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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

#291

Post by minimilian »

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…

With the Arch Wiki and a little determination you don't need any prior knowledge of Linux.

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#292

Post by nortonham »

idoubtit wrote: post #88

I'm a happy user of another rolling release distribution: Debian testing. It's on my desktop and a laptop for a decade (even more for the desktop since I transferred the OS from my previous desktop pc). I can't remember any problem during the upgrades of the recent years. I often apply partial updates through `aptitude` on a weekly basis, and full upgrades once in a while (maybe monthly). There were some rough times…

I use sid/unstable, and like you I use aptitude, partially out of habit. I used to use stable exclusively. About a year ago I decided to try using sid permanently. I only ever had one issue (couldn't login to a gui), but that was resolved during the next update. It feels almost as stable as Debian stable, and I see no reason to try out something like arch or manjaro.

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#293

Post by bengalister »

I ran Archlinux with LTS kernel on my home laptop for 1.5 years and I stopped because of instabilities. The last issue that I had was the update to pipewire, my bluetooth headset stopped working after suspend. I got fed up of tweaking configuration to make it work. I could have reverted to pulseaudio.

But to be honest, the only major issue was an issue with pam login. I could not log in anymore after an update, had to search on the internet to find a workaround that consisted in updating a pamd.conf file in single user mode boot. Many breaking updates were Gnome related...

Switched back to Windows 10 then 11 for a year, tried WSL2 and found it unstable (some random crashes and tmux freezes), and slow sometimes.

Now on Fedora for a few months since I am a Gnome user, I am surprised there are quite frequent kernel updates also. I am little bit less worried that an update will break something, but i'll slowly move away from the bleeding edge.

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#294

Post by TacticalCoder »

WfAjWDYpDHDYCN5 wrote: post #189
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…

If you have a rootkit that you're concerned about copying around, that can somehow persist through pretty much everything on the system being upgraded at some point or another... you should probably also be worried about the various vectors that the rootkit could use to persist across OS reloads.

I don't disagree with that but some OS re-installs also correspond with buying an entirely new machine. And I'm the kind of paranoid person which burns instal DVDs and then checks the DVD's checksums from an offline computer before doing an install on my desktop, for example. Now, sure, the rootkit may try to hide in my Git repos (but that's not the easiest trick to pull) or shell scripts (but they're versioned with Git) etc.

I still like it that way: a good old write-once DVD, checksum'ed, and a brand new install. Ideally on new hardware but that's not always the case.

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#295

Post by d_tr »

girvo wrote: post #279
d_tr wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I am aware of the fact that they wrote an installer. I do not think this invalidates my previous comment though.

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#296

Post by xorcist »

cycomanic wrote: post #98
yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You didn't get bitten by a painful glibc upgrade? It's been long enough that I don't recall details, but I thought that was a big one.

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…

The a.out -> ELF migration had some sharp edges, too, but that was before Ubuntu and Arch.

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#297

Post by TacticalCoder »

dralley wrote: post #160
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…

> 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.

> The top 500 entries on that list are almost guaranteed to be mainframes.

That's very interesting. Your comment got me searching and I found a link here on HN: "Stratus: Servers that won’t quit – The 24 year running computer" with quite a discussion (123 comments) on the topic:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13514909

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#298

Post by LukeShu »

Macha wrote: post #268
LukeShu wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Hmm, I remember UsrMerge being a non-event from a user POV. The official instructions seem quite short too: https://archlinux.org/news/the-lib-directory-becomes-a-symli...

For many users it was a non-event; but if you missed that news post, and didn't pass `--ignore glibc` to your `-Syu`, then your system broke. And a sizable minority of users missed the news post. (Shamefully, I was in that minority.)

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#300

Post by burntsushi »

LAC-Tech wrote: post #278
burntsushi wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Oh I have. We get power outages all the time where I live. At least a few a year that last 8+ hours. Have even had some multi-day outages.

I have all my machines plugged into UPSes and we have a standby whole home generator. So the only way any of my machines shut down is if I do it explicitly.

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