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Ask HN: Arch Users – What is your long-term system maintenance routine?

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Ask HN: Arch Users – What is your long-term system maintenance routine?

#1

Post by ensocode »

Hi Community, been a happy Arch Linux user for many years, keeping up with minimal system maintenance and occasionally performing some package cleanups (using commands like pacman -Qtd).

I'm curious about your long-term system maintenance routines. What steps do you take to ensure your system stays stable and up-to-date, and how long have you managed to keep your system running smoothly without needing to reinstall?

Thanks for your insights!

Re: Ask HN: Arch Users – What is your long-term system maintenance routine?

#5

Post by freedomben »

It won't be a popular answer, but the truth is nuke and pave every so often. The problem isn't Arch itself, the problem is that I like to try new things pretty regularly, and occasionally install junk that I don't want long-term, but that I forget to clean up.

Quite a few years back I just started a bash script that stays in my dot files repo, that has all the base packages and configuration in it that I need for a new system. When it's time for a fresh install, I can run that script and have 95% of my system set up. I even include gnome settings and stuff in there using the CLI tools.

Re: Ask HN: Arch Users – What is your long-term system maintenance routine?

#6

Post by nvy »

>been a happy Arch Linux user for many years

>how long have you managed to keep your system running smoothly without needing to reinstall?

I'm baffled as to how someone could be a happy user of a system that requires regular reinstalls to be usable/stable.

Is it that installing Arch is itself a hobby for some people?

Re: Ask HN: Arch Users – What is your long-term system maintenance routine?

#8

Post by wasted_intel »

oDot wrote: post #3

Your question is partly why I moved to Nix after many years with Arch -- a perpetually clean install

Yep, same. Thoroughly enjoyed Arch, but slowly accruing implicit config state means you'll eventually have to re-install and configure everything again. You can mitigate some of that with dotfiles and some hand-rolled scripts, but NixOS is effectively that "done right".

Re: Ask HN: Arch Users – What is your long-term system maintenance routine?

#9

Post by timetraveller26 »

cranberryturkey wrote: post #2

I just do `yay -Syu` every week or so. What does `-Qtd` do?

Same, also the ocassional paccache (https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Pacman#Cleaning_the_package...). I think -Qtd list orphaned packages.

Of course all's in the wiki, some useful links:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/System_maintenance https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Pacman/Tips_and_tricks

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