I realized my VLC was broke some point in the week after updating Arch. I spend time troubleshooting then find a forum post with replies from an Arch moderator saying they knew it would happen and it’s my fault for not wanting to read through pages of changelogs. Another mod post says they won’t announce that on the RSS feed either. I thought I was doing good by following the RSS but I guess that’s not enough.
I’ve been happily using Arch for 5 years but after reading those posts I’ve decided to look for a different distro. Does anyone have recommendations for the closest I can get to Arch but with a different attitude around updating?
Gentoo, honestly.
The community is much more friendly, the system is probably more arch than arch. The downside is compiling, but big packages have binaries now, and small packages build and install just about as fast as a binary distro.
Good hunting!
This might be the answer really, Gentoo is my favorite distro in theory. In practice I’m a lazy ass that just ends up installing binary packages for everything and missing the AUR.
I’m lazy too!
Gentoo stable scratches that itch quite effectively.
Front loading though, that’ll take some work!
Thanks for the suggestion. I enjoyed how much I learned from picking out packages to get Arch working. I’m getting a similar excitement reading about Gentoo use flags. Giving it serious consideration.
The problem with Gentoo is that you can’t install anything in a hurry.
Run VMs on Arch:
Run VMs on Gentoo?
Yes, this is an extreme example, but many large packages are a bit like this.
That’s why you will tripple-check if you really need sonething before installing it on Gentoo, or you are like me and install Boxes in a Flatpak instead.
Personally i like Gentoo more than Arch because of all the buttons and knobs, and once it’s set up it does not need more time than Arch, but installing stuff is sometimes hard.
I loved Gentoo, it was the first distro I actually stuck with for more than a couple months, I used for 7 years or so.
I went to arch because something broke (probably my fault) and I needed to write a paper that was due soon, and compilation of the required software took too long, so I switched so it wouldn’t happen again. Arch was sold to me as “Gentoo with binaries”.
That being said I think you’re being unfair. I read the Arch’s wiki before installing unknown packages, mostly skimming, just like I did with Gentoo but Gentoo’s docs were somewhat superior. The docs were one of the things I missed.
Most of the time I didn’t read about the use-flags, except for big packages like Gnome. I only changed the use-flags if I knew for sure I wouldn’t use that functionality, so all the maybes and what-ifs still got compiled. TBH fiddling too much with use-flag feels like a newbie thing. On Arch there are actually more steps: I install the big multi-packages then uninstall the ones I don’t want, because those are less than the ones I want, and I don’t risk missing something.
On neither Gentoo or Arch I read the docs of the dependencies unless there’s a specific reason.
Same goes for the Kernel. Don’t disable things you don’t know about, enable all things you maybe will use and all the what-ifs. Once I knew what these were, setting this was quick and simple because they are actually just a couple options.
All that only has to do once, because once you know, even if you reinstall the OS you don’t have to investigate again unless something goes wrong because of changes.
The community of Gentoo is great! Arch’s community is okay.
With both Arch and Gentoo you have to learn about the system and make choices. With Gentoo you have to make more choices but making them and learning is easier than Arch. If OP used Gentoo this would have gone smoother.