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Choosing Next OS (lemmy.world)

submitted 6 months ago by bitahcold@lemmy.world to c/archlinux@lemmy.ml

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I was Nobara user, then I am using Fedora right now. I want to use things like Hyprland etc. and ya know, Its damn cool to say I am using arch btw. So I've decided to use Arch Linux. But everyone says its always breaking and gives problems. That's because of users, not OS.. right? I love to deal with problems but I don't want to waste my time. Is Arch really problemful OS? Should I use it? I know what to do with setup/ usage, the hardness of Arch is not problem for me but I am just concerned about the mindset "Arch always gets broken".

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[–] SpaceCadet@feddit.nl 1 points 6 months ago

But everyone says its always breaking and gives problems. That’s because of users, not OS… right?

It's an exaggeration, it doesn't always break but yes it occasionally does. Any Arch user who tells you otherwise is lying or hasn't used Arch for very long yet.

That’s because of users, not OS… right?

No it's because of regressions in new releases. Arch relentlessly marches forward and always tries to give you the latest-and-greatest version of any package on your system. There is some testing done obviously, but it can never be ruled out that newer software contains new bugs and regressions that are not caught in testing, and that it ends up being released.

To give an example of such a regression, the past few weeks there have been some kernel releases with broken bluetooth support for the (very common) Intel AX200 chipset. It is fixed now, but if you wanted to use bluetooth, Arch was in fact broken for some time.

The fix is usually: temporarily rollback the offending packages until the issue is fixed upstream or until a workaround is found. It does mean you will occasionally have to spend some time diagnosing issues and checking user forums to see if other users are having the same problem.