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Anyone remembers Gentoo? ;)
this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2026
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I remember Sabayon, which was Gentoo based. I liked it at the time, but compiling everything got old really fast.
Arch Linux also stands for I can't configure Gentoo. :p
These types of posts are such rage bait. It makes me sad that they actually work.
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
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.
Yeah, the arch installation on my desktop is about a decade old at this point. It was installed on a completely different computer. No issues.
I found Arch Linux to be less maintenance that Debian/Ubuntu, but then again I need to tweak every aspect of my system and both Debian and Ubuntu keep getting in my way. For example Firefox now requires snap on Ubuntu systems, and Debian requires that I maintain my own version of Pipewire if I want decent sound on my earbuds. Also Apt/dpkg does seem to break a lot.
I also had issues with Manjaro and SteamOS due to system packages being a version or two behind vanilla Arch, which breaks things when you install AUR packages. That being said I have used both Garuda Linux and CachyOS and I've liked both. They get that balance between not requiring that I setup everything myself, while not getting in my way when I want to tinker.
Most of my Arch experience is with SteamOS, but thankfully it does seem that once you get your desktop environment running it's pretty easy to deal with software there via the graphical package manager, though I'm not really doing anything crazy other than some add-on packages for Minecraft, Emu and the like.
I've been a pretty strong supporter of Debian, but I've definately run into issues where Stable = behind on the packages needed for the hardware/software I want, whereas Ubuntu's continual pushing of Snap and intrusive BS is just irritating. I often end up with Mint for the more-decent-than-Debian but mostly snap-free experience, but for my next hardware cycle I am considering Arch given most of the "support" documentation mentions running on such.
SteamOS is easy to deal with if you stick to using Flatpak. I found out the hard way when installing yay that since their packages are a little behind, it wouldn't compile. The problem was either pacman or one of it's dependencies was out of date according to makepkg. So I tried to update them manually and broke the whole system. Plus SteamOS overrides changes to the root filesystem when it updates, which undos all my hard work tweaking the system, which I find infuriating.
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
Isn't Debian pretty clear that they don't support upgrades and it's likely to break if you try?
I have Arch (btw) on my laptop which is the tinkering machine that only I use, and a Win10/Linux dual-boot desktop which is the one other people use that I'm not allowed to break. I had Fedora Silverblue on there originally because I figured it would be pretty stable, but it honestly gave me nothing but trouble. I switched that one over to CachyOS and it's been smooth sailing ever since.
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.
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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
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.
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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.
I've used Arch for more than 12 years, never once has it broken down
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
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.
βoh, I donβt bother to fix anything and just do a fresh install (that idea is especially persistent in Windows users)β
In fairness, not everyone who did that was just trying to avoid looking into things and learning the correct way. I can't be the only one who had Arch on a system before getting a smartphone, so early days, that was my sole means of accessing the internet, so if it went down hard and I didn't immediately understand enough of the error message to at least have an idea of man pages to give a read, I didn't really have a whole heck of a lot else available to continue trouble shooting. These days, worst case, I can turn on my laptop or grab my phone and search things until I understand the issue and find a solution.
That said, nearly all of my system breaking issues were self-inflicted by trying to do things I didn't fully understand, just because I thought the end result sounded cool, or not checking the news and unwittingly doing the exact thing the latest post was warning people to be aware of and not do with some sort of major upgrade/change in the base system.
I canβt be the only one who had Arch on a system before getting a smartphone
But that issue is solved for many years now. Although it makes a certain kind of sense: a lot of the Arch hate and memes causes we to question if that person has actually used Arch in years. So a lot of those ideas may be indeed ancient experiences surviving purely in memes and stories.
Interesting, my two friends with Arch keep breaking their system π They say its not their fault though!
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This is verifiably not true because of the amount of devs that use arch and the fact that the arch wiki exists and there's an entire set of AUR packages for custom bugfix patches on top of bleeding-edge software.
Debian is too dated with packages if you want to mess with practically anything new, otherwise its okay for something not concerned with new libs. Ubuntu repos are a joke and you will never find all the libs you need without some wacky tacky 3rd party downloads.
Debian never worked for me. Something was ALWAYS broken
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.
If you want to have at least some thrill, use testing repos. I had to fix GitLab two (2) times due to the main package not being linked against testing libraries (it took 10 seconds to ln -s the new to the old version), and had one breakage due to dovecot revamping their whole config system, but publishing no example/useful docs.
I fully endorse gentoo and arch in prod
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Arch really is the "Linux" of Linux users, complete with non users making shit up about it.
Sincerely, a Gentoo user.
In the past 3 years of using arch daily I've had to remove some renamed packages after an update once, thats about it
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