alt Hacker NewsI learned linux by using Arch back in the days when pacman -Syu was almost certain to break something and there was a good chance it would break something unique to your install. This was also back in the days when most were not connected to the internet 24/7 and many did not have internet, I updated when I went to the library which was generally a weekly thing but sometimes it be a month or two and the system breakage that resulted was rococo. Something was lost by Arch becoming stable and not breaking regularly, it was what drove the wiki and fixing all the things that pacman broke taught you a great deal and taught you quickly. Stability is not all that it is cracked up to be, has its uses but is not the solution to everything.
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I've contributed 32 edits (1 new page) in the past 10 years, so despite being stable, there are still many things to add and fix!
Sadly, the edit volume will likely drop as LLMs are now the preferred source for technical Linux info/everything...
I learned linux on debian first. The xserver (x11 or what as its old name) was not working so I had to use the commandline. I had a short debian handbook and worked through it slowly. Before that I had SUSE and a SUSE handbook with a GUI, which was totally useless. I then went on to use knoppix, kanotix, sidux, GoboLinux, eventually ended up with slackware. These days I tend to use manjaro, despite the drawback that is systemd. Manjaro kind of feels like a mix between arch and slackware. (I compile from source, so I only need a base really for the most part, excluding a few things; I tend to disable most systemd unit files as I don't really need anything systemd offers. Sadly distributions such as slackware kind of died - they are not dead, but too slow in updates, no stable releases in years, this is the hallmark of deadness.)
> Arch becoming stable and not breaking regularly
I believe this to be the entire ecosystem, not just Arch. It's been a long while since something like moving to 64bit happened. Or swapping out init systems.
> back in the days when pacman -Syu was almost certain to break something and there was a good chance it would break something unique to your install
This was still the case when I switched to arch in like 2016 lol
About a year ago, when I installed Arch, my first Linux distro, most things were great. However, while testing some commands in pacman, there were a bunch of Python-related packages (even though I hadn't downloaded them). Since I needed some disk space, I figured deleting them wouldn't hurt. Unfortunately, I couldn't boot again. I guess the ones related to Python were related to Hyprland and Quickshell.
This brings back memories, same here!
I even bookmarked a page to remember how to rebuild the kernel because I can always expect it breaking.
I have started using Arch in 2016 and it was stable back then. Are you describing an earlier era?
> Something was lost by Arch becoming stable and not breaking regularly
...a smooth sea never made a skilled sailor
>>Something was lost by Arch becoming stable and not breaking regularly
Only a Linux user would consider the instability of a Linux distro to be a good thing.