Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade • Hacker News Board

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#411

Post by eternityforest » Thu, Aug 18, 2022, 9:33 AM UTC

jason0597 wrote: post #383

eternityforest wrote: post #382

All the issues mentioned in these comments would be way too much for me. Sure I could fix them and move on... unless they happened on a very busy day. Then they could tank a schedule. And busy days can show up suddenly. What if I get a super last minute job right after I decided to update my packages and break something? It seems like using Arch or any tech that involves any tinkering requires accepting that the syst…

Same stuff can happen with Windows too with unexpected updates. Not sure about Mac though, I've never used one.

That seems to be one of the big reasons people move to Linux. It's definitely part of why I stay.

Debian based stuff is very good at not breaking.

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#412

Post by neop1x » Thu, Aug 18, 2022, 10:02 AM UTC

I had a similarly great experience with Arch but sometimes the system upgrade would mess up libraries required for the screen locker and I had to use loginctl unlock. I also didn't like that every system upgrade would make a lot of AUR packages broken, waiting to be recompiled.

I solved both problems by moving to NixOS and I have been very happy since then. I haven't had any issues with it so far. I've also created a couple of Nix expressions for packages I was missing, but I found most of the software I use in Nixpkgs or NUR already.

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#413

Post by wvh » Thu, Aug 18, 2022, 2:19 PM UTC

My home laptop Arch installation is about 8 years old. The only major breakage I've experienced with Arch and Debian in the last 10 years or so has been the switch to systemd, which is understandable. I don't necessarily recommend for everybody to run Linux/Unix on desktop – especially if you need specific hardware or software support – but it's definitely not less stable than Windows or OSX from what I gather observing those around me running other operating systems. To me, the fact that I can likely fix things myself is worth any extra trouble of choosing the less beaten path.

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#414

Post by vbernat » Thu, Aug 18, 2022, 2:33 PM UTC

pabs3 wrote: post #408

vbernat wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No /var/log/installer (maybe it was not the case for Woody?) and installation-birthday says 2006 but this is the date of the cross-upgrade to amd64 (using debootstrap).

Maybe the filesystem or LVM/RAID creation date would give a better birthday. Also, these days one can cross-grade between architectures without using debootstrap, just apt. https://wiki.debian.org/CrossGrading

Unfortunately, I migrated to LVM later (I think 2006 too), through a new disk (I suppose with tar | tar). At the time, amd64 was just a port.

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#415

Post by wing-_-nuts » Thu, Aug 18, 2022, 5:04 PM UTC

agumonkey wrote: post #220

meribold wrote: post #35

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 had a similar life with arch. A handful of boot blocking issues, let's say 5. 4 out of them were solved after joining #arch on now-dead freenode and realizing this was explained on arch main page. 1 of them was a deeper borkage that arch team didn't catch early and required a bit of surgery. The problem was gone in 5 minutes.

>realizing this was explained on arch main page

That's not the place to explain it. If they're going to require user intervention on updates, the place to do it is during the pacman -Syu itself. Better yet have a shell script that'll fix it automatically and give the end user the ability to read the source before execution.

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#416

Post by seba_dos1 » Thu, Aug 18, 2022, 5:31 PM UTC

jcelerier wrote: post #378

seba_dos1 wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> which is not what the rest of the world means by "stable" when talking about software [citation needed] That's exactly what a lot of software projects mean when they make stable release branches, stable interfaces, stable protocols...

I'm not taking about the world of software developers, but the world of humans. Go ask your non-tech family members what "is your computer stable?" means to them

Go ask a software developer what that question means to them and you'll get the same answer. Ever heard about that thing called "context"? ;) You may very well argue that stable is where horses are living.

In context of software releases, "stable" has a clear meaning - and Debian releases are software releases.

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#417

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Aug 19, 2022, 7:28 PM UTC

romeoblade wrote: post #182

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 once a year. Nowadays, with PXE booting, preseed files, and automation like Ansible, everything is pretty much automated for me. This goes for both my personal and work laptops. Both have been running some version of Debian for the last ten years. For the previous four/five years, I've been on Debian Sid, and I may run into an issue about every other year that requires me to use timeshift to go back to ye…

[deleted]

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#418

Post by strboul » Fri, Aug 19, 2022, 7:28 PM UTC

romeoblade wrote: post #182

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 once a year. Nowadays, with PXE booting, preseed files, and automation like Ansible, everything is pretty much automated for me. This goes for both my personal and work laptops. Both have been running some version of Debian for the last ten years. For the previous four/five years, I've been on Debian Sid, and I may run into an issue about every other year that requires me to use timeshift to go back to ye…

I have similar automation with Ansible. Can I see your config if it's open source?

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#419

Post by jcelerier » Thu, Aug 25, 2022, 9:45 AM UTC

seba_dos1 wrote: post #416

jcelerier wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not taking about the world of software developers, but the world of humans. Go ask your non-tech family members what "is your computer stable?" means to them

Go ask a software developer what that question means to them and you'll get the same answer. Ever heard about that thing called "context"? ;) You may very well argue that stable is where horses are living. In context of software releases, "stable" has a clear meaning - and Debian releases are software releases.

> Ever heard about that thing called "context"? ;)

most people who use and talk about software aren't software developers - that's the context.

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#420

Post by CRConrad » Fri, Aug 26, 2022, 10:09 AM UTC

zdragnar wrote: post #183

oblak wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But with Manjaro you don't have to personally babysit every computer in the house. Imagine not having your wife and/or child mad after the occasional update breaks things and they're helpless because they simply refuse to get intimate with the OS their own computer! What kind of world would that be?

Well, the wife has a chromebook, and the kid is moved out on her own and pretty much only uses a phone anyway, so it's a pretty nice world, to be honest :) At some point I'm tempted to get a fat server going so I can do my dev work remotely to it using a super light weight / long battery life laptop, but that's a complication too far at the moment.

> At some point I'm tempted to get a fat server going so I can do my dev work remotely to it using a super light weight / long battery life laptop, but that's a complication too far at the moment.

A setup like that would be quite cool -- if it weren't for one problem: All the "super light weight / long battery life" laptops have tiny (= max 13-14 inch) screens; there don't seem to be any 16(or more!)-inch ones. OK, just the bigger screen and housing means a machine like that couldn't be as super light weight as a smaller one, but they could still be quite light weight...

Only machines like that don't seem to exist. Or does anybody know of some?