261–270 of 422 posts
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Gentoo wiki is top notch. I almost used gentoo once, but after 30 minutes in compiling vim I gave up...
I started using it long ago when RedHat 6 or something pulled in X just to install mpg123.
I 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…
That's been my experience as well. With Arch, everything is exposed. There are usually no wrappers or layers of abstraction or weird modifications added to the upstream components it ships. That makes problems so much more straightforward to troubleshoot and fix.
It is wonderful that these distributions maintain an ongoing upgrade path that lets us move smoothly through our computing lives limited disruption. Support your local distros and package maintainers!
(Typing this comment reminded me that I hadn't donated to Debian in ages. Just did.)
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…
Even easier, the ArchWiki has detailed steps you can follow along at your own speed, together with links to each topic for a deep dive (which isn't required, but nice to have when you do need it). Reading through and following the "Installation Guide" + "General Recommendations" pages would take you 2-3 hours at most, and you'll end up with a fully installed and ready system :)
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 wh…
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> But it's fun to think I own one of the computer in the world with the biggest uptime. The top 500 entries on that list are almost guaranteed to be mainframes.
According to Guinness, the top is Voyager 2: > The computer system that has been in continual operation for the longest period is the Computer Command System (CCS) onboard NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft. This pair of interlinked computers have been in operation since the spacecraft's launch on 20 August 1977. As of 29 October 2020, the CCS has been running for 43 years 70 days. https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world…
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The glibc upgrade which was painful (and essentially required recompiling everything) was much further back than 10 years. I think I was running LFS at the time, but recall it was painful for all distros. I don't think there was a glibc upgrade that was disruptive since then. There was the introduction of multi arch on Debian some years back which caused a bit of disruption (I was running Debian unstable at the time…
In Arch, the glibc package upgrade associated with the `/lib` + `/usr/lib` merge in 2012ish was painful. I assume that's what the parent post was referring to. I assume you're referring to the libc5→libc6 upgrade?
It's been pretty stable, had some hiccups a dodgy kernel once I think. Can't remember what it was specifically.
> zcat /var/log/pacman.log.1.gz-2018010214.backup | head -1
> [2009-02-23 18:14] installed filesystem (2009.01-1)