this post was submitted on 03 Dec 2024
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Linux

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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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[–] [email protected] 113 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

To be fair, arch could look like that after a few days.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

NixOS is like that every day for no reason

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 weeks ago

staging rebuild cycles only happen every two weeks or so.

The reason is always that something changed and causes all dependent packages to change, requiring a rebuild of those too.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 weeks ago

Oh, you updated one byte in your config? Better download the entire ducking Internet and rebuild everything!

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[–] [email protected] 49 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Read the Arch news before clicking "yes".

[–] [email protected] 62 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 weeks ago

I used to be an adventurer like you, but then I took an error to gpg.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 weeks ago

I have Informant installed for this. Saved my hide a few times.

[–] [email protected] 37 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (3 children)

people laughed at me for choosing debian. they asked why i chose to have ancient runes running in my computer

who's laughing now?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 weeks ago

Still we, dinosaur.🦖

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

We are still laughing, no worries.

p.s. Debian is great, I am just a "kind of new" void converted.

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I have an Arch laptop that I didn't update for 3.5 years. The system update took a while when I finally went through with it. Amazingly it didn't break anything!

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (3 children)

Yes, I am amazed that quite a few people in this thread are saying they 'had to completely reinstall the os' and that it broke everything after not much time. As long as one doesn't rely on the AUR for system critical packages or much in generel, it is incredibly hard to break an Arch system (Manjaro and other Arch-based distros don't count). This is due in part to Arch being quite reproducible but it also having very good maintainership.
It doesn't hurt to apply new package configs by going through pacdiff once in a while though.

Edit: Typo

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago

Manjaro and other Arch-based distros don't count

I think this has a lot to do with it. I have seen people say they use Arch before and then find out they're using a derivative.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 weeks ago

I switched from Windows to EndeavourOS a few months ago and haven’t had any issues on my personal computer, it’s amazing.

I also have EndeavourOS as a VM on my work laptop and I somehow managed to break systemd-boot when trying to do a system update though. The system update died halfway through and I defaulted to the classic solution of rebooting, which definitely made things worse because my boot partition in the VM broke. The great thing about Linux, and especially Arch, is the tools and knowledge readily available to fix things and everything was working again (with no data loss) in under 15 minutes. I’ve dealt with similar problems on Windows and either had to accept data loss or deal with significant headaches trying to resolve what should be a simple issue because the operating system refuses to provide basic information.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

I did this regularly on arch. And it didn't end very well.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

You see, this is why atomic desktops aren't a bad idea.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

This has nothing to do with immutable desktops.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

Well in an immutable distro, there is little to no chance for the system to end up in an unusable state (I guess it is the same for distros which apply the updates atomically). Traditional distros are far more likely to bork when so much shit is updated at once

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

I don't think this is true. The package manager is there for a reason to prevent that. If you have more updates to install at a time, then the chances are the same as if you would have installed the problematic update one at a time. Just read the manual intervention information from Arch and see if there is something to do, then it won't bork. If people don't know what they are doing and do not read the additional information (that is required to do so on Arch), well yes, then you could end up borking your machine. But not because so many updates are installed at a time. The package manager and operating system and their maintainer designed it in a way that you can install ton of updates at a time without borking. This is fine.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 weeks ago

It's arch. There'll be no issue here.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 weeks ago (6 children)

Sometimes I wish someone would make a an Arch box and come back to it years later to see the updates it has missed.

But that's assuming an Arch box would be reliable enough to stay alive that long lol.

Always heard of 20+ year old bsd and debian machines chugging along with no issue.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 weeks ago

It won't rise much beyond that, since you only get one update per package. Whether it's upgrading Firefox from version 120 to 121 or to version 130, it doesn't change much in terms of download size, nor the number of updates.

At least, I assume, Arch doesn't do differential updates. On some of the slower-moving distributions, they only make you download the actual changes to the files within the packages. In that case, jumping to 121 vs. 130 would make more of a difference.

If you do want lots of package updates, you need lots of packages. The texlive-full package is always a fun one in that regard...

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I have updated arch systems that had not been powered on for years before. It was fine. No issues what so ever. Arch is not some flaky distro that breaks if you look away for a minute. My main system has had had the same install for over 5 years now and I regularly forget to update it for months at a time. Again, no issues.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago

Yeah really the biggest issue I could see is pacman’s keyring being so out of date that it has to be manually refreshed with a new one

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 weeks ago

My arch install has been going strong for about 5 years now

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 weeks ago

I had that on a physical machine! It broke hardcore lol I had to reinstall the OS after trying to update

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 weeks ago (11 children)

Remembers Tumbleweed fondly

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 weeks ago

Haskell packages every other day...

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

And they're red, that means the offer is about to expire. Better act quick!

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 weeks ago

Better apt quick!

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

You wouldn’t believe the shit I’ve seen on internet connected production servers…

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 weeks ago

Nah, just update it.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 weeks ago

Those are rookie numbers.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 weeks ago (7 children)

This is why I Dont use rolling release Distros on Pcs i wont use often.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 weeks ago

I used to care but with recovery tools being what they are and most apps being containers... my base systems tend to be a little more disposable.

That said, I haven't had problems, even if I am at risk for more of them. I have my snapshots and my backups.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 weeks ago

Looks like a !!FUN!! time in Dwarf Fortress.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 27 points 2 weeks ago

arch linux, i'm sshed from my debian machine.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 weeks ago (7 children)

I'm sorry, I gotta - you have the menu on AND the button bar? like, why? you click on those things? you got your screen real-estate on a sale, what?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 weeks ago

Be nice, can't you see they're only able to afford red pixels?

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

welp, looks like you don't use python virtualenvs... well i guess jokes on you all your shit is probably broken now (and as a bonus, that's probably a big part of the donwload size as well) :p

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 weeks ago

Probably should, but this machine is already cluttered terribly. A good bit of the download size is likely Pytorch files.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago

Got busy and didn't update my template for awhile. Machines would be instantiated a few minors back. 9.2 vs 9.4, for instance, but this was back in 7-land.

Updates would be about 600 packages, or most of the install.

Took 5 min, completely safe. Patch, bounce because we looked funny at dbus so it can't cope, and then good to go.

I used to tease my windows peer: he'd be still on "do not turn off your computer".

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Recently updated a nixos machine that was on the shelf for five years or so. A few options and packages had been renamed, fixed those, upgrade completed with zero problems.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago

Only issue with this update was a maintainer's keyring had expired and been replaced, so his packages didn't pass the signing check. After re-installing the keyring, the whole think works fine.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago

6.5 gigs. "Proceed with installation? y/n"

Yeah, I guess. Fark getting any work done today.

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