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Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

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Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#171

Post by wolletd »

Skunkleton wrote: post #55
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…

I would like to defend arch here. In my experience, Arch's main focus is on upholding a simple consistent architecture. There are tools that do something like the bare minimum required work, and then excellent documentation so that the end user can correctly perform the remaining required work manually (or via their own scripts). As a result, there are certain features that will probably never be implemented. For exa…

I love that Arch has no extra configuration system. I'm building Debian images at work for like three years now and still don't really get how debconf works.

Also, the amount of patches, workarounds and custom configuration files in most packages and maintainer scripts is just wild. Coming from more than ten years of Arch, it took me a while to learn to check the debian packaging source if upstream doesn't match the behaviour on my system.

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#172

Post by renewiltord »

ablob wrote: post #41
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

You probably cant test it anymore, but I think it might have had something to do with the keys. I had a similar problem with failing upgrades once, until I updated the keyring.

Ah. Good tip. Thank you. I'll keep that in mind for next time.

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#173

Post by zh3 »

The software install on my daily driver dates from 1999 (though the oldest file in /etc is dated 1994) and was originally an old Red Hat release. It runs XFree86-4.x (last rebuilt 2004) which works fine with nvidia-390.132 (no more than a few years old) on a GTX780Ti and an i7-3770K (maybe a decade old itself now?). Desktop is currently Xfce-4.something (was FVWM for many years); applications only get upgraded as needed (autoconf and make FTW). It's been triplehead pretty much forever (easier now only one graphics card is needed, current running 3x27" Dell something or others).

I don't normally explain why it's so fast, just smile quietly when people comment on how instant the response is.

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#174

Post by renewiltord »

traverseda wrote: post #29
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

Weird AUR packages?

I just had the one nvidia dkms one. But that one actually worked fine.

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#175

Post by ratorx »

wing-_-nuts wrote: post #73
5e92cb50239222b wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you misunderstood the point of the distribution. There's no installer because Arch developers have no need of one. They're creating the distribution for themselves, and if you find it useful (I do), that's great. There's no expectation that an "average technically literate joe" is going to use it because he's not in its target group.

Arch isn't some small LFS niche distro anymore. At a certain point, you have to embrace at least some small amount of usability, or at least not reject PRs to add it. I found it quite embarrassing when one of the most popular distros out there had a worse installer than deb or slack from 20 years ago. That's not 'oops we forgot', it's not 'it was never really a priority' that's blatant user hostile elitism.

Any decent installer is non-trivial code and you cannot expect unpaid volunteers to write or maintain code that they don’t want to write or maintain.

I don’t see what the size of the distro has to do with it. Regardless of size, if there are users who have the time commitment and knowledge necessary to get commit rights and build and maintain an installer (as there is now), then it will have one. Otherwise it will not.

There’s no user hostility necessary for this sequence of events to happen.

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#176

Post by zdragnar »

axby wrote: post #106
zdragnar wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I used https://www.hammerspoon.org/ to write custom keyboard shortcuts for switching between specific applications. I don't have it anymore, but it didn't take too much perusing the docs to find a way to bind a keyboard command to look for a specific window, focus it if it was found, or open the application if it wasn't. SO much better than cmd+tab/backtick or mission control.

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#177

Post by nyadesu »

This matches my experience as well, been using it since 6 or 7 years ago, and it feels nice to know I can rely on my OS install. If something breaks I have to learn how to fix it and that knowledge builds up over time. Way better than other operating systems where I'm totally screwed if something breaks up and the only thing I can do is run in circles.

I also use i3wm btw

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#178

Post by spear »

l72 wrote: post #74

I am currently running Fedora 35. I haven't reinstalled since at least Fedora 21 (maybe older, I can't quite remember)! Every 6 months, I do the standard fedora upgrade and keep on going! This reminds me, it is time to update to Fedora 36!

I avoid reinstalls as well and one of my systems hasn't had a reinstall since Fedora Core 4. This system actually started on Red Hat Linux 8 (the precursor to Fedora, not RHEL). It was upgraded to RH9, then FC1, etc., but I had to reinstall once (I think disk failed during upgrade). I have been able to rescue other upgrades that failed.

I have upgraded literally every component multiple times so it's a Ship of Theseus.

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#179

Post by wooque »

jcelerier wrote: post #93
wooque wrote: post #90

>my experience doesn’t match the common notion that Arch Linux is unstable Arch is unstable, as in, package versions constantly change and can (will) introduce bugs and regressions. Debian is considered stable because apart from security updates package versions are set in stone til the next release, so there won't be any surprises. This is stable/unstable difference, that doesn't mean that you can't break your OS an…

> Debian is considered stable because apart from security updates package versions are set in stone til the next release, so there won't be any surprises. which is not what the rest of the world means by "stable" when talking about software, so there is in practice a lot of surprise for users coming to Debian when they hear "stable" thinking that it means "no bugs" when it actually means "no changes"

stable, by dictionary definition, means "not changing or fluctuating", no bugs would be "bug free", there is no "bug free" distro.
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