Arch is different...
Idk, I've had installs of Kinoite, Bazzite, and NixOS bork themselves unrecoverably. Arch, if something goofs, more often than not I can work my way back to a working system without wiping.
this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2026
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It's difficult to take people shitting on arch in here seriously. I'll take 1h per year fixing whatever broke over a whole weekend upgrading Debian.
Oh and god forbid you need to compile yourself a package and maybe a few of its dependencies from scratch because that 6 years old bug didn't make it through the freeze last release.
Debian isn't the only alternative to Arch. There are rolling-release distros where being a guinea pig is opt-in, not forced. Like Gentoo, where brave users test packages before they reach the wider audience
It's absolutely true. And that my outdated Arch system is likely still more fresh than Debian.
That said yeah I would like something that can update itself whenever without breaking, certainly if it expects me to update frequently. And manual interventions (ideally used for things that actually have a choice/fix, not just what ends up being a pasted command or two) should be a warn-step/update-blocker (depending on situation).
Though what the image is probably about (2025-12-20, nVidia 10-series turned legacy, legacy driver put onto AUR) is a bad situation in its own right particularly later when the AUR issues started happening. And it is really an update-or-don't (or get an AMD card somehow) issue.
Other distros likely do solve the issue of updating, though from what I can see aren't as good with packaging (dependency handling, lacking optional dependencies) and package availability. Which can be worked around somewhat too, but still needs more trial/input.
Annoyances are also multiplied for me by having non-fiber internet (also shared).
Debian can take a week to upgrade? Apparently I’m yolo’ing it and just the upgrade. However I have just done one major update, so u might just be lucky
i have often found myself needing to manually update packages on distros like fedora or debian because i need a newer version that hasn't landed in dnf/apt yet. arch doesn't have that problem. ymmv, obviously, it's not going to be an issue for everyone.
Except the last arch news post is a month ago about virtualbox. I've blindly run pacman -Syu for years without issue
Just did it on two machines this morning actually....
Why would anyone want to use a distro that can break at any update unexpectedly or have to read articles first to see if it's safe is beyond me.
It's too much of a hassle.
yeah windows do be like that
I've yet to have one of my windows systems brick itself. Several of my Linux systems have.
I haven't had a Windows install completely brick itself, but I have seen Windows go into a try to update->update fails->rollback->updates are available->tries to update again... etc. infinite loop.
It's been a while since I've had a Linux system brick that wasn't me doing something stupid, though I've gotten a lot better at handling the occasional minor hiccup.
It's a problem regardless of what OS it happens to. I've personally/professionally found it much more frequent that an update breaks something on linux vs. windows, but it's also much easier to fix those issues & they're rarely the kind of critical failure you get with a M$ OS.
(and if you truly crave stability, Debian is always happy to welcome you back into it's big soft embrace)
Any distro can break at any update. If you've ever done a major upgrade on any fixed-release distro, you have very likely experienced some sort of issue.
And the solution is very simple (and the same for all distros): Enable Snapshots, roll back if important stuff breaks.
Any distro can break at any update.
Not atomic distros, at least not nearly the same risk. Every update is like a fresh install.
Flashbacks to when I bought a Winblows Surface Pro 3 tablet that broke on every single update they released for the first year i owned the damned thing
Yeah, idk bro, it's weird to me too.
It's can be fun to plumb the limits of computing and Arch's gimmick is living entirely on the bleeding edge of computing - it's where all the exciting issues are being actively identified and worked on. However, if you're not into tinkering, I agree - Arch is 'C tier' for average users - specifically because of the dangers of playing in deep waters. As an enthusiast myself, I have Arch on my daily driver, but only because I have a NAS, home server, backup strategy, and other Linux machines running Debian, Fedora, and SteamOS at the ready in case I hit one of Arch's infamous 'Bad Days'.
Why, what news? What I need to be careful this time?
Nothing. OP is imagining an idiot for imaginary internet points.
"No way to prevent this" says only distro where this regularly happens
Arch explicitly says "never do this"
News from this year:
- virtualbox-ext-vnc >= 7.2.12-2 requires manual intervention (package won't install)
- Active AUR malicious packages incident (the AUR is locked)
- Arch Linux 2026 Leader Election Results
- Breaking changes for all users of
varnish, which is renamed tovinyl-cache(it's a proxy, only affects servers) - kea >= 1:3.0.3-6 update requires manual intervention (dhcp server, affects routers)
- iptables now defaults to the nft backend (affects pretty much nothing)
Repost.
Also, my Mint install broke, uh, shit I don't remember, 5 times? Arch broke zero times. Zero times not my own fault for forgetting I was installing something and shutting off the computer, of course. Except for the times I tried the fucking installer python script, but since I never even booted the install it doesn't count.
If you're running Virtualbox on Arch you deserve everything you get.
this year
And one post earlier (2025-12-20) that the image likely could be about:
NVIDIA 590 driver drops Pascal and lower support
Install nvidia-580xx-dkms from the AUR
Impact: Updating the NVIDIA packages [without manually changing to AUR packages] on systems with Pascal, Maxwell, or older cards will fail to load the driver, which may result in a broken graphical environment.
Iptables change actually fucked me because I'd tweaked something stupid 12 years ago and forgot. Took lime 45-60 mins to fix
Mint broke for you? That's the first I've heard of it.
Also if you have a habit of shutting down the PC during updates, check out atomic/immutable distros. They are almost impossible to break. You can pull the power during an update and it'll be fine.
I dont get the bad press arch got. I use arch (btw) and can't remember last time it wont boot after an update. It maybe happened to me twice in 20 years and at least once was my fault and the other was because i didn't read the pacman post warning me
Once it happened to me because 6 years prior I'd made a change thinking 'hah. That makes more sense' and then things changed under me and I had to read journalctl in a tty. Low key enjoyed dealing with it. But here's the thing: most ppl are dead at that point. No idea what to do. Arch is for nerds.
Edit: this is a completely different thing. I had two issues.
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Foot-guns are my PROTECTED SECOND AMENDMENT RIGHT.
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