Arch Linux is a meme but also a really solid distro. I'm writing this from a 2+ year old Arch install that has had basically 0 stability issues. "Rolling release" gets an undeserved bad reputation in my opinion, and many arch packages aren't as bleeding edge as you'd expect. Compared to Ubuntu where I'd often have major issues in between releases, I don't think I could ever go back.
Using Arch is a dream compared to things like Ubuntu for me. PPAs and release cycles made upgrades awkward on Ubuntu. I've been a user for 3 years on my work laptop and have had everything be almost completely painless. (One time yay broke something and a python module had to be removed lol)
Arch Linux is a meme but also a really solid distro. I'm writing this from a 2+ year old Arch install that has had basically 0 stability issues. "Rolling release" gets an undeserved bad reputation in my opinion, and many arch packages aren't as bleeding edge as you'd expect. Compared to Ubuntu where I'd often have major issues in between releases, I don't think I could ever go back.
Using Arch is a dream compared to things like Ubuntu for me. PPAs and release cycles made upgrades awkward on Ubuntu. I've been a user for 3 years on my work laptop and have had everything be almost completely painless. (One time yay broke something and a python module had to be removed lol)
Arch works fine but sometimes I think I might prefer something like Debian Stable + Flatpak because the repos are frozen. Since Arch doesn't support partial upgrades, you have to upgrade the whole system every time a repo list refresh is required, basically. So some days after the last upgrade, some package you want to install is bumped, and a repo refresh list is required, which wouldn't be a problem in Debian. But Arch is rock solid and the AUR for obscure packages is something Debian doesn't have. I might be wrong about this opinion about partial upgrades etc, somebody let me know.
Maybe ten years ago I jumped from Ubuntu to Fedora, can't remember why - just wanted to shake things up maybe? This year I installed Mint on my main machine. Contemplating a switch to Debian 12 when it's out - but might not bother, Mint has been really nice. What drove me from Fedora was mostly the need to upgrade every 6 months, and the short support windows.
My only problems with Mint is that I don't care about Cinnamon, and when things go wrong the only forum that will help you with that particular frankendebian is the Mint forum, which is woefully inadequate. If you want to quickly fix what's broken, Arch, Debian, and Fedora are aces, everything else is trouble imo.
I have used Mint with xfce4/xmonad as my daily driver for six years now. Haven't had any issues and I have continued upgrading.
Arch Linux is a meme but also a really solid distro. I'm writing this from a 2+ year old Arch install that has had basically 0 stability issues. "Rolling release" gets an undeserved bad reputation in my opinion, and many arch packages aren't as bleeding edge as you'd expect. Compared to Ubuntu where I'd often have major issues in between releases, I don't think I could ever go back.
I'm really irritated by Arch's meme status, because it's genuinely a solid distro and out of all the weird Linux workstations I've spun up over the years, my Arch workstations have given me the least trouble. Manjaro, being Arch with batteries included, is an excellent starting point.
Honestly the most useful thing about Arch is the documentation. The Arch Wiki is a fantastic resource for all sorts of common Linux utilities, worth a read even if you use a different distro.
Just a reminder to everybody, Debian 12 is about to release in 2 days. A few years ago I moved back from Ubuntu to Debian and couldn't be happier.
I have a devuan desktop, but it somehow self-nuked its grub. I really, really dislike systemd, but the other desktop is a manjaro setup. It was stable for a while, but now something with logind (which is somehow related to systemd) broke. The one reason I switched to manjaro is that the machine is shared between kids and two parents, and I wanted to be able to switch accounts from the screensaver prompt. That routine…
You can run debian without systemd [1]. I've been running debian sid - the "unstable"/rolling development version - with sysvinit for over 3 years now and it has been a good experience.
How do you deal with grossly outdated software on Debian Desktop?
There is nothing to deal with, outdated software still works, it's stable and you get on with your life. Anything of importance has deb package/official deb repo (Chrome, Brave, VS Code, Slack, Signal, Dropbox, etc), so you receive latest versions. There is flatpak as well. Newer kernel and some libraries could be found in backports repo. I use Debian with 0 flatpaks/snaps/Appimages, only Debian repos and few officia…
There are still some reason that you may want to use a newer version of a software when your distro is stable. e.g. The latest version added a new feature that is really useful to you, or a long-standing bug has been fixed in latest version.
I think Flatpak would be current best choice for these tasks if you are running a stable distro. But I think it would be good to have a distro where core OS and user application is completely separated, and can be updated independently. It would be nice to have latest application without fearing the next grub/DE/kernel/driver/... update might break your current setup.
Snaps are awful. Even simple programs like 'calculator' take multiple seconds to start. I'm planning to bail on Ubuntu soon as well.
I cannot understand why they did the weird squashfs thing that murders their first start performance over sacrificing a little disk space. It's such an odd technical choice that makes snap look bad for a few megs.
No kidding, especially for programs that aren’t that big.