Thoughts and prayers fren
What os and de are you on? It looks pretty clean.
The de is kde plasma
Looks like Manjaro to me
KDE Plasma is one of the default options which you can install with Manjaro. Manjaro is the Linux distro, but KDE Plasma is the DE (desktop environment/GUI).
That’s bog standard KDE, I have no idea about the distro tho
Just do a fresh install man. I’m getting anxiety just by looking at it.
Maybe I’m just screaming into the void here, but does it seem like, as a person who is still relatively out of touch with linux, I don’t necessarily have to update my Arch distribution whenever there are new updates available? I could theoretically just go on downloading new programs, uninstalling old ones, using everything as it sits until theoretically something breaks?
You’ll run into security and stability problems if you put it off for too long.
You should always run a full upgrade when installing a new package to make sure your versions are all in sync. Like if your new package is looking for version 1.1 and you have 1.0 installed, the new package won’t work. In general, everything should be installed with ‘pacman -Syu’ not just ‘pacman -S’
If you don’t install any new packages, then no you don’t need to upgrade anything. You’re just missing out on security patches and upgraded features. It’s worth running occasional upgrades.
I don’t necessarily have to update my Arch distribution whenever there are new updates available
Clearly, op agrees
Iirc, the Arch wiki says you should synchronize all packages while adding new ones, and it’s technically unsupported. It might work in some cases, but personally I didn’t have to do much to not be able to launch something because symbols missing in libraries or no such file altogether. To avoid problems it’s better to sync packages fully at least once in a while.
Looks like glibc got another update
And that is why I use Opensuse tumbleweed, no worries ever (zypper takes a snapshot before and after each upgrade, single command to roll back)
Not to mention that a two or three thousand package update is rookie numbers for zypper.
Basically reinstalling your OS because of an GCC update is the only gripe I have with Tumbleweed.
I wonder though, did I have the same with Arch? I don’t remember.
And they were never heard from AGAIN! Oooooooo It is horror month, and that’s pretty scary! :-D
Don’t try to install Arch after midnight.
How long should you wait before installing? It was midnight over 9 hours ago so am I good to go?
If forgetting/not wanting to update puts you in this hole, like… ever, you should really give an atomic distro some serious consideration.
Say more please? What’s the advantage?
The atomic distro would do a backup and if update goes wrong, it automatically boots back into the previous one.
(correct me if I’m wrong, I’m also new at this)
There are two partitions. One with the current system, one with the previous system. Updates are applied in a whole batch at once, once in a while.
Current system is cloned into the old one and an update is applied to the clone.
Once the update is complete, system reboots in the clone, and what was the current system becomes the previous one.
If something goes bad, you can reboot into the previous system and fix the clone.
This is how the steam deck works. I think newer android phones do this too.
Yes, it uses an immutable atomic distro. I don’t know about Android phones, but I wouldn’t be surprised.
That sounds kinda like what any OS should do in the history of OSs…
that is one way to do it, and it’s a very common one - it’s robust and simple. So I can’t correct you, but thought I would add to it. In NixOS, they’ve improved it by making sure all your apps are symlinked, and when updating, these symlinks are updated. That way you can start using your newly updated system straight away, without a reboot. When rebooting, you are prompted to which generation you want to boot into, (defaulting to “latest” after a few seconds of no input) making rollbacks a breeze.
The system files aren’t writable, instead you download a new system image when you want to update. No dependency hell or weird issues because these system images are all tested. Your system also keeps one or two old ones around and if by some chance something does go wrong you just select the old one at boot.
Downside is you’re more limited on installing software. You can force install things the traditional way but that kinda defeats the point. Instead you have to use things like FlatPak or AppImages which covers most GUI apps you could want. For command line apps you will have to use something like DistroBox.
It’s a trade off but for casual desktop users it is super stable and pretty simple. Updates come out daily (depending on distro) and they just get all their software from the software center app with a nice GUI.
That’s super neat. I’ll get around to checking it out at some point.
You can do gui apps too! I used distrobox to run WebEx on an Ubuntu image for an interview. Just had to get to the actual binary to launch and it worked seamlessly.
Right but if there is a FlatPak, that’s usually the easier option
I have to ask, do you use X11 or Wayland? I’m struggling to get Webex working for calls (video or otherwise) under Wayland.
IIRC that was X11. It has admittedly been a minute. And by a minute, I mean a year.
I know its a meme but nixos is actually good for this. You can be on the unstable branch, not update for 5 years and still get everything working after updating(tho i dont recommend because of security). I think nixos has some fucking AMAZING features but the problem is its paired with features that make it extremely hard to use for a casual user.
Agreed! I think a part of the “problem” is that with Nix, there’s now at least 3 sides: application specific knowledge, system knowledge, and you have to use the nix language, architecture and tools to interface with it. so for a seasoned linux user, there’s maybe just a new programming language, but if you’re new to Linux, it’s quickly gonna overwhelm you. which in a way is a bit ironic because I’d argue that it’s easier to manage a NixOS system, and getting help is so much easier when your problems can be replicated by just aharing your config.
Id say its easy to share your problems with other people because its a few files unlike distros like arch where your packages can be fucked up and then you have to reinstall in most cases. But the support it self isnt too good. Arch has archwiki, ubuntu has a lot of channels of support while nixos has a badly written wiki.
if it’s an actual wiki, you can fix that :)
So many Linux problems are solved by using NixOS, it’s amazing. Immutability? NixOS. Atomic upgrades? NixOS. Whole system rollbacks? NixOS. Versionned system settings? NixOS. Impermanence? NixOS. Multiple versions of the same program installed at once? NixOS. Containers? NixOS. Multiple hardware profiles on a single installation? NixOS.
At this point, I think the only thing remaining is a Flatpak-like sandbox.
I just tried updating my computer to Mint 22 and because I did a lot of tweaking to get VR running well it ended up uninstalling x11. I restored to backup and am now considering just doing a fresh install when 21 loses support instead lol.
Average rolling release distro user experience
I’d automate it but the greybeards tell me it’s a bad idea :(
I do the same as OP with my Fedora workstation, which is wait till I have to summon all the available mirrors just to serve me several gigs of software updates every other week.
For my servers I have an ansible script to update most of the machines. I fire that up every start of the month after the automatic backups. Seems like I’m a week late again already. In these I use apt dist-upgrade since that seems more robust, but I’m still to shy to run it in a cron job.
tbf fedora isnt bad for updates in this way
Not if you update every 4 hours ;-)
Snapper FTW
Legit my first thought too! This looks like my monthly update of Tumbleweed
Seriously though. Snapper has saved my bacon so many times, I don’t even know how I operated before it.
At that point I’d just backup my data and do a fresh install - would probably take less time too
Just think of all the great things you’re going to learn about emergency boot recovery!
It’s been an hour, I think OP didn’t make it!!!
kde?
Mhm
