Right now my computer is in the shop.

[James Mcphee]

this has weird knockon effects too.  since arch is rolling release, and
highly customizable, they don't tend to switch up major pieces often.  say
with fedora they decided to go to ext3 to ext4 to xfs, then btrfs
filesystems.  now, if you run the upgrade scripts on time you can go from
fedora 35 to 36, but you won't have your filesystem changed to btrfs (i
don't remember the exact verison they made that change).  but assumptions
are made that if you're running fedora 36 you have a certain setup, and
hilarity ensues.

You often can't have as long-lived a system with fedora or ubuntu as you
can with arch since arch lets you set it up how you want and organizes its
updates to take that into account.  whereas fedora or ubuntu kinda assumes
you're installing from their media without too much customization and the
cruft that can build up if you've run the update scripts a few times can
get downright nasty.

On Sat, Aug 27, 2022 at 6:32 AM James Mcphee <jmcphe at gmail.com> wrote:

> oh, they have a good test system.  what i mean is breaking versions.
> upgrading from one version of software to another.  say a kernel that
> decides a particular tuning variable  is no longer used in favor of
> something else.  and all the sudden your database performance chunks
> horribly because you had to patch.  (yes, that's happened to me more than
> once).
>
> or, say your favorite tls layer deciding to deprecate ciphers you've
> manually defined in your configs.
>
> the more versioned systems (fedora and ubuntu, etc) will patch the
> versions they have until the next release when they make a big jump in
> software versions (often requiring you to learn large amounts of changes at
> once).
>
> On Sat, Aug 27, 2022 at 6:28 AM Michael via PLUG-discuss <
> plug-discuss at lists.phxlinux.org> wrote:
>
>> wonderful. with breaking patches: is it fixed like the next day or is it
>> usually later than that?
>>
>> On Sat, Aug 27, 2022 at 9:21 AM James Mcphee via PLUG-discuss <
>> plug-discuss at lists.phxlinux.org> wrote:
>>
>>> arch has probably the best community (and wiki) in the business.  they
>>> also have a huge (and relatively simple) extended software library (AUR)
>>>
>>> the main reason most people will speak of arch is that it is a rolling
>>> (or streaming) release.  so with fedora or ubuntu, you get new versions
>>> every 6 months or so and there may be upgrade scripts but you have to pay
>>> attention.  with arch, it's a constant release system.  this means in arch
>>> you tend to have the newer versions of stuff most of the time, not waiting
>>> on some arbitrary version release window.  the downsides of this is that
>>> with a locked version, you can generally count on patches not being
>>> breaking, while that is not a guarantee in arch.
>>>
>>> also.  arch is one of THE most customizable distros out there (that wiki
>>> is so good it's often better than other distros official commercial
>>> support).  if you can do the base install (a bit more involved than fedora
>>> or ubuntu), customizing your desktop isn't much of a jump.  Sure, you can
>>> do this with most other distros, i mean software is software, but with arch
>>> you don't have dependencies for chat clients reaching all the way up to
>>> base packages.
>>>
>>> On Sat, Aug 27, 2022 at 6:15 AM Michael via PLUG-discuss <
>>> plug-discuss at lists.phxlinux.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>> also, it was mentioned that arch has benefits..... what are those?
>>>>
>>>> On Sat, Aug 27, 2022 at 9:12 AM Michael <bmike1 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> thank yout for the advice.
>>>>>
>>>>> On Sat, Aug 27, 2022 at 9:10 AM James Mcphee via PLUG-discuss <
>>>>> plug-discuss at lists.phxlinux.org> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Oh sorry, I must have buried the lead.  I use systemd linux systems
>>>>>> for my desktopy desktops (ubuntu and fedora mostly).  Aka, the ones i check
>>>>>> email, browse the web, play games on.  For my developery desktops I do not
>>>>>> use systemd, but that is born of pure frustration and malding.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Sat, Aug 27, 2022 at 6:05 AM Michael via PLUG-discuss <
>>>>>> plug-discuss at lists.phxlinux.org> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> So do you recommend system d for a desktop? It assms you don't and
>>>>>>> then you do.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On Sat, Aug 27, 2022 at 8:44 AM James Mcphee via PLUG-discuss <
>>>>>>> plug-discuss at lists.phxlinux.org> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> two main reasons.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> one is ideological.  the way systemd was put into the community
>>>>>>>> rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. i won't get into the details, you can
>>>>>>>> google for that whole war.  no sense bringing it up again.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> two is simplicity.  systemd is now over a million lines of code.
>>>>>>>> to put that into perspective, going by the mythical man month numbers, a
>>>>>>>> single good programmer can average understanding 2 pages of code a day in a
>>>>>>>> complex codebase.  That's 50 lines of code per day.  from the same source,
>>>>>>>> developers produce roughly 10 lines of code per day on average.  now,
>>>>>>>> there's a lot of give around these numbers, but you can get some idea of
>>>>>>>> the scale of trying to get a handle on it if there's a bug you need to work
>>>>>>>> with.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> a couple of bugs i've had to deal with in recent memory, extended
>>>>>>>> udp handling in resolved and console output (which was actually correct to
>>>>>>>> standard in systemd, but everyone had worked around the previous bug and
>>>>>>>> that workaround wasn't compatible with the systemd implementation).
>>>>>>>> neither of these were minor.  the resolved bug prevented adoption of dnssec
>>>>>>>> and the console thing required manual intervention of containers using it
>>>>>>>> (docker, k8s, etc).  i don't know if these things have been resolved either
>>>>>>>> in systemd or the container systems.  the problems in question forced a
>>>>>>>> rearchitecture of our projects as fixes were not going to be fast enough
>>>>>>>> and we haven't revisited them.  for the resolved issue, the systemd project
>>>>>>>> lead flat out said it wasn't a priority.  for the container/console issue,
>>>>>>>> you have to go back in time when the docker team wore "no, i will not merge
>>>>>>>> your systemd patches into our codebase" tshirts to conventions.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> in conclusion, i use systemd for servers, desktops, and vms.  I
>>>>>>>> find it quite reliable in most cases.  i think it does a better job with
>>>>>>>> login, hal, service dependency, and mtab than the older system.  for my use
>>>>>>>> case of containers, it is entirely unnecessary and nothing but a headache.
>>>>>>>> for my developer station, i mald quite enough and have no patience left to
>>>>>>>> deal with it when it inevitably creates issues (oh, no for this thing you
>>>>>>>> need to put your proxy settings 3 layers of abstraction down over here with
>>>>>>>> this particular format) and tend to use the simplest system possible.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> On Sat, Aug 27, 2022 at 4:38 AM Michael via PLUG-discuss <
>>>>>>>> plug-discuss at lists.phxlinux.org> wrote:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Why would u not want system d?
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> On Sat, Aug 27, 2022 at 4:15 AM Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss <
>>>>>>>>> plug-discuss at lists.phxlinux.org> wrote:
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> On Fri, 2022-08-26 at 17:50 -0700, T. Zack Crawford via
>>>>>>>>>> PLUG-discuss wrote:
>>>>>>>>>> > I would recommend not Manjaro because it's just a less-good
>>>>>>>>>> arch linux.
>>>>>>>>>> > I use Arch Linux. Depends what you're looking for, though.
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> Or, Artix could be used in order to get the benefits of Arch
>>>>>>>>>> without systemd.
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> SteveT
>>>>>>>>>> ---------------------------------------------------
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>>>>>>>>>> To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings:
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>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> --
>>>>>>>>> :-)~MIKE~(-:
>>>>>>>>> ---------------------------------------------------
>>>>>>>>> PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss at lists.phxlinux.org
>>>>>>>>> To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings:
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>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> --
>>>>>>>> James McPhee
>>>>>>>> jmcphe at gmail.com
>>>>>>>> ---------------------------------------------------
>>>>>>>> PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss at lists.phxlinux.org
>>>>>>>> To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings:
>>>>>>>> https://lists.phxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> --
>>>>>>> :-)~MIKE~(-:
>>>>>>> ---------------------------------------------------
>>>>>>> PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss at lists.phxlinux.org
>>>>>>> To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings:
>>>>>>> https://lists.phxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> --
>>>>>> James McPhee
>>>>>> jmcphe at gmail.com
>>>>>> ---------------------------------------------------
>>>>>> PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss at lists.phxlinux.org
>>>>>> To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings:
>>>>>> https://lists.phxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> :-)~MIKE~(-:
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> :-)~MIKE~(-:
>>>> ---------------------------------------------------
>>>> PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss at lists.phxlinux.org
>>>> To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings:
>>>> https://lists.phxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> James McPhee
>>> jmcphe at gmail.com
>>> ---------------------------------------------------
>>> PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss at lists.phxlinux.org
>>> To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings:
>>> https://lists.phxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> :-)~MIKE~(-:
>> ---------------------------------------------------
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>> To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings:
>> https://lists.phxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss
>
>
>
> --
> James McPhee
> jmcphe at gmail.com
>


-- 
James McPhee
jmcphe at gmail.com
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