so, i finally took the step and installed eos (kde) as a daily driver on my laptop. while i am not entirely new to “arch”, things turn out a bit different on eos in comparison to manjaro.
thus i will start with a very basic question here:
on manjaro, once a stable update was avaiable, i used to
check the forum thread
update in tty2 only, so to lower the risk of a breakage
reboot
backup with clonezilla later on
now i am a little uncertain which concept to follow with the frequent updates under eos/arch?
Check Arch linux news page for warnings about an update. It is available as an RSS feed to make it easier.
Update in TTY only
However I also use these additional tools:
I have created an alias called “update” that runs the update command and also deletes all but the three newest versions of a package in the cache automatically.
I use the automatic mirror updater available for EndeavourOS (search these forums for it, it’s great)
I also run Timeshift to take daily snapshots of my install to an external drive. Please note that you have to manually configure it to back up your home folder.
Also, you don’t have to update every day. Once a week is more than enough.
Timeshift is a backup program in the aur is also a timeshift pacman hook/extention after every update it backup the old packags automatical, if a package get issues you downgrade by your previous… its different then clonezilla, it backup the whole system is also time consuming
personal i dont update right away, also dont wait to long depend on which update i got i update… like linux kernel or systemd can for me wait a bit longer, i always keep a fresh usb beside to chroot and fix it manually…im used to it personally… but most issuesn it came i do experimenting sometimes on my own system and mess things up and i dont do backup personally…
but if you want to backup, timeshift gives a snapshot of your system that is currently working, if you use also the pacman hook, it makes a snapshot right away you dont have to do it after it…until you said you do it manually later on again
Reflector-auto is one good possibility to keep mirrors updated without user intervention.
An alternative way (but not automatic) is reflector-simple which is a GUI app around reflector. It helps you rank the best mirrors based on selecting nearest mirror countries.
The tip with the mirrorlist is to have more than a very small number of mirrors (because a mirror can temporarily fail). For example, I’d recommend having about 5 to 10 different mirrors in file /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist. Depending on your country, you may need to select some additional countries to have enough mirrors.
Well selected mirrors are essential to a great updating experience.
Updating in terminal is a good idea, since pacman is the most reliable package manager in the Arch world.
I use a 20 mirror long list with all Scandinavia + Germany + Poland in theory. Mostly it’s just German and Swedish mirrors since they’re fastest from my location (1 hour drive from Stockholm).
It is good to run it before updating, but most probably not every time. Maybe once a month for a mirror update is a reasonable frequency. But if you notice many differences in the mirror list every time you update the list, then maybe twice a month is better. On the other hand, if the mirror list is not changing at all, then mirror update can be done less frequently.
Usually the mirrors hold their position for weeks or months without issues. But that may depend quite a lot on the country and mirror, so can’t say any absolute truth here.
The reflector-auto runs weekly by default. But with reflector-auto you need to write a config file, see details at the reflector-auto wiki page.
