this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2026
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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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Everyone has their reasons for choosing the distro that they choose.
I'll copy paste what I wrote in reply to someone else with this type of argument:
Now, regarding:
And that isn't a hassle. You sign up to it when you install Arch. If you aren't willing to do that thing that takes a shorter time (loading up the Arch homepage) than actually issuing the upgrade command 😄, then yeah, Arch isn't for you. Let's concede that much, I suppose.
Right, again, that's you creating maintenance for yourself. AUR is considered separate from the distro itself. I stand by my main point. 😁
That’s fine I suppose, though there are other distros more fitting if latest version isn’t of concern.
I didn’t need to do that, I just used a RSS feed reader directly from the Arch news. Now, for an regular user, it would be a learning experience to actually be aware of possible manual interventions, especially since Arch makes upgrading a breeze, it’s not a thing in other distros.
Actually, installing from the AUR is what helped me at the time, since the official software package was deprecated — removed from the main arch repository —, and I didn’t have time to repackage it myself. The deprecated package without a viable official replacement is what created a need to do system maintenance. And installing from the AUR was fine as long as you read the PKGBUILD, at least at the time. Regardless if either installing from the AUR, repackaging or downgrading the software were the solutions, it created friction with the end user. Which is fine for this particular distro, but for others in stable releases, it would be a major flaw.
Nice, that's a great solution!
Ah, I misunderstood what you were saying about installing that thing from the AUR then, in your example. I get it now.
But to think that the deprecation was caused by... upgrading! 😆
We're very deep into this thread now and I'm sort of losing the plot, and it's very late here. But these anecdotes I find are quite rare. Surely this would be happening in a non-rolling release as well. If Arch deprecated a package, and Debian were to do so for the same reason (seems likely, perhaps?), the only difference is the time frame in which you have to/choose to deal with it. If it disappeared from the Debian repo, you'd have to find some way of replacing it yourself, too.
I might be misunderstanding you again, I feel. But I hope you see what I mean, in case I'm understanding the situation correctly.