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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

#231

Post by LukeShu »

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…

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?

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#234

Post by LukeShu »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #167
cycomanic wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 glibc upgrade which was painful (and essentially required recompiling everything) was much further back than 10 years. Ah. I'm old. Somehow traumatic glibc upgrades were not how I expected to find out.

I suspect you were thinking of an Arch Linux-specific glibc upgrade related to Arch's `/lib`+`/usr/lib/` merge in 2012ish, not a painful glibc-itself upgrade that other distros would have noticed?

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#235

Post by vbernat »

goodpoint wrote: post #122
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…

Debian unstable is equally functional on desktops. 15 years without having to reinstall.

It's even better (to use unstable) since you don't have disappearing packages, you have access to packages only in unstable (Firefox instead of Firefox ESR), and you get timely security update.

20 years ago, things may break a lot in unstable. But nowadays, you just have to be careful to only use "apt upgrade" and from time to time "apt full-upgrade" (and check what is removed as it could remove everything).

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#236

Post by kevincox »

hollerith wrote: post #228
sleepydog wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I reinstall every 2 years or so simply to re-evaluate what tools I have and decide if I really want them enough to install and configure them again. It's part of the reason I resist systems like Nix, Guix, or even dotfile management tools.

That doesn't make much sense because Nix doesn't prevent you from reinstalling, and after you reinstall, you are not forced to copy your old configuration.nix to your new /etc/nixos/.

In fact I think Nix is much better here. Instead of reinstalling you can just audit your configuration for anything that you don't want. You don't need to worry about stray packages, config files or services like on other distributions. And of course if you accidentally clean too much it is easy to revert via source control of your config file.

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#237

Post by janci »

pjvsvsrtrxc wrote: post #218
franga2000 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been running this setup since 2017 and while there were occasional graphical and sound glitches, usually after a Windows update, over all it works great. It did the "installing new hardware" thing only after updates as well, so I didn't run into it too often. It does like to deactivate itself after a few reboots, but that's nothing a bit of mild piracy can't fix. I have at least two spare windows licenses in a d…

Seamless mode still exists in Virtualbox 6.1 which is the latest version. (Windows did just crash when I was testing it but, as it also crashed twice before I got that far, I don't think it's related)

Did Windows 10 start to crash in VBox for you too? I had to move to libvirt/qemu as I was not able to resolve. Downgrading nor upgrading VirtualBox did not help. Removing last windows update helped a little, then it started crashing again.

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#238

Post by RcouF1uZ4gsC »

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…

> It definitely gives me peace of mind knowing I can be back online and 98% percent functional in under an hour in most cases on just about every device in the house.

It is also a good test of disaster recovery.

By wiping your devices and doing a fresh install, you catch hidden assumptions.

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#239

Post by ReactiveJelly »

Max-q wrote: post #232

What is the advantage of keeping the installation instead of starting from scratch when buying a new computer?

No idea. I think of /home as the important part. Everything else is disposable.

If I could painlessly flip the FHS, I'd have something like /system, /data, and /config.

/system would be "Files you can download from your package manager verbatim". This is what apt and pacman create and update. If I lose it, who cares, just re-install the OS.

/data would be human-made and only human-made. Not even program preferences. This is the only thing I really care about backing up.

/config would be all the dumb little dotfiles that won't put themselves properly in $HOME/.config. This is stuff that might be important, but since I didn't choose the names of the files or for them to exist, I don't want them cluttering up /data, and I don't want a program complaining if I delete a file in _my_ /home that the _program_ thought belonged to it.

I think Android does something kinda like this. Android is right twice a day.

Re: Using the same Arch Linux installation for a decade

#240

Post by cosmiccatnap »

I had a laptop in storage and went on a trip. I didn't want to bring an expensive MacBook but I did want something that could take a note or two and check my email so I took a very old Dell latitude with me running arch on an intel 2xxx something (ancient)

When I booted it up I realized to my surprise I had been running arch not windows...so I checked my email and then decided on the hotel wifi to try and update it.

I will admit after about 6 years there was quite a bit of fumbling with pacman sources and keyrings and the delta to upgrade on a laptop that old and hotel wifi wasn't great but after I left it for an hour it finished.

I rebooted it and there I was in i3 without a thing wrong. Wild

Maybe if I used gnome it would have been a different story but I think the point of the article holds that arch is much more stable than people give it credit for if you are willing to learn a bit about how it works.

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