This is not a rant about elitest arch-using neckbeards (I am one!) being mean on the internet. No, the Arch Linux Subreddit is horrifying because it provides a glimpse into just how absolutely busted some of it’s user’s machines are.

I’ve been using Arch for the better part of 10 years. It’s been rock-solid the entire time. But I keep hearing about it’s supposed instability. Well, now I understand why. This is a lesson in why no matter how good your software is PEBCAK nullifies all.

As a perfect example consider this thread: How Often Do You Run sudo pacman syu?

This is subtle, but potentially the most offending post in the entire thread. This user is constantly performing what is what is called a partial upgrade. Esentially they are installing software that might depend on updated libraries that are not present on the system because they are not doing full upgrades. Very bad, and the arch wiki warns explicitly against doing this this exact thing. If I had to try to cause my system to become unstable, I couldn’t think of a better way than this.

It gets better:

This is just abuse! Not only of the machine but of Arch’s mirrors. There is so much redundancy in here it hurts. Absolutely unnecessary.

Also in this thread a lot of people saying “never” “every 3 months” or “when something breaks”. I’m not saying you need up update impulsively, but a rolling release distro works best when it’s actually kept rolling. Massive updates only a few times a year can be problematic.

It’s not my intention to make fun of less experienced people here, or the slice of them that happen to hang out on Reddit. But when you hear someone complain that Arch is unstable, keep in mind the myriad of ways it might not be the distribution’s fault.