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Should I give Arch a shot?

I’ve been using Linux as my main OS for a couple of years now, first on a slightly older Dell Inspiron 15. Last year I upgraded to an Inspiron 15 7510 with i7-11800H and RTX3050. Since purchasing this laptop I’ve used Manjaro, Debian 11, Pop OS, Void Linux, Fedora Silverblue (37 & 38) and now Debian 12. I need to reinstall soon since I’ve stuffed up my NVIDIA drivers trying to install CUDA and didn’t realise that they changed the default swap size to 1GB.

I use this laptop for everything - development in C/C++, dart/flutter, nodejs and sometimes PHP. I occasionally play games on it through Proton and sometimes need to re-encode videos using Handbrake. I need some amount of reliability since I also use this for University.

I’ve previously been against trying Arch due to instability issues such as the recent GRUB thing. But I have been reading about BTRFS and snapshots which make me think I can have an up to date system and reliability (by rebooting into a snapshot). What’s everyone’s perspective on this, is there anything major I should keep an eye on?

Should also note I use GNOME, vscode, Firefox and will need MATLAB to be installed, if there is anything to do with those that is problematic on Arch?

Edit: I went with Arch thanks everyone for the advice

superkret , (edited )

I don’t understand what you did that means you have to reinstall. Most issues can be solved in system.
One thing that made me switch back from Arch to Debian Sid was third party support.
The Arch wiki is great but for some things, I read through the 30-step process with multiple links to other wiki articles and then see there’s a preconfigured installer for .Deb available…

unionagainstdhmo OP ,
@unionagainstdhmo@aussie.zone avatar

The Debian 12 installer creates only 1GB of swap by default which I believe was new behaviour from when I install Debian 11 the first time around. Apparently it’s to make it easier for server users but what a pain. Anyway the easiest way to fix that is to just reinstall, since most of my stuff lives on Nextcloud and Gitea it shouldn’t be too hard

lemmyvore ,

I still don’t understand what the problem is, but if you want more swap just get more swap. You can resize the partitions if you want but you can also just add swap as files instead of partitions.

  • Create a file of any size you want with dd.
  • Format it as swap with mkswap.
  • Mount it with swapon.
  • Add it to your /etc/fstab so it mounts automatically:

/swapfile swap defaults 0 0

superkret ,

So fixing it is literally just what you’d have to do before reinstalling anyway. Reduce your root partition from a live system, increase swap partition, re-initialize swap. Done.

Also, the Debian installer tells you how big a swap partition it creates and asks you if that is what you want twice.

unionagainstdhmo OP ,
@unionagainstdhmo@aussie.zone avatar

Are you talking about the Graphical Installer?

I’ve installed it on other machines since and it only confirms stuff for you if you decide to deviate from the defaults

superkret ,

Oh yeah, I always use the graphical expert installer. If the normal installer defaults to 1GB of swap without telling you, that’s pretty bad.
1GB swap is pointless IMO. Either make the swap space twice your RAM or don’t bother.

Still don’t know how that could fuck up drivers though. On a normal system, I don’t even use swap anymore.

dino ,

Huh? The debian wiki is horrendous compared to Arch. You are better off reading the manuals and trying to get a grip on it yourself.

superkret , (edited )

yes I know. (Besides, Debian’s official documentation isn’t the wiki, but the Debian handbook).
The point is, on Debian you don’t need the wiki. Things that are a long manual process on Arch (best example: Nextcloud) are already preconfigured or there’s a ready made solution available.

dino ,

Kind of weird example. When most new software is not even available on debian or heavily outdated due to point release model.

superkret ,

I’m talking about third party software, not what’s in the repository.
It’s usually available as .deb or .rpm and nothing else.
On Arch someone may or may not have converted it and put it in the AUR, and it may or may not be maintained.

Besides, I run Sid, which isn’t point release nor outdated.

dino ,

Oh then I misunderstood, sorry.

Holzkohlen ,

I really enjoy using Garuda Linux. Arch based, using btrfs with snapshots preconfigured. Most beginner friendly arch based distro IMHO. I even prefer it to EndeavourOS. I use the KDE lite version tho, not big on their theming. Garuda is also my favorite rolling release.

super_mario_69 , (edited )
@super_mario_69@hexbear.net avatar

I love arch and I’m incredibly biased, but here goes. I have used Arch exclusively for the past n years. All of the things you’ve mentioned will work great. The AUR absolutely rules. It’s rather similiar to Void in the sense that it’s a completely blank slate, so it’s going to be as unique an experience as you make it.

Arch is really stable and reliable as long as you don’t break it, really. Out of the handful of times I’ve fucked up my install, all of them have been my own fault. Fortunately Arch is (relatively) easy to fix: keep a live USB on hand and chroot into your physical drive with arch-chroot and unfuck whatever needs unfucking. I haven’t ever had to completely start over from scratch a single time. It’s a learning experience!

Go for it, I say. Try it in a VM beforehand if you gotta.

s20 ,

Based just on this, I’d suggest looking into OpenSuse Tumbleweed. It’s got the reliability you need for your university work, all the software you need, and is about as close to bleeding edge as you can get without cutting yourself.

If, however, you’re also looking to gain a deeper understanding of how your system works, and don’t mind (or enjoy) troubleshooting problems yourself when they crop up, Arch is excellent.

Kangie ,

I’m very biased, but try Gentoo. It’s no harder to install than arch and has some very cool package management features, like USE flags.

dino ,

In regards to your original quesiton, I would like to know why you stopped using Void linux. Because to me its very similar to Arch in many ways.

unionagainstdhmo OP ,
@unionagainstdhmo@aussie.zone avatar

I left it for Fedora Silverblue because I was interested in the immutable distro concept. Otherwise my main problems with it was the use of runit over systems, the small community when something went wrong and the lack of mainstream support. Otherwise it was a pretty good experience

thayer ,

You haven’t really identified any of your reasons for leaving the previous distros behind. Did they fall short somewhere? If it was simply to try them all out, then by all means, add a notch on your belt for Arch too. You can always install yet another distro down the road if it doesn’t pan out.

I’m a former Arch dev, and once upon a time I created its logo. I love the project, and it will always be dear to me. That said, I use Fedora Silverblue for most of my host systems now, and Arch containers for my everyday tasks.

As you likely already know, Fedora provides one of the best GNOME experiences available. I like the additional stability, flexibility, background updates, and easy rollbacks that Silverblue provides, but I can also appreciate that the flatpak and containerized workflow isn’t for everyone.

Nibodhika ,

You don’t need to reinstall to increase swap size, in fact you can just delete the swap partition entirely, add it to the root partition and create a swapfile there, that way you can quickly change the size if you want to. Get familiar with doing these sort of things, since that is the sort of thing Arch encourages to do.

Also instability does not mean what you think it means, instability on Linux means libraries get updated constantly, so if you are running external programme or developing on it sometimes things break because they haven’t been updated to that latest library version. I’m not aware of any GRUB issues recently, but in any case I use refind and I like it a lot better than GRUB anyways.

backhdlp ,
@backhdlp@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Yes (biased arch opinion)

FQQD ,

I’ve been using ubuntu based distros but now i use CachyOS and Vanilla Arch Linux, and even though I didn’t want to admit it at first, it’s a better but similar overall experience. the package manager with yay is just so much better than apt

ElRenosaurusReg ,
@ElRenosaurusReg@hexbear.net avatar

So, the big thing with instability is that with Linux “Unstable” refers to “Constantly receiving updates” rather than “Breaks all the time”

In my experience, if arch breaks, 99% of the time YOU the user did it.

If you want a kinkless experience with it, keep it simple.

Arch ships with systemd, as such, it also ships with systemd-boot. Use what’s built, don’t add additional bootloaders unless you need the functionality they offer.

Gnome, Matlab, and VScode have wiki pages for installation and configuration, and Firefox is in the repos and is one line in the terminal to install ( -S firefox)

For a first install, I’d recommend following the wiki to install instead of using archinstall to familiarize yourself with how to use and read the wiki.

comrade_pibb ,
@comrade_pibb@hexbear.net avatar

Two things that arch does really really well:

News feed

Wiki

The best documentation I’ve ever used

notTheCat ,

As a fellow developer who recently moved to Arch, it’s great, the installation process was a tiny bit frustrating (I did test it first in a VM) but after that it works as intended, I keep my eyes on the wiki though if any issues happen, nvidia driver works well with PRIME too, although I don’t use it much (I dualboot for the sake of gaming), if you feel like you need to have even MORE control over your PC than your vanilla Debian or Fedora experiences, I guess Arch is the next step, on a side note, minimal Void Linux installation is very similar to what you get with Arch so in case you used that you already have a taste of what you’re getting into, well, plus having access to the AUR :)

Oh also, I’m not sure about MATLAB, but Octave has been shipped as MATLAB compatible (although it haven’t been the case for me with some functionalities…) Maybe you’ll need a Windows VM if Octave wasn’t enough, or maybe it runs using WINE I haven’t bothered trying it

Ashiette ,

I tried using the wiki to set up nvidia but to no avail… Is there any insight you might give me ? I’m using Plasma and have a prime card (intel/nvidia)

notTheCat ,

wiki.archlinux.org/title/NVIDIA

I followed the steps in the installation section then installed nvidia-prime from Arch repos, prime-run works (I set up a custom menu entry of some apps that I want to run with the NVIDIA card) , the Vulkan demo detects and runs on the NVIDIA driver even without running with prime-run (afaik Vulkan does a good job detecting all the GPUs installed), I have the same setup as you do, Plasma with (Intel iGPU + NVIDIA dGPU)

azvasKvklenko ,

Arch is what stopped distro-hopping for me. Well, mostly. Sometimes I try some distros on separate install just out of curiosity.

If you use Linux for couple of years, there shouldn’t be too many obstacles. Just read through the Wiki carefully and you’ll be good.

As for reliability, I’d say Arch is fairly reliable for my 10+ years experience with it (apart from my-fault breakages, I remember something unexpected happening maybe 3 times in all that period), but if you want to secure your butt in mission critical situations then 1) don’t yolo upgrade your OS if there’s anything important at the moment. Find the right time for it 2) setup a snapshotting solution to have that quick rollback ability. And it’s not just about Arch, I’d say the same for every distro (maybe apart from immutable ones).

Other than that, remember to have fun!

aebletrae ,
@aebletrae@hexbear.net avatar

For someone seemingly so eager to try out new distros, I’m surprised you haven’t mentioned virtual machines. If the vibes are off, it’s a whole lot less disruptive to find out that way.

Your experience with drivers won’t be quite the same as a bare-metal installation, but checking out software shouldn’t be a problem.

CorrodedCranium ,
@CorrodedCranium@leminal.space avatar

Definitely. VMs are great for trialing distro and DE. They may not be great for demanding tasks like gaming without a fair amount of tinkering it should get you to the point where you can figure out if something is for you.

That said stability is a bit more complicated and I think a lot of that comes down to personal experience and long term community thoughts. Both are why I don’t use Manjaro anymore and the personal aspect is why I still love Fedora

luthis ,

No problems that I’m aware of. I use Gnome, Firefox, and have used vscode totally fine.

Arch is not difficult to get going.

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