this post was submitted on 07 Mar 2024
385 points (95.7% liked)

linuxmemes

21263 readers
876 users here now

Hint: :q!


Sister communities:


Community rules (click to expand)

1. Follow the site-wide rules

2. Be civil
  • Understand the difference between a joke and an insult.
  • Do not harrass or attack members of the community for any reason.
  • Leave remarks of "peasantry" to the PCMR community. If you dislike an OS/service/application, attack the thing you dislike, not the individuals who use it. Some people may not have a choice.
  • Bigotry will not be tolerated.
  • These rules are somewhat loosened when the subject is a public figure. Still, do not attack their person or incite harrassment.
  • 3. Post Linux-related content
  • Including Unix and BSD.
  • Non-Linux content is acceptable as long as it makes a reference to Linux. For example, the poorly made mockery of sudo in Windows.
  • No porn. Even if you watch it on a Linux machine.
  • 4. No recent reposts
  • Everybody uses Arch btw, can't quit Vim, and wants to interject for a moment. You can stop now.

  • Please report posts and comments that break these rules!

    founded 1 year ago
    MODERATORS
     
    you are viewing a single comment's thread
    view the rest of the comments
    [–] [email protected] 11 points 8 months ago (1 children)

    Arch breaking grub has happened to me twice. Second time I couldn't even recover the install.

    You learn a lot of good practices by using arch, eg a separate home partitjon, git repositories for your config files, maintaining a clean package tree etc. Installing Arch is also really useful for noobs like me to learn some Linux basics.

    I use Fedora, btw.

    [–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

    maintaining a clean package tree

    What do you mean by that, specifically? I looked that up online and maybe I'm a bit dumb, but I didn't find anything that made much sense

    [–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

    I don't know if that's a widely recognized term.

    Pacman used to be really bad at removing unneeded dependencies. I think pretty much every package manager has this facility now. For instant apt auto remove.

    Suppose you installed gnome to try it out, gnome installs like 1000000 packages. The thing about some of those dependencies is that they're really useful. It's not uncommon for another package you have installed to use it as an optional dependency. In that case it doesn't get flagged for autoremoval when you uninstall gnome.

    When you apply this logic a couple layers deep they start to compound.

    Also libraries and random python scripts tend to just exist forever in your system long after you used it lol.

    I started developing the habit of checking what dependencies are being installed and to uninstall immediately when I realize I don't need it.

    This logic applies to language specific managers like cargo or pip too.

    They all have really good tooling to figure out leaves, orphaned nodes etc. I just didn't start using those until I got into the arch hype.

    [–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

    I see. I suppose figuring out which things to get rid of takes some getting used to, but thank you for the advice!

    [–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

    Yeah, you will invariably remove something crucial haha. The nice thing with arch is that usually you can fix it without too much fuss.

    Me learning to use Linux was like teaching a child that can't feel pain to not touch fire.

    [–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

    I'm quite excited but also mildly worried about Arch. I am currently on EndeavourOS, so I'm used to day-to-day usage of an Arch-based system, but I do worry about not following some best practices that screw me over in the long run during the install or forgetting some crucial security things. I do believe 95% of what I could mess up is going to be covered in the install guide, but who knows what I'll overlook. And I know Archinstall exists, but I might as well stay on EOS if I was gonna use that, as I primarily intend this to be a learning opportunity. We'll see how things go!

    [–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

    I agree. I think that's why nix-os is getting so popular these days.

    I love the idea of declarative system builds even beyond just reproducability. The idea that you can essentially make your own distro without much difficulty is really cool.

    Plus all the benefits of roll backs, light backups, etc.

    Plus if you can dig deep enough you can craft a system that never breaks by pinning certain versions.

    One of these days I want to check it out. As well as LFS. Oh but for the want of time.

    [–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

    About NixOS specifically, I actually made a post on [email protected] and overall the feedback seemed to be that Nix is a mixed bag, and that unless you want to duplicate your system a bunch of times, it's probably smarter to stick to Arch, and a few people said I should use immutable Fedora for some reason despite that not being the question.