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this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2026
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Linux
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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I think everyone here has offered good advice, so I have nothing to add in that regard, but for the record, I fucked up a Debian
bookworminstall by doing a basicapt update && apt upgrade. The only "weird" software it had was Remmina, so I could remote into work; nothing particularly wild.I recognize that Debian is supposed to be bulletproof, but I can offer commiseration that it can be just as fallible as any other base distro.
Nothing that uses apt is remotely bullet-proof. It has gotten better but it is hardly difficult to break.
pacman is hard to break. APK 3 is even harder. The new moss package manager is designed to be hard to break but time will tell. APK is the best at the moment IMHO. In my view, apt is one of the most fragile.
Eh, I disagree with you on Pacman. It could be possible I was doing something stupid, but I've had Arch VMs where I didn't open them for three months, and when I tried to update them I got a colossally messed up install.
I just made a new VM, as I really only need it when I need to make sure a package has the correct dependencies on Arch.
I can almost guarantee that the problem you encountered was an outdated archlinux-keyring that meant you did not have the GPG keys to validate the packages you were trying to install. It is an annoying problem that happens way too often on Arch. Things are not actually screwed up but it really looks that way if you do not know what you are looking at. One line fix if you know what to do.
It was my biggest gripe when I used Arch. I did not run into it much as I updated often but it always struck me as a really major flaw.
I feel like it was more than the package manager whining; I think xorg literally wouldn’t start after the update, although it’s been so long now that I could be misremembering.
Honestly, I probably could have salvaged the install if I’d wanted to without too much difficulty, but it was just a VM for testing distro packaging rather than a daily driver device.
Still, what you say is good to know, and perhaps I should hold back on the Pacman slander. I’ve just been using Debian for around 4 years now and had pretty good reliability; then again, Debian (and most distros, with their pitiful documentation) would probably be very hard to use without Archwiki.