That's the beauty of Linux and OSS; choice. I remember about twenty years ago using Suse. It had the best installer and YAST was a powerful configuration tool. Mandrake was nice as well but like Suse, I didn't like the package manager and .rpm files. A lot of dependency issues back then. I saw you mention PCLinux OS in chat. I used it and it worked well at the time(2004-2005). It was a bit similar to Mandrake and was the distro that gave me the least issues until Mint came along. As long as it works and it's stable I'm happy. I'd still recommend Manjaro as it's given me a hassle-free experience and it was pretty solid and fast. I've had months and months of uptime and it would always perform flawlessly though RAM usage is a bit lower with MX but that's probably due to using XFCE instead of KDE.

You do realize that Arch and Artix have testing repos right? In my experience they do a better job.

I don't constantly update my system. Like not at all. I have a total of 5 Artix systems I'm running, and several ubuntu servers. All of the arch ones have different update frequencies. All of them are stable. All of them I can trust to install new software without borking. All of the ubuntu ones I wish were Artix because I would have more confidence I could upgrade software and add new things without borking it if it were Artix instead of Ubuntu. You just have to update pacman before installing new software. I wish it wouldn't let you. It's the one gotcha.

The one reason it doesn't force correct usage is that if you've updated in the last couple of days you are good to install new things without updating. So if it forced upgrading for each individual package even when it wasn't needed that would get old. Thankfully it doesn't. Just don't install anything new if you haven't updated in the last week (a week is chancing it). Even in the case that you chanced it and get bit, it isn't that hard to fix. AI can guide you through fixing it in 5 minutes. It will be a corrupted initramfs or mismatched kernel. Boot in a live cd. artix-chroot /mnt/thedrive. pacman -S linux.

Artix is not bleeding edge. Not even close. They have testing repos you could install from, but people don't. Modern open source also has version staging on the dev side. So by the time it gets install in Artix it is months old. But critically, none of the software is years old an incompatable with all other new software, creating a needless dependency alignment window problem that can't be tested across all permutations of software that could be installed. Ubuntu and debian are setting up an unneccissary hard problem that they also happen to suck at.

Jason 100% install Artix or an easier Arch system. Larry is always complaining about Linux and how none of his systems work. There is a reason. There is a reason experienced people run Arch. The common though flase narrative is that those people are further along a learning curve and can handle it. The more accurate narrative is experienced people learn what doesn't give them problems and want fewer problems, the same as new people. But they have the experience to actually know what causes fewer problems. Experienced people also do productive things with their system and don't have time to fix Ubuntu constantly. They are done doing personal computer fixing and want something that just works (but in the linux case just works without restricting them ala mac or windows).

Ubuntu and debian decided long ago they want to be a stable production system, back when they though they could be the non-enterprise enterprise and take market share away from Redhat. Actually they succeeded at that. But their model isn't as tuned as they claim it is for desktop linux. A personal instance of desktop linux is a lot more dynamic and needs to be fluid without complaining or breaking when you ask it to be fluid. That's not what Ubuntu is.

Everyone who is experienced who wants to run desktop linux is using an Arch based system. There is a reason for that. It is the modern and correct way to do things. Everyone should be having smooth installs of new software. It's stable as fuck. There is a reason why Valve uses it for SteamOS. They wouldn't be sticking it on devices if they thought rolling releases are dangerous.

Now the one disingenous thing I've said that maybe isn't that universal is promoting Artix. For you @JasonCarswell, actually install plain Arch or Cachy if it is easier, or Manjaro. The reason is Artix involves one extra step to make it good that I worry you might struggle with. And that is that Artix "unofficially" supports combining it with Arch repos, which you are going to want to do if you want all the software and compatability with most of the AUR. And adding that to the configs is a slightly technical step. Really the only thing you are getting with Artix is anti-systemd. So it may not be worth the tiny bit of extra setup for you. But I am 100% recommending you run an Arch based of some sort. It's not dangerously bleeding edge like Larry complains.

You can ask @Gr3vi if Cachy has a smooth install experience. I'm sure it does.

But if you do decided to install Artix, you can live with just the Artix packages for a bit and I can help you later get the Arch packages in and access to AUR setup. It will just be a few command lines. And adding one line to a config file.

Larry is already making a point that he may not realize he is making in the body of his text. He is saying one distro is still using "elogind" and to avoid some old version of a thing you actually need to use this other thing. How would you know that? These old systems with mixed era software require a high level of literacy of the available software and respective dependency alignment windows through history to avoid footguns like that. What Larry doesn't understand is that is a uniquely Debian/Ubuntu problem. He's like a fish that doesn't even see water. He thinks these are normal problems to deal with that are just a given in the Linux world. They don't have to be. I don't deal with that shit. I don't deal with any of the crap he complains about in the /s/LinSucks topic. I just use my system. It just works. It just installs any software I want. It never complains in that process or hands me another problem to solve.

Larry, just run Arch and quit torturing yourself. You fucked up one system and never tried it again. You've seen arch break once. I've seen debian based systems break 50 times or more. And I've seen them introduce struggles to get reasonable software installed for zero good reason 100s of times. I can count on one hand the number of times I had to actually struggle to install something on Arch (and usually it's something insanely obscure). Those same struggles add up on new people. If it's hard for me to get a system working the way I want on ubuntu then it's harder on new people. You always say how much it's a struggle to get linux to actually do what you want. Seems to track with the systems you use. I've had the same experiences on the same systems. The problem is you don't correlate it with what you are using because you haven't tried all of the major systems multiple times like I have. People who have enough experience to have multiple datapoints for each system (not one) all like Arch.