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#51 2009-08-20 03:15:45

madalu
Member
Registered: 2009-05-05
Posts: 217

Re: [SOLVED] Does anyone really have a "rock stable" Arch?

Ironically, despite its bleeding edge reputation, Arch has been the
most stable distro I have used. The reasons:

1) Arch requires a lot of learning up front --- you have to read up on
configuration files, etc. But once you have your basic setup up and
running, you know how it works. As a result, problems are generally a
lot easier to fix than in other distros, not least because of the very
knowledgeable community.

2) I've stopped distro-hopping. wink

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#52 2009-08-20 03:54:18

Chrysalis
Member
Registered: 2008-07-07
Posts: 155

Re: [SOLVED] Does anyone really have a "rock stable" Arch?

Allamgir wrote:
Chrysalis wrote:

One arch dev probably puts more effort into arch then all of them combined into slackware.

Those are some pretty bold statements, especially the last one. The CDs seem to have a whole bunch of software, hence there being 6 of them.

Yea, it was probably an overstatement (the devs comment), but you get my point, its just too conservative for a desktop imho.

Btw, i am sorta confused at how you concluded that arch is not stable because a single upstream closed source driver didnt work on your machine. Thats old news with nvidia/ati/intel/etc no matter what distro you are on. The old one should be in your cache or can be found here http://arm.kh.nu/ or change the pkgver in the pkgbuild or theres a beta driver in aur.  In slackware guess how many options your have? 1... you go to download the same drivers from nvidia.com big_smile

To answer your initial question... yes, arch has been rock stable for years on all my machines aside from random pkging mistakes or upstream fuck ups a couple times a year which are caught during install time. No or less distro related problems then every other distro ive used.

Last edited by Chrysalis (2009-08-20 04:09:00)

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#53 2009-08-20 10:14:55

infoball
Member
From: Sweden
Registered: 2008-01-28
Posts: 6

Re: [SOLVED] Does anyone really have a "rock stable" Arch?

I'm late to the party but I thought that I'd chime in with some negativity ;-)

I most cases Arch works fine, I have a home server that is also a mythtv backend, which is very stable, although there's been the occasional breakage of certain functionality until all packages catch up, but I can usually live with that (I upgrade fairly often but carefully read all warnings and try to heed them). It took quite some time to get everything figured out and configured but now things work well although I'm planning on adding some sort of centralised user management/remote login later to avoid having to recreate all users manually on each local computer at home. But I digress...

I also have a quite recently set up desktop box which unfortunately is much less stable. In particular there are three areas where I regularly experience either spontaneous reboots or complete lockups so I have to powercycle; access to large files (iso:s etc) on an ntfs partition, flash playing in firefox, and virtualisation (virtualbox/kvm both exhibit several different problems). That's a bit annoying and a bit disconcerting. I use ext4 as the file system which might possibly be partly to blame, but unfortunately I don't have much time to troubleshoot right now so I'm not able to ask anyone for help in a way that would allow them to help so I'm hoping things will stabilise by themselves. There might also be an issue with hardware, possibly the memory controller on the motherboard or some such, or heat problems.

Anyway, to figure out if these are really Arch issues I will probably need to install some other distro and try the same things, a prospect that does not really appeal to me as I've invested quite some time in the current setup.

Anyway, good luck!

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#54 2009-08-20 15:11:02

Allamgir
Member
Registered: 2009-06-11
Posts: 168

Re: [SOLVED] Does anyone really have a "rock stable" Arch?

Chrysalis wrote:

Yea, it was probably an overstatement (the devs comment), but you get my point, its just too conservative for a desktop imho.

Btw, i am sorta confused at how you concluded that arch is not stable because a single upstream closed source driver didnt work on your machine. Thats old news with nvidia/ati/intel/etc no matter what distro you are on. The old one should be in your cache or can be found here http://arm.kh.nu/ or change the pkgver in the pkgbuild or theres a beta driver in aur.  In slackware guess how many options your have? 1... you go to download the same drivers from nvidia.com big_smile

To answer your initial question... yes, arch has been rock stable for years on all my machines aside from random pkging mistakes or upstream fuck ups a couple times a year which are caught during install time. No or less distro related problems then every other distro ive used.

Sorry if I made this seem like "OMG MY NVIDIA DRIVER NOT WORKING ARCH IS TEH SUCK". This was just one problem I had (that I resolved by just switching to nv; I don't need transparency), but I've always experienced minor breakages or mishaps after upgrades while using Arch, and if I forget to upgrade for a while, they magnify. I also started thinking about this after reading what users of other distros had to say (and of course this will be biased, but so is asking here), which mainly consisted of "Arch goes too fast", "Arch isn't as stable because the packages are too fresh and not tested enough", "Arch gets plenty of nice, new software, but it's not worth it if it breaks after most updates", etc. etc.

If nothing else my dabbling with slackware will help me gain more knowledge about linux, and if I do come back to Arch (which is almost definitely true; I'll find a place for it somewhere because this distro is AWESOME!), I'll have a deeper understanding of the system. Hopefully.

infoball wrote:

I also have a quite recently set up desktop box which unfortunately is much less stable. In particular there are three areas where I regularly experience either spontaneous reboots or complete lockups so I have to powercycle; access to large files (iso:s etc) on an ntfs partition, flash playing in firefox, and virtualisation (virtualbox/kvm both exhibit several different problems). That's a bit annoying and a bit disconcerting. I use ext4 as the file system which might possibly be partly to blame, but unfortunately I don't have much time to troubleshoot right now so I'm not able to ask anyone for help in a way that would allow them to help so I'm hoping things will stabilise by themselves. There might also be an issue with hardware, possibly the memory controller on the motherboard or some such, or heat problems.

This is the kind of stuff I started to get sick of. It's probably an easy fix, but having to fix these things all the time isn't as much fun when one finishes their desired setup. Who knows, maybe I just don't know enough about Arch and just need to get used to reading the news and forums more often.


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#55 2009-08-20 18:05:11

Ranguvar
Member
Registered: 2008-08-12
Posts: 2,544

Re: [SOLVED] Does anyone really have a "rock stable" Arch?

Allamgir wrote:

Sorry if I made this seem like "OMG MY NVIDIA DRIVER NOT WORKING ARCH IS TEH SUCK". This was just one problem I had (that I resolved by just switching to nv; I don't need transparency)

Might I recommend the Nouveau driver then? It's Free Software like the nv driver, and is usually much faster at 2D (3D is very experimental).

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#56 2009-08-20 19:17:57

klixon
Member
From: Nederland
Registered: 2007-01-17
Posts: 525

Re: [SOLVED] Does anyone really have a "rock stable" Arch?

to answer the OP question: yes, me. And i'm using the latest nvidia{,-utils} package, without needing to recompile. \o/
with my xorg.conf being:

jeepee@jpbox:~ $ cat /etc/X11/xorg.conf 
Section "Device"
    Identifier  "card0"
    Driver      "nvidia"
    Option      "ConnectToAcpid" "False"
    Option      "FlatPanelProperties" "Scaling = Centered"
    Option      "DPI" "96 x 96"
EndSection

Smooth sailing cool


Stand back, intruder, or i'll blast you out of space! I am Klixon and I don't want any dealings with you human lifeforms. I'm a cyborg!

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#57 2009-08-20 19:29:53

Allamgir
Member
Registered: 2009-06-11
Posts: 168

Re: [SOLVED] Does anyone really have a "rock stable" Arch?

Ranguvar wrote:
Allamgir wrote:

Sorry if I made this seem like "OMG MY NVIDIA DRIVER NOT WORKING ARCH IS TEH SUCK". This was just one problem I had (that I resolved by just switching to nv; I don't need transparency)

Might I recommend the Nouveau driver then? It's Free Software like the nv driver, and is usually much faster at 2D (3D is very experimental).

I tried using the nouveau driver but I guess it didn't really like my card (Geforce Go 7400). Things just seemed a little wonky sometimes. First, 3D didn't work at all, but I can live with that. Then even XMonad and dzen2 loaded much slower than with the nv driver. Thanks for the suggestion, though.


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#58 2009-08-20 20:48:07

perbh
Member
From: Republic of Texas
Registered: 2005-03-04
Posts: 765

Re: [SOLVED] Does anyone really have a "rock stable" Arch?

Since everyone else have had their say - let me babble on as well.

I'm an ardent/compulsive updater - if I cant update every morning, I sulk for the rest of the day ...
(I keep my own repo which syncs nightly)

I have used arch for about 4 years (on 3-6 different boxes) - and I believe I can count on one hand the number of times when an update has screwed up the box (if I wait a day or two - I'll usually be ok again) - mostly because my nightly download has coincided with the mirror syncing, so I don't get the 'full' update.
Other than that - it has been remarkably stable (x-ing fingers)

Just my 2c-worth

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#59 2009-08-20 20:54:44

Allamgir
Member
Registered: 2009-06-11
Posts: 168

Re: [SOLVED] Does anyone really have a "rock stable" Arch?

It seems like a lot of people are blaming out of sync mirrors for update woes, if they've experienced any. What's a mirror that stays fairly up to date? Locke.suu.edu was good to me in the past. I think problems on my system started cropping up when I switched mirrors because rankmirrors told me another one was faaster. I'm not sure, though.

Gah this stuff is making me want to come back to arch, but slack is already installed and I haven't even gotten X set up (I'm having so much trouble finding a way to automount external drives without X so I can access them from the framebuffer CLI).


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#60 2009-08-21 10:24:42

10wattmindtrip
Member
Registered: 2009-06-18
Posts: 28

Re: [SOLVED] Does anyone really have a "rock stable" Arch?

Allamgir wrote:

It seems like a lot of people are blaming out of sync mirrors for update woes, if they've experienced any. What's a mirror that stays fairly up to date? .

I use(d) the easynews mirror, however, it seems to be having troubles atm.


which would you choose: A god that never answers you or a society that embraces you?

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#61 2009-08-21 10:36:25

sHyLoCk
Member
From: /dev/null
Registered: 2009-06-19
Posts: 1,197

Re: [SOLVED] Does anyone really have a "rock stable" Arch?

I ran into problems in the past with Arch, but nothing serious that I couldn't fix myself or with the help of people in this community. Arch is bleeding edge but it's very stable for me.


~ Regards,
sHy
ArchBang: Yet another Distro for Allan to break.
Blog | GIT | Forum (。◕‿◕。)

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#62 2009-08-21 19:07:40

almigi
Member
Registered: 2009-07-24
Posts: 6

Re: [SOLVED] Does anyone really have a "rock stable" Arch?

Allamgir wrote:

What's a mirror that stays fairly up to date? Locke.suu.edu was good to me in the past. I think problems on my system started cropping up when I switched mirrors because rankmirrors told me another one was faaster. I'm not sure, though.

Go to users.archlinux.de/~gerbra/mirrorcheck.html to get a list of Arch mirrors and how up to date they are.

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#63 2009-08-21 21:18:19

Allamgir
Member
Registered: 2009-06-11
Posts: 168

Re: [SOLVED] Does anyone really have a "rock stable" Arch?

Thanks everyone for your help. I have good (or bad, depending on your viewpoint) news: I'm coming back to Arch Linux. I spent a couple days diligently working on getting slackware just the way I like, and I figure it's just not for me. Arch just seems to have the configuration aspect set up just how I want it, and using a different distro for a bit (even after the first hour) made me miss how everything here is just a pacman -S away smile

I discovered something about myself, too. Unlike cardinals_fan, I care about the version numbers and having the latest software. I don't know why; I just like to. Having more software that I like is a huge benefit gained by using Arch. I really missed the community contributions section of the forum. Most of my everyday work was powered by those oh so helpful little scripts found there.

I found that slackware is a pretty good distro, but I don't really think it fits me. Thank God for Arch Linux!


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#64 2009-08-21 22:13:40

ArchArael
Member
Registered: 2005-06-14
Posts: 504

Re: [SOLVED] Does anyone really have a "rock stable" Arch?

Smart choice Allamgir. wink The only thing slackware has is the major stability. But if doesn't bother you to fix your system when it gets broken then Arch linux is the best choice. In any case this happens rarely. IMHO there are funnier things to do then managing dependencies manually.

An ardent/compulsive updater? So am I. big_smile Every single day the first thing I do is a system update. God bless pacman and his developers.

Last edited by ArchArael (2009-08-21 22:16:57)

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#65 2009-08-22 01:00:37

cardinals_fan
Member
From: /dev/null
Registered: 2008-02-03
Posts: 248

Re: [SOLVED] Does anyone really have a "rock stable" Arch?

Slackware is mighty, but it relies on your UNIX competence quite a bit. The more knowledgeable you are, the more you will love Slack.

I agree on all counts.

Allamgir wrote:

Thanks everyone for your help. I have good (or bad, depending on your viewpoint) news: I'm coming back to Arch Linux. I spent a couple days diligently working on getting slackware just the way I like, and I figure it's just not for me. Arch just seems to have the configuration aspect set up just how I want it, and using a different distro for a bit (even after the first hour) made me miss how everything here is just a pacman -S away smile

I discovered something about myself, too. Unlike cardinals_fan, I care about the version numbers and having the latest software. I don't know why; I just like to. Having more software that I like is a huge benefit gained by using Arch. I really missed the community contributions section of the forum. Most of my everyday work was powered by those oh so helpful little scripts found there.

I found that slackware is a pretty good distro, but I don't really think it fits me. Thank God for Arch Linux!

Good to see you found a solution.  I had a suspicion that it would end up this way...

If you get itchy palms again, give SliTaz a look.  It doesn't have much on the surface but is an ideal system for sculpting and messing about.


Segmentation fault (core dumped)

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#66 2009-08-22 02:10:32

sHyLoCk
Member
From: /dev/null
Registered: 2009-06-19
Posts: 1,197

Re: [SOLVED] Does anyone really have a "rock stable" Arch?

Am I going crazy?  I do pacman -Syu every 15 minutes. And get majorly disapponted when it says Your systm is uptodate. sad


~ Regards,
sHy
ArchBang: Yet another Distro for Allan to break.
Blog | GIT | Forum (。◕‿◕。)

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#67 2009-08-22 03:44:01

lseubert
Member
From: Maryland, USA
Registered: 2009-05-18
Posts: 141

Re: [SOLVED] Does anyone really have a "rock stable" Arch?

For those looking for some tips on ensuring your Arch system is "rock stable", please take a look at the Rock Stable Arch Linux HOWTO which I recently established.

It features a few things I have done to make my system very stable. However, it could no doubt benefit from community input. Please contribute your ideas and improve the wikipage so that others may enjoy a stable Arch experience as well.

Wikipage Name Change: Enhancing Arch Linux Stability HOWTO

Last edited by lseubert (2009-08-28 21:33:42)


"To the question whether I am a pessimist or an optimist, I answer that my knowledge is pessimistic, but my willing and hoping are optimistic."
    -- Albert Schweitzer

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#68 2009-08-22 11:43:05

Allamgir
Member
Registered: 2009-06-11
Posts: 168

Re: [SOLVED] Does anyone really have a "rock stable" Arch?

lseubert wrote:

For those looking for some tips on ensuring your Arch system is "rock stable", please take a look at the Rock Stable Arch Linux HOWTO which I recently established.

It features a few things I have done to make my system very stable. However, it could no doubt benefit from community input. Please contribute your ideas and improve the wikipage so that others may enjoy a stable Arch experience as well.

Excellent idea! Now this is Arch thinking!

My next question was going to be if anyone used Arch on a system they depended on (for work, school, a living, etc.) because I noticed a lot of posts on various forums around the Internet that people like to keep Arch on a system as a testbed, but use slackware or debian for actual work. I was planning on depending on My Linux box like this and I wanted to be sure it was a safe decision to use Arch. Obviously slack and debian are MORE stable, but is Arch good for this use, assuming I follow the tips on the wiki article lseubert created?

PS I know this sounds a lot like the original question but I want to know who actually depends on their Arch box like this

Last edited by Allamgir (2009-08-22 11:55:37)


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#69 2009-08-22 12:06:45

sHyLoCk
Member
From: /dev/null
Registered: 2009-06-19
Posts: 1,197

Re: [SOLVED] Does anyone really have a "rock stable" Arch?

I was planning on depending on My Linux box like this and I wanted to be sure it was a safe decision to use Arch. Obviously slack and debian are MORE stable, but is Arch good for this use, assuming I follow the tips on the wiki article lseubert created?

I'm sorry if it sounds rude, but you're asking the same question over and over again. tongue Arch is stable. There are many people like me who use it for "actual work". Even I use Debian, but my archbox is pretty stable and works great. It's fast,efficient,light and simple. I guess you are suffering from a distro-hop fever that we all went through at one point or another. The thing with Linux is that you have a lot of choices and often you can't decide which one to use over the other. The best would be to try them and see for yourself. As ofr debian its great. Slackware -> I'm not a sucker for punishment, wont be using it until they have a proper official package manager, I guess I'm too spoiled by pacman and apt. big_smile


~ Regards,
sHy
ArchBang: Yet another Distro for Allan to break.
Blog | GIT | Forum (。◕‿◕。)

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#70 2009-08-22 12:09:03

Allamgir
Member
Registered: 2009-06-11
Posts: 168

Re: [SOLVED] Does anyone really have a "rock stable" Arch?

Alright then I'm all good smile

Hooray for Arch!


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#71 2009-08-22 12:53:32

karabaja4
Member
From: Croatia
Registered: 2008-09-14
Posts: 997
Website

Re: [SOLVED] Does anyone really have a "rock stable" Arch?

sHyLoCk wrote:

Am I going crazy?  I do pacman -Syu every 15 minutes. And get majorly disapponted when it says Your systm is uptodate. sad

signed tongue

In addition to this I developed a habit of building packages from GIT because they are more up to date big_smile

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#72 2009-08-22 12:58:10

ngoonee
Forum Fellow
From: Between Thailand and Singapore
Registered: 2009-03-17
Posts: 7,354

Re: [SOLVED] Does anyone really have a "rock stable" Arch?

My laptop is 95% of the time on Arch. The other 5% is loading up my Ubuntu install just to keep it updated (synaptic, upgrade all, shutdown), to see what new stuff they have there.

I do research for a PhD, teaching to pay that off, and various other computer-related projects. Arch FTW!


Allan-Volunteer on the (topic being discussed) mailn lists. You never get the people who matters attention on the forums.
jasonwryan-Installing Arch is a measure of your literacy. Maintaining Arch is a measure of your diligence. Contributing to Arch is a measure of your competence.
Griemak-Bleeding edge, not bleeding flat. Edge denotes falls will occur from time to time. Bring your own parachute.

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#73 2009-08-22 14:21:39

crouse
Arch Linux f@h Team Member
From: Iowa - USA
Registered: 2006-08-19
Posts: 907
Website

Re: [SOLVED] Does anyone really have a "rock stable" Arch?

I have 4 systems currently running Arch Linux.  It's the ONLY OS I run at home. I have one remote server running Arch ... Archlinux.me.  The few stability problems of archlinux.me were ironically, hardware, not software.  I love using Arch for my server.  Quick, easy, painless, and FAST. I always test updates on my local servers/machines before updated my remote server, especially kernel upgrades which have bit me once or twice in the past, but nothing I couldn't untangle. However when using any system remotely, you have to think things through a bit differently. You can't just insert your live linux disk and fix things smile

Arch has been the most stable distro I've ever used, and I've used almost all of them.  Exception: Gentoo ... just didn't have the patience for the 1 week compiling of stuff just to use my computer.

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#74 2009-10-22 06:08:39

luispa
Member
Registered: 2009-07-10
Posts: 12

Re: [SOLVED] Does anyone really have a "rock stable" Arch?

app4des wrote:

If you are looking for "stability and rolling release" distro, the only option I think is Gentoo, but not many have that much time for maintaining.

I found Sidux to be a very stable distro, even better than ARCH, it follows the rolling release model and it's a bleeding edge distro (based on Debia SID).

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