• gerdesj@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      I’ve spent over 25 years with Linux. With multiple distros and a lot of that with Gentoo and Arch. At work I specify Ubuntu or Debian, for simplicity and stability. I always used to use the minimal Ubuntu, because it was tiny with no frills. For quite a few years I managed a fleet of Gentoo systems across multiple customers - with Puppet. Those have quietly gone away. I’ve dallied with SuSE (all varieties), Mandrake, Mandriva, RedHat, Slackware, Yggdrassil and more.

      Arch is surprisingly stable and being a rolling job there are no big jumps. When I replace one of our laptops, I simply clone the old one to it and crack on. I used to do the same with Gentoo - my Gentoo laptops went from an OpenRC job with dual Nokia N95 ppp connections around 2007 to through to around 2018 with systemd and decent wifi when I switched to Arch to allow the burns on my lap to heal. I still have a Gentoo VM running (amongst friends) on the esxi in my attic.

      It was installed in 2006 according to some of the kernel config files. I left it for way too long and had to use git to make Portage advance forwards in time and fix around a decade of neglect. It would have been too easy to wipe and start again. It took about a fortnight to sort out. At one point I even fixed an issue following a forum post I made myself years ago.

      Anyway, Arch is pretty stable.

      • ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        At one point I even fixed an issue following a forum post I made myself years ago.

        I love when that happens lmao, it’s the best. Thank you past me.

      • Crozekiel@lemmy.zip
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        1 year ago

        I know this was a long comment and I’m only reacting to 1 word, so, I’m sorry in advance… But man, your mention of Mandrake really brought me back… I couldn’t for the life of me remember the distro I used to use all the time and this just clicked it all back into place. So much nostalgia, switching from like red hat 5 or 6 (not rhel, old plain red hat) to mandrake and being so happy.

    • Titou@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      because Arch is more lightwheight than Debian, and also more stable than non-arch users think it is

    • oce 🐆@jlai.lu
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      1 year ago

      Debian is sometimes frustratingly out of date for daily apps like the web browser. I’d rather recommend something with a bit more updates like Mint.

      • tricoro@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        frustratingly out of date for daily apps like the web browser

        Use flatpack for those then?