Realizing Arch isn't for me after updating broke VLC

I upvoted you, I am a fellow openSUSE fan and contributor.

But I need to point out that if you install VLC from a repository outside of Factory, then it's not auto-tested.

Moreover, Packman is external to the openSUSE project altogether. If you use it, you are supposed to "just trust" that everything will be fine.

You are better off installing VLC through Flatpak.

I'm running Arch for a very long time. I agree this is not a distro for general audience. I disagree, however, that it is not stable. When I'm doing work I don't update my system. I enjoy my stable configuration and when I have time, I do update, I curiously watch which amazing foss software had an update. And I try them. I check my new firefox. I check gimp's new features. etc.. or if I have to do something I easily fix it, like in no time because I know my OS. Then I enjoy my stable system again.

Do you want to know what's unstable? When I had my new AMD GPU that I built my own kernel for, because the driver wasn't in mainline. And it randomly crashed the system. That's unstable.

Or when I installed my 3rd DE in ubuntu and apt couldn't deal with it, it somehow removed X.org. And I couldn't fix it. That's also something I don't want. Arch updates are much better than this.

In the last three years there's been a single time I can recall pacman telling me I needed to do a thing.

I copy pasted that warning into google it took me right to the news post. I threw in the commands that the news post said I needed to do.

Nothing broke. So this isn't like it's a weekly problem.

The VLC thing can be solved relatively easily by installing opi with zypper, and then running opi codecs, which will add all the necessary repos and install everything. After that VLC (and h.264 etc) will work like a charm.

you just have to watch every news post for manual interventions before every update, oh, and you better update very often

You have to watch the factory mailing list and make any manual interventions for Tumbleweed, and frankly, you should be watching the news and taking any action required no matter the os.

+1 for Tumbleweed. It's a rolling release distro without (most of) the hassle and YaST is a fantastic utility which you can use to do many things. Nice graphical stuff to help you configure things like backup. Never had any breakages so far with Tumbleweed :)

Thanks! This wasn't a distro I knew much about but it's looking like one I will try out. The way they test packages is exactly the kind of choices around updates I'm looking for.

I like how many options Yast exposes. I enjoyed learning how to do most of what I need in the terminal with Arch but being able to do everything I need through GUI helps when I'm not able to recall a lot in the moment but still need to do a thing.

I posted on the Arch forums ONCE. Didn't get a single reply, lol. Actually had to open an issue on the upstream git repo to get any info.

Yup, OP has done his time in Arch meaning now competent, probably, time to go to Fedora and relax, close enough to the edge but not bleeding, good QA, For extra chill go atomic, check out uBlue...

I don't want to fault people for avoiding Arch's instability in general but this is a very minor issue.

VLC is not a system critical package. I absolutely understand the mods choice to not put it in the RSS. At most they could put a notice in the pacman logs when it updates.

I'm curious as to why the package manager doesn't fix this automatically?

Thanks for this. My VLC broke similarly, but I use it rarely enough that I hadn't looked into it yet.

I hope we're talking about that Linus, and not that Linus. You know, the one that works with computers, and not the other one that works with computers.

Can definitely recommend Fedora too. Software updates are at a good pace, and the system has a lot of polish all around. For example, all you need to do for updates is to press "update" in Discover and it'll do everything for you, applying on reboot for stability. Most things "just work".

Linus is about as far from a normal user as you can get and using him as a measuring stick if anything should be indication of the worse option for normal users...

The only issue is that you provide free testing for IBM, so it's a no go if you try to boycott/avoid US companies. If you don't it's indeed a great choice.

Manjaro is significantly worse with updates breaking.

I used for a little while in 2018 and again in 2019, both times ended because it once became stuck in a boot loop after updates, and another time couldn’t boot after updates.

You just gave me words for something that was previously just vague internal grumbling and emotions.

Manjaro knows how to aesthetically please me with their color choices and background art. I've got a negative impression from various podcasts and forum posts but I'm realizing I need to look into that more because I can't recall specifics besides something about a past issue with package distribution.

the initial state should match the final as closely as possible, in this case by installing the new optional dependencies automatically

Sometimes. Some of us out there have use cases where we really, really don't want our systems making choices for us and would rather read the notes every time. One could equally well argue that an OS whose entire purpose is letting the user make the choice suddenly doing something automatically without asking for input is the break in state that users would find astonishing.

I don't feel like this is a terribly recent attitude. It's definitely one I've encountered repeatedly over a decade or more of dipping my toes in the pool. It's not incorrect in a lot of circumstances, but it's very difficult to find support when no one wants to help you improve. There's always been a significant degree of ego in Linux user communities.

I'm amazed at the idea that in any technical community, an urging to gain more skill in your chosen environment could somehow be seen as negative.

omg you guys are fragile af

I just had this exact same issue. I installed the package. Done.

No whining. It's one fucking line of code.

They are not tech support. Maybe call applecare.

the community is the worst part of most things, the RTFM attitude is better than toxic positivity though

It's more like they expect you to do more reading than I would like to do. If I had been reading more of what they would like, I would have known I was expected to make a decision before updating and install an additional package. So from that view, they didn't push a breaking update.

I doubt the forum style is really the issue.

EndeacourOS, one of my favourite distros, uses the same packages (the real Arch ones). So everything he says here applies.

I like Garuda community.

+1 for Garuda. It's nice that they have their own way of updating (garuda-update), which also handles situations like this one. It was very satisfying to not have to do anything when the linux-firmware change happened a couple of weeks back.

Oh, also snapshots by default are a chef's kiss

The other way is to get a -testing iso, but these usually are broken because most people “upgrade” their installed distro to testing instead of just install it outright.

I’ve installed Debian testing from ISO a handful of times and never had any issues.

What do you do for security updates?

I had the same issue, hadn't found the solution yet (also didn't looked too hard) and while I sort of agree that it should have been in the news I also understand why it's not (it only affects people with VLC, and not everyone uses VLC, if every time a package gets split it was in the news the news would be all about that). That being said I think that there were other solutions that would have been much better, namely split the package with a mandatory dependency on vlc-plugins-all and convert that to optional dependency in a month or two, that way everything keeps working as is for people during the transition, but after a short while it can be modularized.

Thanks for the suggestion. I enjoyed how much I learned from picking out packages to get Arch working. I'm getting a similar excitement reading about Gentoo use flags. Giving it serious consideration.

This might be the answer really, Gentoo is my favorite distro in theory. In practice I'm a lazy ass that just ends up installing binary packages for everything and missing the AUR.

Manjaro has been pretty quiet for a long time. There's gotta be a point where we forgive and forget. I like Manjaro and used it as my entry point to Arch. It sets a lot more up for you out of the box and has manjaro-specific package bundles that just work on install.

According to Manjarno, its been just under three years since their last mistake, and that was just forgetting to renew the SSL cert for their archived forums. Probably about time we let it back into the Arch family.

I was going to say that Manjaro will have the same issue in a short while because they delay the updates a little bit but follow them, so VLC will get split in Manjaro too, but someone already commented that it has already happened

Opensuse Tumbleweed has made my list to try out.

Thanks for CachyOS. This is my first time hearing of it so I've got some reading to do.

Downside: it requires knowing a new coding language, Nix, to maintain your laptop.

If you don’t understand it, it’s going to be painful to fix anything that doesn’t work.

I don't mind trading upfront effort for stability. I enjoyed setting up Arch and I'm still benefiting from insights gained from choosing my setup packages there.

Having nearly latest versions of packages is important to me because I can get into a flow after the initial excitement of a new feature being released but if I have to wait long to get my hands on it that won't happen. In this case, a smaller loss of my excitement to watch a video happened in the time it took me to figure out what was up with VLC.

I ran Endeavour OS for 3 years, and it had a habit of breaking to no return every couple of months. I still liked it, but just got tired of that issue. Cachy OS has been much better

My first experience with Linux was Ubuntu back in 2007! I thought it was interesting but didn't become a Linux user until 12 years later when I realized gaming was possible without dual booting.

Something I experience a lot is getting excited for new features. It gives me an energy I can use to start a project I wouldn't have done otherwise. I need to be able to start soon after hearing about the new feature or I risk losing the excitement and missing out on the energy it would have provided.

I second Debian Testing. The only issues I have are updates slow down during package freezes and sometimes, a package you are using becomes a victim of a package transition. Both are symptoms of Testing being exactly what it says, so I can't blame them, but still a valid annoyance.

The worst example was FreeCAD had a dependency being transitioned, so FreeCAD disappeared from Testing for a while, meaning my system wouldn't update if I wanted to keep FreeCAD. In the end, I just gave up and used the Flatpak. (I probably could have installed from Unstable, but whatever.)

Truth be told, I kind of wish there was a project to keep some new packages flowing to Testing users during freezes. I get why Debian themselves doesn't do it - it would be a nightmare to maintain - but an outside community project would be amazing. It wouldn't exactly be easy, but such a project wouldn't need to necessarily do every package (just desired ones), and they would only need to maintain them a couple months until new versions start flowing into Testing again. I think the biggest difficulty is not going too far ahead of what will end up in Testing post-freeze.