Linux

😅. Alright, I'll digest it for ya.

You said: "If rolling release causes the system to implode, doesn’t that make arch more user friendly?"

Which, if I'll have to guess, is what you understand from the following sentences of mine:

• "But, did I understand you correctly, that you hint towards the curious observation that rolling distros in general are technically ‘immortal’ while point-release distros eventually implode on themselves?"
• "The inevitable implosion happens once every two years at worst."

Which, are the only two instances I used the word. And, in both instances, it is pretty clear what I meant. I even just checked this with a LLM and it agrees with me on this.

However, the question you posed (i.e. "If rolling release causes the system to implode, doesn’t that make arch more user friendly?") has many flaws within it:

• Like, if rolling release cause a system to implode (which I never said nor implied), then, because an implosion is clearly undesirable and thus not user friendly, Arch (as a rolling release distro) would also have been less user friendly (not more user friendly*).

So, what did you actually try to convey with that sentence? Did you make a mistake while formulating it? If so, what did you actually intend to say/ask?

Regarding me quoting myself; it's pretty simple. I just want to ask you if you think that a distro with the following policy can be considered user friendly. And if so, could you explain why you think that's the case? Policy:

"Note: It is imperative to keep up to date with changes in Arch Linux that require manual intervention before upgrading your system. Subscribe to the arch-announce mailing list or the recent news RSS feed. Alternatively, check the front page Arch news every time before you update."

When I quoted the text found below, I wanted to ask you why you feel pacman is better than apt beyond the claimed robustness. I agree with you that I could (and perhaps should) be more explicit.

it’s package manager is just better than apt

You didn’t lay out “fault in my logic”

I meant the following parts of my previous writings:

I'm relatively new Linux user (just over two years now), so please bear with me. But, did I understand you correctly, that you hint towards the curious observation that rolling distros in general are technically 'immortal' while point-release distros eventually implode on themselves? If so, wouldn't it be more correct to attribute this to the release model (i.e. point vs rolling) instead? Because, IIRC, this issue persists on openSUSE Leap, but doesn't on openSUSE Tumbleweed. While both utilize zypper as their package manager.

But, if you noticed, I didn't actually explicitly mention Arch's install or its unopinionatedness as its downfall; which are indeed solved by its derivatives. The problem is with updates. At least on Debian and Ubuntu LTS, packages are (mostly) frozen and thus updates are in general non-existent and thus are not able to cause issues. The inevitable implosion happens once every two years at worst. Is that bad? Sure. But does it cause any trouble within those two years? Nope. And honestly, I don't blame anyone that simply prefers to worry about updates once every two years instead of daily.

To make it easier for you:

• Is Debian (according to you) not robust because it breaks eventually?
• Do you acknowledge that this occurs beyond the Debian ecosystem?
• Do you acknowledge that this occurrence seems to be found on distros with point releases, but not on distros with rolling releases?
• Do you acknowledge that, therefore, blaming the package manager for this lack of robustness is perhaps an oversight?
• And do you acknowledge that, with openSUSE Tumbleweed (rolling release distro) and openSUSE Leap (point release distro), this is perhaps most evident. As both rely on zypper, but the former is basically 'immortal', while the latter will eventually succumb to some major release.
• Thus, do you acknowledge that, in fact, Debian's lack of robustness can not justifiably be attributed (solely) to apt. Nor, can Arch's (seemingly) superior robustness justifiably be attributed (solely) to pacman?
• And thus, do you acknowledge that, we can't continue to make the claim of pacman's robustness as the reasoning doesn't hold any truth in retrospect?

Earlier, when I said

Then, I’d argue, if you really dislike reinstalling, then Arch scores better at that. But we don’t measure how user friendly a distro is on just a single metric.

IF we both understand with your earlier statement of "pacman is so much more robust than apt" that you meant that Arch installations survive longer than Debian installs (under optimal conditions). Then, we could translate this argument to; if you dislike reinstalling, then Arch scores better. But, then I proceeded, with "But we don’t measure how user friendly a distro is on just a single metric.". I don't think this sentence needs any explanation, but I can clarify if you feel like it. The reason why I said "single metric", is because I assumed - with how you actually didn't try to rebuke anything that I said in this comment of mine - that you also agreed with my points. This might be a wrong assumption. So please feel free to correct me on this.

First of all, I'd like to apologize if I misunderstood the situation. Communication only through text can be hard. And, in retrospect, I agree with you that I should have been more careful with my writing.

Secondly, please dismiss my last two replies. Especially the first is atrocious, while the second one was written under time pressure. Something that I should have not done to my fellow human being.

Thirdly, you've had another conversation with another user under this post. And I got most of what I wanted to get out of this conversation from that one already. And, I'd have to agree that that person was a lot more punctual and eloquent when wording their views. Thus, I understand why my writings might have felt as a downgrade by comparison.

Fourthly, thank you for your time. I appreciate it. And I wish you a great day.

Fifthly, there's actually one thing that I really want to know 😅. But, I'll not bring it up, unless you allow me.

Cheers.

So you're really butthurt, eh 😂. Don't worry; I won't initiate any further contact. Consider growing up though. Cheers.

Exactly, so if you run pacman -Sy something and that something has an important dependency that has also been updated, e.g. glibc, you have now updated glibc without updating all of the packages that depend on it, causing them to stop working. E.g. pacman depends on glibc, so doing pacman -Sy something when a new glibc version was released since last you updated essentially breaks your install.

This is because Arch assumes you know what you're doing, and let's you do it. Great for power users, dangerous for people who don't know enough. All of the things I mentioned are similar things that look innocuous, but will cause you huge headaches if you don't know what you're doing. And they don't happen on other distros, because the other distros purposefully try to stop you from doing them.

Edit: BTW, the speed in which you discovered what -Sy does tells me you're far from an average noob user, for you Arch will likely be a breeze, but you need to understand that the average new user will not read manuals nor the wiki, when you recommend stuff to people wanting to migrate assume it's your grandma, you wouldn't expect her to read through technical manuals to use her system.