Ubuntu is no longer the user friendly everymanās desktop system anymore.
Agreed.
Arch is extremely user friendly, just not the installation process.
I do wonder what your definition of user friendly is. Cuz I canāt fathom how you can think that a distro that subscribes to whatās quoted below can (by any stretch of the imagination) be considered user friendly.
Which simple means that you have to check if you can update before you actually perform an update. Thatās just wild.
And you know whatās most curious about this, weāve actually solved (within Linux) issues related to updating your system. You read that correct, itās a solved problem. And I hope that youāll benefit from these advancements even if you continue to use Arch.
Btw, please donāt come to me with packages that automatically pop up in terminal to inform you about manual intervention. On my system, updates occur automatically in the background and with some black magic shenanigans (or just great engineering) it āfixesā itself without requiring any manual intervention from me. That pop-up message in terminal canāt compete with that.
I find it to be much less of a pain in the ass to use than Debian based systems.
Thatās subjective, but sure; youāre absolutely free to think that.
For one, you have the Arch User Repository, so youāre very unlikely to need to not be able to find some software you want, and more importantly, so many packages in Debian are out of date and they take forever to update them, stuff often breaks because the version needed as a dependency for something else is not in the repositories.
What do you mean with robust here? And what makes you think that pacman is much more robust than apt? Thank you in advance for clarifying/elaborating!
I get frustrated online when I see people saying āUbuntu is the most user friendly distroā or āarch is not for noobsā, this stuff was true like 10 years ago, thatās no longer the case. Ubuntu is user hostile, and there are arch derivatives that are basically arch with a graphical installer, which is the only part of using arch that is hard for people who arenāt hardcore nerds.
Honestly, I actually agree with you. Ubuntu has indeed lost all of its credibility. And Arch is absolutely not as bad as people make it out to be. But! In an environment in which Linux Mint, Zorin OS, Pop!_OS, Bazzite are mentioned; Arch simply is (by contrast) the lesser option in terms easy of use etc. So, while in absolute terms, itās definitely not as bad as peeps make it out to be. It is, compared to the earlier mentioned distros, simply less newbie friendly.
Itās not like Gentoo or Void or Alpine or Nix or running a BSD system or something advanced like that.
Thankfully, no one ever bothers to recommend these to new users š.
So, to be clear, these are clearly too advanced and thankfully people never recommend these to newer users. However, while Arch isnāt that bad and thus can be used by some newbie users, it should IMO only very very carefully be recommended to new users. If itās the kind of person that likes to learn as they go and enjoys reading documentation, then (by all means) itās absolutely fine to recommend it. But you wonāt find them that frequentlyā¦
In my 10 years around the Linux ecosystem, Iāve never seen anyone recommend Red Hat to new home desktop users.
Ubuntu has joined Red Hat. Itās a corporate server distro now.
Go look at their website. More corporate logos than a Cup series stock car. Just figuring out which version you should download so you get a ānormal desktopā is a task bigger than it should be. Back on the stupid bad old website I came across a guy who said he āinstalled Ubuntu but it didnāt come with APTā and Iām like āwtfā¦did you install Ubuntu Core, their Snap-only IoT thing?ā And he stopped responding.
Actually Iām going to accuse Fedora of doing this too. You kind of have to know āFedora WorkStationā is the Gnome version which is considered the default, āSpinsā are the versions with other DEs, and āSilverblueā is the immutable file system version.
Great observation on Ubuntu and drawing parallels to Red Hat.
Actually Iām going to accuse Fedora of doing this too. You kind of have to know āFedora WorkStationā is the Gnome version which is considered the default, āSpinsā are the versions with other DEs, and āSilverblueā is the immutable file system version.
Iām mixed on this. Itās a fact that Fedora Workstation receives the most love from Fedora. And while itās undeniable that they also put a lot of effort into all DEs that they support, none come as polished as WorkStation. One might argue that the way different installations are found on Linux Mintās website isnāt that different to what Fedora does on theirs.
In the fact that they offer several DEs with one being their flagship, and then having one or two weird other things going on, like Silverblue or LMDE? Yeah thatās similar.
The presentation is very different, with Mint being way less bullshit about it. Go to Mintās website, click Download and youāre presented with three choices, from top to bottom: Cinnamon Edition, Xfce Edition and MATE Edition, with brief descriptions of each. Cinnamon Edition is at the top and says it is the most popular/primarily developed for Linux Mint, so it heavily indicates thatās the flagship flavor. LMDE has a separate page.
If you click on āNew Featuresā you are given a list of specific features, like the stuff theyāve done to the Hypnotix internet TV viewer, or new features of Cinnamon 6.0. Everything here is factual and verifiable.
Go to Fedoraās download page and youāre presented first with a big useless graphic that says āItās your operating systemā, with choices for Workstation, Server, IoT Cloud, and CoreOS below that. The short marketing blurb says Workstation is āā¦for laptop and desktop computersā so letās click Learn More. And we get a page full of ultimately meaningless marketeering wank like āReliable, Beautiful, Leading Technologyā with very few verifiable facts at all. The word āGnomeā is not mentioned anywhere.
So itās difficult to learn that Workstation ships with Gnome from their website, and itās also not 100% intuitive to find out how to get the other DE versions, which are farther down on the page in a different looking section titled āWant more Fedora options?ā under Fedora Spins. It would be much more intuitive if the āWorkstationā button led you to a page with the Gnome Edition on top with a blurb about it being the most popular, flagship edition, with alternative choices listed below.
Similarly, people on forums casually talk about Fedora Silverblue, which is the immutable file system container-based version. Except you will find nowhere on the main downloads page that says the word āSilverblue.ā Youāll find it under Atomic Desktops. Silverblue is specifically Gnome Atomic. KDE Atomic is called Kinoite, which is a word no one will say out loud correctly. They didnāt bother coming up with wanky branding for Sway Atomic or Budgie Atomic.
Theyāre really trying to channel Apple here, with Retina displays and Airport cards and Magic mice. And Iām trying to channel Tantacrul; as Iām typing my inner voice has adopted an Irish accent, and the next thing Iām going to say is my frustration at all of this makes me want to RAM AN ATOMIC SPIKE STRAIGHT THROUGH MY FACE! Okay, dial it back a bitā¦
Fedoraās attempt at branding has made it difficult to understand what youāre getting when you click on something on their website. Thereās a lot of Fedora-only branding like āspinsā that I would get rid of, and go with something like āFedora Gnome Workstationā āFedora KDE Workstationā and then āFedora Gnome Atomicā āFedora KDE Atomicā etc. That would make it much easier and straightforward to shop.
Hahaha. Okay, yeah you laid it out brilliantly. Thank you for that! I canāt but agree with you then. I hope some Fedora employee sees this @[email protected]. Apologies for the ping*.
If youāve ever āheld broken packagesā youāll know what I mean by robust. Iāve had an entire distro upgrade break in Debian, it seems with a Debian system, eventually, youāre wiping and reinstalling because something broke. I have had this happen to every single Debian system Iāve installed since the gnome2 days.
When I talk about Debian and arch, Iām also talking of their downstream distros. So Mint would be a desktop oriented downstream distro for Debian. It inherits all the problems that come along with Debian, just as Manjaro or EndeavorOS would inherit anything that comes along with running arch. This is all in addition to any issues caused by those distros themselves.
I wouldnāt recommend any new person install arch, in fact I donāt even do it because I get tired of the installation process. Iād recommend someone install EndeavorOS, which is just arch without the installation issues. If someone wants a Debian based system, Iāll recommend Linux Mint, but if you donāt already know why you want a Debian based system, if youāre just looking for a desktop that works, Iāll recommend EndeavorOS because the underlying Arch system is just IMO better than a Debian system.
Also, I used to be a gnome2 guy, then Mate and then xfce, but these days I find xfce breaks on upgrade no matter what system itās running on, and itās incredibly bloated these days. So now I recommend KDE, I find it to be really nice, though I donāt use it (Iām nuts and so run a tiling Wayland setup) but for people looking to replace windows, just have a desktop thatās close to what theyāre used to, Iāll say EndeavorOS with KDE, or secondarily, Mint with KDE, and I think that about covers anyoneās general desktop needs.
If youāve ever āheld broken packagesā youāll know what I mean by robust. Iāve had an entire distro upgrade break in Debian, it seems with a Debian system, eventually, youāre wiping and reinstalling because something broke. I have had this happen to every single Debian system Iāve installed since the gnome2 days.
Iām relatively new Linux user (just over two years now), so please bear with me. But, did I understand you correctly, that you hint towards the curious observation that rolling distros in general are technically āimmortalā while point-release distros eventually implode on themselves? If so, wouldnāt it be more correct to attribute this to the release model (i.e. point vs rolling) instead? Because, IIRC, this issue persists on openSUSE Leap, but doesnāt on openSUSE Tumbleweed. While both utilize zypper as their package manager.
When I talk about Debian and arch, Iām also talking of their downstream distros. So Mint would be a desktop oriented downstream distro for Debian. It inherits all the problems that come along with Debian, just as Manjaro or EndeavorOS would inherit anything that comes along with running arch. This is all in addition to any issues caused by those distros themselves.
But, if you noticed, I didnāt actually explicitly mention Archās install or its unopinionatedness as its downfall; which are indeed solved by its derivatives. The problem is with updates. At least on Debian and Ubuntu LTS, packages are (mostly) frozen and thus updates are in general non-existent and thus are not able to cause issues. The inevitable implosion happens once every two years at worst. Is that bad?Sure.But does it cause any trouble within those two years?Nope. And honestly, I donāt blame anyone that simply prefers to worry about updates once every two years instead of daily.
I wouldnāt recommend any new person install arch, in fact I donāt even do it because I get tired of the installation process. Iād recommend someone install EndeavorOS, which is just arch without the installation issues. If someone wants a Debian based system, Iāll recommend Linux Mint, but if you donāt already know why you want a Debian based system, if youāre just looking for a desktop that works, Iāll recommend EndeavorOS because the underlying Arch system is just IMO better than a Debian system.
Once again, installation is not the problem. I would like to kindly remind you that I havenāt even mentioned it once in my previous comment.
OK, so Debian is not rolling release, arch is. If rolling release causes the system to implode, doesnāt that make arch more user friendly?
Iām the one thatās says the only thing unfriendly about arch is the installation. Thatās a point Iām making. And truth be told, most of what a user interacts with is the DE, installation is the only real sticking point between all these systems at this point, that and package management. Outside of installation and the package manager theyāre basically the same as far as the casual user is concerned. And for arch, once you get past the installation, itās package manager is just better than apt. And EndeavorOS does the installation for you. So itās better.
If rolling release causes the system to implode, doesnāt that make arch more user friendly?
Actually my point was that point release distro seemingly implode at some point š . But, Iāll assume that you meant point release here. Then, Iād argue, if you really dislike reinstalling, then Arch scores better at that. But we donāt measure how user friendly a distro is on just a single metric. That doesnāt make sense.
Iāll quote the main body in which my argument against Arch being user friendly has been laid out. I hope youāll respond this time:
I do wonder what your definition of user friendly is. Cuz I canāt fathom how you can think that a distro that subscribes to whatās quoted below can (by any stretch of the imagination) be considered user friendly.
āNote: It is imperative to keep up to date with changes in Arch Linux that require manual intervention before upgrading your system. Subscribe to the arch-announce mailing list or the recent news RSS feed. Alternatively, check the front page Arch news every time before you update.ā
Which simple means that you have to check if you can update before you actually perform an update. Thatās just wild.
And you know whatās most curious about this, weāve actually solved (within Linux) issues related to updating your system. You read that correct, itās a solved problem. And I hope that youāll benefit from these advancements even if you continue to use Arch.
Btw, please donāt come to me with packages that automatically pop up in terminal to inform you about manual intervention. On my system, updates occur automatically in the background and with some black magic shenanigans (or just great engineering) it āfixesā itself without requiring any manual intervention from me. That pop-up message in terminal canāt compete with that.
itās package manager is just better than apt
Earlier you called it more robust. I laid out the fault in your logic. But you didnāt care to react to itā¦ Regardless, if itās only speed that makes you think that, then please just say so.
OK Iām gettimg frustrated now, because youāre making literally no points at all, and now youāre quoting yourself. A whole lot of words saying absolutely nothing.
You didnāt lay out āfault in my logicā, you just asked me what I mean by robust. Do you have anything to actually say or do you just like the sound of your own voice?
You said: āIf rolling release causes the system to implode, doesnāt that make arch more user friendly?ā
Which, if Iāll have to guess, is what you understand from the following sentences of mine:
āBut, did I understand you correctly, that you hint towards the curious observation that rolling distros in general are technically āimmortalā while point-release distros eventually implode on themselves?ā
āThe inevitable implosion happens once every two years at worst.ā
Which, are the only two instances I used the word. And, in both instances, it is pretty clear what I meant. I even just checked this with a LLM and it agrees with me on this.
However, the question you posed (i.e. āIf rolling release causes the system to implode, doesnāt that make arch more user friendly?ā) has many flaws within it:
Like, if rolling release cause a system to implode (which I never said nor implied), then, because an implosion is clearly undesirable and thus not user friendly, Arch (as a rolling release distro) would also have been less user friendly (not more user friendly*).
So, what did you actually try to convey with that sentence? Did you make a mistake while formulating it? If so, what did you actually intend to say/ask?
Regarding me quoting myself; itās pretty simple. I just want to ask you if you think that a distro with the following policy can be considered user friendly. And if so, could you explain why you think thatās the case? Policy:
When I quoted the text found below, I wanted to ask you why you feel pacman is better than apt beyond the claimed robustness. I agree with you that I could (and perhaps should) be more explicit.
itās package manager is just better than apt
You didnāt lay out āfault in my logicā
I meant the following parts of my previous writings:
Iām relatively new Linux user (just over two years now), so please bear with me. But, did I understand you correctly, that you hint towards the curious observation that rolling distros in general are technically āimmortalā while point-release distros eventually implode on themselves? If so, wouldnāt it be more correct to attribute this to the release model (i.e. point vs rolling) instead? Because, IIRC, this issue persists on openSUSE Leap, but doesnāt on openSUSE Tumbleweed. While both utilize zypper as their package manager.
But, if you noticed, I didnāt actually explicitly mention Archās install or its unopinionatedness as its downfall; which are indeed solved by its derivatives. The problem is with updates. At least on Debian and Ubuntu LTS, packages are (mostly) frozen and thus updates are in general non-existent and thus are not able to cause issues. The inevitable implosion happens once every two years at worst. Is that bad?Sure.But does it cause any trouble within those two years?Nope. And honestly, I donāt blame anyone that simply prefers to worry about updates once every two years instead of daily.
To make it easier for you:
Is Debian (according to you) not robust because it breaks eventually?
Do you acknowledge that this occurs beyond the Debian ecosystem?
Do you acknowledge that this occurrence seems to be found on distros with point releases, but not on distros with rolling releases?
Do you acknowledge that, therefore, blaming the package manager for this lack of robustness is perhaps an oversight?
And do you acknowledge that, with openSUSE Tumbleweed (rolling release distro) and openSUSE Leap (point release distro), this is perhaps most evident. As both rely on zypper, but the former is basically āimmortalā, while the latter will eventually succumb to some major release.
Thus, do you acknowledge that, in fact, Debianās lack of robustness can not justifiably be attributed (solely) to apt. Nor, can Archās (seemingly) superior robustness justifiably be attributed (solely) to pacman?
And thus, do you acknowledge that, we canāt continue to make the claim of pacmanās robustness as the reasoning doesnāt hold any truth in retrospect?
Earlier, when I said
Then, Iād argue, if you really dislike reinstalling, then Arch scores better at that. But we donāt measure how user friendly a distro is on just a single metric.
IF we both understand with your earlier statement of āpacman is so much more robust than aptā that you meant that Arch installations survive longer than Debian installs (under optimal conditions). Then, we could translate this argument to; if you dislike reinstalling, then Arch scores better. But, then I proceeded, with āBut we donāt measure how user friendly a distro is on just a single metric.ā. I donāt think this sentence needs any explanation, but I can clarify if you feel like it. The reason why I said āsingle metricā, is because I assumed - with how you actually didnāt try to rebuke anything that I said in this comment of mine - that you also agreed with my points. This might be a wrong assumption. So please feel free to correct me on this.
First of all, Iād like to apologize if I misunderstood the situation. Communication only through text can be hard. And, in retrospect, I agree with you that I should have been more careful with my writing.
Secondly, please dismiss my last two replies. Especially the first is atrocious, while the second one was written under time pressure. Something that I should have not done to my fellow human being.
Thirdly, youāve had another conversation with another user under this post. And I got most of what I wanted to get out of this conversation from that one already. And, Iād have to agree that that person was a lot more punctual and eloquent when wording their views. Thus, I understand why my writings might have felt as a downgrade by comparison.
Fourthly, thank you for your time. I appreciate it. And I wish you a great day.
Fifthly, thereās actually one thing that I really want to know š . But, Iāll not bring it up, unless you allow me.
Agreed.
I do wonder what your definition of user friendly is. Cuz I canāt fathom how you can think that a distro that subscribes to whatās quoted below can (by any stretch of the imagination) be considered user friendly.
āNote: It is imperative to keep up to date with changes in Arch Linux that require manual intervention before upgrading your system. Subscribe to the arch-announce mailing list or the recent news RSS feed. Alternatively, check the front page Arch news every time before you update.ā
Which simple means that you have to check if you can update before you actually perform an update. Thatās just wild.
And you know whatās most curious about this, weāve actually solved (within Linux) issues related to updating your system. You read that correct, itās a solved problem. And I hope that youāll benefit from these advancements even if you continue to use Arch.
Btw, please donāt come to me with packages that automatically pop up in terminal to inform you about manual intervention. On my system, updates occur automatically in the background and with some black magic shenanigans (or just great engineering) it āfixesā itself without requiring any manual intervention from me. That pop-up message in terminal canāt compete with that.
Thatās subjective, but sure; youāre absolutely free to think that.
Distrobox exists. Moving on.
What do you mean with robust here? And what makes you think that
pacmanis much more robust thanapt? Thank you in advance for clarifying/elaborating!Honestly, I actually agree with you. Ubuntu has indeed lost all of its credibility. And Arch is absolutely not as bad as people make it out to be. But! In an environment in which Linux Mint, Zorin OS, Pop!_OS, Bazzite are mentioned; Arch simply is (by contrast) the lesser option in terms easy of use etc. So, while in absolute terms, itās definitely not as bad as peeps make it out to be. It is, compared to the earlier mentioned distros, simply less newbie friendly.
Thankfully, no one ever bothers to recommend these to new users š.
So, to be clear, these are clearly too advanced and thankfully people never recommend these to newer users. However, while Arch isnāt that bad and thus can be used by some newbie users, it should IMO only very very carefully be recommended to new users. If itās the kind of person that likes to learn as they go and enjoys reading documentation, then (by all means) itās absolutely fine to recommend it. But you wonāt find them that frequentlyā¦
In my 10 years around the Linux ecosystem, Iāve never seen anyone recommend Red Hat to new home desktop users.
Ubuntu has joined Red Hat. Itās a corporate server distro now.
Go look at their website. More corporate logos than a Cup series stock car. Just figuring out which version you should download so you get a ānormal desktopā is a task bigger than it should be. Back on the stupid bad old website I came across a guy who said he āinstalled Ubuntu but it didnāt come with APTā and Iām like āwtfā¦did you install Ubuntu Core, their Snap-only IoT thing?ā And he stopped responding.
Actually Iām going to accuse Fedora of doing this too. You kind of have to know āFedora WorkStationā is the Gnome version which is considered the default, āSpinsā are the versions with other DEs, and āSilverblueā is the immutable file system version.
Great observation on Ubuntu and drawing parallels to Red Hat.
Iām mixed on this. Itās a fact that Fedora Workstation receives the most love from Fedora. And while itās undeniable that they also put a lot of effort into all DEs that they support, none come as polished as WorkStation. One might argue that the way different installations are found on Linux Mintās website isnāt that different to what Fedora does on theirs.
In the fact that they offer several DEs with one being their flagship, and then having one or two weird other things going on, like Silverblue or LMDE? Yeah thatās similar.
The presentation is very different, with Mint being way less bullshit about it. Go to Mintās website, click Download and youāre presented with three choices, from top to bottom: Cinnamon Edition, Xfce Edition and MATE Edition, with brief descriptions of each. Cinnamon Edition is at the top and says it is the most popular/primarily developed for Linux Mint, so it heavily indicates thatās the flagship flavor. LMDE has a separate page.
If you click on āNew Featuresā you are given a list of specific features, like the stuff theyāve done to the Hypnotix internet TV viewer, or new features of Cinnamon 6.0. Everything here is factual and verifiable.
Go to Fedoraās download page and youāre presented first with a big useless graphic that says āItās your operating systemā, with choices for Workstation, Server, IoT Cloud, and CoreOS below that. The short marketing blurb says Workstation is āā¦for laptop and desktop computersā so letās click Learn More. And we get a page full of ultimately meaningless marketeering wank like āReliable, Beautiful, Leading Technologyā with very few verifiable facts at all. The word āGnomeā is not mentioned anywhere.
So itās difficult to learn that Workstation ships with Gnome from their website, and itās also not 100% intuitive to find out how to get the other DE versions, which are farther down on the page in a different looking section titled āWant more Fedora options?ā under Fedora Spins. It would be much more intuitive if the āWorkstationā button led you to a page with the Gnome Edition on top with a blurb about it being the most popular, flagship edition, with alternative choices listed below.
Similarly, people on forums casually talk about Fedora Silverblue, which is the immutable file system container-based version. Except you will find nowhere on the main downloads page that says the word āSilverblue.ā Youāll find it under Atomic Desktops. Silverblue is specifically Gnome Atomic. KDE Atomic is called Kinoite, which is a word no one will say out loud correctly. They didnāt bother coming up with wanky branding for Sway Atomic or Budgie Atomic.
Theyāre really trying to channel Apple here, with Retina displays and Airport cards and Magic mice. And Iām trying to channel Tantacrul; as Iām typing my inner voice has adopted an Irish accent, and the next thing Iām going to say is my frustration at all of this makes me want to RAM AN ATOMIC SPIKE STRAIGHT THROUGH MY FACE! Okay, dial it back a bitā¦
Fedoraās attempt at branding has made it difficult to understand what youāre getting when you click on something on their website. Thereās a lot of Fedora-only branding like āspinsā that I would get rid of, and go with something like āFedora Gnome Workstationā āFedora KDE Workstationā and then āFedora Gnome Atomicā āFedora KDE Atomicā etc. That would make it much easier and straightforward to shop.
Hahaha. Okay, yeah you laid it out brilliantly. Thank you for that! I canāt but agree with you then. I hope some Fedora employee sees this @[email protected]. Apologies for the ping*.
If youāve ever āheld broken packagesā youāll know what I mean by robust. Iāve had an entire distro upgrade break in Debian, it seems with a Debian system, eventually, youāre wiping and reinstalling because something broke. I have had this happen to every single Debian system Iāve installed since the gnome2 days.
When I talk about Debian and arch, Iām also talking of their downstream distros. So Mint would be a desktop oriented downstream distro for Debian. It inherits all the problems that come along with Debian, just as Manjaro or EndeavorOS would inherit anything that comes along with running arch. This is all in addition to any issues caused by those distros themselves.
I wouldnāt recommend any new person install arch, in fact I donāt even do it because I get tired of the installation process. Iād recommend someone install EndeavorOS, which is just arch without the installation issues. If someone wants a Debian based system, Iāll recommend Linux Mint, but if you donāt already know why you want a Debian based system, if youāre just looking for a desktop that works, Iāll recommend EndeavorOS because the underlying Arch system is just IMO better than a Debian system.
Also, I used to be a gnome2 guy, then Mate and then xfce, but these days I find xfce breaks on upgrade no matter what system itās running on, and itās incredibly bloated these days. So now I recommend KDE, I find it to be really nice, though I donāt use it (Iām nuts and so run a tiling Wayland setup) but for people looking to replace windows, just have a desktop thatās close to what theyāre used to, Iāll say EndeavorOS with KDE, or secondarily, Mint with KDE, and I think that about covers anyoneās general desktop needs.
Thank you for your reply!
Iām relatively new Linux user (just over two years now), so please bear with me. But, did I understand you correctly, that you hint towards the curious observation that rolling distros in general are technically āimmortalā while point-release distros eventually implode on themselves? If so, wouldnāt it be more correct to attribute this to the release model (i.e. point vs rolling) instead? Because, IIRC, this issue persists on openSUSE Leap, but doesnāt on openSUSE Tumbleweed. While both utilize
zypperas their package manager.But, if you noticed, I didnāt actually explicitly mention Archās install or its unopinionatedness as its downfall; which are indeed solved by its derivatives. The problem is with updates. At least on Debian and Ubuntu LTS, packages are (mostly) frozen and thus updates are in general non-existent and thus are not able to cause issues. The inevitable implosion happens once every two years at worst. Is that bad? Sure. But does it cause any trouble within those two years? Nope. And honestly, I donāt blame anyone that simply prefers to worry about updates once every two years instead of daily.
Once again, installation is not the problem. I would like to kindly remind you that I havenāt even mentioned it once in my previous comment.
OK, so Debian is not rolling release, arch is. If rolling release causes the system to implode, doesnāt that make arch more user friendly?
Iām the one thatās says the only thing unfriendly about arch is the installation. Thatās a point Iām making. And truth be told, most of what a user interacts with is the DE, installation is the only real sticking point between all these systems at this point, that and package management. Outside of installation and the package manager theyāre basically the same as far as the casual user is concerned. And for arch, once you get past the installation, itās package manager is just better than apt. And EndeavorOS does the installation for you. So itās better.
Actually my point was that point release distro seemingly implode at some point š . But, Iāll assume that you meant point release here. Then, Iād argue, if you really dislike reinstalling, then Arch scores better at that. But we donāt measure how user friendly a distro is on just a single metric. That doesnāt make sense.
Iāll quote the main body in which my argument against Arch being user friendly has been laid out. I hope youāll respond this time:
Earlier you called it more robust. I laid out the fault in your logic. But you didnāt care to react to itā¦ Regardless, if itās only speed that makes you think that, then please just say so.
OK Iām gettimg frustrated now, because youāre making literally no points at all, and now youāre quoting yourself. A whole lot of words saying absolutely nothing.
You didnāt lay out āfault in my logicā, you just asked me what I mean by robust. Do you have anything to actually say or do you just like the sound of your own voice?
š . Alright, Iāll digest it for ya.
You said: āIf rolling release causes the system to implode, doesnāt that make arch more user friendly?ā
Which, if Iāll have to guess, is what you understand from the following sentences of mine:
Which, are the only two instances I used the word. And, in both instances, it is pretty clear what I meant. I even just checked this with a LLM and it agrees with me on this.
However, the question you posed (i.e. āIf rolling release causes the system to implode, doesnāt that make arch more user friendly?ā) has many flaws within it:
So, what did you actually try to convey with that sentence? Did you make a mistake while formulating it? If so, what did you actually intend to say/ask?
Regarding me quoting myself; itās pretty simple. I just want to ask you if you think that a distro with the following policy can be considered user friendly. And if so, could you explain why you think thatās the case? Policy:
āNote: It is imperative to keep up to date with changes in Arch Linux that require manual intervention before upgrading your system. Subscribe to the arch-announce mailing list or the recent news RSS feed. Alternatively, check the front page Arch news every time before you update.ā
When I quoted the text found below, I wanted to ask you why you feel
pacmanis better thanaptbeyond the claimed robustness. I agree with you that I could (and perhaps should) be more explicit.I meant the following parts of my previous writings:
To make it easier for you:
zypper, but the former is basically āimmortalā, while the latter will eventually succumb to some major release.apt. Nor, can Archās (seemingly) superior robustness justifiably be attributed (solely) topacman?pacmanās robustness as the reasoning doesnāt hold any truth in retrospect?Earlier, when I said
IF we both understand with your earlier statement of āpacman is so much more robust than aptā that you meant that Arch installations survive longer than Debian installs (under optimal conditions). Then, we could translate this argument to; if you dislike reinstalling, then Arch scores better. But, then I proceeded, with āBut we donāt measure how user friendly a distro is on just a single metric.ā. I donāt think this sentence needs any explanation, but I can clarify if you feel like it. The reason why I said āsingle metricā, is because I assumed - with how you actually didnāt try to rebuke anything that I said in this comment of mine - that you also agreed with my points. This might be a wrong assumption. So please feel free to correct me on this.
First of all, Iād like to apologize if I misunderstood the situation. Communication only through text can be hard. And, in retrospect, I agree with you that I should have been more careful with my writing.
Secondly, please dismiss my last two replies. Especially the first is atrocious, while the second one was written under time pressure. Something that I should have not done to my fellow human being.
Thirdly, youāve had another conversation with another user under this post. And I got most of what I wanted to get out of this conversation from that one already. And, Iād have to agree that that person was a lot more punctual and eloquent when wording their views. Thus, I understand why my writings might have felt as a downgrade by comparison.
Fourthly, thank you for your time. I appreciate it. And I wish you a great day.
Fifthly, thereās actually one thing that I really want to know š . But, Iāll not bring it up, unless you allow me.
Cheers.
So youāre really butthurt, eh š. Donāt worry; I wonāt initiate any further contact. Consider growing up though. Cheers.