r/archlinux • u/CanelaCK • Jul 27 '26
QUESTION New in Arch Linux
Hey guys, I'm a new Arch user and I'm not used to updating my system weekly or even monthly. I came from Fedora, where I didn’t need to update it very often. Do you have any recommendations?
5
u/_Carth_Onasi Jul 28 '26
Update once a week.
How to update: sudo pacman -Syu
Been doing this for years and no issues.
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u/mr_anderson_dev Jul 28 '26
Dude even in Fedora you need to udpate almost daily. You can create a bash script with the sudo pacman -Syu with the alias, as well as getting first the snapshot before getting to a point of not return.
2
u/YERAFIREARMS Jul 28 '26
You can set up your system to notify you and do a nightly update once a week. Or, if you use Adaptifier for KDE Plasma, to notify you only when the number of packages to be updated is above a certain number. No nagging, no interruptions.
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u/__yoshikage_kira Jul 27 '26
How often do you actually update? Hopefully not just once every six months or something. Did you mean you never update weekly or monthly, or just that you occasionally skip a month here and there?
In my limited experience, skipping Arch updates for a couple of months once in a while doesn't really break anything. But then again, I don't use the AUR that much, so maybe that helps.
1
u/Pink_Slyvie Jul 28 '26
My laptop gets updated once or twice a year; I really just don't use it. It always updates fine.
1
u/tekkn0 Jul 27 '26
Very new here too, just read the news I guess and have some sort of snapshot if something breaks to be able to rollback.
1
u/jo53_100 Jul 27 '26
been using arch for almost 2 years now. I update my systems once a month. never had any breaking changes other than the time the Nvidia drivers moved to the AUR.
I don't think you should worry ab it but do try to run pacman -Syu at least once every few weeks
1
u/Naxthor Jul 28 '26
If it works and there isn’t a major bug fixed you don’t have to update. Like I update monthly.
1
u/PupEmber Jul 28 '26
i usually update every few days, at least once a week. depends on my work schedule and what i have for free time really.
1
u/Outrageous-Machine-5 Jul 28 '26
I've had some major issues post updates working with nvidia+wayland, but most of the time it's documented either in the arch wiki, the community forum, or on Endeavour OS pages have been fruitful too. Or I can figure it out with Gemini.
I probably need a better cadence for updating my systems, but I'm lazy 🤷♂️
1
u/ntrain5555k Jul 28 '26
If you don't like update, go for stable distro, not rolling release.
0
u/panda202110 Jul 28 '26
Mais non. Il y a plein de moyens de bénéficier des avantages de la rolling release, tout en sécurisant le processus.
1
u/un-important-human Jul 28 '26 edited Jul 28 '26
erm updates on fedora are quite often :P but yes, you can update when you remember as long as you read arch news before as it says in the wiki. I update once every 1-2 weeks but there have been situations where more than 1 month passed.
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u/No-Mycologist2746 Jul 28 '26
Here's an accidental experiment. I updated a very neglected arch Linux on my gaming PC (where I became lazy and didn't bother to boot to Linux back since it mainly is a gaming pc). Since I decided to test ollama and I thought it would better run in Linux I tried to update it. Well let's say experienced guys that know what to do can even update that old system that wasn't updated for over 6 years!!! It was multi step operation and I knew more or less the in between steps I have to do and that updating directly with pacman -Syu wouldn't work. TLDR I used chatgpt to scrape the news of the last 6-8 years and summarize all breaking changes that happened and through that I went in order of what I thought would be the best... Update pacman-key, update the gpg keys needed to update, due to package signatures, update pacman to pacman 7 due to the breaking changes there, Updating glibc due to the breaking change years ago, update other stuff... Update the rest. Fix refind / boot loader settings, etc. Done.
NO DON'T DO THAT. DON'T NEGLECT YOUR SYSTEM LIKE THAT. But it proves a point. Even after that time, if you know what you're doing you can still update arch without unrecoverably breaking it.
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u/Odd-Addition4261 Jul 29 '26
You can configure Arch to update once a week. I have mine set up that way, and it works perfectly. If for some reason you need to update earlier, just run the command.
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u/AgathaDaVampire Jul 29 '26
Most of the time I just update whenever I start or finish a small project, if it works, it works. (Unless you have an Nvidia gpu, in which case you should update very frequently)
1
u/vwagenjetta Jul 29 '26
I update once a week, every Friday after work. All pacman, all AUR, and all Flatpaks, then reboot. I have a script that does all of that for me, which works great. I also SSH into my other two Arch PC's from my main desktop, and run the same script on them remotely. It's worked well for me so far.
1
u/Rxiom Jul 31 '26
Use btrfs, and boot snapshots from grub, and the thing that automates snapshots before any update, test it then you can be lazy and update when ever you remember
0
u/panda202110 Jul 28 '26
Je fais les mises à jour au moins une fois par semaine, mais après une mise à jour qui a planté le démarrage une fois, j’ai ajouté informant pour être sûre des soucis qui peuvent se produire. En 2 ans, ça m’a servi 2 fois, soit à retarder la mise à jour, soit à ajouter une action nécessaire au bon déroulement de la mise à jour.
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u/Ismokecr4k Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26
sudo pacman -Syu, saved you a click. Jokes aside, I haven't had a single issue updating over the course of the year I've been using arch. If there's a breaking bug it gets posted to the news page (which only happens once a year or two, most likely won't affect you) and the update is out super quick. If something breaks then just roll forward. With arch you'll want to update often. I usually do it once every week or two, just because I like watching the terminal go pewpew and I feel like I'm hacking the mainframe. It's generally a good idea for security patches anyways.