this post was submitted on 24 Nov 2023
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I am currently using Windows on an older HP Laptop, which I intend to replace with a Framework 16 by next summer, but my Desktop PC at home has been running EndeavourOS, my first ever Linux distro, since last summer, so I have some Arch-based experience.

As a learning experience I'd like to install raw Arch, but I'm wondering if it makes sense as a primary OS on something that should be a stable system, since I intend to use the laptop for university. I am planning on using btrfs and timeshift, so it shouldn't break too horribly, even if something goes wrong (and I don't wanna jinx it, but so far my EndeavourOS pc has been entirely fine too, so I didn't even run into such an issue yet), but depending on who you ask Arch is either the most stable distro they've ever used or bricked their pc ten seconds into the install process.

So now I'm curious on if you all think this is a stupid idea or if it should be fine. Should I try installing Arch and then for actual use replace it with another distro like Debian LTS, NixOS or something like Mint on a machine which fulfills a more critical role than my PC at home, or should I be alright rolling with Arch on my uni laptop?

As a side note, what's your take on using Arch vs EndeavourOS? It's roughly the same fundamentally, so is there any point in using Arch apart from the learning experience and being able to say "I use arch btw"? My reasoning for actually wanting to use it and not just wanting to set it up for the learning experience and then switching off to EOS or something entirely different is "I think it's neat", which is hardly a good reason long-term.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago (2 children)

If the goal is to have the most up to date bleeding edge software, but have it on a critical machine, consider immutable distro like Fedora Silverblue or OpenSuse Aeon. Especially the latter will be just days behind Arch, and if an update breaks something you just roll back and try updating again in a week.

I used Silverblue as my main work system and this saved me a few times.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

Yeahh immutable system is the way, I spent so much energy reinstalling systems that felt dirty and slow or just distro hopping. Then I tried NixOS believe me I'm not going anywhere else

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

can you rollback on boot like with NixOS? This is one feature I found really cool, but NixOS itself completely turns me off. They have several bootloader entries where you could just boot into a previous system configuration, which is not a filesystem snapshot like with grub-btrfs+pacman-boot-backup-hook or similar.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Yup, and I believe it even does it automatically if it fails to reach the desktop for a number of boots in a row.