Totally agree. I think they have their place for sure - though I do get annoyed when they are touted as being “the future of distros” or an objectively better approach.

I think they are a great approach of the pros and cons line up in the direction you want (give me a decent system I don’t need to think about) and the base stack matches your preferences reasonably.

My problem with all of those systems is they, by definition, must be very opinionated as to what the base system is. A common counter argument is using various types of “layers” (with differing terminology depending on distro or technology used) but the fact that even for “just” Fedora there are so many bases to choose from shows how that is limited in practice, and slight differences in system preferences makes the “one clean base you can then build from” not as flexible as implied.

I love the idea of them, and definitely recommend them for a new user that doesn’t care what is under the hood, but as soon as you start wanting to change core pieces they start getting more and more in your way, and “rolling back to a clean base” is no longer useful.

I think Nix has the closest ideal to what I would like for myself, but I don’t like the language of its build files and the fact that the recommended way to do things is not the way the official docs describe is too off-putting, so I just run back to my Arch setup. 10 minutes of package selection and installing is more than simple enough for me if I ever need to rebuild and I get to choose exactly what stacks I am using.

I’d rather know what’s going on. Silently working around a problem is how you end up with a system no longer set up the way you think it is.

Exactly what I’ve been looking for!

The true number messed you up so much you can’t recall it any more.

That’s the point - those mismatched packages often break the system. I had to do probably near a half dozen reinstalls after Ubuntu’s “clever” trick wrecked my system. I ran a Debian system from potato through to sarge updating each time with no trouble. My Ubuntu machine had problems virtually every upgrade (though most minor) and required more than a few full reinstalls.

The update won’t break the system if you follow the update instructions (remove packages from those repositories first). The Ubuntu way does break the system (see my other comment).

I don’t think so, because it shouldn’t be an automated process. Doing that blindly is a great way to have orphaned and incompatible package versions left on your machine.

I had absolutely no problems updating Debian to 13 from 11 to 12 to 13 one after the other. I also had no problems upgrading between Debian versions when I ran it as my main driver from the Potato release up until Ubuntu came out. Conversely, when I used Ubuntu from its original Warty release to around 2012 or so I had issues on literally every single version upgrade. Most relatively minor, but more than a couple requiring full reinstalls.

I would bet money that the vast majority of those having problems upgrading Debian are on “FrankenDebian” systems. Not all, but I am confident the majority are.

It’s extremely rare. Big breaking updates are normally shown in the arch news. Usually they just require a command or two to remove a conflicting package before the update. I think there’s been a few in the last year, but on the flip side I never got a clean distro update on anything but Debian and they usually took a lot more effort to clean up.

Where it may be “unstable” is if a specific program updates (upstream) with some major change or other, whereas another distro might hold off a while.

“unstable” as in changing regularly. Not in any way to do with how reliable it is (as another comment mentioned, that’s a better way to differentiate).

I’ve had far fewer problems updating arch (once I had a clean system anyway) than I ever did trying to move through distribution updates on various other more “standard” ones.

Nah, I looked at it and it doesn’t interest me. I like arch because, contrary to popular belief, it is quite stable (as in non crashing, not package versions) if you only install exactly what you need. I had way more stability issues on the more standard distros since they had so much extra stuff. Debian for servers every day though.

Nix looks interesting in theory, but is a lot of work and too opinionated for me. Far from an expert though and have nothing against those that like it or any other distro.

These ones require crossing your eyes, whereas the other type you relax them (like looking further away).

I find the other type way easier and struggle with cross eye ones. For these images you could swap the left and right portions to get it working the other way.

I’m in the same boat as you. Loved it for what it was on my old Pentium 2 (no internet). Learner a lot and had a blast. Not a daily driver now I have time constraints and binary packages lose what made it special. Happy on Arch for personal stuff and Debian for mission critical stuff.

But that’s almost never how a system is configured. The entire point is that bash, zsh, fish etc. can make use of those utilities. You don’t need bash trying to reinvent everything. You don’t want that. That’s why changing shells is generally painless and a strength, not a weakness.

Oh yes, my moment! 2002, stage 1 off a DVD with no internet connection on a Pentium 2. Accidentally selected everything including open office, Firefox and done other stuff I don’t remember then hit emerge world. One week of compiling later it was finally ready for the next input 😂

Linux gamers say Delta Force game is ‘not part of our agenda in the future’

Very cute! Good on you for being responsible too, both for the wildlife’s sake and theirs 😊

Yeah, I’m not a fan of flatpak for my usage, but this isn’t a great argument against it.

I’d rather someone “only” release on flatpak if that’s the simplest way they can support Linux compared to no support at all.

Sshfs isn’t the same as smbfs if that’s what you’re thinking. It has nothing to do with how windows does files.