I learned linux by using Arch back in the days when pacman -Syu was almost certain to break something and there was a good chance it would break something unique to your install. This was also back in the days when most were not connected to the internet 24/7 and many did not have internet, I updated when I went to the library which was generally a weekly thing but sometimes it be a month or two and the system breakage that resulted was rococo. Something was lost by Arch becoming stable and not breaking regularly, it was what drove the wiki and fixing all the things that pacman broke taught you a great deal and taught you quickly. Stability is not all that it is cracked up to be, has its uses but is not the solution to everything.

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keysersoze33 an hour ago | parent | next [-]

I've contributed 32 edits (1 new page) in the past 10 years, so despite being stable, there are still many things to add and fix!

Sadly, the edit volume will likely drop as LLMs are now the preferred source for technical Linux info/everything...

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resonious 33 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

At the same time, I suspect resources like the Arch Wiki are largely responsible for how good AI is at fixing this kind of stuff. So I'm hoping that somehow people realize this and can continue contributing good human-written content (in general).

	▲	overfeed 5 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> So I'm hoping that somehow people realize this and can continue contributing good human-written content (in general). AI walled-gardens break the feedback loop: authors seeing view-counts and seeing "[Solved] thank you!" messages helps morale.

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fragmede 38 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

Depends on how AI-pilled you are. I set Claude loose on my terminal and just have it fix shit for me. My python versions got all tuckered and it did it instead of me having to fuck around with that noise.

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doubled112 38 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Arch becoming stable and not breaking regularly

I believe this to be the entire ecosystem, not just Arch. It's been a long while since something like moving to 64bit happened. Or swapping out init systems.

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binsquare an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This brings back memories, same here!

I even bookmarked a page to remember how to rebuild the kernel because I can always expect it breaking.

	▲	ofalkaed 24 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I didn't really get into custom kernels until I started using Crux. A few years after I started using Arch I got sick of the rolling release and Arch's constant breakages, so I started looking into the alternatives, that brought me to Crux (which Arch was based off of) and Slackware (which was philosophically the opposite of Arch without sacrificing the base understanding of the OS). Crux would have probably won out over Slackware if it were not for the switch to 64bit, when confronted with having to recompile everything, I went with the path of least resistance. Crux is what taught me to compile a kernel, in my Arch days I was lucky when it came to hardware and only had to change a few things in the config which the Arch wiki guided me through. Crux is a great distro for anyone ok with a source distro and I think it might be the best source distro, unlike the more common source distros, it does not do most of the work for you. Also love its influence from BSD, which came in very handy when I started to explore the BSDs and FreeBSD which is my fallback for when Patrick dies or steps back, Crux deserves more attention.

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2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[deleted]

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kalterdev an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

I have started using Arch in 2016 and it was stable back then. Are you describing an earlier era?

	▲	charleslmunger an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Not OP, but used Arch for a while in 2011, and at some point doing an update moved /bin to /usr/bin or something like that and gave me an unbootable system. This was massive inconvenience and it took me many hours to un-hose that system, and I switched to Ubuntu. The Ubuntu became terrible with snaps and other user hostile software, so I switched to PopOS, then I got frustrated with out of date software and Cosmic being incomplete, and am now on Arch with KDE. Back then I used Arch because I thought it would be cool and it's what Linux wizards use. Now Arch has gotten older, I've gotten older, and now I'm using Arch again because I've become (more of a) Linux wizard.
	▲	Semaphor an hour ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		> This was also back in the days when most were not connected to the internet 24/7 and many did not have internet That does sound significantly longer ago then 2016 ;)
	▲	ofalkaed an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		This would be back in the 00s. I would guess that Arch got stable around 2010? I was using Slackware as my primary system by then so don't know exactly when it happened, someone else can probably fill in the details. I started using Arch when it was quite new, within the first year or two.