Just interested: why not Debian? i.e. still deb based distro?

I'm guessing the poster above you wants recent package versions as they went to Arch.

I usually run Fedora rather than Arch though, because in my limited experience with Arch it really doesn’t like to not be booted into for extended periods of time — if you do that the piled up updates are much more likely to break somehow or things like required config changes will slip through the cracks, whereas I have yet to experience this with Fedora.

I’ve switched all my laptops and workstations from Ubuntu to Arch.

There are rough edges here too, but on overall I’m much happier. I feel like I know how my machine works again. Ubuntu lately has been giving me that windowsy feeling with lots of things running for god knows what reason.

Also in arch the repos seems to not only contain more current versions of things. They seem to bundle more things altogether.

Next server though. Not Ubuntu for sure. Probably Debian?

Is it doable to setup Debian with a ZFS root file system?

When they decided to stop officially distributing debs, and promote Snap as distribution channel, that was the final straw. I don't understand what's their target audience anymore. Desktop users? My machines are sensitive about reboots, but pretty much sealed off the internet. Upgrades are tested, and happen in scheduled windows. Yet Snap auto-update insists on restarts, whenever it sees fit.

Sure, I can find workarounds [0], but the complete disregard on this issue and the reason that they probably forced the LXD project to promote the dumpster fire that is Snap just didn't sit well with me. I'm gone for good.

[0] https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/disabling-automatic-refresh-for...

Auto update happens and I can understand your pain here with sealed machines/testing updates. Most small to medium companies around don't care though (from what I see) and probably have unattended upgrades on anyways.

Bit more on autoupdates - just to align yourself with how people care on keeping versions, you can imagine and check yourself of how many dockerfiles contain `latest` or no any specification of versions of pulled images. Many, many, not giving a shit.

In practice, though, autoupdates are not bringing VEs/VMs down and I find update happened after my `lxc shell some-ve` sessions are disconnected from time to time (I tend to keep those in tmux and it could be attached for weeks or even months).

As for use cases and audience - both Desktop/Server works for me - on desktop I use LXD under my WSL (it has systemd support for ~ 6 months now) to quickly play around with something and on servers to split one big machine into smaller ones/limit access to system for other users. Even had the case using it in CI/CD - custom Linux software to be packaged and doing basic installation test for centos6/7/8, Ubuntu 16/18/20.04 and so on. Package installs were done via dynamic creation of fresh VE each time, to ensure system is "clean".

These days it's looking like Fedora holds that crown.

Arch is customizable, simple (in the sense that there are no surprises; things work as expected), and has a great community. Folks here can argue about snaps or flatpaks, and I can happily use AUR to install nearly anything. If it’s not there, I can publish it.

I’m not forced to adopt whatever GUI Canonical thinks is best for me in a given year or whatever their trendy new craze is. I can enjoy i3, tmux, vim, and ignore the rest.

I'm on Ubuntu for now because Snaps can be disabled but it does make me wonder since they also dumped Unity Desktop a few years back. It almost seems like they don't care about Linux Desktop users any more.

Immediately formatted and switched to pop OS and I've never been happier.

For future reference, if you ever decide to switch back, breaking changes or ones which require manual intervention are usually announced on archlinux.org.

https://old.reddit.com/r/EndeavourOS/comments/wygfds/full_tr...

It's a user-friendly and maintained Arch with some goodies like kernel switcher and driver updater GUIs.

Have you tried OpenSuse Tumbleweed or Gecko Linux? Tumbleweed is a rolling distro but the maintainers apparently test all of the updates they push. OpenSuse can feel a but clunky (it asks for passwords for “everything” for instance), but theres Gecko, which acts a bit as a wrapper of a distro to make OpenSuse a bit more user friendly.

I've heard good things about tumbleweed and it even has support for WSL, so I might try that if I ever build a gaming pc and have to main windows.

I’ve tried adding desktop environments to a pop installation, but I really don’t like having all of the apps included with other desktop environments cluttering the taskbar menu and the like.

I avoid it because I find it hard to use and hard-or-impossible to configure adequately. It takes a "my way or the highway" approach. If you like how it does things, it's great. If you don't, you're better off using a different DE, which is what I do.

In regards to this specific incident, The Arch team did release a statement on how to handle the update.

Also I wanted a distro without systemd and the init system is the one thing you can't choose or change on arch. I tried it but didn't like arch, in the end I moved my stuff to alpine which still runs my docker server.

In the end I chose FreeBSD which has a really nice combo of stable OS but rolling packages which is not common on Linux at all. And the community is much nicer IMO.

https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/cd-in...

lshw tells me

  description: Wireless interface
  product: Centrino Advanced-N 6235
  vendor: Intel Corporation