How to Make Arch Linux Stable and What NOT to Do!

You never disappoint me. In 2023 this may still be one of the most important video that every noob should watch. I've installed Garuda KDE Dragonized 2 days ago and it's the first time I've got Linux on my main machine. I know nothing about it and I was about to make all the possible mistakes that you've mentioned.
I want to start learning the shit but I was almost sure that I'm gonna break it if I will do it as they say on the Arch and Garuda forums. It's just a waste of time learning things by simply following the wiki. And all the GUI tools, like in Garuda are not making it easier at all if you really want to learn anything. They just give you an illusion of control and make you lazy. I know nothing about command line but now I get your point: you just need to know it... and it's ironic that spending two days with the Garuda GUIs, which can theoretically handle most of the crap, made me understand this.
PS. Meanwhile I managed to break Debian. The Arch is alive for now. 😆

What about glibc? I was told in lfs to never update the toolchain. Uou beed to do a reinstall.
?

about holding down the kernel - isn't that dangerous? I heard that, on Arch, you should only ever do a full system update, and that partial updates can cause the system to break.

Gracias 👍🏻

From personal experience I've gotta say timeshift has saved me so many times its a must for any linux distro!

I put my DATA on a separate drive so I can use it with ANY distro without worrying about the bullshit of losing data if I don't do something right. GREAT VIDEO- and thanks for the tips-- NO ONE needs all the CRAP arch aholes think they need-- they're flipping FOOLS.. most of them are aholes too.. ask one for help and theythink they are GOD and we're the devil... and if I ever have an arch user talk to me IN PERSOn like they do online-- I'll KICK THEIR SORRY ASSES up between their shoulders so hard they'll have to take their pants off to EAT!.

IT IS NOT as good as other things-- it's just NOT... and if I wanted to be a DAMN PROGRAMMER-- I'd have gone to school for that-- that is what guis were made for- so we DON"T have to remember all that unrelated key crap and BUILD our software.. bunch of dumbasses use that thinking they're special- and they're NOT. AND that CRAP of updating every 5 minutes is BULLSHIT-- upgrading and new releases is USELESS too.. onece every 3- 4 years would be PLENTY--

i will keep using mint old man

debian kinda be not stable my mate

There is one more rule that no one mention yet: don't use alternative package manager as root to manage packages!

As alternative package managers I don't mean yay or others, but language package dependency managers, like pip for python and there are many others with I will post a list bellow.
When you install package(s) by them as root or with admin rights, you will have conflict of packages when update system by pacman or yay and system won't update with error: "package exist in system" (or something like that).
Then you won't be able to update until you clean that situation with packages.
So, manage packages with one package manager - pacman or pacman based wrapper.

Here is a list (maybe incomplete) of language package dependency managers:
python -> pip
perl -> cpan
php -> composer
javascript -> npm, apm
.NET -> nuget
D -> dub
go -> gx, gx-go
nim -> nimble
OCaml -> opam, ocaml-findlib
crystal -> shards
...

If you need to install package(s) by any of above, don't do it as root, but as ordinary user!

ubuntu: ran out with broken packages that had unmet dependencies

Sort of a joke here.

Basically you are saying arch is stable as long as you don't install anything lol.

First the frequency of updating a system should not affect stability. The only case where this would make a difference would be if updates break the system which would then be the fault of the package maintainer and not the end user.

Second having a backup does not make arch or any other os stable. It just means you can recover your data when the system fails.

Ditto with your kernel advice. I agree you should always ha e at least 1 known good kernel to boot but having a known good kernel does not make a system more stable it only helps if there is a kernel bug, which would be rare, and again the problem would generally be with the package maintainer not the end user.

So funny how arch fanbois tout how the biggest advantage of Arch is that the packages are new and then in order to maintain a stable system you advised not to install such packages.

The truth of the matter is arch is on the bleeding edge of new packages at times at the expense of stability. Sort of goes with the territory.

Other than not updating your system there is no way to make arch as stable as say RHEL or clones or Debian stable.

as of recent Arch Linux has been MORE stable than my mess of an Ubuntu server install...

Arch user goes outside

You didn't talk about -Syu vs -Syyu That can also lead to issues, right? Also, is it ok to just never upgrade? I mean, if it's working don't touch it.

It's about 1 month that I switched to Manjaro from Arch and It's really better.

I update only when discord has an update or when the mirrors on pacman fails

Actually, if you're using a BTRFS system, snapper is the way to go. Just set it and forget it.

Time to download random things on the Arch User Repository

Manage your data properly in cold storage, create fresh install scripts and reinstall a new iso every release and keep your machine up to date and enable your fw and I reccomend setting up a custom router aswel.

good advice on having both lts and linux

Great information to keep in mind. I'm a Linux newb although I've had some exposure to Mint circa 2010. Today I'll be installing Linux on an ARM based Chromebook and it seems like Arch for ARM is the only viable option for my model (Lenovo C330). If only I'd waited a year for the C340! I think these guidelines will help temper my expectations and regard Arch properly

You can't talk about Arch without walking in the woods or park

Dude. What GUI you use ?

When you are making a video on Arch you ought to make it in the woods.

I once wanted to install libre on Arch to make documents and I needed to download a font. So I did and I was trying to move the font pack to the /usr/share/fonts/ with the following cmd;

mv /* /usr/share/fonts/

I was pretty impulsive, I thought what was /* to be every single item in the current directory but truth be told that this silly cmd moves all files from the root system into the /usr/share/fonts lmao

I guess they shall say with great power comes great responsibility. Learned a lesson; be cautious before doing stuff like this !

I can understand recommending Arch, but recommending btrfs!? Come on now. That's silly even two and a half years later.

Yeah I know this video is two years old. I wonder if Chris still has this Archlinux system still up and running? Most likely not. Less is always more and KDE is more. With more back then on constant system updating it broke a lot system dependencies. I also saw third party software on sudo pacman -Syu ... SoSo it was a roll of dice. You want Stable run Slackware. Bleeding edge is for experimenting.. Like Gentoo.. :)

arch isn't necessarily unstable but it does require a lot of hand holding due to its philosophy of keeping it simple and rolling releases. rolling releases if you update with out checking hem can break certain drivers or cause incompatibility bugs. and expecting the user to install and maintain most packages is a very daunting task. this is why even most arch distros that are beginner focused are more on the beginner side of intermediate. while vanilla arch is pretty much exclusive to advanced users. not a bad thing just something to keep in mind when recommending distros.

Using Arch Linux for last 5 months. Never think to switch back to another Linux Distributions. Btw Great advise you have given who are quite new to Arch Linux

why do the old out of date packages break the install? you said not to install them but not why exactly. thx for the video.

I can confirm this work on ubuntu also.

how about security updates? could you update security related contents alone?

An older video but still with some usefull info. I would like to add something: you can reinstall the old version of a package from /var/cache/pacman/pkg/.
I also use paccache, which removes old packages to clean up disk space, but in a controlled way: by default it preserves the last 3 versions of a package, but with the right command line switches you can control that too and much more.
I had to restore a previous kernel (together with some dependend packages of it) quite recently from /var/cache/pacman/pkg/, after I noticed that my zfs-dkms (from AUR) was broken and didn't want build anymore, making my ZFS-array unaccessible. Simply reinstalling the previous kernel did the job. I had to wait for this package to get updated from Github to Arch by the maintainer.

Excuse me sir, I
don't thinks you're allowed to record linux YT videos while existing outside, I hope we don't see that again

Thank you for the tips.
I always had issues with stabillity in the past (but with almoast every distro) as I am relativly new to the system deep linux stuff even if I used linux "sometimes" from time to time for about 8 years...
I more and more was getting into arch-stuff since manjaro was getting popular and was sticking with arch-based distros from then...
Speaking of manjaro... Do I need the IgnorePkg option there as well? So far as I understood using pacman -Syu will not update the linux kernel in arch in general right?

oh wow, that is a lot of work just to update. I do like using the latest software, but damn, actually having to pay attention every time I want to do an update? That is too much energy. Sounds like stressing over an outfit for work everyday like you would for a date, maybe some people are into it, but I most definitely am not.

"Users act upon the prompts provided to them by the operating system, which is just silly and the user breaking their system, not the system being unstable!" I've been using Linux since the 90s and I will never understand or accept this ass-backwards user-hating nonsense.

I only update one day a week and the same day each week.

btrfs or whatever says its not compatable cause its not deb or something? i am on a laptop. i dont use a desktop so what you recommend then?

ARCH IS GOAT

BlackArch students attendance?

i been told that Arch is best for new users because it force them to learn and learn fast mint ubuntu and pop os makes the user lazy.

i am looking into swapping to Linux and would you say this is accurate? i am intrested in Arch since it say that i would have total customization

By the way I use Arch Linux.

I installed arch from scratch by reading archwiki documentation and using it for more than 6 months, tried almost all environments available on arch.
But still i don't know what's vanilla arch.

btrfs with snapshots is super annoying for me on an older computer, whenever i do anything in pacman it takes so much time to do the snapshot, i switched back to ext4 and regular scheduled backups as a result

I’m proud to say that I borked 2 arch installs before finally getting it right

I keep stumbling upon some of your really helpful, golden, content. I haven't learned enough to do anything with it yet, but I sure am glad I picked up a copy of your OS for the Raspberry Pi for $5. It's like I bought you that coffee. :) Thanks for doing you.