Arch is different…
That’s why I use archdebian gives me all the latest software 5 years later.
archdebian? arch+debian dual boot?
Why, what news? What I need to be careful this time?
Nothing. OP is imagining an idiot for imaginary internet points.
This hasn’t been a thing in years at this point
Damn. Truth.
Really? It happens this often?
In 26 years, I’ve seen this happen in two occasions with enterprise Linux. One of them was my own damned fault for using a marginal config. The other was an update that added a new dependency in the code but not the package.
That’s it. Twice.
It’s happened twice to me in seven years of using arch (not black screen, just something being broken after an update) and both times would’ve been avoided if I’d just read the fucking blog like you’re meant to, but yolo lmao. Still on the same install, everything still fine after just switching one package for another or whatever.
with enterprise Linux
I think you already know the difference, but we’re talking about relatively bleeding edge systems here.
Never had an unbootable system after an update, all not checking news has ever done to me is having a package fail to install (and then I check the news to see how to fix it), I’ve seen plenty of kernel regressions or other software, but that’s a thing with upstream and getting not-as-tested software, not with arch itself
https://archlinux.org/news/virtualbox-ext-vnc-7212-2-requires-manual-intervention/ dont worry you only need to shit your pants if you are using virtual box and dont read (sorry OP)
Who uses virtualbox on Linux having KVM, QEMU and virsh/virt-manager?
It’s gonna be slower, proprietary, and it’s not even as easy to install
So, I use it on my workstation because I have to also use windows and virtualbox’s cross system integration is far more mature. I really only use it as necessary and it isn’t running all the time.
I would prefer to use qemu, but I’m not doing anything serious with it. I’m just sometimes running a windows instance that I need to be able to easily share files with, and copy/paste across. Once virt-viewer gets there, I’ll switch.
Though, to be honest, it actually uses kvm as its backend so it really isn’t any less performant than qemu for this.
It’s not slower.
proprietary
Only the extension pack, the app itself is GPL.
not even as easy to install
How do you mean? You simply install virtualbox (and virtual-guest-iso if you want). All the relevant packages are available from official repos, at least on Manjaro, including a linux-virtualbox-host-modules-meta package that maintains the required linux*-virtualbox-host-modules as needed automatically.
Also, I prefer virtualbox because it makes a lot of stuff easy to do.
File sharing with the host for example, it’s a matter of simply pointing at a dir in settings, as opposed to having to set up Samba on the host (which I don’t have and don’t want) and deal with wierd networking issues, or deal with virtiofs.
Don’t even get me started on selecting locations for the vm files. Whatever you think it should work like, virt-manager’s way ain’t it.
Nice bait there, I nearly started writing an actual answer.
Idk, I’ve had installs of Kinoite, Bazzite, and NixOS bork themselves unrecoverably. Arch, if something goofs, more often than not I can work my way back to a working system without wiping.
How’d you get NixOS borked without a working generation to boot into
Nothing’s perfect. NixOS has worked it self for me more then once. Just like every distro ever has.
That’s why I go for boring distros like Fedora
Yeah, lol. Arch people keep telling me that this never happens, and yet here it is.
Nah. Debian is fine for me.
You just need to keep an eye on the news and it won’t happen 99% of the time. Ive got it set up so news updates go to my email in a specific folder. That means i get the notification on my phone as well. Or just get into the habit of checking the page before updating
I don’t need more shit to remember to do. I need a computer that works without me micromanaging it
Thats fine, then arch just isnt for you. Use what you want, but if someone installs arch then complains that it broke because they didnt check the news (something that the maintainers recommend you do) then the blame/fault shifts to the user, not the system.
That seems like a pain in the ass. like the sort of shit why i left windows behind. noted: will not touch arch. thanks for the heads up.
It comes from a very different place than Windows, and the data here is very transparent, unlike your average Microsoft KB.
dont care. It’s still going into my “places i will never go.” box. dont need an OS cockblocking me from my games. that shit can fuck right off.
Besides, some of is use our OS for work. cant afford telling a job “wahh im too stupid to use a reliable OS” just doesnt fly.
but if someone installs arch then complains that it broke because they didnt check the news (something that the maintainers recommend you do) then the blame/fault shifts to the user, not the system.
The question is though why pacman does not display these news during the update. Gentoo has been doing this for decades.
Thats a separate issue, but i do agree with you that it would be extremely helpful if it did
then the blame/fault shifts to the user, not the system
Nah, lol. Not when lots of other systems manage to not break userspace on random updates.
You can claim that blame shifts to the user, but I’m still blaming the shitty system.
In a good system, you can trust that updates are well-vetted already before they’re pushed to average users, and you don’t need to check the news or anything else before updating. You can even set updates to be automatic with a high degree of confidence that it won’t mess anything up for you. (Imagine that, the computer automatically updating itself, saving you the trouble of doing it manually… What a thought!)
“Good” means different things in different contexts. Here you mean it as something like “user friendly”. Of course, there are other priorities that someone else could call “good”. It’s not a helpful word for honest debate, but it’s very convenient for hiding a bunch of semantic puns and confused reasoning behind.
Literally every distro ever even Debian. Has broken user space on updates. It just happens. It’s a fact of life. If your distro hasnt done it to you at least once you are either very new to Linux or you are lying though your teeth.
Youre right for most systems that are advertised as stable. Arch however is rolling release, so this doesnt apply. You get package updates as soon as theyre available pretty much. So no, the fault lies with the user when it comes to arch 99% of the time
Edit: i also said the blame shifts to the user if they don’t do something the maintainers specifically say you should do before every update. If you check the arch news, update, and it breaks then yes, the fault is with the maintainer. However this rarely happens nowadays. Ive been on arch for almost 6 years and have not had to do a reinstall ever.
That is why I am using Tumbleweed, rolling release without the expectation of reading news before hitting zypper dup and stuff still being fine. The price for that is a few days of delay for testing, so that major stuff does not break.
Manjaro has also shown how an Arch distro can achieve this as well, by releasing tested sets of updates slower.
But OP is correct in that’s not the point of vanilla Arch and people who use vanilla should assume the risks.
What’s annoying is people who use vanilla and tell everybody “oh don’t worry nothing ever breaks”. Something always breaks. You have a couple thousand packages installed on the average desktop system, dozens are updated to bleeding edge every day, something will break.
Manjaro maintains a crowd-sourced list of the most egregious defects (+ their fixes) that crop up in popular packages, suffice to say it’s never empty.
Many of them are not system-breaking and may not impact everyone, which is where I’m guessing the “nothing ever breaks” dissonance is coming from.
I’m definitely lucky that I’m pushing 3 years on my desktop arch install and have never had any updates break it. Had some issues with Nvidia and Wayland over 2 years, but that wasn’t really an arch thing, more an Nvidia thing.
My laptop is the same, but I use it far less, so really a fair of a comparison, although I do update every time I use it, which is every couple of days.
Back when I started Linux, poking at the system was fun and exciting (also you had to poke at the system anyway if you wanted to run anything). Now, I just want it out of the way and convenient.
I understand that newcomers might feel that they want to touch everything because it’s all new and shiny, but I think the OS ought to be a creature of the shadows.
If you want really boring, go for Debian.
Indeed. or fed. the only drama i want in my life is the stuff going on IN the game. not some OS cockblocking me.
It’s a peaceful life
Hell yeah – I do want my OS to be boring.
Hello from Mint :)
Mint based on Ubuntu or Debian? Debian mint is probably the most boring … and stable and great for anyone who just wants a computer to work.
Isn’t it based on Ubuntu which is based on Debian? It’s my first time using Linux and I switched a couple of weeks ago so I’m not sure to be honest but the website[1] states:
Based on Debian and Ubuntu, […]
Which leaves me just as confused.
Originally it was based on Ubuntu, which is itself based on Debian. But recently they based directly on Debian. There are some differences. Debian based is more stable with older packages and kernel.
What? No, there are two versions: the main one, based on Ubuntu, and an alternative one based directly on Debian (Linux Mint Debian Edition)
Just wanted to add a clarification that both editions are offered currently.
LMDE is the version of linux mint based on Debian rather than Ubuntu. It is missing a few features over the main version but it wont randomly shit the bed because of a bad ubuntu package.
Hm… btw, I hate fedora.
Lemmy always seems downvote heavy. Why don’t you like fedora?
The upvotes mean some other people too don’t like Fedora like me. Nothing more than that.
A distro can be perfect for some and, at the same time, hated by some others. That’s normal.
Why it’s not for me. Reasons:
Maintained by a corporation. Probably it’s their testing ground.
Too much bloatware is preinstalled.
Too many updates, just like Arch. But arch feels more cleaner and faster anyway.
Require rpm fusion.
Crashes often.
There is always a connectivity issue on RPM Fusion servers.
Heavily depended upon flatpak.
Many applications don’t have native Fedora packages or repos.
Gnome or KDE ? I like gnome over KDE in general but the top bar in gnome seems to create a blank bar in games at top of screen.
Haven’t figured out how to fix it.
You fix that by not using gnome. Or butchering gnome with enough extensions to functionally be a reverse lobotomy.
Since gnomes entirely shitck is that you don’t get to decide how gnome works. It’s out of the box or fuck off.
It’s why it needs a billion extension and mods to be remotely functional
Nobara has also been stable. Underrated distro.
What happened with Arch?
Wait, let me update real quick and reboot, brb
the fact that they wrote “be right back” 5 hours ago and then never came back is telling
Another 13h later, still nothing
almost 30h now, the arch update has to have bricked their hardware or something O.o
Maybe bricked the user too
It’s difficult to take people shitting on arch in here seriously. I’ll take 1h per year fixing whatever broke over a whole weekend upgrading Debian.
Oh and god forbid you need to compile yourself a package and maybe a few of its dependencies from scratch because that 6 years old bug didn’t make it through the freeze last release.
It’s absolutely true. And that my outdated Arch system is likely still more fresh than Debian.
That said yeah I would like something that can update itself whenever without breaking, certainly if it expects me to update frequently. And manual interventions (ideally used for things that actually have a choice/fix, not just what ends up being a pasted command or two) should be a warn-step/update-blocker (depending on situation).
Though what the image is probably about (2025-12-20, nVidia 10-series turned legacy, legacy driver put onto AUR) is a bad situation in its own right particularly later when the AUR issues started happening. And it is really an update-or-don’t (or get an AMD card somehow) issue.
Other distros likely do solve the issue of updating, though from what I can see aren’t as good with packaging (dependency handling, lacking optional dependencies) and package availability. Which can be worked around somewhat too, but still needs more trial/input.
Annoyances are also multiplied for me by having non-fiber internet (also shared).
Whole weekend upgrading debian? I am confused. That’s not how debian works?
Upgrading major versions, e.g. Debian 12 -> Debian 13
Yes? Same thing… aptitude upgrade, aptitude dist-upgrade, edit /etc/apt/sources.lst to point to the new major version (s/bookworm/trixie), aptitude upgrade, aptitude dist-upgrade Done. Typically takes 1 hourish at most.
Debian can take a week to upgrade? Apparently I’m yolo’ing it and just the upgrade. However I have just done one major update, so u might just be lucky
i have often found myself needing to manually update packages on distros like fedora or debian because i need a newer version that hasn’t landed in dnf/apt yet. arch doesn’t have that problem. ymmv, obviously, it’s not going to be an issue for everyone.
As someone who gave up on linux years ago, this sounds like one person driving a broken old alfa romeo shitting on someone else driving a broken old fiat. Whilst I watch on from a modern EV.
Hah, here come the downvotes.
Good to know
i use arch btw
this happened to me once in 6 years. it was my own fault.
Every hero has a journey.
Yours has just begun.
I warn you, this is not the easy path.
But I urge you to heed the call.
For though there will be trials and tribulations,
soon, my friend, you will own new socks.
Yeah i had this happen with devices that originally came with Windows sometimes, mainly laptops. It must be a combo of BIOS, firmware and hardware that increases the chances of update instability. Its just not feasible for every distro to have the same kind of hardware config testing support that Microsoft has for Windows.
Windows spying on you is not just for marketing, they grab your current environment and sanitize the result so they can get a nice list of hardware and application configurations for when they need to test.
