Normally I always forget why I still keep thinking about switching back to Windows. Today was a great reminder. Linux can be frustrating. This post is somewhat about awareness and partly about me learning about other peoples experiences. I updated my CachyOS as usual. There were some system packages upgraded and I got the notification to reboot. Figuring I’d do it later I left after some time and the PC went to sleep. Upon returning the screen stayed black. Even upon forced reboot. Remembering I was using Limine with BTRFS snapshots I tried multiple previous snapshots but to no avail. I remember this happened before. So now I face another reinstall… This and having to dive into the deep end of terminal commands to get drivers, programs or games working can be quite frustrating. I understand why people are turned off and go back to Windows…
Onto NixOS for me. A big dive but it seems very stable which might be just what i need. I feel like the philosophy of NixOS combined with a graphical store to install programs and what not seems like a great solution.
What would your ultimate distro be like?
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Ubuntu was the first Linux distro I tried, and I’ve never tried anything else, across three laptops. I’ve never experienced problems like the ones you describe.
I know its frustrating when this happens. But there is something called arch-chroot, its a program to fix your messesd up os. New users don’t know about this, but as you keep using Linux, you get familiar to these programs. It takes few mins to fix broken system using arch-chroot. I hopw your system won’t break anymore.
What would your ultimate distro be like?
The one that fits one’s needs the best. Given your frustration with unstable systems, I’d say the best ones would be those that take longer to make major updates, like Debian, Mint and Slackware, as then issues aren’t introduced as frequently, and older ones are better known and easier to fix or even preemptively circumvent.
I think the fault here is at Cachy OS for shipping experimental and advanced stuff as if it is ready for most users.
When I installed it recently on an old machine I purposefully stayed away from these fancy options and chose EXT4 + Grub. I admit having some bad memories about casually using btrfs also made my choice easy. No, most users don’t want to have to baby sit their file system.
Anyway, what even is the point of a system restore functionality if it hasn’t been thoroughly battle tested? They should have been behind an “ADVANCED/EXPERIMENTAL” disclaimer or something until it is very hard to break (including brtrfs not borking itself) and actually rescues users from a bad time rather than creating more problems.
CachyOS is built off Arch, a rolling-release distro. RR distros are notoriously unstable, and by design. It does exactly what it says on the tin.
I encountered this problem myself, and it was very stupid and annoying, but I had reason to re-install anyways. That’s the cost of bleeding-edge packages. If you’re unaware/unprepared for it, best not install anything arch-based. That’s why most servers are Debian-based.
They are unstable from a software compatibility perspective where every updates has a worrying chance of breaking compatibility with old “stale” software (software not managed/distributed by the distro itself), but that does not necessarily means unstable from a system stability perspective. If there was some kind of “system stability” scale for distros i would judge archlinux somewhere in the middle. And, with the nature of how linux development is you might actually get better system stability due to it having fresher software that better supports your hardware. That’s the main reason to try and be a the bleeding edge of desktop linux, sometimes you only get a few shallow cuts and stuff actually functions better.
Any serious breakage such as an unbootable or unusable system is supposedly very rare and only affects a minor portion of the users, with any change going through a long process that hopefully catches it before any harm is done. I do realize the irony of building a system restore functionality for precisely this case and me pushing against it. Again, I just think it should be made nearly bulletproof before it’s pushed into the users.
I’ve been using Arch for nearly 20 years and noted that things are a hell of a lot more stable than it used to be. It’s also hard to excuse it since it has grown and matured so much, it’s not a niche distro nobody knows anymore, even SteamOS is now based on it (though the immutability gives it a huge edge and essentially eliminates the aforementioned issue without relying on the, well meaning, but probably flawed system restore thingy).
Anyway, in my judgement, CachyOS being a downstream distro with a lot less manpower behind it should be quite a bit more careful when introducing such fundamental changes. I can’t say how bad it is affecting their user, it’s up to then to know that and if so hopefully change the defaults or at least better educate the user of the experimental nature of it.
cachyos is not a system for newbies, or absolute stability. nix isn’t it either.
try fedora, debian,
ubuntu, mint or something newbie friendly if you want a newbie friendly experience.I’d argue that CachyOS is more noon friendly than arch. As would EndeavourOS be. People fail to see my point that sometimes Linux breaks very easily and I’m not blaming Cachy or Arch specifically but a simple update and sleep should not result in a black screen on any OS IMO. It’s just off putting… If this would happen on windows I’d definitely complain too. And there have been plenty of instances where microslop added OS breaking things…
you are arguing from a place of stubbornness. cachy arch and nix are not supposed to be newbie friendly distros. linux doesn’t break easily at all, but only if you accept you need the right tool for that job.
it’s like that youtuber that keeps insisting on using pop os with a beta desktop when he knows its not windows and breaks, and then complains it’s not windows and breaks.
i work with linux and i’ve been updating hundreds of debian, ubuntu and assorted turnkey distros over decades without issue, and you could too.
simple update and sleep should not result in a black screen on any OS IMO
That’s the thing. Different distros handle it in different ways. Some have the option to do offline updates so it will not actually install the update until after reboot so there is minimal risk of something interfering. That’s why often the recommendation is to try and find one that is more stable if that is what you value more.
I use fedora, debian and mint because I have several computers for different usecases. I wouldn’t recommend Fedora for this, all the others are gold in my experience, but newbies really should go through Mint first.
i find that bazzite can be a great beginner distro, as it has some sane quality of life defaults baked in over fedora, but fedora is not bad if you can get used to default dockless gnome for example.
So I made the jump to Linux a few weeks ago - I used to use it a lot in the 90s but I’ve forgotten pretty much everything so I listened to the general advice and went with mint. I’d recommended it. So far it’s been great, had anticipated issues with my drivers but nothing I couldn’t sort out in the GUI. There are distro options out there that will give you fewer issues - but if you like problem solving and wanted to challenge yourself, enjoy!
Going from CachyOS to NixOS because you bricked something is wild. You very clearly have no clue what you’re doing and I regret to inform you that your choice of distro will not make an impact. But it isn’t all bad — you could stop panicking and acting like you know what you’re doing and learn about the technology you’re trying to use.
Or keep switching distros forever. I’m sure that will work too.
Love the condescending tone! Definitely helps people figuring out Linux. Very helpful reply too. Please keep adding to the community.
You clearly missed my point and instead of adding a helpful reply you decided to get on your high horse…
I’ve been loving Mint; the one thing I missed was WoW Classic but I finally found out how to get it to run under Steam and it’s been relatively great! <3
So first of all, you could likely still access your drives when you boot from a USB. Goes for any OS
secondly: if you play with fire, don’t complain about the blisters. And yo be clear, with fire I don’t mean Linux, with fire I mean specialty distro
You need to ask yourself what you want. If you want something shiny and cool that does certain security things that are awesome but not really that needed for the average Joe, then fine, go with whatever.
I on the other hand need a Linux distro that works, that I can trust. I have been using Kubuntu (Ubuntu with KDE UI) for over the last 20. There are bugs, like everywhere, but bugs like “this little widget doesn’t respond right”, not “oh my OS suicided again”
First of all U don’t need to reinstall anything switch to tty firstly and find out what wrong happened second u can boot in usual live cachyos iso chroot in ur main system and reinstall all packages of system it might help but better firsrly understand what caused this
This will sound like heresy to some, but get away from the bleeding edge. You probably don’t need the absolute latest version of every little thing. It can feel cool knowing you know how to fix a borked install but actually having to do so sucks. Dump the hype and get to something stable for your daily driver. If you want to experiment, do it on another drive/machine. Building a custom rocketship is cool, but you should probably build it without breaking the truck you use to go get parts.
This is a good point. Some distros are on the other end of the spectrum of being too slow (it seems) to update but you might be onto something.
I’m going to call this another vote for Debian
I was gonna say the same thing.
For most beginners who just want their PC to work, the obvious choice should be Mint for older hardware, and Universal Blue’s Fedora-based images (Bluefin or Aurora depending on the preferred desktop).
Of course, since OP mentioned NixOS that is an option as well. But it should be the stable version, and it is not beginner friendly like the other two.
I use Garuda, and it hasn’t borked for me in years. I update it about once a week.
Been on Garuda since September and it’s fantastic. Surprised it doesnt get more love around here.
The one criticism that I felt had some truth to it is that it looks like it was designed by a 14-year-old boy. I think it appeals to my inner 14-year-old who wants neon icons and DRAGONS. But if Dr460nized is too garish for you and you want something more sophisticated, now there’s Mokka.
Agreed! And if you don’t like either setup, it’s trivial to customize it.
Pardon me for asking so … but if you yearn for the “stability” (“simplicity”?) of Windows why not use a Linux distro with an approach more similar to that?
So something not Arch based, … and even tho NixOS almost kinda is the correct direction (for an arch-ish thing), I got the feeling you don’t really want to configure your system & potentially upkeep that config?
Also to note that the actual issue wasn’t fully diagnosed. Reinstalling the full os to fix an update is fairly extreme for your mainstream Linux these days.
But to be at least a bit on topic - bcs I need “simplicity” & “stability” at times when I can’t even (for months on end) I use Tumbleweed (rolling distro).
Fully agree!
As a Linux user for more than 10 years now, I can not really understand why so many people switch from Windows to CachyOS.
Yes, CachyOS is great. In general I see the advantage of Arch based distros, but only if one knows what they are doing. It’s great on fresh installs, but over time users need to fix issues and make decisions and this only works if they know what they are doing.
Similar wis NixOS. Great distro, but not for low maintanance and beginners. If you just want something that runs super stable and you don’t need to fix anything, go for Debian. And there are a lot of options between Debian and CachyOS.
+1
I run CachyOs and EndeavourOS on my main desktop, and I really don’t mind tinkering to fix things if needed.
I also share a laptop with my wife, and that’s where I want something Windows like (both in stability and familiarity). Zorin has been really good for that imo.
I definitely don’t mind the tinkering but I do mind things breaking just as I want to fire up a game with my friend. I wanna choose the moment I tinker not the other way around. It’s also about the interval in which the tinkering is needed. If I spend more time browsing arch wiki than using my PC it’s a bit skewed…
Yeah, that’s what you’ll get away from by switching to something like Debian. The number of packages that gets updated every week can usually be counted on two hands, if that. That means less chance for something to change drastically under the hood that might bring the whole system down.
Why reinstall instead of just repairing the issue at hand?
We had to do that in Windows too.
Hard to repair with no image. And fixing it using a live USB with root is quite involving. Windows issues are almost never this serious and in such cases safe mode exists.
What would your ultimate distro be like?
… Debian.
You read my mind. So straightforward.
How long have you been using Linux, so on the one hand you still keep thinking about Windows. And on the other hand you already progressed to an Arch derivate, use BTRFS, snapshots, a non-standard bootloader and all that stuff?
I like NixOS. But it’s really for people with too much spare time to learn new programming languages, abstract concepts and weird quirks. It’s great. But sometimes you’ll also do a simple
nixos-rebuild switchand it’ll greet you with 4 pages of gibberish. Or you’ll spend 3h packaging some weird Python stuff, because you can’t just install and run it like on a regular distro 😅I’ve been on Linux for about 1-2 years now i think. Needed a reinstall a couple of times and did some distro hopping too.
NixOS seems to be a final destination for a lot of people and the premise of it seems really cool. I did try before but I was a bit put off by the programming style of installing. Like I kinda get it but having that automated by just installing from a store and having the programming stuff in the back would be so good for accessibility. How would I know how to program in a certain package or setting without internet?..
Ah great. Yeah, the entire premise of it is: you get to “program” your experience instead of clicking on some install buttons.
You can temporarily just install something in your shell:
nix-shell -p firefox-esrHow would I know how to program in a certain package or setting without internet?
I guess the easiest way, and what all people do is just use https://search.nixos.org/ In doubt, use your phone 😅
You can also install “nix-search-cli” to search for packages. or “nix-option” to get info on options. However, I’m not sure how you’d end up in a situation without internet and wanting to change the configuration. I mean the moment you want to compile and install anything, it needs access to Github or wherever the code is stored. And if you don’t compile it yourself, it will pull it from the NixOS cache, which is also on the internet. So you can’t do anything. And the times we had a DVD to install software are long gone. So it’s probably down to some rare exception when you’re on the train or airplane, want to prepare something to apply later?! I don’t think there’s a good solution except the two CLI tools and maybe a local copy of the documentation / handbook.And in my experience, the NixOS documentation isn’t great. It’s either there and straightforward. Or it’s a lot of searching stuff on the Wiki, forum… Using GitHub search with an appended: “language:nix” to see if someone already came up with a config. Or I’ll end up reading the code. That is for more advanced things, or niche stuff. It’s a bit similar to the overall experience of NixOS (in my opinion). Either things are super straightforward and mostly done for you to configure with 3 lines of code. Then there’s a fine line of stuff that’s moderately complex. And all the things not covered can get very complex and much more involved.
Use with mix of codex and claude code jt becoming just another level and much more easier to do things
Just don’t do it like me and think copy-pasting stuff from ChatGPT would do it. It’s not good at writing Nix configuration at all. And it doesn’t have a solid understanding either, of all the concepts in the background. Like not being able to execute binaries, what it takes to adapt something without the FHS, the intricacies of Python… Which options are real or just made up…
I have absolutely opposite experience not in web browswer version exactly codex and claude code when it able to interact with system and debug it
Yeah, it probably needs to be a coding agent with some thinking and planning and a feedback loop. Or you’ll end up in a situation like me.
