager on Android
Android, ew. Should be a Linux phone
-sent from Boost for Lemmy
I've used debian and arch. Only on debian have I discovered my wifi driver wasn't yet supported. Only on debian have I turned on a server that I'd left off for a bit and abruptly discovered packages and updates no longer worked due to end of support and that I couldn't run dist-upgrade without them. I've had to do more major surgery on apt then I've ever done with pacman.
abruptly discovered packages and updates no longer worked
This happens when you're at least an entire release cycle behind and haven't updated the archive signing keys. You need to install them, and possibly modify your sources.list to point at archive.debian.org instead. No major surgery required.
Has nix in their profile name and doesn't use NixOS π€ /s
Arch really is the "Linux" of Linux users, complete with non users making shit up about it.
Chaotic Neutral
distro breaks
reinstall
drag your backup back over
get back to work
Use whatever, you'll eventually break it either way.
I wonder how many Arch haters have actually used Arch and ever ran into a breaking issue.
In my 8 years of daily driving Arch, I have had 1 ever, and it was only bad bc I didn't know of BTRFS yet.
That happened 3 years in, and I went on a new distro-hopping spree in between, trying Fedora, NixOS, and others, and they had actual problems. Not "oh an update broke my system and was fixed in a day."
So now I've been back on Arch for more years.
This whole "Arch is always breaking and takes so much maintenance" is a myth. In reality, Arch is the most stable, because it packages everything Vanilla. Everything works the "standard" way. On Debian, things decay, and then some stuff that's new breaks with some stuff that's old. On Fedora, there is a Red-Hat tax: configs in weird places, strange scripts, software missing from main repos (COPR sucks btw). On Arch, it's just "normal" Linux; and that works
Yeah, I've noticed there's this subsection of people that have a completely wrong understanding of what the term "stable" means in the world of distros, and that it often creates as many problems as it solves, particularly on a desktop PC, or even worse, a gaming PC.
And for there record: Stable just means that things don't change. That doesn't mean it contains less bugs, is easier to use or is more secure. And on the flip side it doesn't mean that distros that are not "stable" are necessarily "unstable" in any shape or form.
Well... because of longer testing periods and a lot of stuff never even considered until stale the stable distros indeed have less bugs. The ones that still slip through however will basically not get fixes for years.
On the other hand I have seen a lot of bugs on Arch... but I usually don't care and just assume (rightfully so in 99% of the cases) that they get fixed within hours.
I wonder how many Arch haters have actually used Arch and ever ran into a breaking issue.
A lot... they install it, screw up because they didn't bother to read the instructions, then did the usual... a new install.
Those who pass the first basic barrier to just chroot into the system and fix a simple mistake or roll back a package for the few hours it takes to get fixed instead of starting fresh usually stay for a long time...
In fact with the people I know there is a correlation between either "oh, I don't bother to fix anything and just do a fresh install (that idea is especially persistent in Windows users)" or "there's a big distro upgrade that had issues" and distro hopping. Once you settled on a rolling release and learned the basics in terms of fixing stuff the urge to hop yet another time vanishes for many.
Interesting, my two friends with Arch keep breaking their system π They say its not their fault though!
Debian decays? Can't relate, I've often been running Debian releases until they almost fell out of support (happens on servers) and they were always rock solid after I set them up. It's only ever an issue if you want to run new software versions without some kind of virtual environment, and generally I just don't care about that.
I think you can get problems once you are a full release cycle behind the last supported one.
Funnily enough it's mostly an issue with mirrors and signing keys, so basically the same fix Arch users need if they are behind for many months: update the packages for keys and mirrors first, everyting else afterwards.
This mirrors my experience. I -Syu on a weekly basis, spend about 3 minutes doing pacnews, and then I'm done.
Fedora baybee!
Maximum hardware enablement,
Minimum game breaking bugs.
New Kernals all the time.
~~Community focused distro with no corporate interference~~
~~I can watch all of my "Linux Isos" I torrented out of the box~~
Logo is cool infinity F.
In the past 3 years of using arch daily I've had to remove some renamed packages after an update once, thats about it
I'm not one of those Arch evangelicals, but this isn't true at all now.
100%. Iβve got servers running arch for the past 5 years or so and theyβre the most stable systems Iβve got. I got so tired of the painful upgrade paths on βstableβ distros so decided to switch a server to a rolling release.
After I found arch got security patches into the repos faster than the stable distros could backport, I decided to switch them all over.
Iβm even a mad man and have them self update with a script that checks informant (or something, canβt actually remember) for installed packages against news. If no installed packages are found in news, it continues with the scheduled update.
Itβs glorious.
I was too lazy for scripting the update to check the news and just get a mail when the update has issues... or should get one.
In reality I check if the email process still works once every blue moon because I didn't get one from a failed update in years.
I fully endorse gentoo and arch in prod
But it says this screenshot post happened 4h ago.
Did the internet lie to me?
It still says 4h ago. I checked a while ago, still the same. What the heck? Is it moving in time? Always four hours away? How is this possible?!
Sincerely, a Gentoo user.
Ironically, it's the rolling release that's much more stable for me.
"Stable" distros often had a long and risky process of upgrading to the next major release.
Meanwhile, my Arch install has been pretty damn stable for over 10 years and went through several different PCs.
You're confusing two different meanings of stable. When people refer to "stable" distros such as Debian, they are referring to the meaning of stable as "unchanging," not the meaning of stable as "doesn't crash."
A rolling release distro by that definition cannot be stable.
TBF "doesn't crash" is generally why LTS-distros do "unchanging".
Fair, I'm always scared to upgrade to a new Debian release and the process is always painful. But that happens every couple years and I can take a week or two to look into it before doing it.
Every time I did pacman -Syu it was a Russian roulette. Most of the times everything was fine, but often enough there was a problem and something was broken and I had to spend a couple days figuring out what was the problem.
I always just rollback then wait until I feel like they might've pushed an update to fix it.
There's a lot of people posting their own stories about how their flavor "just works", which is great, but all just anecdotes. The reality is, statistically, anything that changes often is more likely to fail.
I boot my arch laptop once in a blue moon and update it. Its not 2002 anymore.
This is a bit like saying "Honda Civics are Tamagotchis for car people" because there's a community of people who enjoy modifying them. The rest of us just drive, and they run perfectly fine if you're not doing a lot of invasive customization.
Arch is great for tweaking and customization, but it's also fine for a simpler use case.
I use EndeavourOS for my primary gaming setup and will sometimes go a month or more before I remember to update again. Even with a relatively modern nVidia card, it seems to keep up just fine.
That being said, every vanilla Arch experience has been a disaster by the end and while itβs not the same situation as the meme, you very much have to have a ton of prior knowledge to get a system that actually feels personal and by the point itβs personal enough, getting support for your setup is nigh impossible because itβs so bespoke.
Endeavouros is great! Just use Flatpack before the AUR. AUR is basically the Wild West and should only be used as a last resort.
Linux Mint user here, I have no idea if Arc is that complicated, I don't care really. All I need is a rock stable system where I can do things like developing, or just use it as "a computer".
I reboot every month or three, and feel extra happy after any interaction with m$ windows.
Life's good π