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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

#311

Post by abalashov »

I used the same Arch Linux installation from early 2016 until summer 2021, and had a very similar experience to the author's.

There was a significant initial setup investment, by modern standards, although not by historical ones; I had used Linux on the desktop continuously since I was a child, around 1997 (I think I started with RedHat 4.0 and kernel 2.0.29), so I remember all initial setup to be fairly burdensome in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Arch seemed a throwback to that. This is not a criticism, to be clear. I was very aware that this was part of the Arch philosophy, and I embraced that in my switch from Ubuntu.

However, once that was done, very little of interest happened over the next half decade. It's not that nothing ever broke, ever, but the rate of breakage was impressively low, and much lower than I had the previous 7 years on Ubuntu, or desktop Debian beforehand. Arch Linux was eminently stable.

In 2021, I switched to Mac/OSX -- the last of my social group of techies to do so, late to the party by a decade or so. While this has some advantages, my work kinetics will never come close to the raw efficiency and speed of my Arch Linux + i3wm setup.

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#312

Post by rocqua »

codeflo wrote: post #262
andrewstuart2 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Almost always, it's been surprisingly straightforward to un-screw the few screw-ups I've made. 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.

I yearn for my arch days where 'ls /etc' only yielded things I knew about.

These days I am stuck with WSL, and that sadly does not work with Arch. As far as I can tell the Arch community does not want to support WSL because of philosophical disagreement.

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#313

Post by scarygliders »

Jnr wrote: post #99
seletskiy wrote: post #2

As another Arch Linux user, I can attest that it is the rock-solid foundation for your computer. I use double boot to host both Linux and Windows; when I need to use Windows, I just put Linux into hibernation. This greatly extends the amount of time it can go without being rebooted. Driver and X problems still cropped up occasionally, but things seem much more reliable now than they did a while back. This is a also t…

When I don't need Windows for gaming, I just boot the physical windows partition from Linux using Virtualbox. This way I don't even have to hibernate and interrupt any work.

I have a libvirt VM running Windows with GPU passthrough to the GTX1070 (the main GPU is the RTX 2070 Super) and use looking-glass-client and scream to pass the audio to Linux, which I use for gaming. No need to even multi boot, though I do still have the Windows boot available if I need it, which is rarely.

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#315

Post by queuebert »

xvedejas wrote: post #282
fonkyyack wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had the exact same problems you mentioned! Also, Nvidia gpu drivers are the worst (I was on Manjaro back then) to seeif I could get rid of Windows for gaming purposes. I used Linux for games for about 6 months and had to quit and get back to Windows. I should retry now with all the steam deck fuss!

Proton is a game-changer, but Nvidia drivers remain the most unstable thing on Arch. Find a version that works well with your card, and avoid upgrading it, if at all possible. It's performant, but I have games that crash once every few hours, but only specifically on certain machines.

This is true everywhere. I have some very expensive Lambda Labs GPU blades, and even their Lambda-stacked Ubuntu upgrades break CUDA stuff occasionally. I think Nvidia's driver ecosystem is held together with chewing gum and duct tape.

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#316

Post by Retr0id »

dmz73 wrote: post #306

I tried using arch based distributions but the need for constant manual babysitting has turned me off them. Packages randomly break and require hours of work to fix. Non-rolling distribution will usually only break when there is major upgrade which can be scheduled for when you have the time to deal with it. Pacman only works in interactive mode so using it on a headless means at least weekly session. Randomly that w…

> Pacman only works in interactive mode so using it on a headless means at least weekly session.

What do you mean by this?

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#317

Post by colordrops »

malermeister wrote: post #16
valbaca wrote: post #3

Exhibiting the self discipline to not distro-hop in 10 years is more commendable...but I guess that's Arch Linux for you.

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

If you can get past the learning curve, Nix is the final destination.

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#318

Post by discreditable »

I've had the same install going since January 2012:

    > head -1 /var/log/pacman.log
    [2012-01-22 14:55] installed filesystem (2011.12-2)
In that time I've converted the install in-place from x86 to x64, migrated from legacy boot to uefi, replaced the entire RAID set twice, motherboards, CPUs, etc. It's my own ship of theseus. Many of these tasks people would say to do a reinstall, but I've always been able to find a guide on the arch wiki to do it in-place without losing anything.

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#319

Post by lillecarl »

rocqua wrote: post #312
codeflo wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Almost always, it's been surprisingly straightforward to un-screw the few screw-ups I've made. 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.

I yearn for my arch days where 'ls /etc' only yielded things I knew about. These days I am stuck with WSL, and that sadly does not work with Arch. As far as I can tell the Arch community does not want to support WSL because of philosophical disagreement.

WSL2 should have no problems running arch at all.

https://github.com/yuk7/ArchWSL

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