7 ms·

Arch is awesome and I've used it at home and work for years, but the rolling release cycle means that you must keep on top of upgrades. I was once a little too

by mhax 11y ago

Arch is awesome and I've used it at home and work for years, but the rolling release cycle means that you must keep on top of upgrades. I was once a little too slack (no pun intended) and had several hundred packages that needed upgrading and there was simply no easy way of making it work. It was around the time of the systemd introduction, so that may have been a significant complicating factor.

vitoreiji 11y ago
Yes, the systemd introduction was a special time in Arch land. A lot of systems got broken in those days. The only comparable time I can recall right now is when they dropped GRUB Legacy. People who upgraded carelessly were unable to boot. These are the two single big events in 8 years or so I've been using Arch.
- jvreeland 11y ago
  The filesystem package changes have caused no end of issues to people who did't read the news and just Syu'd :)
  - mitosis 11y ago
    Exactly. You're not supposed to pacman -Syu without looking. Part of your duty when you choose to install Arch is to take a few minutes every week to keep on top of what's new. Call it basic hygiene.
    - deelowe 11y ago
      Yet none of the setup guides really stress this and there's no preferred method to keep up to date on things. Arch really needs a better system for making it obvious when nontrivial updates are about to happen. Note, I use pacmatic, which pulls the news feeds, but it took me getting bitten a few times before I learned to do this.
  - amyjess 11y ago
    I really wish Arch had something similar to Gentoo's "eselect news" system that actually displays these notices alongside system updates and lets you query news articles from your terminal.
- elektronjunge 11y ago
  And the /bin symlinking... systemd and GRUB legacy were bigger. But about annually there's something arch land that will break even the most minimal installations if you aren't careful.

by mhax 11y ago

vitoreiji 11y ago

Yes, the systemd introduction was a special time in Arch land. A lot of systems got broken in those days. The only comparable time I can recall right now is when they dropped GRUB Legacy. People who upgraded carelessly were unable to boot. These are the two single big events in 8 years or so I've been using Arch.

jvreeland 11y ago
The filesystem package changes have caused no end of issues to people who did't read the news and just Syu'd :)
- mitosis 11y ago
  Exactly. You're not supposed to pacman -Syu without looking. Part of your duty when you choose to install Arch is to take a few minutes every week to keep on top of what's new. Call it basic hygiene.
  - deelowe 11y ago
    Yet none of the setup guides really stress this and there's no preferred method to keep up to date on things. Arch really needs a better system for making it obvious when nontrivial updates are about to happen. Note, I use pacmatic, which pulls the news feeds, but it took me getting bitten a few times before I learned to do this.
- amyjess 11y ago
  I really wish Arch had something similar to Gentoo's "eselect news" system that actually displays these notices alongside system updates and lets you query news articles from your terminal.
elektronjunge 11y ago
And the /bin symlinking... systemd and GRUB legacy were bigger. But about annually there's something arch land that will break even the most minimal installations if you aren't careful.