[arch-general] People that depend on Arch, etc deserve to die? - Allan McRae - Clarifications

[Paul Gideon Dann]

On Friday 23 Dec 2011 05:32:25 Jonathan Vasquez wrote:
> I wanted to know what was he trying to say? Is he saying that Arch and
> other Arch-like distros aren't serious distros that aren't meant for
> production? I mean I understand that Arch is rolling release and all
> that, but it's packages are marked stable by their corresponding
> upstreams.

I think the point is that it can be dangerous to use ArchLinux for critical 
applications, because there are occasional breakages during updates.  That's 
simply because Arch doesn't have a development cycle including a QA phase.  
Distributions such as Debian can make certain guarantees about the stability 
of their software, because they only use older and thoroughly-tested software 
by default.

However, I believe ArchLinux is a perfectly sensible choice for critical 
production environments, so long as appropriate measures are taken.  For 
instance, there should be a failover server, or in a cluster configuration an 
Arch box should be removed from the cluster for updating, and tested before 
being reintegrated.  It's just about being sensible.

Arch is awesome for servers, though.  It's light and easy to maintain.  It's a 
lot more hands-on for more of the time than more "stable" distros, but doesn't 
have the pain of upgrades.  I think it that balances it out.

Paul