I’ve used my current install for at least that long (going back further with Antergos) and you’re correct about non-rolling options… I definitely would’ve had more pain with system upgrades and PPAs etc in those years.
That said, I think the Tamagotchi comparison probably makes sense in a way if it “dies” you probably did something “wrong” as on-paper it’s also not difficult to maintain a digital pet either.
I’m using an outdated system, it’s on three strikes:
Slow, shared internet for me. This adds friction to updates, and when I don’t update as frequently as Arch expects this is the breakage you won’t see.
I hate that updating today vs days-from-now might yield drastically different results. Admittedly the actual problem with my last few updates is that the reason-I-updated issues persisted.
The AUR is the biggest reason to use Arch. But use the AUR very carefully and not for system dependencies! Your graphics card is now legacy, so we put the driver on the AUR* ;)
Though I don’t think these sort of problems are unfixable**, and other rolling distros probably do fix some of them but may also not have as good of a packaging system as Arch.
For instance I’m trying Void Linux on an old machine and have already ran into 2 (non-default) applications missing dependencies (which might be an issue with package maintainers, but also Void doesn’t seem to track optional dependencies).
Tumbleweed/Slowroll would probably be a better fit for me, if not for Patterns.
* also if you update without switching, blank screen for you
** internet+GPU are also material problems as well, but those cannot get fixed today and probably will not be fixed next month either
I’ve used my current install for at least that long (going back further with Antergos) and you’re correct about non-rolling options… I definitely would’ve had more pain with system upgrades and PPAs etc in those years.
That said, I think the Tamagotchi comparison probably makes sense in a way if it “dies” you probably did something “wrong” as on-paper it’s also not difficult to maintain a digital pet either.
I’m using an outdated system, it’s on three strikes:
Slow, shared internet for me. This adds friction to updates, and when I don’t update as frequently as Arch expects this is the breakage you won’t see.
I hate that updating today vs days-from-now might yield drastically different results. Admittedly the actual problem with my last few updates is that the reason-I-updated issues persisted.
The AUR is the biggest reason to use Arch. But use the AUR very carefully and not for system dependencies! Your graphics card is now legacy, so we put the driver on the AUR* ;)
Though I don’t think these sort of problems are unfixable**, and other rolling distros probably do fix some of them but may also not have as good of a packaging system as Arch.
For instance I’m trying Void Linux on an old machine and have already ran into 2 (non-default) applications missing dependencies (which might be an issue with package maintainers, but also Void doesn’t seem to track optional dependencies).
Tumbleweed/Slowroll would probably be a better fit for me, if not for Patterns.
* also if you update without switching, blank screen for you
** internet+GPU are also material problems as well, but those cannot get fixed today and probably will not be fixed next month either