Arch Linux Updates Keep Breaking Packages (I've Given Up On Pacman!)

It has happened. I have become so frustrated with my rolling release distribution constantly breaking with updates. It seems like with every update, I have a program that I depend on break. There has to be a better way!!!

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[jimmyrichards]

DistroTube: “Rolling release distro’ s are the way to go, they help keep you on your toes.”

Also DistroTube: “I’m a broken man.”
😅

[em_the_bee]

Thank you for those years of unpaid beta testing, friend!

[cherubinth]

I rarely had issues with Arch Linux and they were only minor. But Ubuntu breaks deep inside sometimes from updates. I don't know why people have such different experiences with this things.

[smugtomato]

I've recently switched to fedora after I got sick of Arch randomly breaking for the nth time and so far I'm really liking it, upgrading to the next release is also very easy

[harshalp]

You can also prevent snaps from updating by issuing - snap refresh --hold. Then you can only update snaps manually.

[mtothem]

After hearing this rant. I think you should revisit nix. It allows you to have per-package depdencies, and even multiple versions of the same package. This negates any version conflicts from even happening to begin with. It also does clean installs and removals since it's isolated within it's own path by the underlying store system. So you can freely experiment without tainting the system.

[tubby]

man uses arco, it breaks, gets mad and blames arch

[rishirajsaikia]

I mean, Arch is supposed to be bleeding edge i.e. it's supposed to provide untested latest software even if it breaks the system. That's why if you want stability, you should use some other linux distributions. Moreover, rolling release doesn't mean it's unstable and untested. Fedora, Opensuse tumbleweed, Debian testing, Void, Solus and Gentoo are all stable rolling release distros and goes through testing before the packages are released in the repository. Only Arch gives the bad name for instability to the other rolling release distributions.

[johncrunk]

You have documented one aspect of packages that really just touches the surface. I use Python a lot for "scripting"; i have used Python for many years. Unfortunately, it is suffering from the very popular "update every week" mentality that breaks so many applications. After installing Ubuntu 22.04 in a VM, I tried to build a fairly simple Python app and discovered that someone decided that Python 3.10 was ready for prime time. Python itself may be ready, but there are so many libraries that are not up to the task and I couldn't get pip, venv, or pipenv to work properly. So it's back to Debian 11 for now. Keep up the good work!

[tmendoza]

I have been able to program and use mathematical software on Debian for 7 years with zero problems.
Every time I have moved to an arch based distro on my testing computer I have always had to troubleshoot issues that were not worth the time to fix

[unfa]

I don't think you can blame Arch for Kdenlive not being stable ;)

[greatestcait]

Honestly I’ve never really had much of an issue with Arch updates breaking things, but yeah, I see where you’re coming from here. I’m glad that these options exist.

[MarkusHobelsberger]

That's why I prefer Debian and Debian based systems on productive and semi-productive systems. They just work and work and work. For testing or tinkering machines Arch is fine and it's great to have the possibility to have a bleeding edge system, also for developing. Fedora seems to be developing the image of the best of both worlds at the moment, though.

[wavelengthaudio]

This is the best ad anyone could've made against using rolling releases in production environments. Thanks!!!!

[alx]

This is why you need to learn your package manager, especially for rolling distros - for the purposes of not just being able to install and remove software, but also to undo the upgrade, or hold particular versions of the software

[srikantas]

Have you tried Nix as your package manager, it works well for me and its mostly bleeding edge. You can use home manager with it to keep track of all the packages you want and version control it.

[yothebob]

I use Garuda on all my computers and they have an update function that helps avoid broken packages. They have a lot of features that make for a nice desktop distro

[ordinarryalien]

I thought I could never leave Arch and AUR. Now I love my Linux Mint.

[ecubed]

This is the exact same problem Microsoft had back in the late 90s. It was very nasty. I would think the Open Source system designers would have learned from MS' mistake. They need to find a architecture/infrastructure to address libraries updating to side break applications. Planning to swap the last machine at my house to Linux within two months. Hoping Flatpaks will address this for the critical applications I'll use.

[umopplsdn]

to be fair most the time the breaking changes aren't from the package manager itself it's the changes from the projects themselves or the dependencies they rely on