10 years on 1 Arch

Lounge Linux lounge
1

My original Arch installation turned 10 years old a few days ago.

Stagger_Lee>> date && lsb_release -d && uname -r && stat / | grep Birth 
Mon May 11 08:04:02 AM EDT 2026
Description:    Arch Linux
7.0.5-arch1-1
 Birth: 2016-05-07 08:23:25.000000000 -0400
Stagger_Lee>>
screenshot

birthArch10years
birthArch10years796×762 28.6 KB

This was the first time I ever installed Arch. I used the Arch wiki installation guide. It’s still running strong, with no problems at all through these years aside from the occasional minor bug (and usually bugs are from KDE).

I use no backup for the system (though of course I manually backup any important data). Never needed it. No btrfs, no snapshot, no rollbacks. Just me and pacman and ext4.

2

I like that … “Just me and pacman and ext4” :sweat_smile:

3

Congrats! That’s pretty cool.

4

:clinking_beer_mugs:

this-is-the-b62191aee2-1205504588
this-is-the-b62191aee2-1205504588600×533 63 KB

5

How’d you get that photo of me?

6

Blimey, that’s an impressive insttall!

7

That’s just Arch. It’s remarkably stable if one follows best practices.

8

Forward ever, rollback never! :smiling_face_with_sunglasses:

thefrog 9

i-have-my-ways-stephen-reich-3385374976

7 Likes
10

I had my ? first ? (not sure) blue screen this morning on an arch-based system. It looked like btrfs lost it’s mind, but it could be anything. This is on a server, so it’s always on (yes, I am cheeky to run arch on a server).
However, I’m glad to read of your ten year mark!

11

10 years is impressive.

I have never had an Arch system break but I have never kept any hardware running for 10 years with a consistent OS. I always either have a hardware failure or I change the use case for the machine which triggers an different install. :sweat_smile:

12

This installation is on an HDD. It used to be my daily driver, then in 2019 it was replaced with an SSD.

Since then, the HDD sits on my desk. It gets plugged in and updated every few months, and when I update it I run it for a few hours afterwards. On the yearly anniversaries I usually run it for a couple of days.

Had this been installed on an SSD it would still be residing in my main tower.

13

I wonder why i dont get some output from

─❯  stat / | grep Birth

Then I checked it’s a german system :rofl:

╰─❯  stat /
 Datei: /
 Größe: 4096            Blöcke: 8          EA Block: 4096   Verzeichnis
Gerät: 259/2    Inode: 2           Verknüpfungen: 18
Zugriff: (0755/drwxr-xr-x)  Uid: (    0/    root)   Gid: (    0/    root)
Zugriff: 2025-04-04 15:26:47.000000000 +0200
Modifiziert: 2025-11-22 22:40:49.605271143 +0100
Geändert: 2025-11-22 22:40:49.605271143 +0100
Geburt: 2025-04-04 15:26:47.000000000 +0200


╰─❯  stat / | grep Geburt
Geburt: 2025-04-04 15:26:47.000000000 +0200

Did the trick :winking_face_with_tongue:

14

You can also just run this, which doesn’t use grep for filtering:

stat /

It returns more info; Birth is the last line.

(This reply wasn’t really directed at you, swh - it’s for others who might face a language issue with grep)

15

I’m half way through on Enos.

$ awk -F “[” ‘NR==1 {print $2;}’ /var/log/pacman.log
2021-05-20T14:14:31+0200]

16

Nice! That is the way an OS should be. Install once, and just go.

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LANG=C stat / | grep Birth is the trick for a german system … :wink:
My result for my oldest running EOS-Installation:
Birth: 2019-12-22 13:26:20.000000000 +0100 which is running 24/7 since then …
The first ever EOS installation was from approx. 2019-08. I had to redo the installation last year because of a complete change (ext4 → btrfs, no longer NFS and LDAP auth, additional SSD for /home etc.).

18

Or you could just say “LANG=C” before you execute the command
it is always a good idea to do LANG=C before copy&paste comands from english tutorials.

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IMG2477

Btw congrats on the 10y milestone :partying_face:

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Congratulations ! Arch is a great distribution and has sooo many forks.

╔08:49 PM 𓀗 martin@jane->[~] (2.4Gi/7.7Gi)
╚$ date && lsb_release -d && uname -r && stat / | grep Birth
Mon May 11 08:49:36 PM MDT 2026
Description: Arch Linux
7.0.5-arch1-1
Birth: 2016-06-08 02:20:04.000000000 -0600