He has switched to Linux Mint instead
this post was submitted on 15 Apr 2025
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Thanks for the TL;DW, I can go about my Arch updates without fear now...
I mean, good for him I guess? Comparing Mint to Arch is about as pointless as comparing Mint to headless Debian.
Why
Makes some good points, mint is the closest experience you can get to windows. And one thing I think people who are getting uppity about the idea of that don't get is, if you want more mainstream adaptation of Linux, YOU. NEED. THAT.
I remember the story of a man trying to get his mom onto Linux and she broke down crying at one point because learning all the new things was stressful for her, completely turned her off of Linux.
Mint isn't for the sweaty arch-bros of the world, it's a valuable onboarding tool for the rest of us who didn't spend our childhood scripting shell commands to do random shit on our PC's in grade school. IMHO, Adapt to accessibility or get the hell out of the way.
I dunno, I use Garuda and it's an Arch distro. It's been super user friendly and I've only had to learn console stuff when I wanted to mess with stuff most casual users wouldn't be bothered with.
And maybe you would say, "well that's not really representative of a normal Arch install" but isn't that the point of different distros? That anyone can build on functionality to do something like make Arch more user friendly?
An update black screened his system and corrupted his time shift backups. So he gave Linux Mint a shot and has been using it for several weeks.
Could very well happen on Mint as well. Should switch to atomic, if that's his main concern.
Mint is a good choice because it has an easy timeshift option, so a problem in an update is just a rollback/recover. Same as Snapper Rollback on distros like OpenSUSE, it means a non savvy Linux user can reboot and have it fixed. That is appealing for a lot of users that don't want to bother with finding the fix
According to the previous comment, he had Time Shift but the files were corrupted.
Does ubuntu have this? Or does one need to install something to set this up
You can install time shift on Ubuntu, with Mint it is part of the install process iirc, and default snapshotting with OpenSUSE install
It could happen with anything, but since Mint 17.3 (2015) the only serious corruption I've experienced is during a major OS upgrade. I had far more problems with Windows.
Won't happen with atomic. If the update fails, it just automatically rolls back.
Had a backup so it was not a big deal. Only one major issue in a decade is more than reliable enough IMO.
Right, I was speaking to the situation in the OP, not yours.
I agree here. Taking the time to learn how to use a distro with atomic updates is a nice skill to have anyway. I spent a couple months learning Nixlang on NixOS and it was damn near unbreakable.
But I'd like to add: Did he not have an external drive for his irreplaceable data? Any Linux user worth their salt knows that anything could happen at any time and frequent external backups is the number one way to avoid disaster in any distro. Pair that with a repository keeping your dotfiles updated and its smooth sailing. If you lose your data at that point the world has deemed you unworthy of having it.
I know I praise Timeshift on some of my other comments, but it should be common sense that backing up your system on your system is not the greatest backup plan. Its only the first line of defense.
Can we please just ban distro war ragebait?
It's 2025 and I'm sick and tired of it. You can feel cool for using a specific distro for all I care, you are embarrassing yourself at worst. You are toxic for shitting on other distros or creating an adversarial narrative tho
Y'all are tripping, dude barely badmouthed arch at all
Maybe shouldn't have used a clickbait title then?
Just shows how many people didn't actually watch the video ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ that's on them not me
I watch a lot of his videos. But I didn't watch this one because I loathe and resent clickbait titles. I would imagine a fair number of people chose not to watch and down voted because of the clickbait title alone.
How would you title video where you talk about reasons why you've stopped using Arch?
"This goes against my distro choice and I need validation to feel superior! "
Reading the comments, it's obvious they either didn't watch the video and those that did, missed the point of what he was saying and got butthurt instead... Internet comments on a nutshell
oh, no not that guy.
Is this how the cancelculture tries to enter the Linux world? I use arch btw.
You should go see Gentoo or something if ArchLinux causes you problems.
It's my go-to rescue cum doing-backups cum new-install distribution because it's clean (meaning low cruft), minimalist, and most importantly, rolling. I run it as a console OS. I adore it.
Have I run it as my Workstation OS? Yes. Would I again? No. It was too fragile then.
Pacman is too strange to use with the options reduced to letters and having to include the double dash every time you remember the long form. Gimme dnf, Aptitude or flatpak.
My daily driver is Fedora. Is my heart in my mouth every six months when 4,000 packages all need reinstalling? Yes.
Have I tried Debian Testing&Sid as semi-rolling? Yes, fantastic, until they did something weird with systemd instead of just doing the conf locations as intended like everyone else. And the weak-dependencies lists were unfunny. Did I mention I loved aptitude?!
Have I tried, source distros (exherbo, Gentoo, funtoo)? Yes, never got any work done. I was always compiling something for that 1% corner-case performance gain.
Don't think I'll try anything else save maybe openSUSE or that NixOS. The first seriously, the second for fun - NixOS smells a tiny bit like Gentoo or ArchLinux to me (sorry, not sorry).
Personally, I think bro needs an immutable Linux OS. Fedora SilverBlue, openSUSE MicroOS, the ArchLinux one.
Then someone needs to write a timer such that when he's really concentrating hard at 2am, it stops and puts some graphical meme on the screen for three hours. Then he'll feel at home.
Because you died? I've seen no other explanation.
I use arch btw
Mint is just the GOAT, I was able to install it on family members PCs and tell them it’s windows but looks different and they had no issues doing their normal office stuff while getting better performance and security updates (looking at you windows 11)
Please, sir, do the needful