Hi all, Relatively long time Linux user (2017 to be precise), and about two 3rds of that time has been on Arch and its derivatives.
Been running Endeavour OS for at least 2.5 years now. It’s a solid distro until it’s not. I’d go for months without a single issue then an update comes out of nowhere and just ruins everything to either no return, or just causes me to chase after a fix for hours, and sometimes days. I’m kinda getting tired of this trend of sudden and uncalled for issues.
It’s like a hammer drops on you without you seeing it. I wish they were smaller issues, no, they’re always major. Most of the time I’d just reinstall, and I hate that. It’s so much work for me.
I set things the way I like them and then they’re ruined, and the hunt begins. I have been wanting to switch for a long time, and I honestly have even been looking into some of those immutable distros (that’s how much I don’t want to be fixing my system.
I’m tired, I just want to use my system to get work done). I was also told that Nobara is really good (is it? Never tried it). My only hold back — and it’s probably silly to some of you— is the AUR. I love it.
It’s the most convenient thing ever, and possibly the main reason why I have stuck with Arch and its kids. Everything is there.
So, what do y’all recommend? I was once told by some kind soul to use an immutable distro and setup “distrobox” on it if I wanted the AUR.
I’ve never tried this “distrobox” thing (I can research it, no problem). I also game here and there and would like to squeeze as much performance as I can out of my PC (all AMD, BTW, and I only play single player games).
So, I don’t know what to do. I need y’all’s suggestions, please. I’ll aggregate all of the suggestions and go through them and (hopefully) come up with something good for my sanity. Please suggest anything you think fits my situation. I don’t care, I will 100% appreciate every single suggestion and look into it.
I’m planning to take it slow on the switch, and do a lot of research before switching. Unless my system shits the bed more than now then I don’t know. I currently can’t upgrade my system, as I wouldn’t be able to log in after the update. It just fails to log in.
I had to restore a 10 days old snapshot to be able to get back into my damn desktop. I have already copied my whole home directory into another drive I have on my PC, so if shit hits the fan, I’ll at least have my data. Help a tired brother out, please <3. Thank you so much in advance.
I agree with this, the issue may be the packages installed rather than the distro. For a more reliable experience, I like to:
No, I’ve been running Endeavour forever and know his pain quite well. It’s almost always core packages that break it. None of the stuff from the AUR has ever caused issues. That being said he should be using btrfs and taking regular snapshots. Sometimes I feel like installing grub just to make recovering snapshots easier.
Twice this year I’ve had updates break the system, both were core packages. I just restore a snapshot then delay my next update for a couple days and it’s usually fixed.
That sounds like an awful system to use. I have Arch systems that date back years with unassisted updates, why does it break so much?
It’s pretty common for me at least, I went from manjaro which broke during an update, to endeavour which broke many times but by that point I clued in to btrfs and it’s snapshots. Now I have my home directory split into different hard drives and I just keep my fstab file backed up online in the event that a snapshot can’t save me. Which happened last week, rather than continue on with endeavour I tried CachyOS this time. One day I’ll install Arch the way it was meant to be, but until then…