Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

meribold.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 422 posts

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#101

Post by IceDane »

I never quite made it to a decade, but I think I definitely hit 5 years.

Yes, there have been breakages, but none very bad and thus not very memorable. Interestingly, some breakages were due to windows update doing something bad since I was dual booting.

Before switching to arch, I used ubuntu for years, and that was not nearly as pleasant an experience. Upgrading ubuntu versions always failed in some horrible way for me and I had to just reinstall the new version instead, and the way ubuntu is put together made it a horrible experience if you ever needed to install software that didn't jive with it(like something that required an updated version of some gnome dependency).

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#102

Post by cycomanic »

wing-_-nuts wrote: post #34

I recently switched to an arch flavor because the AUR had a lot of little small utilities that make life better on wayland. Also, it's quite easy to install the latest version of golang and rust, etc. Pros: Documentation is excellent. Better than even Gentoo or Ubuntu's docs. Cons: Arch doesn't have an installer, and seems almost militantly against providing one, or a lot of other little utilities that could improve…

If you want an installer and some utilities to make life a bit easier while staying on arch I can recommend endeavouros. It is really just vanilla arch with an installer and some convenience packages.

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#103

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

cevn wrote: post #42

I tried to use Centos long term, that was a disaster. Ubuntu and Fedora both broke a few times but I was able to recover them. However, Manjaro / Arch feels the most stable in my experience.

> I tried to use Centos long term, that was a disaster.

What was a disaster about it? I would expect pain crossing major versions, but you could plausibly have installed CentOS on a machine and just stayed there for 5-10 years with nothing more than the odd `yum update && reboot` and I would have thought it would be fine.

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#105

Post by cycomanic »

xxpor wrote: post #48
wing-_-nuts wrote: post #34

I recently switched to an arch flavor because the AUR had a lot of little small utilities that make life better on wayland. Also, it's quite easy to install the latest version of golang and rust, etc. Pros: Documentation is excellent. Better than even Gentoo or Ubuntu's docs. Cons: Arch doesn't have an installer, and seems almost militantly against providing one, or a lot of other little utilities that could improve…

There're some Arch-derived distros that are basically just Arch + some choices made for you + an installer, like https://endeavouros.com/

Should have scrolled down before replying. I agree endeavour is excellent.

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#106

Post by axby »

zdragnar wrote: post #69
throwaway1777 wrote: post #40

Having to debug X or audio breaking several times even over 10 years is a non-starter. Had these issues 0 times over 10 years on mac, albeit on several machines, but I think it’s extremely rare for someone to reinstall Mac OS ever. Only time I did it was when I tried to setup a hackintosh and that really broke some things.

I get that some people don't like tinkering. They want something that will always Just Work. Some of my friends who were long time linux uses switched to macs and stayed there. MacOS wasn't that for me- brew was the cause of no shortage of pain, but even that could have been lived with. It's also not exactly stable- one company I worked for (about 7 years total) had a blanket request that people not update OSX to new…

I recently got a macbook for work and I can't believe how many minor things just can't be changed. I don't think you can change the date format in the top right. It seems like you can't get rid of that damn dock entirely without killing important processes and breaking things. (I'm able to hide it and put it in the left, so it's mostly out of the way, but it seems so anti-user to force this interface on everyone).

I haven't yet looked for a "how to effectively use mac keyboard shortcuts" comprehensive guide, instead I've looked for things as I need them. I can see the benefits for introducing "cmd" where "Ctrl" is usually used on other operating systems.

But I'm very disappointed by cmd tab and cmd backtick. Often I want to press a single keyboard shortcut to switch between three windows or so: usually a few browser windows, a terminal, and an IDE. cmd backtick switches between windows of the same program, cmd tab switches between programs.

Can any more experienced mac user tell me the way to do this properly? How to switch between a few separate windows, like alt tab, without having to think about what program they are?

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#107

Post by janci »

renewiltord wrote: post #20

I left my computer in storage for a year while I lived elsewhere and I couldn't upgrade through pacman. There was no simple viable upgrade. The constraints just couldn't be met. Fortunately, all I had to do was reformat / and go again since I keep most user config in /home Really enjoyed it otherwise

This. When I took my old Arch laptop from drawer after few months it was impossible to upgrade without removing half of the system.

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#109

Post by __del__ »

chrsig wrote: post #96
giantrobot wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Another example is installers. Writing a basic installer for a single machine is easy. Writing an installer that covers any machine is very hard. Writing an installer that covers any machine with any configuration the user might want is impossible. This is a cop out. An installer doesn't need to cover every option a user might want. An installer only covering popular options/configurations is only a problem if the…

I'd call it more likely a form a neurosis than a cop-out. It can be hard to resist some analysis paralysis when faced with an incredibly broad problem. There's a strong urge to find one solution to cover all cases. Trying to do everything at once being so overwhelming that it's impossible to get even started on it. Of course, you're correct that the best thing to carve out the most common cases and then iterate. I've…

arch used to have an installer. it didn't work for everyone, and caused a lot of complaining. turned out most people could do the steps themselves.

it has an installer again. maybe the userbase will change.

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#110

Post by flobosg »

idoubtit wrote: post #88

I'm a happy user of another rolling release distribution: Debian testing. It's on my desktop and a laptop for a decade (even more for the desktop since I transferred the OS from my previous desktop pc). I can't remember any problem during the upgrades of the recent years. I often apply partial updates through `aptitude` on a weekly basis, and full upgrades once in a while (maybe monthly). There were some rough times…

Another Debian testing user reporting in. I think I’ve reinstalled once or twice in a decade.
Post reply on HN