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by chongli 182 days ago
A lot of rage over systemd from what I recall.

I raged a lot when my Arch machine would break after an update and I'd have to do config file surgery on a machine that no longer wanted to boot into a graphical desktop. I've never had that sort of thing happen on Mac or Windows.
1 comments
ndsipa_pomu 182 days ago
Well, that's definitely on you. Arch do warn people to actually read the changelogs if you're going to update/upgrade everything. Whenever I've hit a problem with an Arch machine (I think it's only twice), it was written quite clearly in the update notes along with the fix.

It's actually surprising just how stable Arch Linux can be considering that it's typically using the newest code for everything. If you really want Arch and stability, maybe using something like SteamOS would be better - Arch, but designed to be stable.

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incrudible 181 days ago
> Well, that's definitely on you. Arch do warn people to actually read the changelogs if you're going to update/upgrade everything.

"There’s no point in acting surprised about it. All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display at your local planning department in Alpha Centauri for 50 of your Earth years, so you’ve had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaint and it’s far too late to start making a fuss about it now."

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ndsipa_pomu 181 days ago
Well, it is known as a bleeding edge distro

I don't know, apathetic bloody planet, I've no sympathy at all.

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DANmode 181 days ago
> Arch do warn people to actually read the changelogs if you're going to update/upgrade everything

I used to daily Arch, and I read landers/docs/community pages as a hobby, basically.

I’ve never seen this.

I’m not doubting you, to be clear - I just really want to see it! lol

Link?

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ndsipa_pomu 181 days ago
It's a while since I used Arch (apart from my Steam Deck, but that's a bit different as it's curated and has a read only root filesystem by default), so I've had a look around and I think I meant reading the "Latest News" at https://archlinux.org/

e.g.

> NVIDIA 590 driver drops Pascal and lower support; main packages switch to Open Kernel Modules

> 2025-12-20

> With the update to driver version 590, the NVIDIA driver no longer supports Pascal (GTX 10xx) GPUs or older. We will replace the nvidia package with nvidia-open, nvidia-dkms with nvidia-open-dkms, and nvidia-lts with nvidia-lts-open.

> Impact: Updating the NVIDIA packages on systems with Pascal, Maxwell, or older cards will fail to load the driver, which may result in a broken graphical environment.

> Intervention required for Pascal/older users: Users with GTX 10xx series and older cards must switch to the legacy proprietary branch to maintain support:

> Uninstall the official nvidia, nvidia-lts, or nvidia-dkms packages.

> Install nvidia-580xx-dkms from the AUR

> Users with Turing (20xx and GTX 1650 series) and newer GPUs will automatically transition to the open kernel modules on upgrade and require no manual intervention.

Personally, I used to just run an upgrade and then go look for known problems if pacman threw an error. Of course, the recommendation is to have a good backup before running the upgrade and just roll it back if it has issues (then read the notes).

Edit: The warning is shown on the system maintenance page: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/System_maintenance

> 3.1 Read before upgrading the system

> Before upgrading, users are expected to visit the Arch Linux home page to check the latest news, or alternatively subscribe to the RSS feed or the arch-announce mailing list. When updates require out-of-the-ordinary user intervention (more than what can be handled simply by following the instructions given by pacman), an appropriate news post will be made.

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chongli 181 days ago
It was on me, that's why I stopped using Arch. I wanted a computer, a tool for getting work done, not a hobby to tinker with.
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ndsipa_pomu 181 days ago
Yeah, I stopped using it myself as I didn't really need a bleeding edge system. It's actually surprising just how reliable Arch is - I think if you want to run it in production system, you don't bother doing a system upgrade without testing it first.

I do like the Arch wiki though - probably the best source of information on Linux tools etc.

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