Sooner or later, rolling releases especially arch-based fuck something up from my experience :D The good thing though is, that all the time that you're using the distro you have latest and greatest stuff.

This isn't an answer to the question, but back when I was using openSUSE Tumbleweed I ran into no problems whatsoever with updates etc. I eventually switched only because I found nvidia proprietary drivers easier to manage on Fedora -- thanks to negativo17's great repo.

In any case I think it's worth trying out Tumbleweed alongside Arch-derivatives on KVM or Virtualbox or whatever before deciding which one you want to use.

I'm using Arch since almost 8 years by now and run an update

pacman -Syu

almost every day and never had a severe problem to date.

Say 1-2 times a year on average, I hit some packaging inconsistency that's typically quickly sorted out by the community.

It has been a fantastic ride so far, seriously.

Ubuntu can't protect you from bad updates either. I had my system screwed up a couple of times by Nvidia drivers.

Long time Arch user also, with no issues except 1 time when i forcefully removed binutils package myself,it even screamed on the screen that its not a good idea and do i really want to do that :)... anyway.. i have cron job that makes full system drive backup image every week, so if anything goes really wrong, its easy to just restore it.

worth a note, last 4 years i also have testing repos enabled, so i would call it pretty stable even with testing repositories. no issues.

xpander@archlinux ~ $ cat /var/log/pacman.log | grep -a filesystem
[2013-01-21 17:45] installed filesystem (2012.12-1)
[2013-01-21 17:45]   -> Running build hook: [filesystems]

3 years and a half with my current installation of Manjaro, and so far it's great!
I have rarely some issues, as long as you check the forum/update changelog if there will some things to do you're pretty safe.
When I have issues with upgrade it's mainly my fault.

Maybe Manjaro is not perfect, but soon as you try a rolling release you never want to go back IMO.
And don't forget the AUR (Arch User Repository) in all Arch based, it's a great thing!

I've used Arch Linux for a few years. I think the maintainers do a good job of selecting only released quality software, so the distro itself doesn't really have stability issues.

However I think users of Arch Linux tend to like going under the hood of their systems, which is why they would prefer a minimalist, rolling release distro. The Arch Linux wiki provides a lot of information on how to customize the system, and Arch's installation process asks you to edit configuration files and run commands directly (Arch-based distros might provide graphical installers though). When you tinker without following the instructions correctly, it can easily break your system. There have been a few times when I made my computer fail to boot, but I've been able to recover from them with help from the IRC channel, and learned a lot in the process.

For gaming specifically, note that many games only officially support Ubuntu or other Debian derived distros. So gaming on Arch Linux may require extra knowledge to fix issues like missing library versions.

Quoting: hagabakaThe Arch Linux wiki provides a lot of information on how to customize the system, and Arch's installation process asks you to edit configuration files and run commands directly (Arch-based distros might provide graphical installers though). When you tinker without following the instructions correctly, it can easily break your system.

I've read the Arch and Manjaro Wikis and follow Manjaro's forums and came up with the following terminal commands for a good update/maintenance:

Update system
sudo pacman-mirrors --fasttrack 6 && sudo pacman -Syyu

Check for orphaned packages
sudo pacman -Qdt

Remove orphaned packages
sudo pacman -Rns $(pacman -Qdtq)

Check for foreign packages
sudo pacman -Qm

Install packages
sudo pacman -Syu package_name

Uninstall packages
sudo pacman -Rns package_name

Clean package cache
sudo paccache -r

Old configuration files
     ~/.config/ -- where apps stores their configuration
    ~/.cache/ -- cache of some programs may grow in size
    ~/.local/share/ -- old files may be lying there

What do you think?

Have you come across the 'Rosetta' (after the 'Rosetta Stone') as well? It's a pretty thorough table of correspondence across package management commands in various distros: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pacman/Rosetta

Quoting: wvstolzingHave you come across the 'Rosetta' (after the 'Rosetta Stone')

Didn't know that one, thanks.

Hi,

I'm using Manjaro Xfce stable (kernel 4.19 at the moment) on my laptop (intel + nvidia Quadro) and my pseudo-seedbox (Intel + Amd GPU) for a year and an half and nothing broke so far.

My previous laptop was fueled with Arch + Plasma and it was all nice and good until the motherboard died a year later.

I can't say the same for Mint which broke several time due to drivers incompatibility with the current kernel and I won't talk about the upgrade from 18.3 to 19.0... Thanks Timeshift.

Waiting to upgrade my main computer to ditch Mint and go Manjaro or Arch, I don't know yet. Count me as a more than satisfied user.

If you are already comfortable with using the command line, just read the man page and wiki page of pacman and any other tools you use for package management. Personally I have "pacman -Syyuu" built in to muscle memory, which basically updates the package lists and then synchronizes installed packages to the repo versions, and I look things up when I need to do something different.

Quoting: DorritI've read the Arch and Manjaro Wikis and follow Manjaro's forums and came up with the following terminal commands for a good update/maintenance:

Update system
sudo pacman-mirrors --fasttrack 6 && sudo pacman -Syyu

Check for orphaned packages
sudo pacman -Qdt

Remove orphaned packages
sudo pacman -Rns $(pacman -Qdtq)

Check for foreign packages
sudo pacman -Qm

Install packages
sudo pacman -Syu package_name

Uninstall packages
sudo pacman -Rns package_name

Clean package cache
sudo paccache -r

Old configuration files
     ~/.config/ -- where apps stores their configuration
    ~/.cache/ -- cache of some programs may grow in size
    ~/.local/share/ -- old files may be lying there

What do you think?

Thanks for all the answers :)

I have had Fedora eat itself just as much as Arch with me using both. Your mileage may vary.

I have even had broken kernel updates on CentOS, which is embarrassing...

By the way, about openSUSE:

Interesting bit of news from LWN; though it's a paid article and I can't read it currently -- here's the abstract:

In mid-May, LWN reported on the discussions in the openSUSE project over whether a separation from SUSE would be a good move. It would appear that this issue has been resolved and that openSUSE will be setting up a foundation as its new home independent of the SUSE corporation. But now the community has been overtaken by a new, related discussion that demonstrates a characteristic of free-software projects: the hardest issues are usually related to naming.

For some background, the LWN article from May 21: https://lwn.net/Articles/788935/

Quoting: HamishI have even had broken kernel updates on CentOS, which is embarrassing...

You got my respects for achieving this :)

Currently deciding my new distro, because of the new Canonical 32bit shenanigans I want to switch.

In the ring are currently OpenSuse Tumbleweed, Manjaro, Federa and Pop!_OS.
I'm kinda scared about Manjaro, I don't really want to hassle with the system. I'm only familiar with Debian based Distros so far and there is still a risk breaking Manjaro upon updating, or am I wrong?

I'm using Ubuntu Budgie non-LTS for quite a while now and never crashed/not booted for me, this should still be the case with my new distro.

I reckon for gaming with and AMD GPU (Vega 64 here) it is quity mandatory to have the latest kernel, that's why I currently look at the above mentionend distros.

Any hints/meanings why I should choose one over the others?

There is also Arcolinux now, which is a derivative of Arch Linux. Would recommend it over Manjaro now for new/non-commited users of Arch. It is easy to use and the devs put up how to videos for things.
Would never recommend Antergos though as for whatever reason it chews through resources/runs slow in comparison to Manjaro or Arcolinux.

Just spotted this thread... :D

I've been using Arch since 2009 because I got cheesed off with the 6 monthly Ubuntu upgrade and having stale packages. It's nice to see other Arch users chime in saying they've had few problems, I thought I was the only one having it easy :whistle:

And I mean very few problems, all of which were sorted quickly and easily. I had much bigger problems running Ubuntu but then I didn't really know what I was doing until I installed and set up Arch from scratch.

I would say try it in a VM first, if you're hesitant. Even if you decide against it, you'll probably still learn something new. I'm by no means any kind of advanced computer user but getting to grips with the basics really set me up nicely for using Linux in general. I love knowing exactly what I've installed and what I'm running (roll my own DE, window manager plus select components). There's always a fully blown DE a quick install away to hold your hand if you want that.

I can't comment on any of the other distros because I've never tried any of them! There is nothing with Arch I think could be be better to warrant me trying something else. And compiling stuff is an absolute doddle with the AUR and PKGBUILDs, so simple and elegant.

That's my experience anyway. The freedom of choice and variety of Linux is wonderful.

From my experience and only that:

Tried Antergos, but Plasma was very unstable on it, to the point I had to give up.

Switched to Manjaro. Plasma was fine, so I decided to stick with it. I'm using for about a year (maybe more?) and my system broke at least twice.

First time cuz I was messing with NVIDIA stuff. The second one was caused by an update, which later I saw in the news with instructions on how to fix it (downgrading a certain package, via chroot, did it with the very same Live USB I used to install Manjaro).