I’ve been using Arch for over a decade now. On a laptop, desktop, VPS and now it’s also driving Steam OS on the Deck. I had very little problems with it compared to our Ubuntu setups at work that randomly break on updates. Ubuntu is not as bad as it used to be but from my experience (i.e. the way I use it), Arch has been more stable and reliable.
I have also had issues with Ubuntu. I just stick with Debian because I don’t have to touch it for years.
Can you do the same with Arch? Also why do you need newer packages on a server? (I’m taking about the VPS)
I haven’t tried not touching it for years to be honest. Longest period without a reboot was something between half a year and a year and it worked without a problem. Check the Arch website, breaking changes or manual interventions are very rare nowadays. There’s just one thing you have to do if you start an update after a long time: make sure to update the keyring first or pacman will exit with an error. That’s also mentioned in the wiki.
I installed Arch on my server because:
- I know it very well.
- The base system is tiny. Fewer packages = fewer problems. Everything else is in Podman containers anyway.
- It’s very flexible. I have a customized encrypted rootfs which needs to be unlocked through SSH, not a very common thing I guess.
No, you need to do system maintenance on Arch at least once a year if you don’t do it after each update. You need to merge configs (I love etc-upgrade from gentoo for this) and find and delete orphaned packages left behind by the rolling release that are still on your system.
