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Arch based distros and stability
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TobyGornow Jun 7, 2019
Hi,

I'm using Manjaro Xfce stable (kernel 4.19 at the moment) on my laptop (intel + nvidia Quadro) and my pseudo-seedbox (Intel + Amd GPU) for a year and an half and nothing broke so far.

My previous laptop was fueled with Arch + Plasma and it was all nice and good until the motherboard died a year later.

I can't say the same for Mint which broke several time due to drivers incompatibility with the current kernel and I won't talk about the upgrade from 18.3 to 19.0... Thanks Timeshift.

Waiting to upgrade my main computer to ditch Mint and go Manjaro or Arch, I don't know yet. Count me as a more than satisfied user.
hagabaka Jun 7, 2019
If you are already comfortable with using the command line, just read the man page and wiki page of pacman and any other tools you use for package management. Personally I have "pacman -Syyuu" built in to muscle memory, which basically updates the package lists and then synchronizes installed packages to the repo versions, and I look things up when I need to do something different.

Quoting: DorritI've read the Arch and Manjaro Wikis and follow Manjaro's forums and came up with the following terminal commands for a good update/maintenance:

Update system
sudo pacman-mirrors --fasttrack 6 && sudo pacman -Syyu

Check for orphaned packages
sudo pacman -Qdt

Remove orphaned packages
sudo pacman -Rns $(pacman -Qdtq)

Check for foreign packages
sudo pacman -Qm

Install packages
sudo pacman -Syu package_name

Uninstall packages
sudo pacman -Rns package_name

Clean package cache
sudo paccache -r

Old configuration files
     ~/.config/ -- where apps stores their configuration
    ~/.cache/ -- cache of some programs may grow in size
    ~/.local/share/ -- old files may be lying there


What do you think?
Dorrit Jun 7, 2019
Thanks for all the answers :)
Hamish Jun 8, 2019
I have had Fedora eat itself just as much as Arch with me using both. Your mileage may vary.

I have even had broken kernel updates on CentOS, which is embarrassing...
Spud13y Jun 8, 2019
I've had Arch for almost a year on both my AMD laptop and Intel+Nvidia desktop. Never had a problem, but other than upgrading and installing I don't tinker with much under the hood. The only problem I had with openSUSE as far as stability with proprietary Nvidia is that usually an Nvidia upgrade would cause the system to not boot. I would wait a few days and then update it; it usually works ok but even then sometimes it would fail. I stopped using Manjaro because they held all updates for an entire month way back in the summer of 2016. That might have been the only problem like that, but it soured my disposition toward that distro ever since. Arch is pretty sweet.
wvstolzing Jun 8, 2019
By the way, about openSUSE:

Interesting bit of news from LWN; though it's a paid article and I can't read it currently -- here's the abstract:

QuoteIn mid-May, LWN reported on the discussions in the openSUSE project over whether a separation from SUSE would be a good move. It would appear that this issue has been resolved and that openSUSE will be setting up a foundation as its new home independent of the SUSE corporation. But now the community has been overtaken by a new, related discussion that demonstrates a characteristic of free-software projects: the hardest issues are usually related to naming.

For some background, the LWN article from May 21: https://lwn.net/Articles/788935/
jens Jun 8, 2019
  • Supporter
Quoting: HamishI have even had broken kernel updates on CentOS, which is embarrassing...

You got my respects for achieving this :)
Dr_Cox1911 Jun 25, 2019
Currently deciding my new distro, because of the new Canonical 32bit shenanigans I want to switch.

In the ring are currently OpenSuse Tumbleweed, Manjaro, Federa and Pop!_OS.
I'm kinda scared about Manjaro, I don't really want to hassle with the system. I'm only familiar with Debian based Distros so far and there is still a risk breaking Manjaro upon updating, or am I wrong?

I'm using Ubuntu Budgie non-LTS for quite a while now and never crashed/not booted for me, this should still be the case with my new distro.

I reckon for gaming with and AMD GPU (Vega 64 here) it is quity mandatory to have the latest kernel, that's why I currently look at the above mentionend distros.

Any hints/meanings why I should choose one over the others?
Spud13y Jun 26, 2019
Quoting: Dr_Cox1911Currently deciding my new distro, because of the new Canonical 32bit shenanigans I want to switch.

In the ring are currently OpenSuse Tumbleweed, Manjaro, Federa and Pop!_OS.
I'm kinda scared about Manjaro, I don't really want to hassle with the system. I'm only familiar with Debian based Distros so far and there is still a risk breaking Manjaro upon updating, or am I wrong?

I'm using Ubuntu Budgie non-LTS for quite a while now and never crashed/not booted for me, this should still be the case with my new distro.

I reckon for gaming with and AMD GPU (Vega 64 here) it is quity mandatory to have the latest kernel, that's why I currently look at the above mentionend distros.

Any hints/meanings why I should choose one over the others?

Manjaro's probably still pretty great. I've used Fedora and loved it. openSUSE Tumbleweed on my Nvidia desktop ran great (except with what I said in an earlier post). Tumbleweed on my AMD laptop was a nightmare to set up. Tried launching Steam a few times on different installs and there were things constantly missing from it. Don't know if it would be better on a rig with a dedicated graphics card since my laptop was a chipset hodgepodge deal.

I'm on Arch and it's been my one and only for quite a few months now. Manjaro might be a bit different because they hold back packages longer than Arch, but with either OS I've never had a problem. Just make sure you update fairly often (weekly if not daily). Don't know if you'll have other problems until they just happen, but that's with any system.
RossBC Jun 26, 2019
There is also Arcolinux now, which is a derivative of Arch Linux. Would recommend it over Manjaro now for new/non-commited users of Arch. It is easy to use and the devs put up how to videos for things.
Would never recommend Antergos though as for whatever reason it chews through resources/runs slow in comparison to Manjaro or Arcolinux.
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