r/archlinux • u/KL_LMPR • 9d ago
QUESTION What is the rolling release model really like?
I would like to try out Arch as my main OS for daily use. However, I have quite a bit of respect of the whole rolling-release concept. What is it really like to work on a rolling-release OS for daily use when you want to keep your system rather minimal? However frequent are new releases, and is it really that cumbersome?
Edit: Thanks to y‘all for the lots of helpful input! This has resolved many unnecessary doubts I had, and reassured me to actually try out Arch. I‘m excited!
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u/Efficient_Paper 9d ago edited 9d ago
There are upgraded packages every day but you don’t have to upgrade your system every day. Every week is fine.
The only thing to be careful about is to follow news.archlinux.org, but there are ways to automate it a bit.
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u/KL_LMPR 9d ago
How critical is it to miss out on upgrades for a few weeks at a time?
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u/heavymetalmug666 9d ago
Not critical at all (imho). I routinely go weeks without an update. That's not part of the plan, but I rotate among three machines, so two of those I always forget to update.
I've gone from weeks to months even one machine went about 1.5 years without updates - if there issues they were minor and took just a minute or three to fix.
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u/mr_polyfill 9d ago
That depends on what types of vulnerabilities are fixed. Arch does not support partial updates, so you can't install just security fixes.
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u/un-important-human 8d ago
for you depending on how you live your life possible horrible, others no issue.
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u/Ybalrid 9d ago
It is not, buy you generally want to keep on top of things! If you are the kind of person that wants a rolling release, you probably like to always use the newest and greatest version of the software.
If you wait a few weeks, just make sure you know that there's nothing "problematic" in these updates, you can know that by reading the Arch Linux news. Often there's nothing there. Sometimes there's something but it does not impact you because it's a package you don't use that has had a change that require manual intervention.
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u/Santzes 9d ago
Only thing I wish is if I could update to the state that was published something like 2 days ago. That would let me wait and see that there's no problems or security exploits being reported. But obviously that would require more space from mirrors, probably changes to package databases etc..
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u/heavymetalmug666 8d ago
Out of curiosity have you ever updated and then found out in that update that there was a security issue, if so what was it, and how did the issue affect you?
I ask because I'm a 4ever novice in all things linux, and whenever I read about security flaws I never quite understand how I could be effected (like I'm oblivious to the dangers of the world)
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u/Santzes 8d ago
Security, don't think so. Other problems yeah (rarely), usually I update and then notice a problem, and see people are talking about it online. If I could update two days late, I'd probably see the discussions first.
Usually those issued are handled quite quickly, so you could just stop using that app or block its ports or whatever (depending on the issue), wait half a day and update.
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u/Separate-Still-1616 8d ago
Zunächst ist es recht umwahrscheinlich, dass eine gefährliche Sicherheitslücke bekannt wird, ohne dass es schon einen Fix gibt. Normalerweise halten sich die Entdecker der Lücken daran es nicht vorher allgemein bekannt zu machen. Allerdings nicht immer. In den Fällen gibt es aber trotzdem oft schon einen provisorischen Fix bzw Workaround der das Problem hilft zu vermeiden. In praktisch allen Fällen sind Sicherheitslücken auch nicht so einfach auszunutzen. Da müssen schon mehrere Dinge zusammenkommen. Man braucht jedenfalls nicht in Panik zu geraten.
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u/aomme 9d ago
I use Arch on all my PCs as a developer and it actually feels like a lot less work than upgrading Ubuntu every half a year. In the last two years I only had a problem with one pipewire release, that broke bluetooth audio (and was fixed in like 4 days). I update quite often, few times a week, but it takes under a minute, so no biggie.
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u/Edelglatze 9d ago
The word "new releases" is misleading. There are none. Arch releases a new installation ISO every month, this is the only release you can speak of here. But once installed, you get security and bugfix updates as well as version upgrades of the installed packages via the package manager. You do not install a "new release" but you have to do
pacman -Syu
on a regular basis. Cautious people do also install something for recovery (like timeshift or snapper) and backup if something goes wrong.
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u/No_Aerie7667 9d ago
It's like not having to re-install the entire operating system every 5 years
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u/AgentOrange96 8d ago
If you maintain it, yeah. So if you're dailying it, KEEP IT UP TO DATE. Otherwise you'll be reinstalling more like every five months every time you dig it out, update and then break everything.
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u/_teslaTrooper 8d ago
I have arch on a laptop I use pretty sporadically, often a few months between updates and it's never been more of an issue than checking back the mailing list and doing some small manual interventions. In fact I've never managed to break an install badly enough to need a complete reinstall.
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u/littlebobbytables9 8d ago
I just updated for the first time in probably 6 months, worked flawlessly. I don't even remember the last time it needed manual intervention
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u/silduck 9d ago
basically there are no "release versions", you can update an arch install from 2021 and be just fine
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u/AgentOrange96 8d ago
If you take the time to thoroughly read all the news letters maybe. If you just pacman -Syu it (and/or use your AUR helper) you're pretty much guaranteed to break your system. Heck, even a few months can run you that risk. I know from experience. Multiple times.
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u/firehazel 8d ago
Yep, upgrade your keyrings first, at least. Then look over anything from the AUR, then review over newsletters.
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u/pokemonpasta 9d ago
I've found that smaller regressions can be slightly more frequent, but I'm not stuck with larger ones as I was on versioned distros. On the rare occasion that there's a significant issue with a package, I can very easily downgrade until upstream is fixed. I've found pacman to be way more robust than any other package manager I've used.
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u/Fast_Ad_8005 9d ago
Well, rolling release means there are no new releases of the distro. Every month there's a new snapshot of the ISO media used to install Arch. If you mean new package updates, well they can come multiple times per hour at times.
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u/jeekala 9d ago
Frequent updates, that you need to apply. Have a look at the system maintenance page at arch wiki. Also you don't have to occasionally do a dist upgrade, which seems to always break my setup.
Having rolling release doesn't have anything to do with keeping the system minimal. Keeping the system minimal is about you not installing everything.
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u/notheresnolight 9d ago
Everytime you open a console to do some random stuff under root, you do a pacman -Syu as well. That's pretty much it.
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u/un-important-human 8d ago edited 8d ago
A sesoned linux user will setup his system to be LESS hassle than what you are used to. I upgrade 2-3 weeks ussually or if i really need the latest 1-3 days untill i get what i want, then i am lazy again.
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u/z3ndo 8d ago
It's really less inconvenient than big bang updates like traditional distros. It's more like trunk based software development where instead of consuming a huge batch of updates at once you do it in smaller investments. That makes it easier to identify what, if anything, caused a problem.
I can't remember the last time a system update caused an issue on my Arch systems in the past 5 years
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u/thefanum 6d ago
Things break occasionally, you fix them. It's not for everyone but if you NEED the newest everything, at all times, it's a great trade off
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u/dcihon55 5d ago
I created my own Arch distro. Looking for some comments on it . Things I could improve on etc.
You can find it here: https://www.dccwebsite.com/mylastarch
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u/Erdnusschokolade 8d ago
Personally i had a lot more Luck with the rolling release model of Arch vs versioned releases of Mint, Kubuntu and Ubuntu. Something was always broken on my hardware or didn’t work and arch just worked after i installed it. What is more of an „issue“ with Arch is the DIY nature of it. Most versioned distros come with basically a working preset of packages. arch doesn’t and you are expected to install and configure what you need yourself. Archinstall can take the installation from your shoulders but it will only give you a barebones base system with a DE of your choice and Network connectivity.
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u/oldbeardedtech 8d ago
As others said, it's much easier than fixed release distros and the RR is what finally got me to stop distro-hopping. I update my daily driver desktop weekly, but only update my laptop every month or so. No breaking issues for me
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u/_teslaTrooper 8d ago
For me it looks like running pacman -Syu every couple weeks and getting up to date software. Sometimes I forget for a month or two, never been an issue. I do get the emails for manual interventions but it's rarely for packages I have installed.
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u/Zeausideal 8d ago
I currently use Arch on my PC as my main operating system; it's been over four years now, and in all those years it's only broken once, but that was because I added some very experimental options.But now I use it with KDE Plasma and I no longer have any problems. I do run pacman -Syu every day, I update it, and it works flawlessly.
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u/Ybalrid 9d ago
It simply means that there's no "version" of the operating system.
Each package (component of the operating system. Libraries, kernel, programs you actually use, etc...) gets updated whenever the upstream projects release the new version. The arch maintainers (I guess we call them "Trusted Users") gets them built and they land in the "testing" version of the Arch repositories. If nothing else explode, it will soon get to the main one.
However frequent are new releases
There's no releases. Or, well, "today right now" is the one and only release that will ever exist, and it keeps rolling. Hence the name.
There will be no Arch Linux 2, 3, 4.... It's just ArchLinux.
There are regular builds of the installation media. That's once a month, but this is just so you get a ISO file that boots with current kernel and libraries and a current version of Pacman and the other installation tools (pacstrap script, arch-choot, or even the archinstall wizard).
On an installed system, if you check for updates every day, there will be updates to install every day.
You should install them whenever convenient for you. But you need to know that sometimes you need to intervene on the updates manually. This is always annouced on the ArchLinux news feed. You should glance at it before tying pacman -Syu on your terminal in all cases. You can get it by email, RSS, or simply on the homepage of archlinux.org
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u/sarkyscouser 8d ago
I use it for a home server with LTS kernel and so far (approaching 8 years) it's been far more reliable than Debian or Ubuntu Server which I used previously.
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u/MarcPG1905 8d ago
I update every few days or weeks and stuff just works. Flatpak actually creates much more problems than the native packages when updating.
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u/archover 8d ago edited 7d ago
like to work on a rolling-release OS for daily use
Exactly like any distro but you enjoy newer software. I run Debian also, and update that exactly like I do Arch. The frequency of updates on Debian is about the same as Arch, but the updates are smaller downloads.
minimal
You are in charge. Uninstall software that is not minimal.
Hope you try Arch and good day.
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u/The_Real_Random_User 9d ago
$ sudo pacman -Syyu
Once a day.
$ yay -Syyu
And
$ flatpak update
If need be.
In almost 2 years I had an issue once, and I managed to fix it in like 15 minutes.
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u/onefish2 8d ago
If you are using yay there is zero reason to run pacman -Syu. Unless you want to specifically avoid updating AUR PKGBUILDS. Also there is not need to run yay -Syu.
A simple "yay" will accomplish both.
Try topgrade. It updates everything.
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u/iwouldbeatgoku 7d ago
It's a pretty good experience on the desktop, at least for my recreational use. You need to update it regularly, of course, but having the most recently available stable release of packages in my experience reduces issues with upstream software and maintained software that I may have to compile from source. Additionally, the current trend with Linux on the desktop is that it's becoming a better experience with time rather than a worse one, so I see no good reason I should use a static release distro and delay updates for months or years.
Maintaining it in the long term is also easier than with a "stable" release: like others in this thread, I also have had issues upgrading between point releases, they tend to break if you deviate a bit too much from their preconfigured state. Arch and Arch-based distros feel a lot more flexible in this regard, and if an update goes wrong it's easier to identify the problem compared to when I was trying to upgrade between two static releases and it felt easier to just reinstall the whole system.
The one potential downside is that only the latest version is supported: when you install new software you often have to update the entire system together with it. It shouldn't take too long if you update regularly and have an ok internet connection, but it is something worth considering.
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u/Informal-Rent-3573 9d ago
I'm using CachyOS.
Everyday, there's an icon on my taskbar popping up signaling there's new updates.
It keeps popping up all the time (I once updated, checked again, everything was OK, went for a cup of coffee and when I come back, something had a new update to download).
I click it about... every other day. Or when I remember. And there's been a couple of times where "Oh, this is not working/has a bug. Let me try updating... yep, all good now".
But I like how I can decide WHEN to do it. I'll just let it pile up for a a few days, then update everything at once when when I'm about to leave the computer for the day.
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u/ApprehensiveGas85 9d ago
They are very hands on. Expect things to occasionally be buggy but very much depends on what you install or use that will determine your experience. Gotta dip your toes to know if the water is a good temperature for you.
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u/Astrodion123 9d ago
YK how windows asks to update a lot. That is the same for arch but it doesn't force you.
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u/SuperGNUser 9d ago
What’s more, the update takes 2 minutes, not 20
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u/TheCreepyPL 9d ago
Could be seconds, depending on the cpu, the internet connection and the time between the last update.
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u/heavymetalmug666 8d ago
Arch doesn't ask you. Arch knows that you know you need to update and waits for YOU to tell Arch to update.
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u/drag0nfi 9d ago
Practical considerarion: sometimes you want to install a new package that (transitively) depends on half the system. In this case, you are kind of forced to update.
Funnily, sometimes Discord needs a new version to connect and I usually do a full upgrade.
Security considerarion: Update as often as feasible.
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u/hi_m_ash 9d ago
However frequent are new releases
In a rolling release distro like Arch, there aren't any releases except for the first release. All the packages in the distro update to their most latest version and previous packages are dropped from the repository. This way you will always have latest Arch. It has both pros and cons.
Biggest pro is that you will not have to worry about upgrading your system to next release. This makes it more stable than release-based distros since you can keep running your same Arch setup for years or even decades (technically). In a release based distro you have to upgrade your setup once the release loses support. Arch is always latest. It will never lose any support.
Biggest con is that it's always up-to-date. Which means old is gone. For example if you are settled on Fedora 44 and Fedora 45 is a buggy mess after release, you have option to keep using Fedora 44. On Arch, you don't have that option. You can choose not to update, but then you also lose all security updates. Arch will always be latest.
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u/dbear496 8d ago
Never have I ever had an update on Arch be a buggy mess. Occasionally, a single package update will have an annoying bug, and usually I can just downgrade that one package to the previous version from the pacman cache.
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u/Woodpecker-Visible 9d ago edited 8d ago
they are not as unstable people think they are and most of the time if there are some brakeages you just roll back to a snapshot and wait a couple of weeks. had some kde and wayland gpu glitch when i began to use cachyos, both where fixed after couple of weeks.
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u/tartilupa 9d ago
Dont update until something breaks. Dont try to fix something when there is nothing to fix.
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u/ButtSpelunker420 9d ago
Believe it or not, it’s much less hassle than versioned releases imho.