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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

#271

Post by okamiueru »

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…

I was in the same situation. My fresh install adjustments to Ubuntu consisted of a long list of apt packages, removing snap, dep packages, ppa's and some make builds.

I finally tried arch, and my long list of custom manual shenanigans was reduced to packman + aur. I'm seriously impressed, and it gave me a renewed hope for OSS.

I've used Linux, Windows and MacOS. For what an operating system does, the only flaw Linux has is due to lack of software and driver availability, neither of which has anything to do with the operating system itself. Because for what it is, and what it does, Linux and gnome is imo, absolutely excellent.

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#272

Post by vkoskiv »

I have a similar experience. I have a 2005 Fujitsu LifeBook S2110 I keep for sentimental purposes. I installed Arch on it in ~2015, and I've been upgrading it ever since. I've had 2-3 breakages over the years, but every time I've just googled the issue and found an obvious solution to resolve the issue. I've been so happy with the Arch rolling release that I now use it on my main daily driver desktop. I switched over full time from macOS last year.

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#273

Post by capableweb »

oedo wrote: post #194

Yeah, this is a thing. To enjoy years of stability on Arch[0]: - occasionally upgrade your system - before upgrading, glance at https://archlinux.org/news/ to see if anything requires manual intervention [0] I use Arch btw

> - before upgrading, glance at https://archlinux.org/news/ to see if anything requires manual intervention

I simply have https://archlinux.org/ as my homepage when I open my browser on the desktop computer. Shows the same news in a slightly better format (personally), and also shows latest package updates on the right side, in case some favorite software of mine has been recently updated.

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#274

Post by bee_rider »

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.

I don't think you should be embarrassed. An offer to provide code review, continuing development, and community support for this new feature is quite generous of you. They might not have decided to prioritize it, but at least you can be proud of the fact that you aren't just nitpicking from the sidelines, right?

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#275

Post by codeflo »

demux wrote: post #265
codeflo wrote: post #260

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…

Booting with a live USB, mounting the root dir and doing a manual downgrade of libc could work

Yeah, something like that. I don't remember the full steps I took, but it involved pacman-static from the AUR, which is a pacman build that works without a working libc. I think I used the USB boot method you mention, but with pacman-static, I was able to go forward and do a full system upgrade.

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#276

Post by capableweb »

aidenn0 wrote: post #230
silasdavis wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows -> Solaris -> Windows -> Gentoo -> Arch -> NixOS I feel much more satisfaction pouring hours into NixOS over doing the same on Gentoo and Arch. The hours on nix are in a source file I can carry around. The hours on Gentoo and Arch I'm doomed to forget and have to repeat. I do miss the AUR though. I haven't been able to package a rust program that has a build with a transitive dependency that expects internet…

Yes, builds that expect internet access are not friendly with nix. It's particularly annoying when such packages are in something like cargo: A: "We built this nice tool named cargo that manages transitive dependencies for you and will automatically fetch and build them from the internet" B: F-this, I'll just download a tarball from the internet.

Ironically, what cargo does is just downloading tarballs from the internet for you.

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#277

Post by ansible »

aarchi wrote: post #226
dralley wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

43 years without a single reset or revision to safe mode (a common feature on spacecraft)? The linked article says that they've updated the software many times, by live patching it, instead of rebooting?

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#278

Post by LAC-Tech »

burntsushi wrote: post #191
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…

This is the best I've got, almost 2 years: $ w 15:25 up 725 days, 6:06, 1 user, load averages: 1.31 1.21 1.30 USER TTY FROM LOGIN@ IDLE WHAT andrew s000 192.168.1.200 15:25 - w But! This is a system in my office at home. Not in a data center somewhere.

I'm more impressed you didn't get a single power cut in that time.

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#279

Post by girvo »

d_tr wrote: post #210
WfAjWDYpDHDYCN5 wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it wouldn't, because that versatility can be attained by... not using the installer, the exact same as the situation without an installer . An installer, if anything, improves "user centrality" because you're making it more accessible and usable to most users with just the most common few options. Not having an installer improves "dev centrality" (the few users who matter are the devs and other advanced users), o…

At the end of the day, as others have probably already said in this thread, the maintainers are unpaid volunteers and choose to focus on certain things for their own reasons and using their finite resources. There are other distributions that focus on other things and people can choose. If Arch chose to implement lots of convenience functions, that choice could be to the detriment of other strong aspects of the distr…

…which they chose to use to write an installer for Arch after all, so I find your arguments against it somewhat amusing.

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#280

Post by capableweb »

rockyj wrote: post #131

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.

How many packages (via pacman I assume?) do you have installed in total?
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