I’ve had no problems, as long as I’ve updated the keyring first sudo pacman-key —refresh-keys. I’ve probably gone a few times not upgrading my system for a while and I had minimal problems.

NixOS + Home Manager user here.

I run in an opt-in state config. / is tmpfs. /home is tmpfs. /boot and /nix are real filesystems. At boot, the EFI loader reads the configuration from /nix/persist/etc/nixos/flake.nix, symlinks all the programs and configs into / and /home, and startup proceeds as normal.

That means nothing persists across boots unless I add it to my config. Cruft doesn't accumulate in hidden areas, it's all in my config. That keeps things fast, makes management easier, and makes troubleshooting easier.

I use Debian so that i can ignore it for a year and it still wont break.

I've gone like 5 moths without updating a laptop on Arch before and the only thing I had to deal with was updating keyring first

I am using NixOS and have used Arch before. Its great. No dependency hell, superb config management (with home manager) and builtin rollbacks. But the nix language is somewhat arcane. Error messages are only somewhat helpful and docs are really lacking. NixOS also uses quite the amount of disk space in its store. Would only recommend NixOS if youre a resourceful programmer (or not)

PS. Ive never had arch break any drivers on me, or any upgrade failing (unless a package itself is borked, but they usually put out posts for this). But my systems all amd, ymmv

Most likely, nothing will happen. Arch breaking if you don't updating 5x a day is more of a meme than a reality.

I've updated a client's Arch server that hadn't been touched for years, and it went just fine.

You're the user, you're in control, you're empowered to make sure it won't break after the update, you're empowered to fix it if it does.

After a long time I usually upgrade the keyring first with pacman -Sy archlinux-keyring For upgrading I like to use Topgrade which also upgrades other stuff (snaps, flatpacks, pip, ...)

I have several virtual machines here with Arch that I often don't use for months. And when I do use them, I proceed as I do with every update. So before an update, I check if something has been published at https://archlinux.org/news/ that affects the installation in question. This is done automatically with the help of the tool informant. If something has been published that affects my installations, I take that into account. Otherwise I run pacman -Syu as usual. And that's it.

I use NixOS. Was a kinda rough start since it was annoying to install apps through a config, but after getting my config fully fledged out I love it. A declarative system is a dream for a dev, I can just copy my config to a new system, run one command, and I have my entire system back! Very stable as well

I've got an Arch server that I update monthly (and have been for 2+ years now), and a desktop that I update maybe 2-3 times a week. I've not had any issues, so long as I update the keyring first. Good luck!!

(Disclaimer that I’m still new-ish to Linux)

I just went about a year between EndeavorOS updates on a laptop and uhh… it wasn’t happy. I just installed Kubuntu which hopefully will be more forgiving haha.

I guarantee it

I've never used Arch or Nix, but I switched from Void -> Guix and have been very happy with it. It's such a huge peace of mind to be able to have your whole system declaratively configured, package changes being atomic and generational (rollbacks so no worries about breakage), Guix shell for messing about, and being able to make your system do anything you can write in Scheme.

That's my daily driver. On servers so far I've gone with Debian Stable + Guix.

Also Void is still a fantastic distro, and is what I would use if not for Guix/Nix.