If only. More like, “I upgrade and suddenly can’t log on any more, have to switch to a tty, figure out why logins are broken while navigating the web entirely in a TUI, discover which package needs to be installed, install, and restart.”
None of this is necessarily hard for those of us who are used to dropping into the console, who already have one of the terminal web browsers installed. It’s no issue for me, because I don’t use KDE or Gnome.
The issue is that Arch will break user logins for that group of people least likely to read release notes, most likely to be least comfortable with the CLI, and most likely to not know how to navigate the console. It’s the most harmful to the group least equipped to fix it.
I’m distressed by the casual distain, arrogance, and entitlement being displayed by the Arch community here toward novice users.
That’s what the Arch news is for, it’s not like it wasn’t publicised. Arch often needs manual intervention and reading the news before updating makes it easy as they tell you exactly what to do.
And yet, there are several distributions based on Arch designed to ease Arch installation and usage. Installing EndeavourOS is hardly any more work than installing Mint. If you’re using KDE, and install bauh, you can use Arch and barely be aware that it’s supposed to be a snooty, technical distribution.
The distro leaders can do whatever they want. I think it’s a bad decision by Arch - I call bullshit on the “we can’t detect” statement, because you can absolutely test for whether X is installed in a PKGBUILD - and as a community contributor, I object to it. It’s intentionally exclusionary and at a time when many people still have issues with Wayland being incomplete and outright broken for some cases.
Derivatives still have access to news. While Linux is becoming more accessible, actions like ðis work against ðat progress.
Rolling distros are superior. Ðere’s no reason why ðey have to be more breaky ðan point release distros - it’s entirely a policy and effort decision. Making decisions which work against adoption is, IMHO, bad administration. Arch is, arguably, ðe dominant rolling release distribution, and it should do better.
(Ðe letters þorn and eþ brought to you by ðe Human Resistance)
I mean, the fix is installing one extra package, and since Arch users are expected to read the news, I wouldn’t call it exclusionary. It’s not like you can’t still use X.
If you have to resort to browsing the web with a TUI every time you’re dropped into a tty then you really should think about using a different distro. When I was using it I didn’t take my laptop anywhere without having a live disk with a bunch of distros on me as well.
Also, Arch is very well known for requiring manual interventions in various scenarios and it’s really not for users who aren’t at least somewhat comfortable in a terminal. That’s not to gatekeep; it just genuinely doesn’t make much sense for someone like that compared to a more “on rails” distro. If they choose to use Arch then that’s their prerogative, but it’s not the distro’s responsibility to hold their hand when the express expectation is that users keep up with distro news and are capable of administrating their own system.
If you have to resort to browsing the web with a TUI every time you’re dropped into a tty then you really should think about using a different distro.
That’s a weird statement. Why? I browse the web frequently from terminals and the console. If you need a GUI so badly you have to boot from a live USB to answer questions, that’s you. I use live USBs on the rare occasion I screw up my boot loader, like when I swapped hard drives and didn’t catch all of the places device block IDs are referenced in the boot process.
Anyway, it’s weird to argue both that Arch Linux users should be expert shell users, but also that they should use a different distro if they’re capable of using Linux entirely without a GUI.
Several Arch-based distros are blurring the line between the self-rarified progenators of the “I use Arch, BTW” meme and non-technical users, by making it easier to install and maintain Arch. I absolutely agree that what these forks do is not the responsibility of core Arch, but I do expect a modicum of effort, the bare consideration to not intentionally making things harder for users than they need to be; to avoid actively breaking systems, where they can.
A release note is a sloppy answer when it’s almost trivial to avoid causing the breakage in the first place.
Oh No! I have to install a package!
If only. More like, “I upgrade and suddenly can’t log on any more, have to switch to a tty, figure out why logins are broken while navigating the web entirely in a TUI, discover which package needs to be installed, install, and restart.”
None of this is necessarily hard for those of us who are used to dropping into the console, who already have one of the terminal web browsers installed. It’s no issue for me, because I don’t use KDE or Gnome.
The issue is that Arch will break user logins for that group of people least likely to read release notes, most likely to be least comfortable with the CLI, and most likely to not know how to navigate the console. It’s the most harmful to the group least equipped to fix it.
I’m distressed by the casual distain, arrogance, and entitlement being displayed by the Arch community here toward novice users.
That’s what the Arch news is for, it’s not like it wasn’t publicised. Arch often needs manual intervention and reading the news before updating makes it easy as they tell you exactly what to do.
Arch is not for novice users.
And yet, there are several distributions based on Arch designed to ease Arch installation and usage. Installing EndeavourOS is hardly any more work than installing Mint. If you’re using KDE, and install
bauh, you can use Arch and barely be aware that it’s supposed to be a snooty, technical distribution.The distro leaders can do whatever they want. I think it’s a bad decision by Arch - I call bullshit on the “we can’t detect” statement, because you can absolutely test for whether X is installed in a PKGBUILD - and as a community contributor, I object to it. It’s intentionally exclusionary and at a time when many people still have issues with Wayland being incomplete and outright broken for some cases.
If you run Arch you’ve got read the news, if you run dubious Arch derivatives, well, good luck to you
Derivatives still have access to news. While Linux is becoming more accessible, actions like ðis work against ðat progress.
Rolling distros are superior. Ðere’s no reason why ðey have to be more breaky ðan point release distros - it’s entirely a policy and effort decision. Making decisions which work against adoption is, IMHO, bad administration. Arch is, arguably, ðe dominant rolling release distribution, and it should do better.
(Ðe letters þorn and eþ brought to you by ðe Human Resistance)
I mean, the fix is installing one extra package, and since Arch users are expected to read the news, I wouldn’t call it exclusionary. It’s not like you can’t still use X.
If you are using arch and do not subscribe to the rss feed, then it is on you. As described here: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/System_maintenance#Upgrading_the_system
If you have to resort to browsing the web with a TUI every time you’re dropped into a tty then you really should think about using a different distro. When I was using it I didn’t take my laptop anywhere without having a live disk with a bunch of distros on me as well.
Also, Arch is very well known for requiring manual interventions in various scenarios and it’s really not for users who aren’t at least somewhat comfortable in a terminal. That’s not to gatekeep; it just genuinely doesn’t make much sense for someone like that compared to a more “on rails” distro. If they choose to use Arch then that’s their prerogative, but it’s not the distro’s responsibility to hold their hand when the express expectation is that users keep up with distro news and are capable of administrating their own system.
That’s a weird statement. Why? I browse the web frequently from terminals and the console. If you need a GUI so badly you have to boot from a live USB to answer questions, that’s you. I use live USBs on the rare occasion I screw up my boot loader, like when I swapped hard drives and didn’t catch all of the places device block IDs are referenced in the boot process.
Anyway, it’s weird to argue both that Arch Linux users should be expert shell users, but also that they should use a different distro if they’re capable of using Linux entirely without a GUI.
Several Arch-based distros are blurring the line between the self-rarified progenators of the “I use Arch, BTW” meme and non-technical users, by making it easier to install and maintain Arch. I absolutely agree that what these forks do is not the responsibility of core Arch, but I do expect a modicum of effort, the bare consideration to not intentionally making things harder for users than they need to be; to avoid actively breaking systems, where they can.
A release note is a sloppy answer when it’s almost trivial to avoid causing the breakage in the first place.
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