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this post was submitted on 03 Jan 2024
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I'm on 545 and I have no issues. But I'm also not using Ubuntu...
Maybe it's the distro that's the problem not the backup. I mean I'd rather have a distro with smooth updates than one that makes me need snapshots.
What's even the point with such a distro, ok so I restore previous working state, then what, I can't do updates anymore? Living in fear of official updates sounds terrible.
So you're implying there exists a distro that is perfect and never breaks anything? Sounds like denial. Having time shift in place is risk management and says nothing about the distro, which btw all are imperfect and may break eventually. Kinda confused how one can run Linux and be unaware of how complex and fallible ALL software is.
No, I'm implying that official updates breaking the system is insane and should not be accepted as the norm to the point you casually need to use snapshots just to keep your system working.
That's not an accurate portrayal of anything though. You're implying risk management means you're accepting that the system sucks and the only way to keep it running is to have a backup system.
That's not what anyone is doing. They are acknowledging the flawed nature of software and humanity in general and guarding against the consequences of this. It's being smart. Name one distro that has never broken with updates? You cannot because there obviously couldn't exist one.
A major distro breaking your system is the equivalent of a flower pot falling on your head walking down the street. Does it happen? Sure. Do I want to spend my life wearing a motorcycle helmet and looking up all the time? No.
I'm not saying distros can't crap on you, I'm saying stop tolerating it. Raise a stink or switch distro. There are distros out there where you don't have to live in constant fear and where nothing happens if you don't have snapshots.
I do have backups, precisely because shit happens. But there's a difference between a helmet and health insurance.
Okay what distros are we talking about? What's an example of an unreliable one and what's a reliable one?
I think it's much more complicated than this. Honestly there's a reason it took decades for Linux distros in general to get as stable as they are today. It's really really hard to build an operating system.
I think a better analogy for installing updates on linux would be riding a motorcycle. Accidents happen all the time. They're bound to, be prepared. Just because you can ride for 30 years unscathed doesn't mean you can take that for granted.
.deb distros are doomed from the start if you need to use third-party repos (which you do, for a desktop system) because they always end up undermining the stability of the packages from the core repos in the long run.
Try an Arch-based distro, they're super stable because their compatibility model is more robust, and there are options depending on how much hand-holding you want — ranging from vanilla Arch to Endeavour to Manjaro.
Ya know, this is super interesting you mention Arch. The only person I've known IRL who uses and loves Arch champions it hardcore but with the caveat that you have to be okay with things breaking due to the rolling release model. Due to his guidance I have avoided arch specifically. I've been running Ubuntu based distros a couple of years and only had issues with updates breaking things like 2 times... Both of which didn't require a wipe or anything.
Packages can break, not the distro. Packages can break at any time because there's thousands of them and nobody can check all of them thoroughly. A rolling distro gets you both the bugs and the fixes faster.
Non-apt and non-rolling will limit your options considerably.
I might be confused. I thought that the distro itself was made up of packages and that's what all updates did: update various packages bundled with the distro (plus any you installed yourself)
My 2 cents, OpenSUSE Leap is stable as hell. lots of QA happening with their automated testing, and keeping in lockstep with SUSE releases (now sharing same binaries). Every distro upgrade has gone flawlessly, but when I have had the urge to tinker and do stupid things inf config files the built in btrfs snapshots have been a godsend.
What you wrote and what I'm reading about openSuse leap sound excellent. My only concern is support. Just about all the apps and tools I use are well supported on Ubuntu based systems but I don't recall seeing nearly as much support for rpm based oses, including open suse . What's your experience? If you go to install just any random software you just heard about, how well does it typically go getting it installed/working?
I haven't had issues finding packages, often they may not be on the dev websites that host a deb package, but the main repos contain the general tools, if you need something more "fringe",independent dev or new, then software.opensuse.Org allows you to turn on a search by community or experimental packages (which would be like Arch AUR and contains a lot of rpms) so you can install directly from the website, it will add the neccessary community repos during the install. Or if you don't want to pollute your repo list they typically they have the option : Grab Binary directly. Or ther is an OPI ? Package you install that lets you search locally for community packages. For commerical apps like teamviewer , yubikey,webex etc the rpms were all available to support corporate SUSE users. If you still can't find an rpm, then you run the Alien tool which converts a deb to the RPM installation format. The only issue I had once was the community package had dependencies that were not contained in the users repo so I had to find the dependencies and install those first. That felt like 1990s
This is a great response and I appreciate it a lot. I'm saving it for later!
No problem. Happy New Year. Also it is .org i mistakenly put .com for the opensuse software site. ( I will edit post) Also I should mention if you dont see an officially supported rpm on the software site, it does not mean it isn't there, it now seems to mean it is in the main repos. I think years back they would all show, but maybe due to shared binaries with SUSE they don't bother listing on the https://software.opensuse.org site. So best to check locally in the YAST or Zypper search of your repos first.
Thanks again! And a happy new year to you too
Windows?
Lol wtf. Windows has broken in catastrophic ways after updates on several occasions for me. Some of the many reasons I avoid it. But nice GoTcHa tho
I think it's just dumb to not make a backup before large updates. There's so many things happening, a lot can go wrong, especially if you have added 3rd party repos and have customized core parts of the system, not just through config files but let's say you switched to latest kde plasma from the one your distro ships.
And what happens if you have to restore the backup?
You can look up what's the solution to your problem in peace while everything is still working. If it was a server, all the services are still available, if it was your desktop you don't have to use a live linux usb that's without all your configs to find the solution
You make a good point. Ubuntu gives you so many ways to shoot yourself in the foot that it's pretty much a given that it will get messed up eventually. So you have to use snapshots.
On Arch based distros the updates just work. I've never had to snapshot anything. But having just one single community repo (AUR) contributes to that a great deal.
I don't like Ubuntu, and I do like Arch's philosophy. But I think Arch is the more prone to breakage of the two.
Except that time a year and a bit ago where an Arch update broke Grub for a huge number of users.
No distro is immune to breakage.
And a filesystem snapshotting tool would help you restore bootloader how?...
So you agree, Arch can also break by updating.
Of course it can. And your PC can also fall off the desk. I'm saying a snapshot tool is a really poor solution for distro problems, it's really a bandaid for a problem that shouldn't exist.
Use a decent distro, take proper backups, and use snapshots for what they were intended — recovering small mistakes with personal files, not for system maintenance.
That's the point -- your claim about deb-based distros is just anecdotal.
The example here is Nvidia updates borking the system. I've have that happen to me numerous times on Arch-based systems.
I've run deb-based distros on some boxes over years of updates with no issues. On the other hand I've had updates cause breakages on Arch-based systems pretty much every time I've run them.
Which is to say anecdotes are useless, updates can break systems, and being able to immediately roll back to a working system and deal with updating later is a simple, nice thing to have with no downsides.
nvidia drivers have often done weird shit to my system. so, I would probably also lean towards amd in the future.
Yeah that's why I use Nvidia, because AMD drivers are super stable.