Arch is different…
Except the last arch news post is a month ago about virtualbox. I’ve blindly run pacman -Syu for years without issue
Why would anyone want to use a distro that can break at any update unexpectedly or have to read articles first to see if it’s safe is beyond me.
It’s too much of a hassle.
It’s can be fun to plumb the limits of computing and Arch’s gimmick is living entirely on the bleeding edge of computing - it’s where all the exciting issues are being actively identified and worked on. However, if you’re not into tinkering, I agree - Arch is ‘C tier’ for average users - specifically because of the dangers of playing in deep waters. As an enthusiast myself, I have Arch on my daily driver, but only because I have a NAS, home server, backup strategy, and other Linux machines running Debian, Fedora, and SteamOS at the ready in case I hit one of Arch’s infamous ‘Bad Days’.
yeah windows do be like that
I’ve yet to have one of my windows systems brick itself. Several of my Linux systems have.
It’s a problem regardless of what OS it happens to. I’ve personally/professionally found it much more frequent that an update breaks something on linux vs. windows, but it’s also much easier to fix those issues & they’re rarely the kind of critical failure you get with a M$ OS.
(and if you truly crave stability, Debian is always happy to welcome you back into it’s big soft embrace)
Any distro can break at any update. If you’ve ever done a major upgrade on any fixed-release distro, you have very likely experienced some sort of issue.
And the solution is very simple (and the same for all distros): Enable Snapshots, roll back if important stuff breaks.
Flashbacks to when I bought a Winblows Surface Pro 3 tablet that broke on every single update they released for the first year i owned the damned thing
Yeah, idk bro, it’s weird to me too.
Damn. Truth.
Why, what news? What I need to be careful this time?
“No way to prevent this” says only distro where this regularly happens
Arch explicitly says “never do this”
Well yeah and cigarettes tell you not to smoke them
Lol. Care to explain how your analogy stands?
Lol. Care to explain how your analogy stands?
It stands as written.
Arch will give you cancer
I have been using arch linux. And I havent gotten cancer yet. How do i have to be using arch linux to get it?
I smoke since 20 years and I haven’t gotten cancer yet too. How do I smoke to get cancer? /s
Cigarettes work for me perfectly well, other users must be doing something wrong.
You need to be wearing striped thigh-highs I think
No no no, that’s how you prevent it. Striped thigh-highs and fursuits isolate against the cancerous effects.
Hasn’t yet. Ubuntu, on the other hand, managed to piss me off completely
Arch can be traded for sex and murders in prison.
Exactly
Hasn’t yet. Ubuntu, on the other hand, managed to piss me off completely
Edit: sorry, wrong thread
Damn I thought you were about to say Ubuntu gave you cancer
News from this year:
- virtualbox-ext-vnc >= 7.2.12-2 requires manual intervention (package won’t install)
- Active AUR malicious packages incident (the AUR is locked)
- Arch Linux 2026 Leader Election Results
- Breaking changes for all users of
varnish, which is renamed tovinyl-cache(it’s a proxy, only affects servers) - kea >= 1:3.0.3-6 update requires manual intervention (dhcp server, affects routers)
- iptables now defaults to the nft backend (affects pretty much nothing)
Repost.
Also, my Mint install broke, uh, shit I don’t remember, 5 times? Arch broke zero times. Zero times not my own fault for forgetting I was installing something and shutting off the computer, of course. Except for the times I tried the fucking installer python script, but since I never even booted the install it doesn’t count.
Iptables change actually fucked me because I’d tweaked something stupid 12 years ago and forgot. Took lime 45-60 mins to fix
I dont get the bad press arch got. I use arch (btw) and can’t remember last time it wont boot after an update. It maybe happened to me twice in 20 years and at least once was my fault and the other was because i didn’t read the pacman post warning me
Once it happened to me because 6 years prior I’d made a change thinking ‘hah. That makes more sense’ and then things changed under me and I had to read journalctl in a tty. Low key enjoyed dealing with it. But here’s the thing: most ppl are dead at that point. No idea what to do. Arch is for nerds.
Mint broke for you? That’s the first I’ve heard of it.
Also if you have a habit of shutting down the PC during updates, check out atomic/immutable distros. They are almost impossible to break. You can pull the power during an update and it’ll be fine.
Active AUR malicious packages incident (the AUR is locked)
🤭 heh
Foot-guns are my PROTECTED SECOND AMENDMENT RIGHT.
Reminds me of my try of Nobara. I do clean install, it installs and starts updating itself for a long while. Afterwards it tells me to reboot, and that the update has failed. I am??? Since I am a noob, so I reboot. And the whole system fully breaks, and no trouble-shooting helps, so I have to re-install. No biggie, just mildly annoying, it was a clean install after all. Then I do some searching to figure out, what went wrong, and find out, that updates failing and the system fully breaking, and having to re-install it if you reboot, is apparently normal behavior for Nobara.
I’ve had Nobara on my PC for several years and not had a problem, though I know others have
Having said that, if I could be bothered I would probably just return to regular Fedora again so that I could have a decent package manager and updater…
i use arch btw
this happened to me once in 6 years. it was my own fault.
Really? It happens this often?
In 26 years, I’ve seen this happen in two occasions with enterprise Linux. One of them was my own damned fault for using a marginal config. The other was an update that added a new dependency in the code but not the package.
That’s it. Twice.
Never had an unbootable system after an update, all not checking news has ever done to me is having a package fail to install (and then I check the news to see how to fix it), I’ve seen plenty of kernel regressions or other software, but that’s a thing with upstream and getting not-as-tested software, not with arch itself
It’s happened twice to me in seven years of using arch (not black screen, just something being broken after an update) and both times would’ve been avoided if I’d just read the fucking blog like you’re meant to, but yolo lmao. Still on the same install, everything still fine after just switching one package for another or whatever.
with enterprise Linux
I think you already know the difference, but we’re talking about relatively bleeding edge systems here.
That’s why I go for boring distros like Fedora
Nobara has also been stable. Underrated distro.
Gnome or KDE ? I like gnome over KDE in general but the top bar in gnome seems to create a blank bar in games at top of screen.
Haven’t figured out how to fix it.
If you want really boring, go for Debian.
It’s a peaceful life
Hell yeah – I do want my OS to be boring.
Hello from Mint :)
Mint based on Ubuntu or Debian? Debian mint is probably the most boring … and stable and great for anyone who just wants a computer to work.
Isn’t it based on Ubuntu which is based on Debian? It’s my first time using Linux and I switched a couple of weeks ago so I’m not sure to be honest but the website[1] states:
Based on Debian and Ubuntu, […]
Which leaves me just as confused.
What the other person wrote isn’t quite true: there is a current version of Linux Mint based on Ubuntu (which is itself based on Debian) and another current version based directly on Debian for those who want to avoid Ubuntu.
Originally it was based on Ubuntu, which is itself based on Debian. But recently they based directly on Debian. There are some differences. Debian based is more stable with older packages and kernel.
What? No, there are two versions: the main one, based on Ubuntu, and an alternative one based directly on Debian (Linux Mint Debian Edition)
Just wanted to add a clarification that both editions are offered currently.
Indeed. or fed. the only drama i want in my life is the stuff going on IN the game. not some OS cockblocking me.
Yeah, lol. Arch people keep telling me that this never happens, and yet here it is.
Nah. Debian is fine for me.
I’m definitely lucky that I’m pushing 3 years on my desktop arch install and have never had any updates break it. Had some issues with Nvidia and Wayland over 2 years, but that wasn’t really an arch thing, more an Nvidia thing.
My laptop is the same, but I use it far less, so really a fair of a comparison, although I do update every time I use it, which is every couple of days.
You just need to keep an eye on the news and it won’t happen 99% of the time. Ive got it set up so news updates go to my email in a specific folder. That means i get the notification on my phone as well. Or just get into the habit of checking the page before updating
I don’t need more shit to remember to do. I need a computer that works without me micromanaging it
Thats fine, then arch just isnt for you. Use what you want, but if someone installs arch then complains that it broke because they didnt check the news (something that the maintainers recommend you do) then the blame/fault shifts to the user, not the system.
but if someone installs arch then complains that it broke because they didnt check the news (something that the maintainers recommend you do) then the blame/fault shifts to the user, not the system.
The question is though why pacman does not display these news during the update. Gentoo has been doing this for decades.
Thats a separate issue, but i do agree with you that it would be extremely helpful if it did
That is why I am using Tumbleweed, rolling release without the expectation of reading news before hitting zypper dup and stuff still being fine. The price for that is a few days of delay for testing, so that major stuff does not break.
Manjaro has also shown how an Arch distro can achieve this as well, by releasing tested sets of updates slower.
But OP is correct in that’s not the point of vanilla Arch and people who use vanilla should assume the risks.
What’s annoying is people who use vanilla and tell everybody “oh don’t worry nothing ever breaks”. Something always breaks. You have a couple thousand packages installed on the average desktop system, dozens are updated to bleeding edge every day, something will break.
Manjaro maintains a crowd-sourced list of the most egregious defects (+ their fixes) that crop up in popular packages, suffice to say it’s never empty.
Many of them are not system-breaking and may not impact everyone, which is where I’m guessing the “nothing ever breaks” dissonance is coming from.
Fair enough. I am all for choosing a distro that aligns with the own reqirements. It is strange to use a misaligned distro and then complain about it.
then the blame/fault shifts to the user, not the system
Nah, lol. Not when lots of other systems manage to not break userspace on random updates.
You can claim that blame shifts to the user, but I’m still blaming the shitty system.
In a good system, you can trust that updates are well-vetted already before they’re pushed to average users, and you don’t need to check the news or anything else before updating. You can even set updates to be automatic with a high degree of confidence that it won’t mess anything up for you. (Imagine that, the computer automatically updating itself, saving you the trouble of doing it manually… What a thought!)
“Good” means different things in different contexts. Here you mean it as something like “user friendly”. Of course, there are other priorities that someone else could call “good”. It’s not a helpful word for honest debate, but it’s very convenient for hiding a bunch of semantic puns and confused reasoning behind.
Youre right for most systems that are advertised as stable. Arch however is rolling release, so this doesnt apply. You get package updates as soon as theyre available pretty much. So no, the fault lies with the user when it comes to arch 99% of the time
Edit: i also said the blame shifts to the user if they don’t do something the maintainers specifically say you should do before every update. If you check the arch news, update, and it breaks then yes, the fault is with the maintainer. However this rarely happens nowadays. Ive been on arch for almost 6 years and have not had to do a reinstall ever.
That seems like a pain in the ass. like the sort of shit why i left windows behind. noted: will not touch arch. thanks for the heads up.
It comes from a very different place than Windows, and the data here is very transparent, unlike your average Microsoft KB.
dont care. It’s still going into my “places i will never go.” box. dont need an OS cockblocking me from my games. that shit can fuck right off.
Besides, some of is use our OS for work. cant afford telling a job “wahh im too stupid to use a reliable OS” just doesnt fly.
Ya then you need an application and you need to jump hoops or have certain versions of packages not available in your package manager, and on arch, here we go.
Back when I started Linux, poking at the system was fun and exciting (also you had to poke at the system anyway if you wanted to run anything). Now, I just want it out of the way and convenient.
I understand that newcomers might feel that they want to touch everything because it’s all new and shiny, but I think the OS ought to be a creature of the shadows.
Hm… btw, I hate fedora.
Lemmy always seems downvote heavy. Why don’t you like fedora?
The upvotes mean some other people too don’t like Fedora like me. Nothing more than that.
A distro can be perfect for some and, at the same time, hated by some others. That’s normal.
Why it’s not for me. Reasons:
Maintained by a corporation. Probably it’s their testing ground.
Too much bloatware is preinstalled.
Too many updates, just like Arch. But arch feels more cleaner and faster anyway.
Require rpm fusion.
Crashes often.
There is always a connectivity issue on RPM Fusion servers.
Heavily depended upon flatpak.
Many applications don’t have native Fedora packages or repos.
https://archlinux.org/news/virtualbox-ext-vnc-7212-2-requires-manual-intervention/ dont worry you only need to shit your pants if you are using virtual box and dont read (sorry OP)
Who uses virtualbox on Linux having KVM, QEMU and virsh/virt-manager?
It’s gonna be slower, proprietary, and it’s not even as easy to install
It’s not slower.
proprietary
Only the extension pack, the app itself is GPL.
not even as easy to install
How do you mean? You simply install virtualbox (and virtual-guest-iso if you want). All the relevant packages are available from official repos, at least on Manjaro, including a linux-virtualbox-host-modules-meta package that maintains the required linux*-virtualbox-host-modules as needed automatically.
Also, I prefer virtualbox because it makes a lot of stuff easy to do.
File sharing with the host for example, it’s a matter of simply pointing at a dir in settings, as opposed to having to set up Samba on the host (which I don’t have and don’t want) and deal with wierd networking issues, or deal with virtiofs.
Don’t even get me started on selecting locations for the vm files. Whatever you think it should work like, virt-manager’s way ain’t it.
So, I use it on my workstation because I have to also use windows and virtualbox’s cross system integration is far more mature. I really only use it as necessary and it isn’t running all the time.
I would prefer to use qemu, but I’m not doing anything serious with it. I’m just sometimes running a windows instance that I need to be able to easily share files with, and copy/paste across. Once virt-viewer gets there, I’ll switch.
Though, to be honest, it actually uses kvm as its backend so it really isn’t any less performant than qemu for this.
Nice bait there, I nearly started writing an actual answer.
I love me my arch, but yes. This is a reality.
It’s super rare in my experience over the last 10+ years.
Used to get it like every other update on arch. For it once or twice on Manjaro and once on catchyos.
But in also on an nvidia card. Can’t afford to switch these days lol
Weird. I wonder what makes the difference because I’ve got an RTX 4060 in my main machine and a laptop with an AMD card and haven’t had an issue. Idk I’ve also got the mesa driver’s installed as a fallback though and headers.
I guess I also don’t use a typical DE so that could have something to do with it. Dwm seems to basically always just work as long as the system posts.
De souls have nothing to do with it. Circa 2015 I’d literally drop to a shell on boot. I think I had a 500 series nvidia card back then. Is have to use the cli with lynx or something to download the driver and install it lol.
That’s why I use archdebian gives me all the latest software 5 years later.
archdebian? arch+debian dual boot?
I just had my first one. Update shows a change in the template for official mirrors. Updated asks me if i want to view, merge or cancel. I view, looks okay? Merge. No more updates, corrupted. Heeeeetyyyyhh?
When I type “yes” for view pkgbuild, it always shows failed to retrieve message. Then without asking for a retry, it asks to continue with installation!
What specifically happened? Can you share the news item?
Last one I remember was related to the keychain update, you had to re-acknowledge all of the maintainers in the arch-keyring.
It was a lot of work to visit them all and get them to recite their key signatures while I held their hand to make sure they were really there. The blood tests took a while to come back and affirm their identities, but it was worth it for the piece of mind.
I think no rolling releases has gotten their act right. All eventually break with an update, and if you skipped several, the likelihood of reinstalling is high.
At least they teach you good backup practices.
I mean, I’ve been running exclusively rolling release Linux distros (Gentoo and Arch) as my daily driver for the last 20 years and I don’t think I’ve ever had the thought that reinstalling from scratch would be simpler than just… fixing the issue. I’ve never backed up my OS files either. Only data files; the sort of files that aren’t put there by the install process or package manager. I’ve never used BTRFS or anything with snapshotting abilities either.
I have booted into a live system, chrooted, and fixed something. (Because my kernel or bootloader or something was borked.) But it’s been quite a long time since I’ve had to do that, and I’ve never reinstalled from scratch because I couldn’t fix something.
(The only times I’ve used non-rolling releases were pretty limited cases. A server here running Debian here, a Raspberry Pi running Raspian (though even Raspberry Pi’s, I’ve mostly used Arch Linux ARM) there. Also my work machine, though I’ve even installed rolling release distros on my work machine on a forgiveness-rather-than-permission basis at times. Lol.)
the likelihood of reinstalling is high.
At least with Arch, I don’t imagine needing to reinstall, worst case I should be able to reinstall all packages from a live image.
Wouldn’t say that. OpenSuse Tumbleweed might got some tech debt with their backend and doesn’t come with fancy stuff such as Kernel modifications like Cachy, but their rolling distro is rock solid. And for the few cases where something really breaks the bootable btrfs Snapshots come by default.
It still is for Intermediate users for sure (the installer expects you to know what you want - yet is a GUI). But in terms of stability they really nailed it, I’d absolutely use it for work horses that require newest software. Or Leap if I require binary compatibility to SLED/SLES.
My record with Arch is longer than 6 months without updates, and it completed the updates fine.
My oldest install is 4 years old, and it’s true, it became unbootable once. But it was my fault, for generating an initramfs without free space in /tmp, which caused it to fail. It was a quick fix once I figured it out.
All of this isn’t to say rolling is as stable as Debian, of course. Rolling is inherently gonna be more unstable, and that’s by design.
But if you take some care, you can actually make these rolling distros pretty stable. Hell, my servers run Arch (I’m working on migrating them to Gentoo to get rid of systemd, but I haven’t yet commited to it). And I haven’t had any serious breakages, even on Arch Linux ARM.
But it was my fault, for generating an initramfs without free space in /tmp, which caused it to fail.
I really don’t think that was your fault. A critical build process that’s not checking for resources and not failing gracefully and leaving the machine unbootable is not the user’s fault.
A build+install can fail for many reasons. It’s actually annoying how many critical system updates on Linux don’t use a staging process and a sudden power-off at the wrong time can leave the machine completely crippled.
Some distros have taken to doing a BTRFS snapshot before they start the upgrade but (a) they’re far and few in between and (b) that still doesn’t fix the upgrade process, it’s just sweeping the problem under the carpet.
I manually triggered it, and didn’t read the logs when it said it failed. That was my fault. If it fails, it will tell you. You still have the machine working until you reboot, so if you read the logs, you can clear /tmp and retry again, and the machine should be bootable again.
Linux lets you do anything, including stupid things. I’d say doing stupid things is the fastest way to learn about it, though.
The same issue would have happened even on Ubuntu, as it uses the same tools as Arch for generating the initramfs. I don’t consider it an Arch or Linux issue, just a user mistake. It won’t happen normally, unless you manually trigger it.
I’m starting to sound like a broken record but since nobody else has mentioned it yet: atomic/immutable distros often use something called rpm-ostree, which stages updates for the next boot. Updates are “atomic”, so you can’t end up with a corrupt partial update, even if you pull the power mid-update (in which case it will just stay on the current version). Everybody gets the same base image, so your OS won’t diverge over time and end up like some frankenstein mess that. It’s all super cool tech.
Who needs research when you have backups?
My system creates automatic snapshots and that’s usually enough. Restoring a snapshots takes me literally 1 minute.
This should be built-in on every modern distro.
I don’t mean it happened right now. I mean it often happens. Probably when i tweak too much or more installs from AUR.
Manual intervention announcements happen far from “often” though, tinkering with your system is a different thing
Good to know
