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.
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.
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.
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.
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…
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.
I disagree because i also used Antergos for a long time and never had the breakages that some people refer to. I never had the issues with the installer either. Then i was onboard with EndeavourOS from the beginning when Antergos ceased. I also have Nvidia graphics and it is rock solid not to say there haven’t been issues with Nvidia as there sometimes are. But there are more issues that i see with Intel and Hybrid graphics. I don’t think Arch hasn’t changed that much and when it does you are aware quite quickly.
I think that’s because most of the software that we are using became more stable/mature, there are more devs around and there are more retired devs that know what they are doing
I think @dalto made an excellent point. When you are a newbie, every little issue seems bigger than it is. Also, when something breaks, you tend to remember that, but when an update goes smoothly, you forget about it. So your long-term memory is always a bit biased towards instability and breakages, so your OS at present seems more stable than it was in the past.
Maybe that’s the case but i also find i just don’t have the issues that i see a lot of people refer to and i wonder how and why. I think a lot of people make all kinds of changes to the particular desktop they are using and that’s where the issues happen. I don’t tend to do a lot of that so i don’t break things often.
Hardware is part of it and think there are other factors such as skill level and system maintenance. However, this biggest difference I have seen is expectations.
Different people have such different expectations. For one person, stability might mean that their system boots up and they can login. Another person might consider the fact that one application has one bit of functionality not working completely unacceptable.
I think the only OS that constantly broke with updates was gentoo for me. It was more of an experiment for me anyway, the whole “compile every little thing” approach got annoying rather quickly. Never had such problems with other distros. Then again, I never used and will never use Nvidia.
That is true, but I think it is unfair and unreasonable to judge the stability of an operating system based on the functionality of a specific application (assuming the bug was introduced upstream, of course).
DEs are more mature and stable than ever, Deepin aside.
AMD hardware just works now in Linux, open source kernel drivers, meaning nvidia can be avoided completely.
Arch policy still holds though, reproducible builds from unpatched source as soon as released upstream. Into testing repo first then into stable repo when deemed sound.
Wait til your first major kernel update, stuff always breaks then. Even though Arch holds new kernels back from stable until the first point release, there are always bugs and regressions, some very serious.
5.10 LTS release was a real show.
Also takes other software time to catch up when new kernels are released, Virtualbox and NVidia drivers usually have issues until patched upstream.
The kernel is now arguably too big, mono-massive-lithic, good advice is always keep an LTS kernel installed on your system, just in case a new mainline kernel itself.
Don’t get too complacent though, make sure you have a working system backup & restore process and at least one LTS kernel to boot into.
) will still have way better luck with any Linux distro, than with “professional OS” 
show.