This is so good, but Arch only annoys me in 1 way - that every week I need to download 500MB of updates. If I go away for a couple of weeks, my computer will most likely have 2 GB of updates pending.
Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade
131–140 of 422 posts
Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade
#132I can provide some details regarding the times things did break that I mentioned in the article. * In September 2014, X broke, and I created an `/etc/X11/Xwrapper.config` file with the lines `allowed_users = anybody` and `needs_root_rights = yes` to get it to work again. I don't remember and don't have notes on why that helped. It sure does sound like a pretty terrible hack. I don't have that Xwrapper.config file any…
So to recall the above, had you blogged about this, wrote in your journal, or just queried your damn memory??
I try to take a note whenever I fix some major issue with my system. Querying my memory doesn't yield much; definitely not specific dates :)
Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade
#133I 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…
> Arch doesn't have an installer, and seems almost militantly against providing one, or a lot of other little utilities that could improve the user experience This just changed! The archinstall package is included on install media now and is not considered experimental (according to the wiki page history, that happened on 2022-07-08). https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/archinstall
Welp, looks like I'm switching back from Manjaro for my next Linux install.
Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade
#134I always reinstall from scratch although I could just Debian "dist upgrade". My thinking is this: if, ten years ago, I somehow missed a security patch or some 0-day owned my machine before it was patched, then I'd potentially have been copying / dd'ing / rsync'ing a rootkit for ten years.
By installing from scratch at every new stable (or unstable) release, I get rid of a lot of potential security issues.
Now as an anecdote: ten years with the same install is nice but... I've got a dedicated server at OVH with 3400 days of uptime. You read that correctly. Nearly ten years of uptime. Once in a while I give temporary ssh access to people here and there just so they can type "uptime" and see. Kids: don't try this at home. Yes, it's insecure (although there's a firewall and only the SSH port open). No, it doesn't do much nor is it very useful. But it's fun to think I own one of the computer in the world with the biggest uptime.
I plan to kill it once it reaches ten years \o/
Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade
#135Circa 2003 i used the same Debian install for 4 years without a reboot.
Fine
Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade
#136The best thing about the rolling releases is that the OS feels ageless. If I leave a Thinkpad sitting in a corner for 3 years and boot it up again to pacman -Syu, it will have basically the same software as my modern Thinkpad. This just tickles my sense of "this is how the computer _should_ behave".
And all the data in your `~/.config`, `~/.cache` will still be in the old format. Linux programs are notoriously bad at handling that kind of things. There is no local data update api like the one provided by android sdk.
Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade
#137I can provide some details regarding the times things did break that I mentioned in the article. * In September 2014, X broke, and I created an `/etc/X11/Xwrapper.config` file with the lines `allowed_users = anybody` and `needs_root_rights = yes` to get it to work again. I don't remember and don't have notes on why that helped. It sure does sound like a pretty terrible hack. I don't have that Xwrapper.config file any…
I definitely had some rough edges with the pulseaudio, and then pipewire, upgrades, and a few cases where almost everything broke because in my infinite genius I had compiled my own (insert dependency) for a bleeding edge feature, forgot to revert when it made it to mainline, and then later down the road a major version bump meant some `.so` was missing, and I had to USB liveboot to fix it.
I've also been on Arch for over a decade, and it's almost never been broken, even when I was playing with some seriously bleeding edge components. Almost always, it's been surprisingly straightforward to un-screw the few screw-ups I've made.
Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade
#138Operating systems are not unstable. Users are unstable.
Of course OSs are unstable, in two senses: First, some OSs, somewhat dependent on hardware and software in play, just tend to crash. Second, OSs can be unstable in the sense of changing things; users are, in this sense, actually supremely stable and tend to be quite unhappy when the system decides one day to move menus around, rename programs, change shortcuts, shift around config files, require manual intervention for updates to work, etc. It is this second sense in which Arch tends to be less stable, and distros like Debian and RHEL are extremely stable.
Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade
#139The best thing about the rolling releases is that the OS feels ageless. If I leave a Thinkpad sitting in a corner for 3 years and boot it up again to pacman -Syu, it will have basically the same software as my modern Thinkpad. This just tickles my sense of "this is how the computer _should_ behave".
I would be very surprised if pacman -Syu worked after three years of no upgrades. That's generally not supported and will require manual interactions.
If you boot from USB to use an external pacman to upgrade you can mitigate almost all of the common problems people have with this.
Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade
#140I 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/
Another vote for Endeavour.
I already run Ubuntu on my NUC, and when I was looking around to install on my former gamebox (i.e. computer with a graphics card unlike NUC with onboard graphics only) I wanted something with good steam/nvidia integration. It came down to either Pop! OS or Endeavor... because while I develop software I also want to play games without futzing around too much.
Very happy with Endeavour: pacman or yay for nearly everything, no hassle graphics drivers updates (system always suggests a reboot after and I always do that).