Is “it works” the average experience of an Arch user?
Edit: Folks, I know it wasn’t clear, but this was rhetorical. I love the passion that motivates all of you to share your personal experiences - it’s what keeps Linux moving forward… But you beautiful bastards need to chill.
Base Arch can be fussy, but that’s because there’s a lot to set up, so many opportunities to forget things and only discover them later.
I ran Artix on a laptop for about a year; that was a constant PITA, although I still value their goals.
But EndeavourOS has been an entirely different matter. It’s a “just works” Arch derivative.
I had so many fewer problems with Arch that I went through the effort to convert my 3 personal cloud servers from Debian to it. I went through a lot of work to replace thee default Mint on an ODroid to Arch, and it’s been so much better. I put Endeavor on the last two non-servers I installed. So, yes, I personally find out far more reliable and easier to work with than Ubuntu, Debian, or Mint.
That said, I had dad install Mint on a new computer he bought because I had to do it over the phone and he never, ever, upgrades his packages, and almost never installs anything. If all I’m going to do is install it once and then never change anything, Mint is easier. But for a normal use case where I’m regularly updating and installing software, Arch is far easier and more reliable.
Endeavour is fantastic. I’ve been using Arch since high school, but hung it up for a few years until last year when I’d had enough of Windows’ shit. EOS takes the PITA out of the install process (I just don’t have the time these days to dig as deep as I used to), but is the same Arch experience in usage.
I’ve tried arch (and preferred Endeavour), but found both needed too much attention - If you consider “operating system” a hobby, they’re perfect - the versatility is endless if you invest the time.
Personally, I want my OS to get out of the way and let me do what I want.
I can see that, although TBH I almost never have to “admin” EndeavourOS. I just upgrade every once in a while.
Most important to me is being able to find and install whatever software I want, and I have a string preference that it either be installed in my ~, or be managed by the package manager. I really dislike sideloading software globally. And Arch does this better than most. AUR is massive, and packages are trivial to write and install in the rare event something isn’t in AUR.
I ran Arch flavors for a while, (Endeavor, Crystal, Garuda, and mostly CachyOS) and I eventually got tired of the tinkering, so I’m back on Opensuse now. Benefits of the perks of rolling release with less tinkering than Arch.
I personally use Tumbleweed, then I use Slowroll on my media PC and my dad’s laptop.
Personally my arch install is almost boring me with how stable it’s been - and if anything goes wrong, it backs itself up before and after every single update plus on every boot just cuz, so I can roll back to wherever I want. I’ve put a lotta work into building out all these redundancies I’m happy with, and arch has been so goddamn stable I haven’t even had an excuse to use them. The process of getting a complete install was absolutely not “it works” - but now that I’m there, yeah, it really does just work. My only complaint is that I don’t have any reason to tinker with it more.
I made a major mistake that bricked my system, all my fault, but I was able to plunge my arm into the smoldering pit it fell into and drag my install directly from the gates of hell. Still working great like half a year later and I now know not to do what I did before that broke it all.
I switched over to development/experimental package repos cause I was impatient for a new feature. I switched back to prod but I didn’t revert my packages. It worked fine for a couple weeks but they eventually became to outdated and I couldn’t post.
Luckily you can use a live stick to chroot in to fix. Felt pretty cool being able to do that, but yeah it was a stupid mistake lol. And I’m always gonna have a live USB on the side just in case I do something similarly bone headed.
At the start yes. But it deteriorates with time. I can’t even update because of dependency conflicts and whatnot. My system is held together by ductape and a piece of bubble gum
Did you miss a required manual intervention on an update? A while ago there was an arch update that needed manual intervention cause of a dependency circle. Might be worth looking up the past year or so of manual intervention newsletter posts for Arch.
Last time I had a dependacy issue I was able to remove the conflicting package, update, then reinstall the package and it worked fine afterwards.
My own system was working great for a long while on an Arch flavour. But a bit ago HDR stopped working properly after an update and I just couldn’t get it running right. Would display very dim.
Eventually gave up on my 2 year old install and went back to Tumbleweed.
I loved all the tinkering on Arch, but I just don’t have it in me to do the tinkering anymore.
Just uninstall the kernel module that takes care of the GPU working properly, should solve the conflicts. You probably won’t see the screen, so I advise to do a disk clone to a different PC and mirror your actions.
In frustration I switched from fedora to manjaro on my laptop and it has fixed almost all the issues I had even though fedora is the recommended distro by Framework. Dunno why but in all my time using Linux (even back to when netbooks were a thing) Arch based ones have consistently given me the least issues even though I’m far from an expert.
I’m also happily running Manjaro on my new Framework 16.
Even the fingerprint sensor works fine - although I’ll still need to tune LightDM a bit, so I don’t have to press enter.
Do you have any tips what you have done further or any resources?
At first the WiFi wasn’t working and is still a bit unstable - like isn’t available as interface after booting and I need to toggle flight mode.
But it seems a newer kernel (6.10.6-10) mostly fixed it.
Also sometimes coreboot seems to take some time. But only every 10 boots or something.
Other than going through the guide on Framework’s website I can only recall having to edit the config files to get the fingerprint reader to work with KDE.
The one that tells you what you can do and how to fix things if you messed up. It’s a DIY distro.
Arch generally works (based on the 3 machines I’ve tried it on) unless you change something and if you messed something up you can always roll it back if you’re smart enough to have planned ahead and didn’t wipe your backup.
No, but the skills you learn by spending 100% of your spare time fixing all the stuff that gets borked after every update prepares you to take better advantage of the easier distros and be more efficient with them.
Is “it works” the average experience of an Arch user?
Edit: Folks, I know it wasn’t clear, but this was rhetorical. I love the passion that motivates all of you to share your personal experiences - it’s what keeps Linux moving forward… But you beautiful bastards need to chill.
I say it’s rather a „it mostly works” experience, but as a twist, if anything goes wrong, you can fix it very easily
Base Arch can be fussy, but that’s because there’s a lot to set up, so many opportunities to forget things and only discover them later.
I ran Artix on a laptop for about a year; that was a constant PITA, although I still value their goals.
But EndeavourOS has been an entirely different matter. It’s a “just works” Arch derivative.
I had so many fewer problems with Arch that I went through the effort to convert my 3 personal cloud servers from Debian to it. I went through a lot of work to replace thee default Mint on an ODroid to Arch, and it’s been so much better. I put Endeavor on the last two non-servers I installed. So, yes, I personally find out far more reliable and easier to work with than Ubuntu, Debian, or Mint.
That said, I had dad install Mint on a new computer he bought because I had to do it over the phone and he never, ever, upgrades his packages, and almost never installs anything. If all I’m going to do is install it once and then never change anything, Mint is easier. But for a normal use case where I’m regularly updating and installing software, Arch is far easier and more reliable.
Endeavour is fantastic. I’ve been using Arch since high school, but hung it up for a few years until last year when I’d had enough of Windows’ shit. EOS takes the PITA out of the install process (I just don’t have the time these days to dig as deep as I used to), but is the same Arch experience in usage.
I’ve tried arch (and preferred Endeavour), but found both needed too much attention - If you consider “operating system” a hobby, they’re perfect - the versatility is endless if you invest the time.
Personally, I want my OS to get out of the way and let me do what I want.
I can see that, although TBH I almost never have to “admin” EndeavourOS. I just upgrade every once in a while.
Most important to me is being able to find and install whatever software I want, and I have a string preference that it either be installed in my ~, or be managed by the package manager. I really dislike sideloading software globally. And Arch does this better than most. AUR is massive, and packages are trivial to write and install in the rare event something isn’t in AUR.
I ran Arch flavors for a while, (Endeavor, Crystal, Garuda, and mostly CachyOS) and I eventually got tired of the tinkering, so I’m back on Opensuse now. Benefits of the perks of rolling release with less tinkering than Arch.
I personally use Tumbleweed, then I use Slowroll on my media PC and my dad’s laptop.
It is!
After some time
For some time
Personally my arch install is almost boring me with how stable it’s been - and if anything goes wrong, it backs itself up before and after every single update plus on every boot just cuz, so I can roll back to wherever I want. I’ve put a lotta work into building out all these redundancies I’m happy with, and arch has been so goddamn stable I haven’t even had an excuse to use them. The process of getting a complete install was absolutely not “it works” - but now that I’m there, yeah, it really does just work. My only complaint is that I don’t have any reason to tinker with it more.
I made a major mistake that bricked my system, all my fault, but I was able to plunge my arm into the smoldering pit it fell into and drag my install directly from the gates of hell. Still working great like half a year later and I now know not to do what I did before that broke it all.
what did you even do lmfao
I switched over to development/experimental package repos cause I was impatient for a new feature. I switched back to prod but I didn’t revert my packages. It worked fine for a couple weeks but they eventually became to outdated and I couldn’t post.
Luckily you can use a live stick to chroot in to fix. Felt pretty cool being able to do that, but yeah it was a stupid mistake lol. And I’m always gonna have a live USB on the side just in case I do something similarly bone headed.
At the start yes. But it deteriorates with time. I can’t even update because of dependency conflicts and whatnot. My system is held together by ductape and a piece of bubble gum
Did you miss a required manual intervention on an update? A while ago there was an arch update that needed manual intervention cause of a dependency circle. Might be worth looking up the past year or so of manual intervention newsletter posts for Arch.
Last time I had a dependacy issue I was able to remove the conflicting package, update, then reinstall the package and it worked fine afterwards.
My own system was working great for a long while on an Arch flavour. But a bit ago HDR stopped working properly after an update and I just couldn’t get it running right. Would display very dim.
Eventually gave up on my 2 year old install and went back to Tumbleweed.
I loved all the tinkering on Arch, but I just don’t have it in me to do the tinkering anymore.
Just uninstall the kernel module that takes care of the GPU working properly, should solve the conflicts. You probably won’t see the screen, so I advise to do a disk clone to a different PC and mirror your actions.
At this point i’d rather do a full reinstall. Would probably solve my other issues too
Yep. That’s why I stopped distro hopping years ago.
Once set-up it just works™.
Basically like that but Frankenstein saying it.
In frustration I switched from fedora to manjaro on my laptop and it has fixed almost all the issues I had even though fedora is the recommended distro by Framework. Dunno why but in all my time using Linux (even back to when netbooks were a thing) Arch based ones have consistently given me the least issues even though I’m far from an expert.
I’m also happily running Manjaro on my new Framework 16.
Even the fingerprint sensor works fine - although I’ll still need to tune LightDM a bit, so I don’t have to press enter.
Do you have any tips what you have done further or any resources?
At first the WiFi wasn’t working and is still a bit unstable - like isn’t available as interface after booting and I need to toggle flight mode.
But it seems a newer kernel (6.10.6-10) mostly fixed it.
Also sometimes coreboot seems to take some time. But only every 10 boots or something.
Other than going through the guide on Framework’s website I can only recall having to edit the config files to get the fingerprint reader to work with KDE.
Since i use Arch everything actually worked. Scary.
My former colleague was an Arch user and barely a week passed without him having major issues. My guess would be “no”.
He probably haven’t read the wiki
You mean the one that helps you unfuck things… after the OS has started having issues again.
The one that tells you what you can do and how to fix things if you messed up. It’s a DIY distro.
Arch generally works (based on the 3 machines I’ve tried it on) unless you change something and if you messed something up you can always roll it back if you’re smart enough to have planned ahead and didn’t wipe your backup.
Skill issue of your coworker tbh
Pretty sure, yes. But it was annoying as hell.
No, but the skills you learn by spending 100% of your spare time fixing all the stuff that gets borked after every update prepares you to take better advantage of the easier distros and be more efficient with them.