I strongly believe that the Arch Linux team has made some serious changes to their update policy

A long time back I tried Antergos. I just used it for 1 week & within that one week I faced breakage. I had to learn how to downgrade packages. I got fed up & moved to Debian.
Things are not like that anymore. I am using EndeavourOS for some months now. I update daily & still not a single breakage. I am almost 100% sure the Arch team has changed their policy about releasing updates.

Do you agree or is it my misconception ?

I would say misconception or rather bad luck on your part. Also it always depends on what software you use. Other than that, I don’t see any significant changes in how arch works in the last few years (regarding updates).

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Not really, it’s just that major DEs became more stable over the years…
Although they’re still BLOAT :laughing:

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@I0F // @keybreak
Sorry I forgot to mention one detail. When I tried Antergos I was using a Nvidia graphics card with the non free driver. Now I am using onboard Intel graphics which as you know uses the opensource driver. Do you the non free driver caused the breakage ? It was a long time ago but I still remember I had to downgrade both the kernel & the Nvidia proprietary driver multiple times.

I’m on Nvidia proprietary drivers, usually it doesn’t break as long as you update system the Arch way, read the news and don’t use some bleeding edge or AUR / custom stuff, apart from some nasty bugs on their part like some recent display port / 4k weirdness - it’s surprisingly smooth for me.

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Please don’t take this in a wrong way but I simply don’t want to do that. I will keep doing what I do that is keep updating the system everyday. If things starts breaking I will be compelled to choose a fixed release distro.

If you read this thread of mine >> Click here @Kresimir thinks its very unlikely the system will break if the user is using Intel graphics.

It’s the Arch way actually :rofl:
Maybe even…every 10 seconds :scream:

What i mean is using pacman in terminal, make full update and not partial - that kind of stuff.

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I am using the command : pacman -Syu
Am I doing it correctly ?

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I’m using Nvidia as well. My main PC has become so stable that I don’t need to visit the forum much since I don’t have any problems! I update every other day, but just to be sure I always keep a backup.
Manjaro, back when I was using it, was never this stable and I mean never.

I think it is mostly misconception.

It is much more likely that it is a variety of things, for example:

  • You may have become more familiar with Linux over that time making things that once seemed mysterious and overwhelming not as big of a deal
  • Perhaps you have easier access to support when things don’t go as planned
  • It could just be luck
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To knock on wood, I’ve never had any major breakages due to update on either Manjaro or vanilla Arch (or EndeavourOS). The only time I had to be careful with updates was when I was using proprietary Nvidia drivers from the AUR. This is because the drivers would be updated a few days after an update to the kernel, and if I updated in the meantime, I would have difficulties booting. So that was one thing to keep an eye out for, and it’s not an issue with Arch itself (well, apart from old Nvidia drivers not being in the repos).

Other than that, nothing ever breaks. There might be some new bugs introduced with new updates, but nothing major. Arch is a very, very stable OS (and so is Manjaro, or at least it was the last time I used it, which was over a year ago). I’ve had more issues updating 'buntu, especially the major releases (that would typically end up in me reinstalling the OS).

As long as you update your system the way it is intended (that is, using pacman -Syu or yay, which does the same thing), and you’re not using any drivers from the AUR, you should be fine.

Personally, I update whenever I remember to, which is almost every day. It takes a few seconds to do it.

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Another interesting point is what you mean by “A long time back”. Since this could mean anything from 3 months ago to 30 years ago. :grin:

There was certainly a point in the early days when Arch was different than it is today but that was well before the start of Antergos

That’s a relief. In that case I am never going to leave EndeavourOS. Honestly the reason I installed EndeavourOS is not only because I get the latest packages. I used to distrohop like crazy but now that phase of my life is over. I simply hate to install.

Many members are mentioning Manjaro so I want to mention that I had used Manjaro in the past. I remember I spotted a very striking difference between Manjaro & Arch (or EndeavourOS), On EndeavourOS if you run pacman -Syu on a daily basis there is a high chance that you will receive “small” amount of updates but things were different on Manjaro. I remember that I didn’t receive absolutely no updates for a week or sometimes even 2 weeks & then I had received updates of 300MB or even much more at a time.

I never installed vanilla Arch so I am talking about Antergos. The only cli based installer that I have experience with is OpenBSD.

Yes, Manjaro has its own repos. Only the “Unstable” branch of Manjaro takes packages directly from the Arch repos. Other branches have delayed updates. Here the term “unstable” is a bit misleading, it refers to the frequency of updates, not to the perceived stability of the system.

EndeavourOS is, for all practical purposes, a pure Arch system.

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In general, the term unstable is used many different ways which is one of the reasons people often disagree as it relates to stability.

A while back I wrote a post on that over here.

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In your opinion is that delay bad for security ?

I have no opinion on that. The reason I left Manjaro was because of their forum, and their ever increasing “corporate attitude”, not because of the OS, which I was quite happy with.

Now, I am happy with EndeavourOS and I have no intention of using Manjaro again.

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It is a complicated question. They often fast track certain packages like browsers and packages with serious security vulnerabilities, sometimes getting the fixes in before Arch does. Unfortunately, it isn’t always consistent so it is a mixed bag. Ultimately, it depends what priority the Manjaro team puts on the specific threat.

That being said, we might be drifting a bit too far off-topic…

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Okay. That question coz I read many posts on the Manjaro forum complaining why they are not getting the latest version of Firefox but later they addressed this issue by adopting a policy of immediate release of particular packages one of them being Firefox.

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