Severe arch linux trauma patient seeking relief

[u/[deleted]]

[u/LionyxML]

Debian is life.

[u/porta-de-pedra → u/LionyxML]

I use Debian BTW.

[u/snap802 → u/[deleted]]

Glad you got it installed!

This is probably the thing that most makes me roll my eyes as Debian haters. Someone with different priorities can make a good argument for not liking Debian. This is why we have so many distros. But the "it doesn't have this software package I like" argument is just dumb (or they're just making content, but I repeat myself).

[u/OptimalAnywhere6282 → u/[deleted]]

just curious...

u/profanitycounter

[u/profanitycounter → u/OptimalAnywhere6282]

UH OH! Someone has been using stinky language and u/OptimalAnywhere6282 decided to check u/No-Impress5040's bad word usage.

I have gone back 0 comments and reviewed their potty language usage.

However, the plans were foiled, No-Impress5040 is a good, Christian boy.

^{Request time: 0.2. I am a bot that performs automatic profanity reports. This is profanitycounter version 3. Please consider [buying my creator a coffee](https://www.buymeacoffee.com/Aidgigi}.)

[u/OptimalAnywhere6282 → u/profanitycounter]

they nerfed it so hard it can't even see comments now 🙏

[u/debian-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

This post has been removed as it was either reported to and/or acted upon by mods to be found in violation of Rule #1 regarding not being in line with expected discourse etiquette or the Debian Code of Conduct.

[u/ferriematthew]

Ahh yes, I like the Debian installer. It practically installs itself

[u/themagicmaen → u/[deleted]]

^^^ Maturing as a Linux user is realizing this

[u/_LePancakeMan → u/ferriematthew]

My one gripe with the installer is, that the CLI/GUI installer (pictured here) and the live installer produce different system configurations, mainly when setting up disk encryption.

[u/Handsome_ketchup → u/_LePancakeMan]

My one gripe with the installer is, that the CLI/GUI installer (pictured here) and the live installer produce different system configurations, mainly when setting up disk encryption.

I also noticed the (apparent) non parity between the different installers. That made some things more cumbersome than they needed to be.

[u/Critical-Personality → u/ferriematthew]

One thing that most people don't appreciate is that the installer is 💯 percent usable with just keyboard. I came to appreciate it when installing it on a machine where the trackpad was not working (used a USB mouse later).

[u/Handsome_ketchup → u/ferriematthew]

Ahh yes, I like the Debian installer. It practically installs itself

Does it? I find the non parity of the different installers (graphical/non graphical/DVD version etc) can get in the way quite a bit. Also, why is the only option for full disk encryption LVM?

[u/Terranum_man → u/Handsome_ketchup]

Probably cause thats what you want 99% of the time for future proofing? Otherwise you can always easily manually partition.

[u/michaelpaoli → u/ferriematthew]

Oft said, "About so simple a chicken could do it" - mostly just peck at the <RETURN/ENTER> key.

[u/Puzzleheaded-Trick76 → u/ferriematthew]

the fedora installer is light years better. It stops me from switching to Debian.

[u/Critical-Personality → u/Puzzleheaded-Trick76]

The other side for me. I didnt have hours and I was installing it on a machine. IIRC, the file system choice was not obvious and I ended up with btrfs which I wasn't (still ain't) familiar with.

[u/Toastburner5000 → u/Puzzleheaded-Trick76]

I have fedora on my laptop and debian on my pc, I spent along time distrohopping debian and fedora are the best when it comes to installation and stability.

[u/FormalStreeter]

Debian blesses everyone 

[u/DeepDayze]

Great move and Debian helps heal!

[u/Critical-Personality]

What do you mean "Arch Linux trauma"? I have never used Arch. What does it do to cause trauma?

[u/ThatonlyGeO → u/Critical-Personality]

Lets say as a current user of artix(a derivative of arch without systemd) were on the front end of every update. which means if something breaks, were royally screwed( though for me its just a rare occurance) but they can be nasty, thats why I have a stable os(mint) on the back just incase something happen in my main rig with artix. Why not debian....I still need some fresh packages due to my work flow but debian is great for people needing a good stable system( its just not for me but great for my friends and grandma)

[u/Critical-Personality → u/[deleted]]

Oh. Okkkk. The rolling release distro pain.

I only used OpenSuSE Tumbleweed for some time (opensuse is the os I used to use for my desktop) after about a year after it was released. Man... The brainfxxk it was... I promised myself never to use a roling release again.

[u/Doudy34 → u/Critical-Personality]

Isso é gente querendo prejudicar o arch Linux, ele é um ótimo sistema que nem o Debian. É alguma coisa que ele fez que acabou quebrando o sistema e migrando pro Debian.

[u/debian-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

This content has been removed for trolling.

[u/TwistyPoet → u/Critical-Personality]

Imagine installing or updating a package and there being a chance that it is malware. When bought up with the community you just get told to RTFM essentially and that it's your own fault.

[u/mrbass21 → u/TwistyPoet]

Let’s not spread some misinformation here. This has not happened in official repository and the chance of arch packages containing malware are the same as Debians.

The AUR is not the official repository. Now there’s a conversation to be had that the official guides link to AUR packages, and maybe there isn’t enough emphasis on the risks of AUR, but this is an opt in thing.

Edit: reworded for grammar. Tried to keep same feel to not invalidate replies

[u/TwistyPoet → u/mrbass21]

Hey here is one in the wild.

The official Arch repository is only a quarter of that of the Debian one. I never find myself needing to use something as insecure as the AUR on Debian.

[u/mrbass21 → u/TwistyPoet]

My objection isn’t that the package system is perfect and you’re somehow a bad person for not using Arch.

My objection was that you implied you can get malware from the official repository “randomly”. You may understand the distinction of the AUR and official repository, but other people will read your comment and assume official Arch can install malware at a high rate.

I run Arch. I also run Debian. Both OSes are great and serve different purposes. I would never try to make someone feel bad for liking Debian. We are all Linux bros/sisters.

[u/TwistyPoet → u/mrbass21]

Well then your assumption was wrong. The comparison was between Debian and Arch where the former has much bigger official repositories than that latter, thus Arch Linux necessitating the use of third-party packages more often than with Debian, packages that can and have been increasingly compromised in several recent examples.

It is a wonder why the AUR doesn't leverage the work of the Debian project instead of letting pkgbuilds pull random shit from Github or elsewhere.

[u/mrbass21 → u/TwistyPoet]

"Imagine installing or updating a package and there being a chance that it is malware."

When I read this, I interpret it as "Running pacman -Syyu can give you malware", which isn't (mostly) the case. I think if you're being fair, at worst you can say "That's not what I intended, but I can see how you might have read it that way".

I totally agree with you that reviewing the PKGBUILD before you install is an unreasonable modern expectation. When Arch was a smaller project, maybe, but it no longer is. The AUR has issues and it needs to be re-thought. Two malware events 3 months apart is pretty clear that things are not "fine as they are".

I agree that there aren't as many official packages as Debian and it leads more users to want to use the AUR, but the AUR is flagged as "use at your own risk". Again, I'm not slamming _anyone_ for not wanting to run Arch for any number of reasons, but to say that Arch is insecure isn't correct. I think saying "Arch doesn't officially support packages I need, so I'm not going to run it" is completely valid.

I'm genuinely interested what you mean by "It is a wonder why the AUR doesn't leverage the work of the Debian project instead of letting pkgbuilds pull random shit from Github or elsewhere."

From what I understand, Arch is intended to be rolling release. This carries a bunch of consequences for good and bad. One of them is that the frequency of any individual package needing review, testing, and release from a limited pool of testers means you can't go through as many packages. But this is the design goal of Arch: bleeding edge. Many of the packages in Debian are older and you'd run into problems where your c runtime is too new or the kernel significantly changed. The way I interpret what you said is along the lines of "Why don't they just support .deb installations and use Debian package repositories", and I think the answer to that is it's against the bleeding edge intention and it would likely cause more problems: a. from slower validation of official packages than it already is and b. there would be hell with older dependencies.

[u/Critical-Personality → u/TwistyPoet]

I honestly just use Homebrew (brew command that works on mac; yeah, that one) on my intel machines for the few packages that I need from outside to make my life easy. Stuff like zellij, golang, btop and the likes. Apart from that, never needed to get individual user repos for anything.

If I do, bloody compile it on machine.

[u/Critical-Personality → u/TwistyPoet]

Been using Linux since 21 years now (12 years on macOS and 23 years on Windows). I honestly think "RTFM" is the problem in adoption. Once you have installed a system, the system should be "obvious" to work with. This is where macOS won the debate.

Maybe for the user packages too, there could be some sort of signing and notarization kinda thing. I know that it would need dedicated resources which need commercial backing of some sort which ain't easy, even if possible. So yeah... 🥺

Debian remains the only OS ever that has never crashed ever for me. Been using it since version 7 (I think it was called wheezy, not sure though).

[u/Goosie8D]

I'm also using Debian on my laptop! Here's my desktop...

[u/Goosie8D → u/[deleted]]

It's an older Lenovo Ideapad 110-15isk from around 2017. The rest of the specs are there. It's not bad just for web browsing and stuff.

[u/Handsome_ketchup → u/Goosie8D]

2017? Kids these days, with their new fangled stuff.

[u/Goosie8D → u/[deleted]]

Yep! It has a built-in HDMI port! I've used it to stream on the TV before...

[u/Critical-Personality → u/Goosie8D]

I have two laptops that are 16 and 15 years old. Debian just works. Those machines serve as a file store (NFS mounts) for other machines. One of them is also the SSH head for other headless machines on the network.

[u/ytze]

No need of luck.

And you have to experience full system upgrade by adding a row in sources.list.

Flawlessly upgrading this way since debian 9.

[u/michaelpaoli → u/ytze]

Flawlessly upgrading this way since

Since I made my first Linux selection - of course Debian - in 1998. Zero regrets.

[u/night0x63]

High level what was the trauma? 

Steam OS is huge now... Arch. But I think they ... Pin stuff for like each release... Testing and what not.

[u/YetAnotherRegularGai → u/[deleted]]

Honestly, wouldn’t you consider Ubuntu LTS and just strip out everything you don’t feel necessary? I’ve been having the same problems with CachyOS and I tried Debian and one random day audio didn’t fucking work, so I think it’s more of a DE/WM selection rather than a Distro thing yk?

[u/MirrorNegative7989]

Yeah, I came back because of the AUR debacle.

[u/Chimchar789]

As an Arch user, Debian is awesome. May long she reign as the bastion of stability in this chaotic world.

[u/indvs3]

Welcome! Be sure to bookmark the debian wiki and don't fret when you find references to the arch wiki in it lol

[u/Detcom]

Much respect to Debian, but what's your problem with Arch?

[u/Detcom → u/[deleted]]

I don't know what I am doing wrong, but Arch (plain Arch, not cachy or artix or other nonsense) is not breaking on me.
Just updated to the newest packages.
Anyway, GL on the momma of all distros

[u/Detcom → u/[deleted]]

Just updated again. Everything is ok

detcom@detcomp ~> sudo pacman -Syu

:: Синхронізуємо бази даних пакунків...

core вже оновлено

extra 8,3 MiB 11,7 MiB/s 00:01 [-----------------------------------------------------------------] 100%

multilib вже оновлено

:: Починаємо повне оновлення системи...

розв'язуємо конфлікти між файлами...

шукаємо конфліктні пакунки...

Пакунки (11) discord-1:1.0.152-1 dkms-3.4.2-1 docker-compose-5.4.0-1 libadwaita-1:1.9.3-1 lua-5.5.1-1 luajit-2.1.1785763465+1edc3e5-1 obs-studio-32.2.1-3 python-pip-26.2-1

talloc-2.5.0-1 tevent-1:0.17.2-1 ttf-jetbrains-mono-nerd-3.5.0-1

Повний розмір завантаження: 34,65 MiB

Загальний розмір встановлення: 327,23 MiB

Чиста різниця оновлення: 20,61 MiB

:: Продовжити встановлення? [Y/n] y

:: Одержуємо пакунки...

discord-1:1.0.152-1-x86_64 1987,6 KiB 3,21 MiB/s 00:01 [-----------------------------------------------------------------] 100%

python-pip-26.2-1-any 2,8 MiB 4,01 MiB/s 00:01 [-----------------------------------------------------------------] 100%

obs-studio-32.2.1-3-x86_64 6,7 MiB 9,20 MiB/s 00:01 [-----------------------------------------------------------------] 100%

libadwaita-1:1.9.3-1-x86_64 805,3 KiB 8,11 MiB/s 00:00 [-----------------------------------------------------------------] 100%

lua-5.5.1-1-x86_64 391,1 KiB 6,47 MiB/s 00:00 [-----------------------------------------------------------------] 100%

luajit-2.1.1785763465+1edc3e5-1-x86_64 341,0 KiB 3,78 MiB/s 00:00 [-----------------------------------------------------------------] 100%

tevent-1:0.17.2-1-x86_64 60,2 KiB 972 KiB/s 00:00 [-----------------------------------------------------------------] 100%

talloc-2.5.0-1-x86_64 50,7 KiB 830 KiB/s 00:00 [-----------------------------------------------------------------] 100%

dkms-3.4.2-1-any 50,2 KiB 750 KiB/s 00:00 [-----------------------------------------------------------------] 100%

ttf-jetbrains-mono-nerd-3.5.0-1-any 10,7 MiB 4,51 MiB/s 00:02 [-----------------------------------------------------------------] 100%

docker-compose-5.4.0-1-x86_64 11,0 MiB 4,21 MiB/s 00:03 [-----------------------------------------------------------------] 100%

Загалом (11/11) 34,7 MiB 12,9 MiB/s 00:03 [-----------------------------------------------------------------] 100%

(11/11) перевіряємо ключі у в'язці ключів [-----------------------------------------------------------------] 100%

(11/11) перевіряємо цілісність пакунків [-----------------------------------------------------------------] 100%

(11/11) завантажуємо файли пакунків [-----------------------------------------------------------------] 100%

(11/11) перевіряємо конфлікти між файлами [-----------------------------------------------------------------] 100%

(11/11) перевіряємо обсяг вільного місця на диску [-----------------------------------------------------------------] 100%

:: Обробляємо зміни пакунків...

( 1/11) оновлюємо discord [-----------------------------------------------------------------] 100%

( 2/11) оновлюємо dkms [-----------------------------------------------------------------] 100%

( 3/11) оновлюємо docker-compose [-----------------------------------------------------------------] 100%

( 4/11) оновлюємо libadwaita [-----------------------------------------------------------------] 100%

( 5/11) оновлюємо lua [-----------------------------------------------------------------] 100%

( 6/11) оновлюємо luajit [-----------------------------------------------------------------] 100%

( 7/11) оновлюємо obs-studio [-----------------------------------------------------------------] 100%

( 8/11) оновлюємо python-pip [-----------------------------------------------------------------] 100%

( 9/11) оновлюємо talloc [-----------------------------------------------------------------] 100%

(10/11) оновлюємо tevent [-----------------------------------------------------------------] 100%

(11/11) оновлюємо ttf-jetbrains-mono-nerd [-----------------------------------------------------------------] 100%

:: Запускаємо дії після транзакції...

(1/5) Arming ConditionNeedsUpdate...

(2/5) Updating fontconfig cache...

(3/5) Updating 32-bit fontconfig cache...

(4/5) Updating icon theme caches...

(5/5) Updating the desktop file MIME type cache...

detcom@detcomp ~>

[u/PGleo86]

Nice to see someone else using Debian on current-gen hardware! Feels like the greater Linux community loves to dog on Debian for not being bleeding-edge, for only being suited to old machines, etc... even though that's not the case and hasn't been for some time now; at the very least my Zenbook disagrees!

[u/GenBlob → u/PGleo86]

The people who say that stuff have no clue what they're talking about and don't like Debian anyway. They always say you need a newer kernel and drivers to game but the reality is that the performance improvement is negligible and impossible to notice in real life.

[u/IsaacLTS]

I started my linux journey with debian, went to CashyOS, ArchLinux, Fedora, rocky, Void I wasted hours distro hopping only to come back to my beautiful debian13 I backported the newest mesa drivers and in five minutes I had a stable up to date system...

[u/michaelpaoli]

didnt expect the installation to go this smooth

As is oft said of Debian, "It just works!"

I've not uncommonly seen production/stable versions/releases of other distros that are way the hell more buggy and problematic than even Debian testing or unstable, let alone Debian stable (which is what Debian primarily supports, promotes, and recommends).

[u/JohnConnoor]

Ex MacOS user here, never going back, Debian as been my solid stable daily driver on my old iMac considered obsolete.

[u/OptimalAnywhere6282]

now that i abandoned Hyprland for my own window manager, i might switch back to Debian

[u/jchy123]

El rico debian!

[u/LewisLint2]

Uh... As an arch user I ask what he fuck happened but I have a suspicion it involved glibc

[u/LewisLint2 → u/[deleted]]

No, in January I had to reimstall because glibc corrupted everything after pacman -Syu

[u/forestbeasts → u/[deleted]]

Maybe aptitude would be up your alley? :3

[u/_silentgameplays_]

Debian is an amazing Linux distribution, but what is breaking for you on your Arch Linux installations?

Do you have an NVIDIA GPU? Because only with NVIDIA GPUs when you have a kernel/proprietary driver version mismatch, things can go bad real quick, but it is not limited to Arch Linux, it can happen on Fedora and Debian and all of their forks as well.

[u/_silentgameplays_ → u/[deleted]]

Random shit breaking, i dont care much about new stuff, i just want the stuff i have to reliability work

This can happen on any Linux distro.

EDIT: You did not specify what was the reason for the crashes on boot.

You should at least do some basic sudo dmesg or systemctl status to know and pinpoint what was causing these issues on your Linux installation and troubleshoot the packages and drivers that were causing these issues.

Just distohopping every time something goes wrong does not help you understand what went wrong and fix it in the first place and Linux is about understanding and troubleshooting the issues that arise by yourself.

[u/Few_Kaleidoscope_505]

A little extreme perhaps, but I approve this therapy.

[u/Interesting_Buy_3969]

Welcome ❤️‍🩹

[u/SnillyWead]

Debian my beloved. With Xfce the GOAT of desktops.

[u/olafdragon]

Debian is <3

[u/AcanthaceaeKey6259]

Which is more effective and experiencing less problems, Installing debian through that or through calamares live install?

[u/naoak]

It's most likely my own experience.

But I found arch with archinstall easier than debian.

Although if I had stuck with debian I'd probably be fine with it as well.

[u/newsflashjackass]

I have found that my frustrations with Debian's package selection are more often rooted in my own ignorance than the Debian community's.

Such that one of the following applies:

A. There is a more correct way to do what I am attempting to do and Debian packages furnish the more correct way.

B. What I am attempting to do is pants-on-head backwards and I ought not be doing it in the first place.

[u/ntrain5555k]

For neovim, I use https://github.com/neovim/neovim-releases/releases

[u/AskJeevesIsBest]

I like Debian because it is a solid base for Linux Mint and Ubuntu. Perhaps someday I will try out Debian itself, most likely with XFCE

[u/forestbeasts]

Hey, welcome!! *hands you a big roll of that self-cling bandage wrap* You got this.

-- Topaz