[arch-general] Arch Linux Release Question

[Isaac Dupree]

On 04/08/10 07:21, Joe(theWordy)Philbrook wrote:
> My take on it is that while it's always a good idea to be using a
> current install medium, with Arch it only matters that your system is
> able to become current via update. The release of a new install set in
> itself should never be a reason to reinstall a working system.

Good description (although I'm willing to bet there's some little bit of 
unimportant cruft on a system originally installed several years ago, 
due to various organizational updates, in addition to you as admin 
forgetting which files you've left around in /etc...)

> All I know for sure is that while Arch takes a bit more work to get a
> running desktop system than some other distros, The idea of not having
> to start from scratch every 6 months makes it "way worth it..."

if you don't mind running old versions of software... which I do... 
there are always the distros with longer release cycles (some people 
even run Ubuntu 8.04 (Long-Term-Support release) on their desktop still. 
Although I think I'd pick Debian in that case.)

> I've learned that if I can only find the right wiki entry, there is
> usually a good comprehensive walk through of whatever I need to do to my
> system. And this way, I wind up with a better understanding of my system.

oh indeed!  Over the years, the Gentoo wiki has been a pretty good 
source of info too (whatever distro you're on), and even the Ubuntu wiki 
has some nice info for specific hardware (MacBooks at least), etc.  Arch 
has a pretty good wiki now also!

> So as long as the rolling release process turns out to be consistently
> more reliable than updating a 'buntu system to the next release {by
> editing the sources list and doing an "apt-get dist-upgrade" (2 out of 5
> such upgrades really hosed my my 'buntu installs...)}

You did it wrong, according to Ubuntu documentation.  Ubuntu (unlike 
Debian) (well, I'm not sure about ubuntu-server...) only supports the 
GUI update manager as an update path (I believe it does a few more 
things than a mere dist-upgrade, depending on the particular upgrade; 
and by not doing those things, you're asking for trouble...).  On the 
other hand, I can't vouch for the official upgrade path being terribly 
reliable (I usually reinstalled in a separate partition because there 
was no way to roll back on the same partition if the new release had 
different hardware problems that I didn't yet figure out how to solve).

-Isaac