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Hi there

Anonymous - 9 months ago -

Hi All,

I'm here because I'm looking for a community of tech savvy people to talk with.

For many years, I was a Linux user spending a lot of time with Arch and Ubuntu but mostly Arch. These days I use macOS most of the time (for work) but I want to get back Linux.

I'm very interested in GNU/Linux-Libre and I am very excited to see Parabola a pacman-based distro using it. I loved Arch so I'm sure I'll love Parabola too.

You'll probably see me posting questions in different places as I setup my system. It's been a few years since I setup a system like this and a lot has changed in the Linux world. But I'll do my best to RTFM, before asking a question.


Replies (6)

RE: Hi there - Anonymous - 9 months ago -

Welcome friend!

Don’t hesitate to hang around the IRC channel too if you have questions to have a more direct answer.

Good luck with the setup and happy hacking!

Hi there - bill-auger - 8 months ago -

how'd that work out for ya?

RE: Hi there - Anonymous - 7 months ago -

Honestly, I'm a bit conflicted now. I figured out everything that I need to do to install and setup the Parabola the way I want. But then I realized what I really need is a stable system. Because the only reason I'm not still using Arch today is cause the system self-destructed one day after an update.

So I looked at Hyperbola which seemed ideal until I found that they're hard-forking OpenBSD for their next release, and I really don't think they can pull it off. I've looked at OpenBSD and a few other Linux distros but it's hard to choose there's always trade-offs.

I'd really like to use a stable Libre system with a straight-forward and worry-free upgrade process. If Parabola is the same as what I've experienced with Arch then I don't think it's for me. Sorry.

RE: Hi there - bill-auger - 7 months ago -

I'd really like to use a stable Libre system with a straight-forward and worry-free upgrade process.

trisquel and dragora fit that description

RE: Hi there - antalepo - 7 months ago -

Because the only reason I'm not still using Arch today is cause the system self-destructed one day after an update.

I'm sorry to hear that. Arch is actually quite stable though. Across multiple computers, I've only had issues with Arch and its forks due to
  1. OpenRC (a dhcpcd bug only triggered when using OpenRC was introduced in an update)
  2. Parabola's key issue a while back
  3. Doing partial updates (I hadn't updated in a while, got 404s and didn't have time to do a full system update. I then forgot to update for a while and had colliding packages the next time)
  4. npm and pip colliding with pacman

The first two you won't see on regular Arch for obvious reasons. Although it is technically possible, the risk of that happening is very small and equal to that of any other distro.
The third you can avoid by not running unsupported actions. Additionally, if you update regularly, you won't find yourself in a position where this can even be a reasonable choice.
The fourth has the same mitigations as on any other distro.

Personally, I've had way more issues with apt, portage and the likes than with pacman, and most of the time the pacman ones were the easiest to resolve thanks to the community and the uniform package design across its forks. That is without even mentioning the hassle that 3rd party packages are on many other distros.

I'd recommend giving Arch with systemd another try while updating regularly (once a week should be enough) and installing the downgrade package (or an equivalent, that's just what I use) ahead of time for use if an update goes wrong.

RE: Hi there - telur - 7 months ago -

i think arch is just too fast for you, every distro eventually encounter the same problem because they mainly have same upstream packages, but others experienced it at more slowed pace.

in arch you are free to access the latest upgrades or wait until the upgrades are stable out (waiting an ICU package for example/if you force the upgrade your web browser will break). those pacman error messages might be intimidating but actually you absolutely fine if you know what are you doing.

in other distro mainly they halt this upgrade until they sure the upgrade are stabilized out then release it alltogether at certain time. halting upgrade to be stable might sounds good but the problem is you stuck with the current of time. say im depended on krita because i like drawing, but im certain there is some krita releases that so buggy and unusable and you re stuck with this package until the upgrade rools out, in debian you stick with this buggy krita that doesnt have a pencil at all - 3 years in lts (unless the maintainer are kind enough to backport the latest release, or unless the bugfix version has landed on the upgrades) while on arch you get this on the next day.

im still using my 5 years parabola installation without issues mainly because i have learned how to handle upgrade like which time is right to upgrade and if something break there always this nice downgrading technique, everything always had been considered and well documented in archwiki. but sure there is learning process and some hardships in arch not suitable for user prefer to be nice and cozy all the time.

FINNALY whatever thing you choose there is always tradeoff whatever good something it is. the right thing is to choose the tradeoff that you liking. thats what im believe :)

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