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I realized my VLC was broke some point in the week after updating Arch. I spend time troubleshooting then find a forum post with replies from an Arch moderator saying they knew it would happen and it's my fault for not wanting to read through pages of changelogs. Another mod post says they won't announce that on the RSS feed either. I thought I was doing good by following the RSS but I guess that's not enough.

I've been happily using Arch for 5 years but after reading those posts I've decided to look for a different distro. Does anyone have recommendations for the closest I can get to Arch but with a different attitude around updating?

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[-] Zetta@mander.xyz 25 points 2 weeks ago

Fedora, great blend of bleeding edge and stability. Plus Linus uses it, so what better praise could you get.

[-] heythatsprettygood@feddit.uk 10 points 2 weeks ago

Can definitely recommend Fedora too. Software updates are at a good pace, and the system has a lot of polish all around. For example, all you need to do for updates is to press "update" in Discover and it'll do everything for you, applying on reboot for stability. Most things "just work".

[-] ReversalHatchery@beehaw.org 6 points 2 weeks ago

that's exactly how updates should work in every desktop distro. as an option of course.

systemd made it possible to install updates on shutdown.
packagekit enabled kde software to automatically obtain and prepare the updates.
plasma does the final touch nowadays to ask you on the reboot/shutdown dialog whether you want to install them.

Basically all the system is in place, with code from widely used parties. packagekit can even integrate with your filesystem to make a snapshot before install. It's wonderful. yet, it seems as if only fedora supports this full setup right now? or is there anything else?

[-] heythatsprettygood@feddit.uk 2 points 2 weeks ago

I've tried quite a few distros (openSUSE, Ubuntu, Solus, Arch, so on) and none seem to offer this feature. It's a shame, as it's quite useful to have since updating a live system can sometimes cause some trouble. Even just the updating from Discover can be broken on some systems (I know openSUSE at the very least acts a bit funny when it comes to PackageKit, I think Arch as well).

[-] MangoPenguin 2 points 2 weeks ago

Fedora and Bazzite both do it.

[-] ReversalHatchery@beehaw.org 1 points 2 weeks ago

I've been told that opensuse tumbleweed has it. I've also read a suse forum post saying leap 16 will support offline updates, releasing in January, so they could be the first to support all of this with fs snapshots

Even just the updating from Discover can be broken on some systems

if you didn't enable offline updates in systemsettings, then it'll do roughly the same as you would in the terminal, so that's not unexpected

[-] fushuan@piefed.blahaj.zone 5 points 2 weeks ago

Discover is a KDE thing, not a fedora thing. Not fedora exclusive.

[-] heythatsprettygood@feddit.uk 2 points 2 weeks ago

It is a KDE thing, but Fedora is the distro on which it works best. On a lot of other distros it often runs into problems.

[-] qaz@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

I can attest to that. It's remarkable on how few distros updating through Discover actually works reliably. I always update through the terminal because at least that works. I've noticed this issue on Kubuntu (apt), Debian (apt), and OpenSUSE (zypper). I think these issues are related to the PackageKit integration.

[-] Philamand@jlai.lu 3 points 2 weeks ago

The only issue is that you provide free testing for IBM, so it's a no go if you try to boycott/avoid US companies. If you don't it's indeed a great choice.

[-] MangoPenguin 5 points 2 weeks ago

How are you providing free testing by using something if you don't actively file bug reports and such?

[-] Philamand@jlai.lu 2 points 2 weeks ago

Telemetry, but I don't know if many Linux user doesn't turn it off. But I also don't know if many Linux user doesn't fill bug reports.

Also, if you use Fedora you may recommend it to people that will leave telemetry and/or file bug report. And you also contribute to make the red hat ecosystem relevant, potentially bringing paid customers for RHEL. It's a drop in the ocean of course, but personally I don't want to contribute to it.

this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2025
293 points (100.0% liked)

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