Arch is NOT as Stable as Debian

Updates should NOT be run every day! .

[topherfungus]

Arch users aren't stable, either

[andrewr]

Your system, your rules. That's the beauty of FOSS. Learn from others, pass along what you have learned. Keep the discussion going.

[that_leaflet]

I find it so annoying when Arch users always say that it's the users fault when they break their system. Sure, users can break the system. But Arch has had its fair share of broken packages.

[todarivah]

On the very first day God said "Apt install light" and the rest is history...

[steveowens]

In other news, water is wet. 😁

I've run both. Arch is great if you want to craft your system from the ground up, really learn how to manipulate a Linux system at a low level, or play with the latest & greatest. If you're looking to just get work done or are building a server you need to rely on, then Debian is a much better choice.

[mikecantreed]

I don’t know why people in the Linux community have boners for updating their system.

[bobgrimes]

I valued stability for 10+ years running Centos 6.x on a Thinkpad T-400. I now run an Arch clone, Endeavour, on a Thinkpad W-530. I have to run it just to keep up with DTOS!

[mgjulesdev]

At the end of the day if you are on Arch, do regular backups weekly, daily and on every package update. This safety net is more than enough. Also, don't update every other day. Once a week or two is good. Heck even a month. Update when you know if something break you can at least spend 10mins rolling back 😊

[TheFrantic]

You can make Arch stable with the right procedures and practices, but Debian is naturally more stable due to how tested (ie OLD) the packages are. This does not mean that either distro is better than the other. Use the screwdriver that fits the screw.

[sesimie]

Stability = Priceless. Experimentation = Costs you Time.

[LautaroQ]

I love Michael and Peter bickering in the chat like toddler siblings in front of his dad 🤣

[VictoriaMan]

I found myself in the position twice in the last 3 months where I updated as soon as packages were available and something important broke that made it impossible to boot into kde and needed to wait a few hours for a hotfix. Now I update once a every few days out of caution.

[deultima]

Ya, I love Arch. It's like driving a sexy sports car. But, I don't want to drive that gas guzzling, speed ticket magnet that costs a fortune to maintain and repair everyday to work. Debian is like a Toyota or Honda. Stable, lasts forever, is cheap on gas, maintenance, and repairs. That's what you want to drive everyday from point A to B. Just like a sports car, Arch has its place. For example, a dedicated gaming machine, but for production... Debian for the Win!

[echologname]

Updates breaking stuff is exactly why I don't always like Windows.

[matijacizmar]

You were right about Debian beeing on top tier list:))..i am using it now and just wow, that thing is super stable and polished..i know i praised Fedora and it is good but flickering, video freezing for 2 sec tipically 3 Times on MP4 format videos..etc and you cannot timeshift btrfs ok only if you install it with ext4 file system..but if os brakes booting Fedora live dosent allow you to install backup Tool..so i run to Debian 12, i am done with newest software and constant pop ups in gnome..so far not one single error happened on Debian 12.. thats fantastic

[christopherjackson]

Arch is a nice learning platform. Its not what I'm looking for on a production system. Its more work. Plain and simple.

[motoryzen]

arch is not as stable as debian

Yeah..no shit..

In other news water is wet. 😉...

Did anyone actually believe that Arch is stable and meant for production aka business environments?

[tomspencer]

Who wants to deal with a system that doesn't boot or crashes? There are other problems in the world that have higher priority.

[michelhoude]

By definition stable means not changing, which Arch isn`t

[orbital]

Personally I do upgrade every time I turn on my laptop running Arch. If something doesn't work correctly after an update, its often not even a bug but just a change in behavior and that's not something you're avoiding by waiting to update. If anything, updating often makes it easier to debug any potential issues because its only a small handful of packages that changed. Another reason why I prefer very frequent updates on Arch is because some updates require manual intervention. It's a lot easier to miss some package saying "hey you need to do so and so now" while updating if you have pages and pages of pacman output whizzing by.

Lastly, if you're going to use arch, just use BTRFS with bootable auto-snapshots before every update (and put the kernel on the snapshot too!). You always know that you have working versions of your system to fall back to instantly. Your bootloader is a single point of failure but you can run two boot loaders or just keep a backup of your bootloader if you're worried about that.