• cygnus@lemmy.ca
    881·
    6 days ago

    I use Arch BTW full-time for work and personal for about 3 years now and haven’t had any issues at all.

    • FunkyCheese@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      49·
      6 days ago

      I worked with someone who uses arch on his work laptop

      One day it just died and he had to spend a day or two setting it all up again

      I mean, its not common, but it happens

      • Addv4@lemmy.world
        34·
        6 days ago

        Yeah, I ran arch through college, it broke 3 times over 4 years, basically each time because Nvidia updated. Now that I don’t have the time to fuss with spending a couple of hours chrooting in and fixing Nvidia stuff, I just swapped to endeavorOS sway community edition (and made sure none of my PCs have Nvidia anything in them) and haven’t had an issue yet.

          • Addv4@lemmy.world
            7·
            6 days ago

            Yep. Funnily enough, never really had any issues with the drivers on a desktop, only on mobile, mostly switching between integrated and discrete. But after messing with them on my laptop for a few years, you better bet my laptop was only running Intel integrated and my desktop runs on amd.

      • ceiphas@piefed.socialEnglish
        6·
        6 days ago

        I used to do much distro hopping coming from gentoo and settling down with endeavour. My tip for all of you: use lvm for everything outside boot, root and swap (vms, home, games). That way a complete reinstall just takes minutes.

      • flying_sheep@lemmy.ml
        5·
        6 days ago

        That doesn’t happen. When it breaks, it’s always recoverable, and it very very very rarely breaks (>10 years Arch user here, never lost sleep about it)

      • azertyfun@sh.itjust.works
        1·
        5 days ago

        I’ve been dailying the exact same arch installation since 2014 without reinstalling it a single time.

        Now to be fair I did have it non-bootable at several points. Worst of which was a PAM update which broke it completely because the new config was in a .pacnew file and the old one was not compatible anymore. But since it was a edge-case there was no forum post about it. Still recovered it just fine after an hour or so of troubleshooting.

        It’s all open-source and usually decently documented. The only reason anyone should have to reinstall a Linux desktop is lack of experience, but I would always advise to persevere because troubleshooting my system is how I gained much of my expertise. If that’s not what you want, stick to Debian.

    • bender223@lemmy.todayEnglish
      13·
      6 days ago

      been using Artix and Arch for two years, for work and play, no issues

      I think bleeding edge linux is probably more stable than windows

    • flying_sheep@lemmy.ml
      8·
      6 days ago

      Around 10 years here. Some issues, but much less time wasted in total than if I had done “dist-upgrade”s the whole time.

        • flying_sheep@lemmy.ml
          7·
          6 days ago

          It’s what Debian and similar distributions use to switch from one stable release to the next. This happens every half year for Ubuntu and every blue moon for Debian, which makes it a significantly more error-prone process than updating Arch every week in my experience.

            • flying_sheep@lemmy.ml
              3·
              6 days ago

              Oof, that’s probably almost a full reinstall when you upgrade, depending on how stable your stack is. A lot of services will will have breaking config changes in that time frame.

    • paequ2@lemmy.todayEnglish
      6·
      6 days ago

      Yeah, people like to think that bleeding edge means “untested”. As if your OS was directly receiving the dev’s git push…

        • Illecors@lemmy.cafeEnglish
          2·
          6 days ago

          Portage allows that to some extent - you can make it install thr latest of everything. Depending on the ebuild, a lot of that will be straight from git. Master branch, not some random working one, mind you, but still.

    • shane@feddit.nl
      6·
      6 days ago

      The only issue I ever had was Arch ARM changing the naming convention for network devices and making me have to plug the first Raspberry Pi that I upgraded into a monitor to debug what was going on.

      This was annoying for sure, but less annoying than using a 6 year old Python version like the Red Hat Enterprise Linux at work…

      • StarDreamer@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        2·
        6 days ago

        I see your 6 year old python version and raise you RHEL5 running python 2.5 in 2022.

        That thing didn’t even have a base Exception class.

  • smeg@infosec.pubEnglish
    33·
    6 days ago

    I like Fedora for my desktop. Close enough to upstream to get the latest features, but not so bleeding edge that it’s unstable.

      • Ephera@lemmy.mlEnglish
        7·
        6 days ago

        Yeah, but he has stated that he really doesn’t have an opinion. He just happened to install Fedora on the family PC a long time ago and now he neither wants to deal with two separate distros, nor switch the whole household over.

        • 42Firehawk@lemmy.zipEnglish
          1·
          6 days ago

          I mean that and being open enough of a distro he can change the kernel out decently often, but not so open things like throwing a new kernel in arch leads to poking at other things.

    • yardratianSoma@lemmy.ca
      4·
      6 days ago

      Yeah same. Its a little annoying having to wait for certain updates, like when a new application can be built from source on arch, but i’d have to rebuild a core dependency from a scratch to get it working on fedora.

      But ive been using it for years, and even if i broke the system, ive always got it working again, which is saying something.

    • Bluewing@lemmy.world
      1·
      5 days ago

      It’s balanced as all things should be.

      I’ve really started to enjoy Kinonite. Fedora’s atomic version of KDE Plasma.

    • Wildmimic@anarchist.nexusEnglish
      1·
      6 days ago

      I’m on Nobara, and if the installation ever dies, i will probably install pure fedora. My previous experiences were all with debian, which drove me crazy as a gamer because when playing current games you want your system to be a lot closer to the bleeding edge of the knife - debian is more like a chain glove for holding it.

  • username_1@programming.dev
    30·
    6 days ago

    I use Debian testing for… 20 years? I had serious problems with it. Twice. Nothing unrepairable, but still I needed another machine with internet to fix the problem. I suppose that is ok stability-wise for 20 years.

  • FreddiesLantern@leminal.space
    14·
    6 days ago

    Step 1: ah so glad this setup is complete and fully tweaked. So let’s leave it as is.

    Step 2: but then again maybe I should try out this little extra thing I just found online that might not work…

    • Vlyn@lemmy.zipEnglish
      3·
      6 days ago

      Step 1: ah so glad this setup is complete and fully tweaked. So let’s leave it as is.

      Step 2: but then again maybe I should try out this little extra thing I just found online that might not work…

      Step 2: Why is x broken after an update!?

      …

      Step 99: ah so glad this setup is complete and fully tweaked. So let’s leave it as is.

      Is it just me? I’ve had more issues with Linux updates than Windows updates at this point. Don’t get me started with major distro updates.

      • FreddiesLantern@leminal.space
        3·
        6 days ago

        To me it kinda depends on what hardware/distro.

        Currently running MX on multiple systems for more than a year now and it’s been pretty smooth sailing.

        I do remember, however, using fedora and whatnot ages ago having exactly what you describe.

        If you want something more stable you might wanna look at debian, opensuse,… (I’m sure someone more knowledgeable will complete this list). They might not be as flashy but you can depend on those and get some work done.

        • Vlyn@lemmy.zipEnglish
          1·
          6 days ago

          I’m running LTS versions of Ubuntu server (and Windows 11 on my PC). Debian would be more stable, but then it’s so far behind that it’s a pain to use at times, especially for running any kind of game server. Ubuntu has been pretty good so far, but LTS to LTS isn’t always easy.

  • Assassassin@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    3·
    4 days ago

    LTS is all fun and games and stability until someone releases an update with features that I really really want right now. This is why I keep coming back to KDE neon.

  • thethunderwolf@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    6·
    5 days ago

    If you want up-to-date rolling release packages without living dangerously, I recommend openSUSE Tumbleweed. It breaks way less than most other rolling distros such as Arch. I don’t know how they achieve it but they do.

      • RustyNova@lemmy.world
        7·
        6 days ago

        Min- oh.

        I don’t really know a bunch of distros, but I helped convert some normies so here’s a list of pain points I rather not have as a first experience

        • No rolling distro. While some people may never see an issue in their life, some may see it right away. Bad first impression (Someone insisted on starting on fedora, then noticed the hard way that the current Nvidia drivers were incompatible with the shipped kernel)
        • easy Nvidia driver install (only for gamers on Nvidia)
        • Has a gui app store
        • has a common package manager that is often shown in tutorials (like apt. You always see exemple apt commands)
        • sudo is configured
        • doesn’t have a DE that tries to revolutionize UX

        New users are dumb, so it needs to be easy for them

        • Pommes_für_dein_Balg@feddit.org
          4·
          6 days ago

          Sudo is configured in the Debian installer, if you click the “root not allowed to log in” checkbox. So it literally checks all your boxes.

        • Limerance@piefed.socialEnglish
          1·
          5 days ago

          the current Nvidia drivers were incompatible with the shipped kernel

          A more common issue with Nvidia is older hardware no longer being supported by Nvidia’s current drivers and the kernel not supporting the old drivers. For older cards, you need to run kernel 6.8 or older for the binary drivers to work. The open source Nouveau driver is noticeably slower and getting hardware accelerated video to work can be difficult. So you can easily end up with mesa-llvm, meaning your CPU emulates OpenGL.

          The easiest way to get this to work is to install Linux Mint 22.1.

  • stinerman@feddit.onlineEnglish
    11·
    6 days ago

    Used to be me. I ran Debian Unstable for years. Got tired of it breaking. I installed Stable probably 7 or 8 years ago and never looked back.

    • Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      2·
      5 days ago

      Windows 11 will never touch my home machines, but I still need to use Windows for a couple things. I’m so happy there’s Windows 10 LTSC ioT.

    • Syndication@lemmy.today
      3·
      6 days ago

      Same here. I want to ditch Windows 11 so badly, but I tried Linux Mint and I lost half my frame rate in games. I guess if you use a Nvidia GPU on Linux then you’re shit outta luck sadly, as I heard the reason is poor driver support. If I did something wrong I’ll gladly try Linux again but I don’t have high hopes it will work now :(

      • Pommes_für_dein_Balg@feddit.org
        12·
        6 days ago

        You need to change to a newer kernel when you use Mint for gaming. It has a GUI for it.
        But personally, I’d just install Bazzite instead, it has all gaming- related optimizations built in from the start.

      • mybuttnolie@sopuli.xyz
        8·
        6 days ago

        nvidia drivers are good performance-wise, you should have installed the proprietary ones because mint comes with nouveau, which does not perform well at all. if you did that, let’s talk about L3 cache. ironically gaming on low end hardware is worse on linux because apparently proton needs quite a bit of that cache. my previous cpu (9600kf) had 9 MB and it was hopeless, current one has almost 100 and performance is not an issue anymore.

        btw pop os comes with proprietary nvidia drivers so you don’t need to think about it all, but because they ship it with their half-done cosmic de, can’t recommend it to newcomers anymore…

        • Syndication@lemmy.today
          1·
          6 days ago

          My CPU (Ryzen 9 3900XT) is a 12 core CPU paired with an RTX 5080. My CPU sucks for gaming and is meant more for workstations, so you might be onto something here…

          • mybuttnolie@sopuli.xyz
            1·
            5 days ago

            your cpu is good, seems like you were on the right tracks originally. people have been complaining about 5080 performance with dx12 games on linux. it may take them a while to get the drivers right, but i did recently see some news (techlinked probably) about nvidia adding resources to optimizing their linux drivers

      • damnthefilibuster@lemmy.worldEnglish
        5·
        6 days ago

        I’m just waiting for win 11 to fail catastrophically in me. That will definitely give me the time to install Linux… checks notes… Debian?

        • Syndication@lemmy.today
          5·
          6 days ago

          Yep that’s my plan, whenever my Win11 install becomes broken, I’ll make the switch, laggy games be damned! Maybe we can install Arch so we can fit in with the Linux crowd and finally say “I use Arch btw”

      • BCsven@lemmy.ca
        4·
        6 days ago

        Tumbleweed and Nvidia Proprietary drivers worked really well for my games. There is Bazzite that’s ready to go for gaming too.

      • Supercrunchy@programming.dev
        2·
        6 days ago

        On my system I am using kde x11 instead of wayland for the same reason. Last time I tried wayland I was getting half of the framerate compared to x11.

        At some point I want to switch to a gaming-oriented distros and see if it’s magically better there.

      • Addv4@lemmy.world
        3·
        6 days ago

        What games specifically? Some distros require a bit more driver installation, so maybe that was part of it (was running an rtx 2070 super on linux until a few months ago on linux, didn’t have any issues with frame rates). The poor driver support is mostly on laptops, as they sometimes have issues switching between integrated and discrete graphics.