The meme was “I use Arch, BTW,” but I think it has mostly died as enough people have pointed out that Arch isn’t really hard-mode Linux or something. It is a barebones start but
1) very stable due to rolling-release producing small changes
2) the skill barrier to getting a full system is “basic literacy, to read the wiki”
Eventually I switched to Ubuntu for some reason, it has given me more headaches than Arch.
> 1) very stable due to rolling-release producing small changes
Having very frequent updates to bleeding edge software versions, often requiring manual intervention is not "stable". An arch upgrade may, without warning, replace your config files and update software to versions incompatible with the previous.
That's fine if you're continuously maintaining the system, maybe even fun. But it's not stable. Other distributions are perfectly capable of updating themselves without ever requiring human intervention.
> 2) the skill barrier to getting a full system is “basic literacy, to read the wiki”
As well as requiring you to be comfortable with the the linux command line as well as have plenty of time. My mom has basic literacy, she can't install ArchLinux.
ArchLinux is great but it's not a beginner-friendly operating system in the same way that Fedora/LinuxMint/OpenSUSE/Pop!_OS/Ubuntu/ElementOS are.
> Having very frequent updates to bleeding edge software versions, often requiring manual intervention is not "stable". An arch upgrade may, without warning, replace your config files and update software to versions incompatible with the previous.
12 in the last year if you used all the software (I don’t many people are running dovecot and zabbix), so probably actually like 3 for most users: https://archlinux.org/
That’s not too dissimilar from what you’d get running stable releases of Ubuntu or Windows. And of course plenty of windows software will auto upgrade itself in potentially undesired ways, windows users just don’t blame the OS for that
I don't just mean the types of manual intervention mentioned in the news. ArchLinux ships bleeding edge software to users with very little downstream changes. ArchLinux also replaces config files when upgrading. This is inherently different behavior from stable release distributions like Ubuntu.
ArchLinux is not an operating system where you can do an unattended upgrade and forget about it. That's not "bad" or "good", that's just a design choice.
Arch replaces _unmodified_ config files when changing. It’s not an uncommon behaviour in software to update defaults to the new defaults.
If you have a modified config file, it puts the new default one in a .pacnew file for you to compare, which seems strictly better to just deleting the new default one.
Huh you're right, I must've confused myself by removing/installing instead of upgrading recently.
Anyway I think the discussion boils down to semantics. ArchLinux is not "unstable" in the sense that it is prone to breaking. But it also delivers none of the stability promises that stable release distros or rolling release distros with snapshotting and testing like OpenSUSE Tumbleweed deliver. To call ArchLinux stable would make every distribution stable, and the word would lose all meaning.
Most distributions promise that an upgrade always results in a working system. Instead moving the manual maintenance to major release upgrades.
> without warning, replace your config files and update software to versions incompatible with the previous.
This is just nonsense, pacman doesn't do this. If you'd modified a config file, it will create a .pacnew version instead of replacing it. Otherwise you'll get the default config synced with the version of the software you've installed, which is desirable.
It's pretty rare to modify any config files outside of ~/.config these days anyway. What few modifications I have at the system level are for things like mkinitcpio, locale, etc and they never change.
> very stable due to rolling-release producing small changes
Can you elaborate on the chain of thought here? The small changes at high frequency means that something is nearly constantly in a <CHANGED> state, quite opposite from stable. Rolling release typically means that updates are not really snapshotted, therefore unless one does pull updates constantly they risk pulling a set of incompatible updates. Again, quite different from stable.
It's the same train of thought as the modern cloud software notion that deploying small changes more often is safer than bundling "releases"; if you upgrade 3 packages 3x a week (or deploy 50 lines of code 3x a week), you catch small issues quickly and resolve them immediately, rather than upgrading 400 packages 1x a year (or deploying 50,000 lines of code 2x a year), where when things break you have a rather tall order just to triage what failed.
I think there are advantages to both, but I will say that I've found modern Arch to be quite good. The other huge benefit of Arch is the general skill level present in the user base and openness of the forums; when something breaks it's usually easy to google "arch + package name broken" and immediately find a forum thread with a real fix.
I don't think I'd use Arch for a corporate production server for change management reasons alone, but for a home desktop and my home server, it's actually the distribution that's required me to do the _least_ "Linux crap" to keep it going.
It’s stable in the way that a person taking small predictable steps at a time is stable compared to somebody who making large random lurching steps. Sure, the system is often changed, but if only a few packages have changed, should there be a problem it is easy to identify the culprit.
Although it is hard to say. Ubuntu also has, I guess, intentional behavior that is hard to distinguish from a bug, like packages switching from apt to snap. So it might just be that my subjective experience feels more buggy.
I think op meant the subjective feeling of having a system that runs in a stable manner.
I don't quite follow their reasoning either (maybe the smaller changesets expose compatibility bugs before affecting general ux?), but I agree that arch was a joy for me to use and felt "stable".
I know. I was emphasising that this time is not like before. That there are major differences, and things look similar only on a very superficial level.
I've started my Linux journey a decent year ago. It's been fun but I'm happy that they're such a great community to troubleshoot along with me. Never tried Arch but I do love a barebones no fuzz system.
I just tried to use Heliboard. It has many rough edges, I'll file issues to see it they can be improved.
For one thing, the voice typing is useless. It respects neither the language of the full keyboard nor the language shown in its interface. And that separate interface needs to be brought up separately, thus requiring many taps - exactly what I'm avoiding by using voice typing in the first place.
Selecting text then pressing the Delete key does not delete that selection in Hebrew or Arabic. It does work in English.
The swiping in English works fine - probably because that library is lifted directly from Gboard. So the idea is independence from propriety Gboard is not reality anyway. Swiping does not work in Hebrew or Arabic - which together with the lack of voice typing means that I can not use this keyboard at all.
I do like the arrow keys and selection buttons in the toolbar. Gboard has that in a seperate pane, but in the toolbar is much more convenient.
Belgian youngsters aged 17 wil get a voluntary call for 'vacation camps' in the army in a few weeks.
Recently a lot of people were hired four the federal and regional governments to handle strategic supplies. All Belgians were asked to stock their own 3 day emergency kit.
I mean war aside, the 3 day kit is always a good idea - power outages happen, freak weather events, supply chain issues, strikes, or even not feeling like going out which is very common.
As for the army vacation camp, I think it's good experience (same with scouting for example), although there's probably a huge recruitment angle there.
Personally I wouldn't mind a stint in the military, but at the same time I'm nearly 40 and not exactly fit if you catch my drift. That said, the military is also looking for a lot of reservists, people who do some jobs outside of their day job, some in IT security, base guarding, that kind of thing.
I think Belgium is the most stable unstable country in the world.
We're always on strike, only surpassed by the French. At any given moment one of our seven governments is in a state of crisis.
Somehow I feel like we'll make it though three days of lockdown without any issues.
I tried to sign up as a reservist - civil personell - because I feel like my logistic expertise could come in handy but sadly I passed 40 a few years ago and I'm deemed to old for service, even as a reservist.
I work for some local governments in Belgium and with every system they put in place I keep insisting on a analogous version. Online forms? Great but if anyone chooses the should be able to send in a paper form or get assisted by someone who fills in the online form for them.
As the spouse of someone blind it's becoming increasingly difficult to get accomodations from doctors and govt things. Surprisingly so much so that even making ada complaints goes nowhere. Very few offices are willing to sit and fill out paperwork nor willing to provide an accessible version.
The only saving grace has been be my eyes and other apps that allow for some level of access without needing another human available. It really sucks though as back in the early 2000s strides were being made for the blind community but now it feels like things have regressed because of technology and basic human dignity and kindness has lost out.
that's... not what gp was talking about. Why are so many people jumping in with this mistake?
Operation mincemeat wasn't a german officer, it wasn't anything about using a known plaintext to compare to coded messages, it wasn't pretending to be german documents, and it wasn't to help with cryptanalysis. About the only similarity is a dead body
Couldn't enjoy it at all. One of the first scenes shows MI6 officers, during WWII, making plans on a post-1991 world map, with reunified Germany and independent Baltic countries, etc. Kills immersion for me immediately, along with the gender politics every few minutes in a history show. Maybe I'm old fashioned.
We run dell or HP laptops at work. After 3 years they get replaced.
I usually buy my old work laptop to use it for personal use or to hand off to my family.
Tge first one I bought in that way is still working after 14 years. I converted it from Windows to Linux a few years ago and My mother uses it for browsing, banking and email.
Personally I'm using a 7 years old HP.
Batteries get upgraded when necessary and first thin I do after buying is adding RAM.
I don't get how 5 years is a good lifespan on a Mac?
The point is corporate wouldn’t need to replace the Apple MacBooks after 3 years. I’ve got an M1 air bought what feels forever ago and it’s still as fast as I need it to be. I’ve also been using hp laptops in my previous job and they couldn’t even wake from sleep when needed (but would wake in backpacks to the point IT explicitly forbade putting sleeping laptops in bags. Absurd.)
They do so because it's a tax thing. After three years the devices aren't deductible anymore. Benefit of the whole roulette is that all our devices are constantly under extends warranty so most defects are covered. It turned out to cost more to keep these devices for longer that to replace them every three year.
IME they do anyways? They won't replace every single device every 3 years, but most companies I've worked for will do refreshes every 3-5 years, Mac or not
