Happy Birthday to my Arch install.
[derek@archcinnamon ~]$ stat / | grep Birth
Birth: 2020-05-01 07:55:16.000000000 -0700
[derek@archcinnamon ~]$
So, it seems so many times over the years I heard about the instability of Arch and Arch based distributions. So a year ago I set out on a goal of a complete 365 day installation of Arch Linux and treating it like I would assume an average user would. I have learned a lot about maintaining my computer in a way that non-stop distro hopping doesn’t really teach you. For a long time in my LInux career - if there was an issue - reinstall. Nuke and pave that baby and start over. It kept the computer feeling fresh, and allowed me to non-stop hop. XFCE, KDE, XFCE+i3, Cinnamon, XFCE, LXQT. . . . you get the idea. It was this non-stop “new” computer.
Approx 2018ish I found my way to Manjaro, and for the first time I finally kind of understood my computer. I never really understood APT, and I learned to LOATHE PPA’s.
Anyway. After a couple of years I was just getting decent at installing distros on my computer, but I never really felt like I was “maintaining” my computer.
So, early last year with the onset of covid and needing another project. I decided to install Arch Cinnamon, and said I will use this computer for a full year, no matter what. I used Linux Mint for years and Cinnamon is still my favorite openbox style DE. I said I’ll fix it, figure it out, break it, whatever. And to be honest. . . I didn’t. I was lazy.
There were a couple of months I didn’t even touch the computer. Recently I even purposely went 7 weeks without updating just to see what would happen and if pacman would break my install somehow. I’m sad to say after a year. . . I had no major issue what so ever. I took one timeshift snapshot during the first update of every month, and I never needed to use it. I updated sometimes weekly, sometimes monthly, and sometimes not even that often.
Anyway. With basic maintenance, timeshift, clearing the cache, removing outdated packages, clearing orphans, etc. I can safely say after a full year on the exact same install - Arch and Arch based distros are probably only unstable due to people breaking something trying to configure something else. If you’re looking for an OS to install and use, that is up to date, and you have even a vague amount of willingness to maintain your own computer - as I imagine most Arch/EOS users are - treat it nicely and it should last as long as you’re willing to let it keep rolling But I find it very difficult to believe all of the stories I read about on the net stating how unstable and dangerous Arch is for normal users. I would say it’s no more unstable than any other distro out there - GNOME updates, Fedora upgrades, hell - Windows updates. I’m very impressed with the work of this entire community, the devs here and the Arch community/devs. Thank you all!
If you distro hop like I (usually do) that may be a few days, if you just need to get work done some of you do, it could literally be years - I know a few of you, although I won’t call you out.
Are there any other “long term” users out there? I’m just over a year - Birthday of 5.1.2020
Reply with your computers birthday -
stat / | grep Birth
(I don’t endorse partial upgrade)
It seems much more trouble-free than previous Ubuntu setups, and more up-to-date than MX-Linux (which is pretty stable, too).
