I realized my VLC was broke some point in the week after updating Arch. I spend time troubleshooting then find a forum post with replies from an Arch moderator saying they knew it would happen and it’s my fault for not wanting to read through pages of changelogs. Another mod post says they won’t announce that on the RSS feed either. I thought I was doing good by following the RSS but I guess that’s not enough.
I’ve been happily using Arch for 5 years but after reading those posts I’ve decided to look for a different distro. Does anyone have recommendations for the closest I can get to Arch but with a different attitude around updating?
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Based on what you describe, I would strongly recommend going with OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. It’s just as bleeding-edge as Arch, but all packages go through automatic testing to ensure they won’t break anything, and if some manual actions are required, it will offer options right before update. Moreover, snapper in enabled by default on btrfs partitions, and it makes snapshots automatically before updates, so even if something breaks somehow, reverting takes a few seconds.
One small footnote is that you’ll need to add separate VLC repo or Packman for VLC to have full functionality - proprietary codecs are one of the rare things official repos don’t feature for legal reasons.
On Arch rant: I’ve always been weirded out by this “Arch is actually stable, you just have to watch every news post for manual interventions before every update, oh, and you better update very often” attitude.
Like, no, this is not called stable or even usable for general audience. Updating your system and praying for it not to break while studying everything you need to know is antithetical to stability and makes for an awful daily driver.
I upvoted you, I am a fellow openSUSE fan and contributor.
But I need to point out that if you install VLC from a repository outside of Factory, then it’s not auto-tested.
Moreover, Packman is external to the openSUSE project altogether. If you use it, you are supposed to “just trust” that everything will be fine.
You are better off installing VLC through Flatpak.
you just have to watch every news post for manual interventions before every update, oh, and you better update very often
You have to watch the factory mailing list and make any manual interventions for Tumbleweed, and frankly, you should be watching the news and taking any action required no matter the os.
A decent daily driver distro for regular user should not break on blind update - at most, it should warn the user automatically before applying updates. If user is expected to check news every time they want to update their system - it is not a good fit for anyone but enthusiasts.
Where did you get the idea that Arch is a daily driver for regular user? The very distro that tells in big letters: stuff can break, you better watch out on updates? The very distro that has command-line install process with chroot-like commands as official one?
Plenty of people seriously propose it as such.
It is not - at least if you’re not an enthusiast happy to tinker with your system all the time.
There are distros based on Arch that are proclaimed to be user friendly and ready for general desktop/gaming use. Plus plenty of people online tell others to use Arch as a daily driver.
Regardless I don’t think an update should happen if it’s going to break something, unless you manually over ride the warnings it should be showing.
Anyone who is not curious enough to type
yay -Pwbefore typingyayshould probably stick with something like Windows. And even then, you should watch out for the rare manual intervention.Edit: Tone.
I don’t think it makes sense to gatekeep Linux only to those who has time, energy, and dedication to continuously check for necessary interventions and to familiarize themselves with all the terminal utilities in the first place.
That is a sort of elitism we need to carefully avoid - one, because otherwise it would halven the desktop Linux community, and two, because there’s a huge group of people out there who need what Linux offers, but cannot dedicate themselves to it in the way enthusiasts do.
For them, there must be an option to push the button and get a smooth update, with everything resolved automatically or prompted in a user-friendly way. Arch is not that.
You feel comfy doing this - alright, no one stops you, Arch is great and has a purpose. But we should never put blame on users for not using their system The Arch Way™, because it’s too technical, too engaged, and is just a poor fit for most. People will not and should not accommodate for this just to use their system. There’s no need to.
If someone chose Arch and complains that it breaks things, it could be useful to point out Arch doesn’t have required guardrails to make it operable in a way they expect, and direct the user to other distributions that have them and potentially least painful ways to migrate.
Having tried Arch and its derivatives, and recognizing their strong points, I can absolutely tell the person needs another distribution, and that’s alright! Whatever fits anybody is up to them. And for stable rolling release experience without the need for manual checking (but also without some of the power features of Arch mainly geared toward enthusiasts) there’s OpenSUSE Tumbleweed.
Edit: Tone.
Well… not really. My current installation of Tumbleweed is three and a half years old, and back in 2022 the only reason I re-installed it was changing the NVMe drive. I’ve never read factory mailing list and don’t ever recall having made manual interventions. I’ve just booted it, updated (zypper ref; zypper dup), rebooted and continued working.
IMHO the actual problem here is the Arch moderator being an ass.
This happens in all operating systems from time to time. An update kills an app. Usually, the app is wildly out of date and hanging on to the last vestiges of a deprecated call that finally gets removed. I recently experienced this with V4L (for OBS virtual camera) and a kernel update in NixOS. Had one hell of a time tracking it down. It was one of the twice-yearly OS upgrades. Luckily, I had only updated one of my devices, and it still worked on the old one. After tearing apart the changes, I was finally able to specify V4L and a Linux kernel version. Immediately, the problem popped right out. The new kernel now needs a specific value passed for the expected video stream, where it used to use a default if it wasn’t specified.
Apple breaks apps all the time. Windows does, but less so. The difference is usually before an update happens, Windows and Apple have had TONs of people testing on their own teams and their insiders people.
In the end, I just needed to roll back the kernel one revision until the V4L guys make the change, or I needed to recompile V4L myself with the option defaulted to something useful.
I don’t think you can safely get away from this kind of issue. (app incompatibility on upgrade, not mods being an ass)
Debian or Mint seem to be pretty welcoming and easy going to get rid of the asshole issues, but chances are, you’re going to break something eventually, and it’s going to be super hard to figure out why and how to get around it.
So to be clear, you are willing to upend your entire system and potentially your workflow because a single package update was mishandled and because somebody was a little too direct on a forum?
Have you considered Mac OS? Yes, I’m being snarky, but the Linux world isn’t fully user friendly. If you’re unwilling to roll with the punches, it may not actually be for you.
EDIT: I guess tough love from somebody who ran slackware from a stack of physical representations of save buttons is unwelcome. Noted.
You’ve got it right. I appreciate the directiness of the forum moderator because it was a clear signal to me that the Arch community doesn’t value my experience at the level I would like.
Supporting iMacs for 8 years taught me Apple doesn’t value my experience either. I’m happy to upend my system and workflow if it means I’m a step closer to living in the world I want to exist. Most of my life is chosen for me so I want the decisions I have control over to be meaningful to me.
I’m truly sorry that’s the takeaway you got from all this. My (attempted) point was along the lines of “Linux is still the wild west.” If you’re looking for appreciation from random people on the internet, you might be in the wrong place.
Most of my life is chosen for me so I want the decisions I have control over to be meaningful to me.
I get it, probably more than most (my handle isn’t random). But from that very perspective, IMO you have to be able to withstand a few assholes and pick your battles. An asshole in a forum that isn’t even replying to me specifically doesn’t exceed that threshold.
If this is upendable, im sure the next distro will be fun for this user.
Heck, I’m feeling that vibe through this whole thread. I weep for the time these folks get to Senior or Associate levels - if they manage to.
i have no problems with assholes on the internet i find them very entertaining i like the wild west. but i would also like for my computer to work. it just seems the wrong attitude to have for the situation. there not fucking windows with an almost monopoly i find it just very counterproductive and maybe just don’t be like windows in any way. its very bad for first time users that don’t know there is more then 1 place to find info or a solutions. i just don’t respect anybody that sniffs there own farts its just funny.
I’m being snarky, but the Linux world isn’t fully user friendly. If you’re unwilling to roll with the punches, it may not actually be for you.
I guess you’re an Arch user, but this is exactly the wrong thinking. Yes, stuff sometimes break for pretty much every distro, but that doesn’t mean we should dismiss people who want stuff to “just work” (which OP went above and beyond). We should absolutely strive to not break stuff, and if it does be humble and polite. Unless you literally want Linux to never become mainstream…
And btw I’ve been using Fedora for ages now, don’t have to follow anything, and when stuff breaks they are generally apologetic about it and try to fix stuff.
Yes, I’m an arch user. But that’s not the point. Even using something like mint, you still have to pay attention. Someone who’s not willing to do that needs a curated operating system. Simple as that.
I also like to watch locally hosted videos from time to time. I also had the problem with VLC. 10 minutes later I had my answer, the problem was fixed, and I went on with my day. I didn’t need to whine about the attitude of someone providing free tech support to someone else, and I didn’t whine about a simple package adjustment.
I’ll say it again. Linux isn’t for everybody. Not yet. It still takes a little bit of grit.
i don’t really care about being rude. but just saying Linux isn’t for everybody seems stupid to me because this has nothing to do with Linux itself. its about the people you depend on to get your information and no Linux user benefits from making Linux smaller because of attitude on a forum i never got this. i liked arco linux because you had a video for every problem you don’t need a forum moderator to tell you anything if you can see the problem and the solution. seems the best way for everybody to learn and that should be the whole point the rest is just people sniffing there own farts. https://www.youtube.com/@ErikDubois
So you’ve acknowledged the same issue, and instead of offering a solution to their issue, you decide to criticize them. They even said they’ve used Arch for 5 years. That’s not a small amount of time to be using an OS. You are what’s wrong with the Linux community, not OP.
Fedora, great blend of bleeding edge and stability. Plus Linus uses it, so what better praise could you get.
I hope we’re talking about that Linus, and not that Linus. You know, the one that works with computers, and not the other one that works with computers.
Can definitely recommend Fedora too. Software updates are at a good pace, and the system has a lot of polish all around. For example, all you need to do for updates is to press “update” in Discover and it’ll do everything for you, applying on reboot for stability. Most things “just work”.
that’s exactly how updates should work in every desktop distro. as an option of course.
systemd made it possible to install updates on shutdown.
packagekit enabled kde software to automatically obtain and prepare the updates.
plasma does the final touch nowadays to ask you on the reboot/shutdown dialog whether you want to install them.Basically all the system is in place, with code from widely used parties. packagekit can even integrate with your filesystem to make a snapshot before install. It’s wonderful. yet, it seems as if only fedora supports this full setup right now? or is there anything else?
I’ve tried quite a few distros (openSUSE, Ubuntu, Solus, Arch, so on) and none seem to offer this feature. It’s a shame, as it’s quite useful to have since updating a live system can sometimes cause some trouble. Even just the updating from Discover can be broken on some systems (I know openSUSE at the very least acts a bit funny when it comes to PackageKit, I think Arch as well).
I’ve been told that opensuse tumbleweed has it. I’ve also read a suse forum post saying leap 16 will support offline updates, releasing in January, so they could be the first to support all of this with fs snapshots
Even just the updating from Discover can be broken on some systems
if you didn’t enable offline updates in systemsettings, then it’ll do roughly the same as you would in the terminal, so that’s not unexpected
Ah yes, the issue with modern Linux, the community.
I feel the shift to the current “git gud” style of blaming the user in any support has done more damage to Linux then any part of the software.
I’m amazed at the idea that in any technical community, an urging to gain more skill in your chosen environment could somehow be seen as negative.
I’ve been an Arch user for about 15 years now, and I’ve never posted to the forums. Not because I’m great at this and don’t break things. I constantly break things and need to fix them. I don’t ask questions there because before you’ll get any help you are going to get sat down and explained (in great detail sometimes) how you are the stupidest piece of shit on Earth.
https://endeavouros.com/ https://garudalinux.org/ both arch based maybe you will like the forum style better and they will probably also give you this information.
+1 for Garuda. It’s nice that they have their own way of updating (garuda-update), which also handles situations like this one. It was very satisfying to not have to do anything when the linux-firmware change happened a couple of weeks back.
Oh, also snapshots by default are a chef’s kiss
i used arco linux and they just linked the word update to the arch command to update and that made it very easy to update i don’t remember the correct name for this. i do not know if garuda does the same or if they have there own program to do this.
Garuda works differently. You use garuda-update instead of pacman, and it takes care of just about everything for you. So, for example, if you have something like needing to uninstall a package because it was split (like linux firmware), garuda-update just takes care of that for you (after they update the scripts, which takes at most a week usually)
ah ok good to know.
I doubt the forum style is really the issue.
EndeacourOS, one of my favourite distros, uses the same packages (the real Arch ones). So everything he says here applies.
i mean the communication style on the forum.
i think almost all arch based distros use the arch repos plus there own. i think only manjaro does there own thing.
Very true though most have more in their own repos than EOS does.
arch is for people who want to play linux. if you actually want to use linux, go with something else
