Hello everyone, lately I got really into Linux. I installed it in every machine I have, but I still had to try Arch. From what people were saying online I thought that it was going to be a hard and impossible task. So I bought a Thinkpad for a hundred euros (x260 if you’re wondering) and I followed a guide on how to install Arch. I thought I was going to be using the terminal all the time, and had to type everything. No black screen of death, no prompt saying “Are you awake?” Matrix style, the pc didn’t breack, reality didn’t bend and just following simply the guide I had Arch running in fifhteen-twenty minutes no problem. Only the Network Manager wasn’t on were I rebooted after installation but it took five minutes to search online how to fix it. Everything works: bluetooth, internet, apps and so on. I could leave it as it is and I could just use it as any other pc. So all I’m saying is that I’m having a great time with Linux distros, the pain to learn how install repository and other things is really worth it. Every time I learn something more about my computer puts me more in control. So thank you Linux and its community.
Welcome :) The myth that “Arch isn’t user-friendly” will probably never die — and neither will “Arch is unstable.” I’m honestly relieved you didn’t dare push the door to join us 😏
If you ever switch machines, you can check how Arch is supported on tons of laptops here.
The reason people say that Arch is unstable is that you are expected to read the news on the website before every update or else your system is liable to be broken – and sometimes it will break in spite of that. Oh, and the expectation is that you’ll be updating multiple times per week, and if you don’t, you will soon be in a situation where to install any package you must update your entire system.
Most other distros place no such expectations on the user.
I hardly ever read the news and I update like once every one to two weeks, and I’m not sure I’ve ever had a system breaking bug introduced by an update. I’ve had small bugs that break UI stuff but nothing that really impairs my ability to use the computer.
I have run into all sorts of weird issues trying to run games or programs not packaged to run on Arch but those are usually solvable with tinkering and some outside advice.
Arch has just never really felt inherently unstable to me, IMO. If you have patience for tinkering and customizing Arch is a great distro that gives you a ton of control over your system + has a fantastic body of documentation.
I agree with you completely. I am sure you deal with these minor issues quickly and barely notice them half the time.
But users of other distros would find it intolerable to have to deal with these small tweaks on any given day. “My computer is a tool” they will say and “it just needs to work”.
Fair enough. But then they turn around and fight bugs and limitations that were solved for Arch users months or even years ago.
And they fight to install software not in the repos, often making their overall system less reliable in the process.
I prefer the stability of Arch over the stability of Debian thank you.
I’ve been using Arch for over 15 years, and honestly, I never check the news before updating. Once in a while, I’ll get an error — maybe once a year — and the fix is always just running a quick command I find on the Arch site or the package page. Takes seconds, no drama.
I’ve only managed to break my system twice, and both times were 100% my fault. Even then, recovery was easy: just chroot in and run one command.
As for updates, doing them regularly (daily, weekly, or monthly) is recommended. No need to go crazy with updates. Too frequent updates are actually discouraged. Arch is a rolling release, so your packages and dependencies get updated together — meaning things don’t randomly break. Skipping updates won’t nuke your system either, and if something ever goes sideways, you can just downgrade and be back up in no time.
One time I did not update an arch system for something like 6 months… You can’t immagine the troubles I needed to go through to get it into a working state.
I have had multiple systems with no updates for a year.
The biggest pain is always that the keyring is out of date and it does not want to install packages signed with newer keys. Once you have dealt with that once or twice, it is quick and easy to resolve and the rest of the update generally just works.
Yes, the keyring is a pain, also because I like to manually check all the keys. But then what often happens is that lots of configuration options have changed and you have to go through bunch of software to find out which exact package is now misconfigured and makes your system not work as it should.
The problem is that “stable” means two different things in Linux.
It can mean “reliable” as in it does not crash. I think that is what most of us think of.
However, It more often mean “static” or “unchanging”.
Take Debian Stable. It is “stable” because the software versions rarely change outside of security updates. This does not mean it does not crash. It does not mean it does not have bugs. It means you can depend on it to behave tomorrow like it does today. Design problem not the software installed? They are not getting fixed. As an example, you will see that the people saying Wayland does not work are almost always Debian users because they are using software from 2 - 3 years ago. Debian 13 has improved things but the NVIDIA drivers are from 2 years ago even now. And if KDE has fixed a lot of bugs, that does not mean Debian gets those updates.
Arch on the other hand updates its packages constantly to the latest to very recent versions. The behaviour of your Arch system changes all the time as new versions of software are installed. You may like this or you may not but this is “unstable” using Debian’s definition.
From the point of view of robustness, Arch users often have a better experience than Debian users. Things more often “just work” due either to new features or because issues have been resolved in recent versions. Rapidly developing software, let’s take Wayland or NVIDIA again, will often work dramatically better on Arch. However, every update has the potential to break something. And so, on Arch, you are certainly more likely to encounter breakage. Often these problems are very short-lived with fixes appearing quickly. This means that, even if something did break, many Arch users will not even know.
Anyway, this is my take Arch vs Debian:
So, it all depends on what we mean by stable
it’s funny because once you start using other distros you quickly realize how easy Arch actually is. I find Arch more straight forward and easier to use that Ubuntu. Ubuntu makes me want to rip what remaining hair I have out.
My impression was always that the biggest issue is needing to pay attention to, and sometimes intervene in updates, is that not a thing with arch anymore?
It does still happen occasionally that updates need some intervention, it is still policy that you should check the blog in case, but it’s only happened once in the last two years for me.
How often are you supposed to check the blog?
Edit: probably every time you’re about to do an update, sorry I’m sleepy lol
Yeah, exactly, when you want to do a full upgrade it’s technically best practice to check if there’s anything which requires intervention. But I never bother honestly, and the one time there was an issue it was resolved by just uninstalling one package for another.