A space biologist by training and a (Arch)Linux user by passion #ArchLinux #Linux #KISS #FOSS #terminal, #python https://www-gem.codeberg.page/

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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: February 17th, 2023

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  • I’ve been using Arch for over 15 years, and honestly, I never check the news before updating. Once in a while, I’ll get an error — maybe once a year — and the fix is always just running a quick command I find on the Arch site or the package page. Takes seconds, no drama.

    I’ve only managed to break my system twice, and both times were 100% my fault. Even then, recovery was easy: just chroot in and run one command.

    As for updates, doing them regularly (daily, weekly, or monthly) is recommended. No need to go crazy with updates. Too frequent updates are actually discouraged. Arch is a rolling release, so your packages and dependencies get updated together — meaning things don’t randomly break. Skipping updates won’t nuke your system either, and if something ever goes sideways, you can just downgrade and be back up in no time.




  • You’re correct partial upgrades are unsupported. Arch follows a rolling release model, meaning there are no fixed “versions” of the system. Instead, everything is continuously updated. Each package is built and tested against the current state of the rest of the system in the Arch repositories. That package was compiled against the latest system libraries in the repos, not necessarily the ones on your machine.

    Your proposed “workaround” may work if the package is standalone and has few/no dependencies. Again, ArchLinux strongly recommends full system upgrades (pacman -Syu) rather than only reinstalling/upgrading a single package, because library or dependency mismatches can occur if your system is out of sync.
    A safer approach may be to use “pacman -S package --needed” which will avoid removing it first and automatically handles dependencies safely.