Linux

You haven't really identified any of your reasons for leaving the previous distros behind. Did they fall short somewhere? If it was simply to try them all out, then by all means, add a notch on your belt for Arch too. You can always install yet another distro down the road if it doesn't pan out.

I'm a former Arch dev, and once upon a time I created its logo. I love the project, and it will always be dear to me. That said, I use Fedora Silverblue for most of my host systems now, and Arch containers for my everyday tasks.

As you likely already know, Fedora provides one of the best GNOME experiences available. I like the additional stability, flexibility, background updates, and easy rollbacks that Silverblue provides, but I can also appreciate that the flatpak and containerized workflow isn't for everyone.

I’ve previously been against trying Arch due to instability issues

Skip Arch and go straight to NixOS if you are worried about that. Gives you most of the same advantages (huge up to date package collection) with none of the disadvantages (everything can be downgraded, patched, rolledback, etc. with ease).

Last year I upgraded to an Inspiron 15 7510 with i7-11800H and RTX3050. Since purchasing this laptop I’ve used Manjaro, Debian 11, Pop OS, Void Linux, Fedora Silverblue (37 & 38) and now Debian 12.

A distro-hopper. *Noted*.

I need to reinstall soon since I’ve stuffed up my NVIDIA drivers trying to install CUDA and didn’t realise that they changed the default swap size to 1GB.

Prefers starting from scratch instead of fixing. *Noted*.

I use this laptop for everything - development in C/C++, dart/flutter, nodejs and sometimes PHP. I occasionally play games on it through Proton and sometimes need to re-encode videos using Handbrake. I need some amount of reliability since I also use this for University.

General-use and reliable. *Noted*.

I’ve previously been against trying Arch due to instability issues such as the recent GRUB thing.

Understandable, but not entirely justified.

But I have been reading about BTRFS and snapshots which make me think I can have an up to date system and reliability (by rebooting into a snapshot).

Fair.

What’s everyone’s perspective on this, is there anything major I should keep an eye on?

It is almost common knowledge at this point that this approach has serious merits. That's why we find it on a myriad of rolling release distros. From Manjaro to Garuda, from SpiralLinux to Siduction. Heck, even Nobara -which is not strictly a rolling release distro- has it. I wouldn't even use/recommend a rolling release distro if not for (GRUB-)Btrfs+Timeshift/Snapper. But, while by itself it is already very powerful. It still benefits a lot from testing. Which, when utilized by openSUSE in particular, manages to elevate their Tumbleweed to a very high standard. So much so, that it has rightfully earned to be named the stable rolling release distro. But not all distros are as rigorous in their testing... if at all...

Should also note I use GNOME, vscode, Firefox and will need MATLAB to be installed, if there is anything to do with those that is problematic on Arch?

Nah, that's absolutely fine. *Noted*.

Should I give Arch a shot?

So there are some glaring issues here:

• You've set some parameters and asked us if Arch satisfies. Which it does, but so do a lot of other distros. Which seems to tell me that this will become yet another chapter of your distro-hopper-phase. Which -to be clear- happens to be totally fine. I'd even argue that it's preferable to do it sooner rather than later. Though the mindset of a distro-hopper might deter you from being satiated...
• As previously alluded, Arch is yet another distro that satisfies your needs. You didn't mention what attracted you towards it, nor why you'd prefer it specifically over all the other available options.
• Btrfs snapshots, while powerful, are not 100% fail-safe. Sure, nothing actually is as a random SSD crash might loom around the corner. And I'd be one of the first to tell you that using Btrfs snapshots to rollback to is an exponentially better experience than without. But we're still able to improve upon it (mathematically speaking) infinitely times, to be more precise; some systems allow us to decrease the complexity from uncountably infinite amount of states (which therefore become "unknown states") to countably infinite or (better yet) finite amount of states (which therefore actually become "known states"). The reduction of complexity that this offers and its implications to system reliability are far more impactful than the simple use of Btrfs snapshots.

Consider answering the following questions:

• Are you a distro-hopper? Or did you have very legit reasons to switch distros? If so, would you mind telling us why you changed distros?
  • Would it be fair to assume that it boils down to "I messed up, but instead of repairing I will opt for reinstalling."
    • If so, is this something you want to work on (eventually) or doesn't it bother you at all?
• Why Arch?
• Would you like to setup Btrfs yourself? Or would you prefer your distro to do it for you? Or don't you actually mind regardless?

Arch is what stopped distro-hopping for me. Well, mostly. Sometimes I try some distros on separate install just out of curiosity.

If you use Linux for couple of years, there shouldn't be too many obstacles. Just read through the Wiki carefully and you'll be good.

As for reliability, I'd say Arch is fairly reliable for my 10+ years experience with it (apart from my-fault breakages, I remember something unexpected happening maybe 3 times in all that period), but if you want to secure your butt in mission critical situations then 1) don't yolo upgrade your OS if there's anything important at the moment. Find the right time for it 2) setup a snapshotting solution to have that quick rollback ability. And it's not just about Arch, I'd say the same for every distro (maybe apart from immutable ones).

Other than that, remember to have fun!

I’ve previously been against trying Arch due to instability issues such as the recent GRUB thing.

But you used Manjaro? 😂

Go for it. If you use archinstall, it is incredibly simple to get up and running. The difficulty around Arch is quite overblown except perhaps when talking about people brand new to Linux. Even without archinstall, you are just following a guide in the wiki.

You make it sound like its a paid distro -- just go ahead and give it a shot. Worst case scenario -- you'll learn lots of new things and will give your brain a few extra, healthy braincells. :')

If you want to learn arch linux for the sake of learning about how to manually configure Linux yourself why not. However if you have done a minimal install of void linux (without xfce and bundled) you are not going to learn much.

Arch Linux can be great if you really want to customize your setup and have fun doing so. Arch can be great if you enjoy having a unique looking environment with an extensive wiki to help you doing so. However it is not the "best" unlike arch fans would say, pacman can have issues updating your system using the AUR and not being careful can sometimes lead you to annihilating your own OS at times (though I have heard that recent updates try to fix that). Besides the full customization it doesn't have much for it.

Gentoo is epitome of customization where you compile your OS and chose specific versions (even binaries) of what you want. Void Linux is really fast with the xbps package manager being nearly as fast as pacman and its unique init system which makes it book under 5 seconds using a SSD NVMe. Fedora, Debian and Pop OS are the most used because of how simple and stable they are, and having the largest amount of support from non FOSS developers.

So f you want to have fun customizing your stuff without having to compile everything: sure why not. Otherwise just try something else.

So, the big thing with instability is that with Linux "Unstable" refers to "Constantly receiving updates" rather than "Breaks all the time"

In my experience, if arch breaks, 99% of the time YOU the user did it.

If you want a kinkless experience with it, keep it simple.

Arch ships with systemd, as such, it also ships with systemd-boot. Use what's built, don't add additional bootloaders unless you need the functionality they offer.

Gnome, Matlab, and VScode have wiki pages for installation and configuration, and Firefox is in the repos and is one line in the terminal to install (#pacman -S firefox)

For a first install, I'd recommend following the wiki to install instead of using archinstall to familiarize yourself with how to use and read the wiki.

Based just on this, I'd suggest looking into OpenSuse Tumbleweed. It's got the reliability you need for your university work, all the software you need, and is about as close to bleeding edge as you can get without cutting yourself.

If, however, you're also looking to gain a deeper understanding of how your system works, and don't mind (or enjoy) troubleshooting problems yourself when they crop up, Arch is excellent.

I can't think of much. I have been using EndeavorOS as my daily driver for about three years now and haven't had much in the way of instability.

For someone seemingly so eager to try out new distros, I'm surprised you haven't mentioned virtual machines. If the vibes are off, it's a whole lot less disruptive to find out that way.

Your experience with drivers won't be quite the same as a bare-metal installation, but checking out software shouldn't be a problem.

Yes (biased arch opinion)

You don't need to reinstall to increase swap size, in fact you can just delete the swap partition entirely, add it to the root partition and create a swapfile there, that way you can quickly change the size if you want to. Get familiar with doing these sort of things, since that is the sort of thing Arch encourages to do.

Also instability does not mean what you think it means, instability on Linux means libraries get updated constantly, so if you are running external programme or developing on it sometimes things break because they haven't been updated to that latest library version. I'm not aware of any GRUB issues recently, but in any case I use refind and I like it a lot better than GRUB anyways.

on the other end of the spectrum, if you really don't want to learn shit about linux, use Linux Mint. it's easier to install than Windows, and I only use the terminal for updates using lolcat so I can feel like a rainbow hacker.

frequent questions and thoughts I have as a Linux Mint user:

• why tf is everyone arguing about over whatever systemd is?

• wow, that guy uses Arch, btw 😮

• I don't understand this Linux meme

• where is this program installed??

• wtf are Vulcan Shaders?

• should I use apt or apt-get to install? eh, it depends on how lazy I'm feeling

• check out my screenfetch. I'm such a hacker.

• i wonder if the people on Linux Mint forums are sick of me asking for help without helping anyone else.

• all these Linux privacy benefits don't mean shit since I use Chrome

• how come no one ever brags about Cinnamon?

In regards to your original quesiton, I would like to know why you stopped using Void linux. Because to me its very similar to Arch in many ways.

No problems that I'm aware of. I use Gnome, Firefox, and have used vscode totally fine.

Arch is not difficult to get going.

As a fellow developer who recently moved to Arch, it's great, the installation process was a tiny bit frustrating (I did test it first in a VM) but after that it works as intended, I keep my eyes on the wiki though if any issues happen, nvidia driver works well with PRIME too, although I don't use it much (I dualboot for the sake of gaming), if you feel like you need to have even MORE control over your PC than your vanilla Debian or Fedora experiences, I guess Arch is the next step, on a side note, minimal Void Linux installation is very similar to what you get with Arch so in case you used that you already have a taste of what you're getting into, well, plus having access to the AUR :)

Oh also, I'm not sure about MATLAB, but Octave has been shipped as MATLAB compatible (although it haven't been the case for me with some functionalities...) Maybe you'll need a Windows VM if Octave wasn't enough, or maybe it runs using WINE I haven't bothered trying it

one thing ill say. flutter via aur is kinda a pain, I would reccomend installing the flutter package, not flutter-git, then adding it to ignore-pkg in /etc/pacman.conf then letting flutter handle updates

I'd recommend openSUSE Tumbleweed instead. They originated the btrfs setup that lets you rollback in the grub menu, which has been copied by others. They are bleeding edge except that all packages go through an automated testing system before being rolled out so there's much less breakage to start with.

My answer is "No". Don't do distro-hopping. It is only waste of time and distraction from actually learning Linux properly. Concerning BTRFS (and I write it as a user of openSUSE which has been supporting it for the longest time), I am absolutely certain that Debian can use it as well as any other distro. Just don't do the distro-hopping.

Arch is great. You’ve kinda dipped your toes in it with Manjaro already. I recently moved to EndeavourOS with BTRFS for my gaming computer and couldn’t be happier. I could have done stock Arch but I honestly didn’t care enough to. EndeavourOS has great sane defaults and no bloat. And you can pick almost any DE during the install. Spin up a VM and give it a try if you can.

I can’t speak to MATLAB though. But all the others you mentioned I also run.

The only issue I have right now is the half screen flickering with GNOME and NVIDIA drivers. But I just ignore it.

I've been using arch for many years now. I've used various distros every once in a while, but I always come back to arch. When arch break it is probably a single package that is causing the issue, and there is likely a forum post explaining how to fix it already when you have an issue. However if I manage to break ubuntu for example, I always have a bad time getting the system back up without a reinstall. I haven't tried using BTRFS for snapshots yet, but I usually format my drive to BTRFS for new systems/reinstalls now, so I have the opportunity at least. Don't know if snapshots would have made a difference for the GRUB issue that happened though. Thankfully it didn't affect me as I use systemd-boot instead.

I also use Gnome, vscode and firefox. Don't know about matlab but there is a wiki page and an aur package, so I think it should work. For gnome if you use extensions, I recommend installing them from the aur, instead of from the web browser, as you won't need to manually update them. For vscode, there is an aur package for the official version from microsoft, but there is also a FOSS version on the main repo (though some extensions may not work/be available out of the box on that one).

One issue arch users may get after a while is the hard drive filling with cached packages. Pacman doesn't delete old packages from the cache automatically, so if you never clear the cache, you will get a copy of every version of every package you've ever installed in the cache. I've made it a habit now every once in a while I'll clear the cache, after an update and I've confirmed the system works after the update. There's a command "paccache" from the "pacman-contrib" package that's convenient for clearing cached packages.

I love arch and I'm incredibly biased, but here goes. I have used Arch exclusively for the past n years. All of the things you've mentioned will work great. The AUR absolutely rules. It's rather similiar to Void in the sense that it's a completely blank slate, so it's going to be as unique an experience as you make it.

Arch is really stable and reliable as long as you don't break it, really. Out of the handful of times I've fucked up my install, all of them have been my own fault. Fortunately Arch is (relatively) easy to fix: keep a live USB on hand and chroot into your physical drive with arch-chroot and unfuck whatever needs unfucking. I haven't ever had to completely start over from scratch a single time. It's a learning experience!

Go for it, I say. Try it in a VM beforehand if you gotta.

Thanks everyone for your advice, I decided to install Arch, I've got it all set up with BTRFS and snapper with automatic snapshots through snap-pac.

The only problems in the install were that the default BTRFS subvolume layout given by archinstall gives an @.snapshots subvolume. If you want to use snapper with the root subvolume you need to unmount and remove this subvolume so that snapper can create a new one.

The other problem was that once the proprietary NVIDIA driver is installed gdm will force X11 still on Hybrid graphics laptops. Just had to symlink the gdm config to null which is mentioned in the wiki for drivers older than 470 on single GPU set-ups. Sorry don't have the links on me.

Otherwise all set up now, we'll see how this goes

Arch is bound to break every once in a while, that's just the deal you get with a rolling release distro. If stability is all you want, you can go with the BTRFS snapshots and hope to heavens this setup doesn't break or use something stable like Debian or Fedora.