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That clock placement is giving me anxiety
what’s there to not like about 7:40PM?
Maybe I’m just screaming into the void here, but does it seem like, as a person who is still relatively out of touch with linux, I don’t necessarily have to update my Arch distribution whenever there are new updates available? I could theoretically just go on downloading new programs, uninstalling old ones, using everything as it sits until theoretically something breaks?
You’ll run into security and stability problems if you put it off for too long.
Iirc, the Arch wiki says you should synchronize all packages while adding new ones, and it’s technically unsupported. It might work in some cases, but personally I didn’t have to do much to not be able to launch something because symbols missing in libraries or no such file altogether. To avoid problems it’s better to sync packages fully at least once in a while.
You should always run a full upgrade when installing a new package to make sure your versions are all in sync. Like if your new package is looking for version 1.1 and you have 1.0 installed, the new package won’t work. In general, everything should be installed with ‘pacman -Syu’ not just ‘pacman -S’
If you don’t install any new packages, then no you don’t need to upgrade anything. You’re just missing out on security patches and upgraded features. It’s worth running occasional upgrades.
I don’t necessarily have to update my Arch distribution whenever there are new updates available
Clearly, op agrees
And they were never heard from AGAIN! Oooooooo It is horror month, and that’s pretty scary! :-D
Don’t try to install Arch after midnight.
And that is why I use Opensuse tumbleweed, no worries ever (zypper takes a snapshot before and after each upgrade, single command to roll back)
Not to mention that a two or three thousand package update is rookie numbers for zypper.
Side note: “I’mma” is a contraction of the whole phrase “I’m going to” or “I’m about to” so it’s followed immediately by the verb indicating what you’ll be doing:
“I’mma rawdog this sucker without backups.”
Yes, I added sucker, because it’s going to suck up all your time and data, sucka!
Op should have used “I’m finna rawdog this jawn no backup style”
For no reason other than mixed US slang from different regions sounds funnier to my ear
“no backup style” hits just right.
I’ve always thought of it as I am gonna
That’s the lightly slangy version I would normally use, but as long as I was being pedantic I thought I’d better avoid any contractions in that part.
@[email protected] it’s been 8 hours, did you make it?
He ded
He is in progress
What os and de are you on? It looks pretty clean.
The de is kde plasma
Looks like Manjaro to me
KDE Plasma is one of the default options which you can install with Manjaro. Manjaro is the Linux distro, but KDE Plasma is the DE (desktop environment/GUI).
That’s bog standard KDE, I have no idea about the distro tho
Thoughts and prayers fren
It’s my experience that Ubuntu and Fedora break if you don’t upgrade often (and then suddenly do after a year), while arch doesn’t… Which is interesting, since it’s supposed to be the other way around…
I think it’s because Fedora and Ubuntu add a lot of new things, while arch just updates it’s packages.
Fedora upgrades are very reliable. I’ve never had one fail, 24 upgrades and counting.
Eh, I leave fedora for a while and come back and it’s fine. Never had it break and I’ve been using it consistently since like 27.
More please. Getting ready to switch from Windows to Linux, been making sure I can install all the -arr I want and get games running, but in Mint.
Now I’m hitting the brakes hard. It’s Arch if that means I don’t have this headache. I’ll need to start over learning, but it’ll be worth it.
I’ve had two different arch based distros have issues when trying to update after long periods. I also had an Ubuntu server fail completely when doing a major version upgrade and had to restore it from backup. But then again I’ve also had no trouble updating an Ubuntu machine that was a couple years behind.
I’m on Fedora now for my desktop and it’s been great so far, but I also do updates at least weekly. My advice would be if you expect to go months between updates your best choice is probably Debian.
As long as you update frequently (I do it whenever I think about it, usually once every few days to a week) you shouldn’t run into any issues
Just think of all the great things you’re going to learn about emergency boot recovery!
Average rolling release distro user experience
Becareful with glibc
yolo, friend. yolo.
what packaging system?
Duct tape and baling wire, perhaps?
Strapping tape and cardboard is way cleaner.
don’t forget the spit! pulls everything together nicely - lubricates, seals and protects.
I’ve updated an Arch install after not being used for 2 years. I don’t think there were any issues.
I’ve experienced far more issues upgrading to a new major release of an apt based distro though…
That apt based distro was Ubuntu, wasn’t it?
I never successfully upgraded that from one release to the next.what did you do to that poor oldstable, you, you… monster???
If forgetting/not wanting to update puts you in this hole, like… ever, you should really give an atomic distro some serious consideration.
Say more please? What’s the advantage?
The system files aren’t writable, instead you download a new system image when you want to update. No dependency hell or weird issues because these system images are all tested. Your system also keeps one or two old ones around and if by some chance something does go wrong you just select the old one at boot.
Downside is you’re more limited on installing software. You can force install things the traditional way but that kinda defeats the point. Instead you have to use things like FlatPak or AppImages which covers most GUI apps you could want. For command line apps you will have to use something like DistroBox.
It’s a trade off but for casual desktop users it is super stable and pretty simple. Updates come out daily (depending on distro) and they just get all their software from the software center app with a nice GUI.
You can do gui apps too! I used distrobox to run WebEx on an Ubuntu image for an interview. Just had to get to the actual binary to launch and it worked seamlessly.
I have to ask, do you use X11 or Wayland? I’m struggling to get Webex working for calls (video or otherwise) under Wayland.
IIRC that was X11. It has admittedly been a minute. And by a minute, I mean a year.
Right but if there is a FlatPak, that’s usually the easier option
That’s super neat. I’ll get around to checking it out at some point.
(correct me if I’m wrong, I’m also new at this)
There are two partitions. One with the current system, one with the previous system. Updates are applied in a whole batch at once, once in a while.
Current system is cloned into the old one and an update is applied to the clone.
Once the update is complete, system reboots in the clone, and what was the current system becomes the previous one.
If something goes bad, you can reboot into the previous system and fix the clone.
that is one way to do it, and it’s a very common one - it’s robust and simple. So I can’t correct you, but thought I would add to it. In NixOS, they’ve improved it by making sure all your apps are symlinked, and when updating, these symlinks are updated. That way you can start using your newly updated system straight away, without a reboot. When rebooting, you are prompted to which generation you want to boot into, (defaulting to “latest” after a few seconds of no input) making rollbacks a breeze.
That sounds kinda like what any OS should do in the history of OSs…
Should. But didn’t. Until fairly recently.
This is how the steam deck works. I think newer android phones do this too.
Yes, it uses an immutable atomic distro. I don’t know about Android phones, but I wouldn’t be surprised.
The atomic distro would do a backup and if update goes wrong, it automatically boots back into the previous one.
I know its a meme but nixos is actually good for this. You can be on the unstable branch, not update for 5 years and still get everything working after updating(tho i dont recommend because of security). I think nixos has some fucking AMAZING features but the problem is its paired with features that make it extremely hard to use for a casual user.
Agreed! I think a part of the “problem” is that with Nix, there’s now at least 3 sides: application specific knowledge, system knowledge, and you have to use the nix language, architecture and tools to interface with it. so for a seasoned linux user, there’s maybe just a new programming language, but if you’re new to Linux, it’s quickly gonna overwhelm you. which in a way is a bit ironic because I’d argue that it’s easier to manage a NixOS system, and getting help is so much easier when your problems can be replicated by just aharing your config.
