this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2023
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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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My wife uses Arch (actually). She calls it the internet, when she really means Facebook. She knows it isn't Apple but it gets a bit vague after that!
The last time I had to fire up the Mesh Central client to sort something out on her desktop from work was around three months ago. Every couple of weeks I ssh into it, update it and schedule a reboot for 03:00.
why arch and not something with more stable updates like debian?
After many years of using multiple devices and even servers with Archlinux installed it never broke because of an update (spoiler: I use systemd-boot instead of grub). If a system is to be used by a less experienced user, just install linux-lts Kernel instead.
Unstable does not mean it crashes/breaks often, it just means it does not guarantee to not bump to the newest upstream version and that it does not do backports. This can be a problem when using unmaintaned software that does not like using a recent python/php.
This is also great because if you find a bug in a software you can report it to upstream directly. Debian maintainers only backport severe bugs, not every one of them. It can take over a year for new features to arrive - especially painful with applications like gimp, krita, blender, etc. You can use debian-unstable of course, which is close to upstream as well.
I setup a pacman hook to reinstall grub and rebuild the config file after every grub update. This is apparently how the grub team expect people to use it. They want each distro to setup their own install scripts or something.
So far no issues from grub and I've had it set up that way for half a year.