Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by behnamoh | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

behnamoh

> You know what software doesn't fill me with dread to update? FOSS.

As someone who's been burnt several times with CachyOS (Arch) updates, I don't think this is true.

View on HN

Arch is bleeding edge. Breakage is expected there. It breaks so others can be stable.

Thank you for your service.

So many Linux user problems are self inflicted. It’s almost a demonstration why proprietary platforms limit your options so much when users choose to shove a stick in their bike spokes and complain it let them do that.

Nope, we're talking about updates to the OS, not users messing around and shoving a stick in their bike spokes.

Choose a niche distro, deal with niche update issues.

Choose a major distro, deal with poettering non-sense.

Using Cachy since about two years now. Never had any stress with it. Maybe it's about the random combination of components, hardware, driver/firmware quality? If you've got a bad combo, it will always crap out at some point in time. But so do others, too. Just on different combinations.

Arch is not "bleeding edge" . It's latest stable version of packages/software.

The fact that Arch is bleeding edge has been an explicit part of the Arch philosophy for as long as I've been using it (for 20 years now). It breaks a lot less frequently than it used to.

I personally think the whole bleeding edge argument is funny. Imagine me telling macOS27 is bleeding edge. Or any stable version of software u use is bleeding edge and that we should wait 6 months before using it.

Arch reflects the state of linux. I will never say it's perfect. But rolling releases give u the latest stable version of software. Like I said, I've found arch to be easier to fix. I've been burned too many times cos of Ubuntu and the lots.

Upstream developers declaring a release as "stable" isn't sufficient to make it so. Distros and users are the ones who decide what is stable and what isn't.

Trouble is, there's an enormous gap between when maintainers accept that a package as stable and when it actually makes it into the next release. I'd be plenty happy waiting an extra month or two for a stable release, but am not thrilled with waiting a year or more for one.

I used to think that way when I was young and with plenty of free time. Nowadays I want stability more than anything else and I'm fine with software that's 1 year old. The only problem still present is how to buy a new laptop and have everything work from the beginning.

Which is exactly why I use Arch. I've has more papercuts from point releases than arch. My argument is not even Arch. But rolling releases.

I've had more problems in point releases in my last 15years of using Linux. The problem and issues usually happen because of the said holding off of outdated software. If it's desktop computing, Arch (or rolling releases) are the best option. Arch, when it breaks, it's also the easiest to fix. I'll agree with you if it's about server side of things.

I wrote a lil about it all here: https://www.unsungnovelty.org/posts/01/2024/a-linux-distro-r...

Arch actually has testing repos (and has had for as long as I can remember), plus other project-specific testing repos like kde-unstable when upstream is taking a very long time to push out a new actually stable release. It also has lts packages for projects that offer those (like the kernel), and sometimes stays on old versions and backports fixes if the upstream definition of stable is too out of whack.

People seem to believe arch is much more yolo than it actually is (though forks of arch have tended to be pretty yolo, and I assume cachyos is a bit yolo as well based on the issues people have).

Arch users are basically beta testers. Near same day updates with upstream.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com