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by _yy
3774 days ago
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> It's just in the same bag as Gentoo regarding release process. There's a big difference, though - Arch Linux has no concept of partial upgrades. You have to update, or things break. Gentoo allows you to stick with old versions and has a pretty sophisticated mechanism for that ("slots"). It's also complicated, which is one of the reasons Arch Linux is easier to use. This makes Arch Linux unsuitable for pretty much any "production" scenario. Puppet version updated to 4? Tough luck if you didn't scramble and update all of your code since version 4 has backwards-incompatible changes. Works pretty well for desktops - if something breaks, you can usually just fix it. But it does not scale. Gentoo, on the other hand, has an unstable and a "stable" channel and you can use it for production systems if you've got the necessary manpower to essentially build your own distro. |
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It works very well for me (I didn't have any update-induced downtimes yet, except for the usual reboots to apply kernel upgrades), but I can easily see how people could struggle with the no-partial-upgrade problem when they employ complex, fast-moving software stacks.
My solution is to package that software myself in a private repo, so that I get to decide when to upgrade. In Arch, probably more than with any other binary distribution, it helps very much to have a good grip on the packaging process. Once you already have your private repo and signing key set up and rolled out everywhere, the barrier to rolling the next custom package is much slower.