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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

#251

Post by daxvena »

aidenn0 wrote: post #78
herpderperator wrote: post #4

I'm the same but with Gentoo, which is another rolling distribution. I've had it installed for over 12 years on multiple servers without any issues.

My preferred distro journey went: Mandrake -> Gentoo -> Debian -> Gentoo -> NixOS I rage-quit Gentoo the first time (2002ish?) for Debian when stable portage got a broken version of gcc, making it very hard to recover. The second Gentoo was by far the longest, maybe 2003 through 2018? I'm 4 years into NixOS now and very happy with it. I actually run into issues with switching to new release channels almost as often a…

For me it was: Windows -> Xandros (1 year) -> Ubuntu (6 years) -> Arch (4 years) -> NixOS (4 years)

Except I never actually installed Xandros myself, my dad just brought it home from work one day and installed in my computer.

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#252

Post by jreese »

maxnoe wrote: post #111
dj_mc_merlin wrote: post #36

The 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.

I literally let my server sit without upgrades for almost three years before realizing my autoupdater script had been failing me. The biggest issue was needing to manually download a statically linked version of pacman (found on the arch forums) to support the new mirror/signing features. Once the system pacman was upgraded, I just ran `pacman -Syu`, let it spin for a while, and rebooted, and it just worked. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#253

Post by colordrops »

sleepydog wrote: post #224
TacticalCoder wrote: post #134

I 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 a…

I reinstall every 2 years or so simply to re-evaluate what tools I have and decide if I really want them enough to install and configure them again. It's part of the reason I resist systems like Nix, Guix, or even dotfile management tools.

Funny, I've had the opposite experience. Because Nix is so stable and allows risk-free easy experimentation and rollbacks, I'm always re-evaluating and upgrading my system. An added benefit is that the changes you make stick, and you've got a paper trail of the changes in git. You can create a whole set of changes behind a single flag or config file, and flip back and forth between different setups nearly instantaneously.

With Ubuntu I was afraid to change anything because I might break things and not know how to get back to a working state.

With Nix, you are always on a fresh, pristine system, because the file system is mostly read-only and an exact reflection of what's in your config. It's impossible to get crufty.

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#254

Post by malermeister »

evh wrote: post #203
malermeister wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah Arch is basically the final destination all that distro hopping gets you to. No reason to hop once you've arrived.

s/Arch/Gentoo/ I did run Arch for a while around 2010 but it didn't take. It's nice to find a permanent home - I've been on Gentoo since 2013 and an acquaintance has been on Slackware since the 90s. Those three seems to be where us tinkerers end up.

Those three do seem like the popular ones amongst the tinkerers.

Could I ask what your favorite things about Gentoo are?

For me, with Arch, it's how up-to-date the repos are and how it doesn't make me compile everything myself. Should something not be available in the repos, chances are I can still compile it myself and build a package using AUR.

Another thing I like is the excellent wiki.

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#255

Post by fareesh »

I stuck with Ubuntu (eventually Kubuntu) for many years because I thought it was the best for a no-fuss distro for folks who wanted things to just work (TM). I was afraid of things randomly breaking and interrupting my daily work. One day I eventually bit the bullet and installed Arch instead. The experience has been phenomenal, and if anything it feels more stable than Ubuntu. I was underestimating my own Linux knowledge, and it really isn't difficult to setup/configure at all if you have a reasonable understanding of how Linux works. The initial installation can be done by just following one of the many YouTube videos that break down the process step by step - you may even learn something if you don't already know it. I can't ever see myself going back.

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#256

Post by maurodec »

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…

The thing is that it used to have an installer that was removed at some point. It was a simple menu that just covered the basics and would leave you with a working system withing minutes. I don't know why it was ever removed.

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#258

Post by mikewhy »

fareesh wrote: post #255

I stuck with Ubuntu (eventually Kubuntu) for many years because I thought it was the best for a no-fuss distro for folks who wanted things to just work (TM). I was afraid of things randomly breaking and interrupting my daily work. One day I eventually bit the bullet and installed Arch instead. The experience has been phenomenal, and if anything it feels more stable than Ubuntu. I was underestimating my own Linux know…

Nowadays arch install ISOs have an `archinstall` script that can get you going for basic setups.

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#259

Post by _Algernon_ »

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.

That is only true if the Arch developers seek user growth beyond the niche they currently have. You are not entitled to them spending their time to meet your demand, though you are free to build your own distribution on top of it (or use one of the many available ones).

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#260

Post by codeflo »

The keyring issue that other commenters mention has to be the dumbest misfeature ever, because upgrading is guaranteed to fail, yet nobody fixes it. To make things worse, one of the top Google suggestions is a pacman command that can cause libc to be upgraded without a full system upgrade, which will make your system unusable immediately. No process will launch after that. I had to do very desperate recovery steps when that happened to me. To be honest, I'm still not entirely sure how to safely fix the keyring issue when it happens.

Other than that, and this may sound very strange given the last paragraph, Arch is fantastic. It's the most usable and useful system for general software development I've ever owned. Basically, you follow the wiki, and everything just works, sound, graphics, wifi. I never had that with Linux, not with Ubuntu, not with SuSE.

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