I keep hearing this argument but I've either been very lucky or something else.
I've been using arch or arch based distros for 15 years on my main machine and never had a system crash or issue.
The thing is… arch…. You can actually fix. Most times.
Unlike the proverbial him.
(Not that you should have to.)
Who is NixOS for?
Serial killers
People who have more than one computer
People who are into BDSM
People who have a favourite pencil.
Wow way to make assumptions huh
It's a fountain pen
Pentel Graphgear 1000 is my favorite mechanical pencil, and my favorite Linux distro is NixOS... hm
"Linux is my personality."
Phil Connors
Highly accurate, but, even if you fix him...An update will break him, as Arch Linux moves fast as hell!
That's the neat part, if anything's broken, just update, it's probably fixed in a next version already. Then, when you find what broke on the last update, just update again, it'll be fixed by then.
not many read the arch linux news, causing such breakage to happen ._.
After a year there's only something about linux-firmware requiring manual intervention.
I thought I wasn't reading the news in correct place. Manjaro had update snapshot discussion threads, and usually there were things to fix manually. Usually just minor things.
Possibly, but in the few years I have spent with it, it has only done that once (got a kernel panic on reboot). Managed to diagnose and fix the problem in around 10 mins without the help of the internet.
Last time I saw kernel panic on Debian and that was more than a decade ago.
In my time of using Linux, to my knowledge, I can't recall a kernel panic. I've had my boot record break, graphics drivers simply not want to load (that was fixable, just annoying), or GNOME Display Manager crashout hard related to a memory leak. I use Ubuntu and Fedora KDE these days, at most there is an occasional bug that doesn't cause major issues. Just little annoyances that can be solved with an upcoming update or using the terminal.
That's the thing, just because there is a breakage doesn't mean there isn't a way to fix it. It just becomes a cycle of breakage and repair...Arch goes through cycles of being temporarily broken and back to working just fine. This is merely the nature of rolling release (part of the reason why I am not a rolling release distro).
Naturally, if one has the skill to fix Arch, it would be of no real concern. It might be annoying, but it seems that you can overcome those temporary disruptions caused by introduced bugs
I suppose, but again, I would hardly call it a cycle of breakages, after all, that was the one lone time anything major broke (blatant user error aside). In small cases where things do break (non-critical) it is sort of assumed that the people using arch will have a certain level of competence in diagnosing and fixing even minor issues. Though I will admit, that is partially less relevent now, with the introduction of archinstall, and distros such as EndeavourOS.
EndeavourOS, CachyOS, and archinstall do lower the barrier to entry for Arch itself, which means that there may be really fresh users (who should probably not be on Arch) using it. As wild as it sounds, those Arch and its distros get recommended to new users that aren't technically inclined.
For the seasoned Arch users, non-critical breaks don't feel as serious, since they can fix him. It's just the new users wandering in a dark place without light (a place they shouldn't be encouraged to wander, without knowledge), that these problems are serious or can be made worse by said user misunderstanding how to apply fixes. Or prevent issues in the future.
I agree that there are likely very few serious breakages not caused by a user happening on Arch, just the potential of them happening (anything made by human hands occasionally will suffer this).
Yeah, I agree.
Arch often seems to ignore the fundamental rule:
Linus is in the right. Arch developers are frequently in the wrong.
The "don't break userspace" is a kernel rule. It's ok to break userspace within (like on library upgrades). The equivalent for Linux would be breaking kernel space, which they do... very often. It's the reason DKMS exists and why Nvidia can be such a hassle
Don't use Arch if that's important to you
Hint: :q!
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