this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2024

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submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Alt text: O'RLY? generated book cover with a donkey, navy blue accent, header: "It's only free if you don't value your time", title: "Handling Arch Linux Failures", subtitle: "Mom, please cancel my today's agenda!"

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[–] [email protected] 71 points 5 months ago (9 children)

I really don't get these memes. In about 9 years of daily use on multiple systems I never had anything break beyond a multitude of failures to update with pacman - all of which could be fixed within minutes - and in the early years having to restart my system every couple of months because it stopped recognizing USB devices - after many rounds of updates mind you. I've had more frequent troubles with windows. How did Arch get this bad rep?

[–] [email protected] 62 points 5 months ago (3 children)

Maybe your "could be fixed within minutes" is someone else's "took hours to figure out how to fix when I was actually supposed to be working"?

[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 months ago

Nah, I usually find the solution on the arch website. If that doesn't work, it's in the forum - which is usually the first search result on all major search engines for any given pacman problem. Once you've found the solution it's hardly more than just copy-pasting it.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 months ago

No it's actually very simple stuff. Arch is surprisingly stable and easy to manage, and had been for the better part of a decade

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago

If you follow the manual installation at the end you know which package do what in your system. When i use a ready to use distro (i have a endeavouros for my daily) you have to invest more time in your error resolution because you have to analyse what your distro use.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 5 months ago

Most likely old folk(tm) I used Arch during the migration from init to systemd (2009-2013). Oh boy did things like to go boom at unforeseen moments. Like random segfaults after package updates, disappearing as suddenly as they started.

But admittedly after ~2013 Arch stabilised extremely compared to before. I remember having discussions around 2014 with people surprised that they didn't have update-introduced issues with their Arch install for 2 years at that time. Most of them never again until today.

Also: new users After aforementioned stabilisation period I got to know recently started Linux users who just did wired shit. Like accidentally deleting all kernel images on a Luks encrypted system or using unusual hardware which by chance Ubuntu or Fedora supported out of the box but would require kernel patches for Arch. They wanted to learn and they did learn but always perceived Arch as "more complicated" than the alternatives. But most of that was imo not the fault of Arch.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 months ago (4 children)

That's because arch is very old and back in the days it was prone to breakage. Ironically, it is now much more stable and easy to maintain than an Ubuntu derivative but people will still recommend Mint to beginners for some reason.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 months ago

Because beginners have no idea about OS architecture concepts. If they are a true beginner coming from Windows or MacOS they may not understand things like the Linux boot process. Of course they can read the Arch install procedure which I’ve heard is excellent, but many people are easily intimidated by documentation and often view computers as a tool that should just work out of the box without them needing to understand it. Mint is an attempt at making that happen. Obviously, once you start to modify your Mint install alot you are going to run into issues, and a highly modified or customized system is where distros like Arch and Tumbleweed actually become easier to maintain. I’d argue Mint is a natural first step to the Linux pipeline. People who only need a web browser will probably stop there, while others will continue to explore distros that better fit their needs.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 months ago

Same here. Switched to Arch in 2015 so I am also coming up on the 9 year mark. I have had very few issues, and the ones I have had were usually my fault for doing something stupid. I used Windows, OS X, and Ubuntu previously and compared to those Arch is a dream. Hence why I've stuck with it for so long now.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Same here. 10 years on my laptop and it broke only once: I accidentally closed the terminal where the initramfs was installed. So my mistake. I could fix it by using an arch install on an USB and my knowledge of how to install the system, since I did it myself, by hand.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

well in this particular case it's initramfs' fault for not designing for all-or-nothing atomicity (a operation either completes fully or not at all). which you can work around with a terminal multiplexer where a session can be re-attached later in such cases btw.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

Thanks, the multiplexer idea is actually really good.

Having Said that, In my particular case it was actually my fault.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Do you use the AUR? That might make the difference.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Yep, I have a lot of AUR packages installed. Never had any problems besides needing to remove a package once to resolve some dependency issues.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

the real question is whether you use git variants. Which is another way of not making arch (and Gentoo) certainly not free as in free beer, especially if you live in Europe and need to deal with those outrageous energy prices. btw imo one should be suspicious of projects with long tagged release cadence since it's usually a sign of technical debt and the need to look for alternatives.

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

Hmm, I think I broke my X11 server with an update more than once.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

The X server has to be the biggest program I've ever seen that doesn't do anything for you.
Ken Thompson

I see Wayland's flaws but X is such a bloated piece of hardly maintainable spaghetti code that it is sadly beyond saving or prospects for anything in terms of significant improvement

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

How did Arch get this bad rep?

Because so many people love it and make a point of its 'brilliance', so it's funny to take it down a peg.

Myself, long ago, I moved from Arch to Ubuntu partly for ease of downloads on bad internet in Asia (in-country package mirror, and obviously less downloads overall); and partly because I didn't want my time and mental energy to be 'on call' for a random breakage from an upgrade. Breakages were occasional for me, and normally easily fixable, but took immediate time and effort.

I still think Arch is great, but I've got through some distro hops to end up currently on Mint, from wanting stability + a couple of binaries that are published for Ubuntu and not other distros.

Was tempted by NixOS or Guix, but... not just yet.

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

I've tried a couple rolling distros (including Arch), and they always "broke" after ~6 months to a year. Both times because an update would mess up something with my proprietary GPU drivers, IIRC. Both times, I would just install a different distro, because it would've probably took me longer to figure out what the issue was and fix it. I'm currently just using Debian stable, lol.

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

The key word here being I

[–] [email protected] 61 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Me: is this some joke I have too many known-good btrfs snapshots to understand?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

backup to restore filesystem? i like guessing acronyms

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

B-tree file system, actually.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 5 months ago (2 children)

The thing I hate about the "value your time" argument is that windows is shit.

Let's be generous for a minute and assume that windows and linux have the same amount of problems. Someone who is on windows for the past 30 years has 30 years of acquired knowledge and will probably know quickly how to solve it on windows, but not linux. Someone who is on linux for the past 30 years has 30 years of acquired knowledge and will probably know quickly how to solve it on linux, but not windows.

So the entire argument is just "but I have muscle memory tied to windows, and I already know how to solve those problems, but I dont know how to solve the linux ones, so they take me a lot of research and time to solve, therefore all linux problems always take a lot more time to solve"

On windows, I have to spend time fighting BSODs and finding out where to download software from that isn't just bloated up with viruses, and how to run registry hacks to get rid of start menu ads and to stop microsoft from phoning home. None of those things i have to do on linux.

On linux, today my biggest issue was figuring out how to change the keybinding for taking a screenshot... And that was an easy issue, but it's also not even possible on windows.

So I guess different types of problems. My "wasted" time is customizing my OS/environment so it works the way I want it to, not trying to fight back any ounce of control.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Linux is also way more helpful when troubleshooting imo. There's usually an easy to find log with a helpful error message. Windows is just "Shit didn't work. (0xGOFUCKYOURSELF)."

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago

Don't have to spend time troubleshooting if you just never fix the BSOD and just kinda live with it. Point for windows

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

yeah sysctl > regedit

'tis a meme... ;)

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

my rant was not about your meme. But people actually use this argument seriously, and that frustrates me.

And I will admit that learning a new system has a time cost, but once you reach experience parity, the time cost per problem is less, and the number of problems is less. In that way, the "time spent" is an investment rather than wasted.

So A+ meme, it triggered me in all the ways it was supposed to.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 5 months ago (2 children)

$ head -3 /var/log/pacman.log 
[2009-04-04 12:40] installed filesystem (2009.01-1)
[2009-04-04 12:40] installed expat (2.0.1-2)
[2009-04-04 12:40] installed dbus-core (1.2.4.4permissive-1)

I installed my Arch on Desktop in 2009 and it was just cloned from one disk to another through multitude of PCs, and sure, there were occasional troubles, like upgrade from SysV init to systemd, when KDE plasma 4 released, or the time, when I had to run a custom kernel and mesa which supported the AMD Vega 56 card ~month after release.

But nowadays, I didnt had a single breakage for several years, my RX6800 GPU was well supported 3 months after release, and most things just work... BTW I run arch also on my home server, in 6 years it had literally zero issues.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Ok wow! This is really impressive. I couldn't even run Windows or Debian or something like that for 15 years, yet you managed to do it with Arch. May I ask what was the main reason behind trying to keep this Arch installation for so long? Were you just to lazy to reinstall or are there other factors?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago (1 children)

My arch install is from 2015. It just works, why should I reinstall?

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

@[email protected] mentioned cloning the drive and moving it to another computer. I imagine reinstalling would be easier at that point, that's why I asked.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

And reinstalling the packages, moving over all the configs, setting up the partitions and moving the data over? (Not in this order, of course)

Cloning a drive would just require you to plug both the old and new to the same machine, boot up (probably from a live image to avoid issues), running a command and waiting until it finishes. Then maybe fixing up the fstab and reinstalling the bootloader, but those are things you need to do to install the system anyways.

I think the reason you'd want to reinstall is to save time, or get a clean slate without any past config mistakes you've already forgotten about, which I've done for that very reason, especially since it was still my first, and less experienced, install.

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

There were no real reasons to reinstall it, it works fine, occasionally had to purge some config files in home for some apps after major version changes, or edit them, but most work for years. I mean, my mplayer config is from 2009 and last edited 4 years ago...

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

How often do you do updates on your home server?

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

once a month usually.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I opened Lemmy and this was my top post in home, I came back 6hrs later and it was still the top post. I'm not mad.

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

Real Lemmy experience

[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 months ago (2 children)

You spelled NixOS wrong

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Never managed to brick my NixOS System

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Me either but I'm tired of clearing my schedule to read wiki pages every time I want to make any change to my configuration

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 months ago

The subtitle made me laugh so much. Thanks OP

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago

You know this book is not real because Arch Linux has no failures 😎

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

"It's a stable distro, newbie! I swear!"

Anti Commercial-AI license

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago

Well, see, the thing is, minimalist distros like Arch or Void are more stable than "fully-featured" distros like ubuntu, just by virtue of having less software that could break. The reason I wouldn't suggest them to newbies is because having less software installed by default means that the user is expected to know what software they need, and to know what program to debug if things do go wrong, which isn't a reasonable thing to expect from someone coming from mac or windows or bsd.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

well in my experience it was opensuse tumbleweed or Manjaro that were significantly less stable, but perhaps my perception is a little bit skewed since I use artix and it's certainly not too rarely just the bloated, tightly coupled nature of shitstemd that causes some of arch's issues.

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