Anyone use Arch Linux? (Or what’s your preferred distro?)
I’ve been working on a project that I want to be compatible with the major/popular distros. Whilst I’ve been a long-time fan and user of Ubuntu, I’ve discovered other distros through this project and I’m tempted away.
One that stands out to me is Arch Linux. It is a rolling release (which worries me a little) but the only one I’ve come across that has the most bang up-to-date packages in its own repositories.
Does anyone else use Arch on Linode and what’s your experience of it in terms of updates and stability? Are all of Linodes features compatible (networking/disk management/recovery/Lish/Glish/backups?)
Alternatively do you have a strong preference for a distro (that runs on Linode) and why?
2 Replies
I use Arch Linux primarily. It's been quite stable for me. Aside from some configuration changes that might need to be made on packages from time to time during upgrades, everything runs smoothly, and it's better than upgrading Ubuntu from one release to another, in my opinion.
All of Linode's services work on Arch Linux, backups and the like. As long as you aren't doing any customized file systems or disk partitioning, you should be fine to use Linode backups with it.
Smccabe
Linode Staff
Hey @andysh!
Does anyone else use Arch on Linode and what’s your experience of it in terms of updates and stability?
All updates are provided via Arch repos, so there shouldn't be any lag in getting new updates! Stability is fine, I haven't seen any issues with keeping it up and running so long as I make sure the packages get updated every so once in a while.
Are all of Linodes features compatible (networking/disk management/recovery/Lish/Glish/backups?)
Yep, all normal features should work with Linodes Arch image :)
Alternatively do you have a strong preference for a distro (that runs on Linode) and why?
I think it comes down to the project that you have, and what you were planing on using it for. At home, on the desktop I usually run Arch Linux, which is why I occasionally deploy some Arch instances if I want to run some tests, or one off things like gaming servers. The more important services I run on Linode (mail server, Nextcloud instance) all run on Ubuntu. While I have not had any issues with Arch updates( both at home and on Linode) Ubuntu or CentOS generally seem to be more stable as far as long term package support, and they generally have less issues when updates have been put off for sometime. Again, for me it all comes down to the length and importance of the project.