Normally I always forget why I still keep thinking about switching back to Windows. Today was a great reminder. Linux can be frustrating. This post is somewhat about awareness and partly about me learning about other peoples experiences. I updated my CachyOS as usual. There were some system packages upgraded and I got the notification to reboot. Figuring I’d do it later I left after some time and the PC went to sleep. Upon returning the screen stayed black. Even upon forced reboot. Remembering I was using Limine with BTRFS snapshots I tried multiple previous snapshots but to no avail. I remember this happened before. So now I face another reinstall… This and having to dive into the deep end of terminal commands to get drivers, programs or games working can be quite frustrating. I understand why people are turned off and go back to Windows…
Onto NixOS for me. A big dive but it seems very stable which might be just what i need. I feel like the philosophy of NixOS combined with a graphical store to install programs and what not seems like a great solution.
What would your ultimate distro be like?
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Fedora w/ KDE always just feels like home to me, I like the defaults so I don’t spend much time mucking around, and it feels stable and reliable.
This is exactly what I think every time someone recommends CachyOS or Manjaro to new users. Arch is great, but it expects the user to know how to deal with things, it expects user to read the news and it pulls the rug periodically because it expects you to be able to figure things out.
In your case in particular I don’t think it was Cachy on its own, otherwise we would have seen other users affected, but still, it’s likely that the Arch philosophy got you because of something you changed without even remembering and now with the update your config is no longer backwards compatible.
NixOS is great, but it’s a very different paradigm, you will not be able to install things from the graphical interface as you’re expected to declare your system. And it can never be compatible with a graphical installation as that would beat the whole purpose of reproductible builds.
I think what you’re looking for might be something like Bazzite, where the core system is immutable but you get user space freedom. But personally, if 0 downtime is your goal NixOS is better, as you can rollback to previous generations of your system if something goes wrong, but to get that you have to pay the price of declaring your whole system which might be too steep to pay for some.
Ubuntu was the first Linux distro I tried, and I’ve never tried anything else, across three laptops. I’ve never experienced problems like the ones you describe.
I have found bazzite to be very stable for my needs. My use case is mainly gaming with some light productivity. I have had very few problems.
I switched a couple of days ago. Seems very good so far!
I know its frustrating when this happens. But there is something called arch-chroot, its a program to fix your messesd up os. New users don’t know about this, but as you keep using Linux, you get familiar to these programs. It takes few mins to fix broken system using arch-chroot. I hopw your system won’t break anymore.
I see people recommending Debian but you also said you enjoy tinkering, so I’d recommend SpiralLinux. It’s basically Debian but it uses BTRFS so you can roll back to a previous snapshot if you break something. I don’t think Spiral has updated to Trixie yet so you’d need to manually upgrade but that’s not too big a hassle if you do it immediately.
I think NixOS is a superb choice if you have the time and energy to invest in it. I’m currently using Guix System (a GNU fork of Nix) and I’m very very happy with it. Previously I’ve been on openSUSE Tumbleweed because I thought the most important thing for me was btrfs with an easy snapshot system. But then, one day, when I was writing ansible playbooks to configure my OS I realized that what I care most about is declarative configurations. Now I’ve completely stopped using ansible for my laptop/desktop, and just rely upon native Guix configuration. I love it.
I do still run MicroOS on all of my servers because it “just works” and I think transactional systems are great for servers. Recently, however, I’ve been thinking about trying out NixOS/Guix System as my server OS of choice, but we’ll see how that goes.
If you’re willing to put in the time, I think you’ll love NixOS.
Edit: Nix/Guix are also transactional.
NixOS paired with an LLM gives you a customized PC that won’t change. There isn’t a better option for longevity + hands off user experience than NixOS. The only downside is the big initial time investment.
True, but isn’t that a risk too? LLM’s can be powerful but also produce garbage sometimes. Especially with niche stuff?
It depends on how you use the LLM and I personally think it helped me learn NixOS/Nix/Flakes much faster than without it. You can choose to not use LLMs if you’re worried though.
What would your ultimate distro be like?
The one that fits one’s needs the best. Given your frustration with unstable systems, I’d say the best ones would be those that take longer to make major updates, like Debian, Mint and Slackware, as then issues aren’t introduced as frequently, and older ones are better known and easier to fix or even preemptively circumvent.
Well I was mostly curious about what your ultimate distro looked like.
I think the fault here is at Cachy OS for shipping experimental and advanced stuff as if it is ready for most users.
When I installed it recently on an old machine I purposefully stayed away from these fancy options and chose EXT4 + Grub. I admit having some bad memories about casually using btrfs also made my choice easy. No, most users don’t want to have to baby sit their file system.
Anyway, what even is the point of a system restore functionality if it hasn’t been thoroughly battle tested? They should have been behind an “ADVANCED/EXPERIMENTAL” disclaimer or something until it is very hard to break (including brtrfs not borking itself) and actually rescues users from a bad time rather than creating more problems.
Amen
CachyOS is built off Arch, a rolling-release distro. RR distros are notoriously unstable, and by design. It does exactly what it says on the tin.
I encountered this problem myself, and it was very stupid and annoying, but I had reason to re-install anyways. That’s the cost of bleeding-edge packages. If you’re unaware/unprepared for it, best not install anything arch-based. That’s why most servers are Debian-based.
They are unstable from a software compatibility perspective where every updates has a worrying chance of breaking compatibility with old “stale” software (software not managed/distributed by the distro itself), but that does not necessarily means unstable from a system stability perspective. If there was some kind of “system stability” scale for distros i would judge archlinux somewhere in the middle. And, with the nature of how linux development is you might actually get better system stability due to it having fresher software that better supports your hardware. That’s the main reason to try and be a the bleeding edge of desktop linux, sometimes you only get a few shallow cuts and stuff actually functions better.
Any serious breakage such as an unbootable or unusable system is supposedly very rare and only affects a minor portion of the users, with any change going through a long process that hopefully catches it before any harm is done. I do realize the irony of building a system restore functionality for precisely this case and me pushing against it. Again, I just think it should be made nearly bulletproof before it’s pushed into the users.
I’ve been using Arch for nearly 20 years and noted that things are a hell of a lot more stable than it used to be. It’s also hard to excuse it since it has grown and matured so much, it’s not a niche distro nobody knows anymore, even SteamOS is now based on it (though the immutability gives it a huge edge and essentially eliminates the aforementioned issue without relying on the, well meaning, but probably flawed system restore thingy).
Anyway, in my judgement, CachyOS being a downstream distro with a lot less manpower behind it should be quite a bit more careful when introducing such fundamental changes. I can’t say how bad it is affecting their user, it’s up to then to know that and if so hopefully change the defaults or at least better educate the user of the experimental nature of it.
Much better explanation than 03:00-me ^^^
This will sound like heresy to some, but get away from the bleeding edge. You probably don’t need the absolute latest version of every little thing. It can feel cool knowing you know how to fix a borked install but actually having to do so sucks. Dump the hype and get to something stable for your daily driver. If you want to experiment, do it on another drive/machine. Building a custom rocketship is cool, but you should probably build it without breaking the truck you use to go get parts.
I’m going to call this another vote for Debian
I was gonna say the same thing.
For most beginners who just want their PC to work, the obvious choice should be Mint for older hardware, and Universal Blue’s Fedora-based images (Bluefin or Aurora depending on the preferred desktop).
Of course, since OP mentioned NixOS that is an option as well. But it should be the stable version, and it is not beginner friendly like the other two.
I honestly wish someone had said something similar when I made my switch. I love bazzite, and I’ve made it work for myself. But even as a barely tech literate guy, it can still be a struggle, an even just trying to pacman or install something sends me down a rabbit hole of things I dont understand.
Anyway, it works, but I wish I had gone with something more stable with far more documentation.
I should have clarified that the list above only makes sense if you just want your machine to work because atomic distros aren’t great to tinker with (except NixOS), but let’s face it, moist people are not tinkerers do what they need is exactly what atomic distros offer.
I use Garuda, and it hasn’t borked for me in years. I update it about once a week.
Been on Garuda since September and it’s fantastic. Surprised it doesnt get more love around here.
The one criticism that I felt had some truth to it is that it looks like it was designed by a 14-year-old boy. I think it appeals to my inner 14-year-old who wants neon icons and DRAGONS. But if Dr460nized is too garish for you and you want something more sophisticated, now there’s Mokka.
Agreed! And if you don’t like either setup, it’s trivial to customize it.
This is a good point. Some distros are on the other end of the spectrum of being too slow (it seems) to update but you might be onto something.
Pardon me for asking so … but if you yearn for the “stability” (“simplicity”?) of Windows why not use a Linux distro with an approach more similar to that?
So something not Arch based, … and even tho NixOS almost kinda is the correct direction (for an arch-ish thing), I got the feeling you don’t really want to configure your system & potentially upkeep that config?
Also to note that the actual issue wasn’t fully diagnosed. Reinstalling the full os to fix an update is fairly extreme for your mainstream Linux these days.
But to be at least a bit on topic - bcs I need “simplicity” & “stability” at times when I can’t even (for months on end) I use Tumbleweed (rolling distro).
Fully agree!
As a Linux user for more than 10 years now, I can not really understand why so many people switch from Windows to CachyOS.
Yes, CachyOS is great. In general I see the advantage of Arch based distros, but only if one knows what they are doing. It’s great on fresh installs, but over time users need to fix issues and make decisions and this only works if they know what they are doing.
Similar wis NixOS. Great distro, but not for low maintanance and beginners. If you just want something that runs super stable and you don’t need to fix anything, go for Debian. And there are a lot of options between Debian and CachyOS.
cachy is the current ‘flavour of the day’, apparently.
+1
I run CachyOs and EndeavourOS on my main desktop, and I really don’t mind tinkering to fix things if needed.
I also share a laptop with my wife, and that’s where I want something Windows like (both in stability and familiarity). Zorin has been really good for that imo.
I definitely don’t mind the tinkering but I do mind things breaking just as I want to fire up a game with my friend. I wanna choose the moment I tinker not the other way around. It’s also about the interval in which the tinkering is needed. If I spend more time browsing arch wiki than using my PC it’s a bit skewed…
Yeah, that’s what you’ll get away from by switching to something like Debian. The number of packages that gets updated every week can usually be counted on two hands, if that. That means less chance for something to change drastically under the hood that might bring the whole system down.
I feel like the other side of that coin is that some stuff might not work/be supported or takes long to fix though. I mean the most stable system would be one where the hardware or software would never change. But that’s quite unrealistic.
What would your ultimate distro be like?
… Debian.
You read my mind. So straightforward.
Why reinstall instead of just repairing the issue at hand?
We had to do that in Windows too.
Hard to repair with no image. And fixing it using a live USB with root is quite involving. Windows issues are almost never this serious and in such cases safe mode exists.
You must have been of Microslop for a while if you think frustrating issues on update is a Linux thing. Just last a couple weeks ago, Microsoft released a security update that locked people out of their “C” drive. (In Windows, this is bad)
Windows sucks donkey balls for sure. Between shoving AI down your throat and indeed also messing up things or weird ass issues it’s a shit fest too. But my point is that people are more adjusted to it and there’s more resources to fix the issue. And in my experience it’s less of a OS breaking experience.
I’ve found the opposite - using Linux on my PC has been a breeze. I expected drama connecting my phone and e-reader, but no. Plain sailing, everything just works. I’m so glad I jumped when I did, hearing some of the recent Windows nonsense.
I’m on Zorin if it helps. The free version.
Totally agree. I tried Zorin for a bit too and it might be the closest to windows so an easier switch. The troubleshooting on windows is generally easier but also still needed. And more and more it seems.
