this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2025
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I realized my VLC was broke some point in the week after updating Arch. I spend time troubleshooting then find a forum post with replies from an Arch moderator saying they knew it would happen and it's my fault for not wanting to read through pages of changelogs. Another mod post says they won't announce that on the RSS feed either. I thought I was doing good by following the RSS but I guess that's not enough.

I've been happily using Arch for 5 years but after reading those posts I've decided to look for a different distro. Does anyone have recommendations for the closest I can get to Arch but with a different attitude around updating?

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[–] Allero@lemmy.today 98 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (36 children)

Based on what you describe, I would strongly recommend going with OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. It's just as bleeding-edge as Arch, but all packages go through automatic testing to ensure they won't break anything, and if some manual actions are required, it will offer options right before update. Moreover, snapper in enabled by default on btrfs partitions, and it makes snapshots automatically before updates, so even if something breaks somehow, reverting takes a few seconds.

One small footnote is that you'll need to add separate VLC repo or Packman for VLC to have full functionality - proprietary codecs are one of the rare things official repos don't feature for legal reasons.

On Arch rant: I've always been weirded out by this "Arch is actually stable, you just have to watch every news post for manual interventions before every update, oh, and you better update very often" attitude.

Like, no, this is not called stable or even usable for general audience. Updating your system and praying for it not to break while studying everything you need to know is antithetical to stability and makes for an awful daily driver.

[–] kilgore_trout@feddit.it 20 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] BCsven@lemmy.ca 74 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (5 children)

OpenSUSE TUMBLEWEED, always updating, but they have an OpenQA tool that checks the builds for success, and if for some reason something did go bad you just reboot and pick the previous (automatic) snapshot. Lots of GUI tools to manage the system and packages via the various Yast2-GUI apps.

[–] Stewbs@lemmy.world 25 points 1 week ago (2 children)

+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 :)

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[–] Mordikan@kbin.earth 68 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I've been an Arch user for about 15 years now, and I've never posted to the forums. Not because I'm great at this and don't break things. I constantly break things and need to fix them. I don't ask questions there because before you'll get any help you are going to get sat down and explained (in great detail sometimes) how you are the stupidest piece of shit on Earth.

[–] Shayeta@feddit.org 18 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] neon_nova@lemmy.dbzer0.com 65 points 1 week ago (6 children)

Arch is really for those who like to troubleshoot and actively maintain things when they break.

I’m pretty decent with linux and for the most part, I can fix arch when it breaks, but I don’t have the time for that. For that reason, I use Fedora and recommend mint.

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[–] daggermoon@lemmy.world 46 points 1 week ago (4 children)

The same thing happened to me. The package was split into separate packages. Install the package vlc-plugins-all.

sudo pacman -S vlc-plugins-all

Problem solved

[–] sudo@programming.dev 18 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zone 14 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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

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[–] Zetta@mander.xyz 38 points 1 week ago (17 children)

Fedora, great blend of bleeding edge and stability. Plus Linus uses it, so what better praise could you get.

[–] Tattorack@lemmy.world 22 points 1 week ago (2 children)

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.

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[–] Undaunted@feddit.org 34 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I can totally understand that. In case you still want to give it a chance, I can highly recommend EndeavorOS. It's basically pre-styled, pure Arch. But it has a welcome dialog, where you have a warning banner at the top if you need to be careful regarding an update. This directly links you to their Gitlab and forum with the steps you'd need to take to not break anything. This saved me multiple times already and I never broke my system, despite not even reading the Arch RSS feed or changelogs.

Besides the EndeavorOS forum is waaaay friendlier compared to the Arch one.

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[–] SheeEttin@lemmy.zip 32 points 1 week ago (9 children)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_astonishment

Someone should inform whoever made that change. If a package is split in a new release, the initial state should match the final as closely as possible, in this case by installing the new optional dependencies automatically. (Although I'm not sure why they'd want to split everything out like that anyway; no other VLC distribution does that, so splitting is itself a violation.)

Maybe Manjaro might be an alternative? I haven't personally used it. I don't like this kind of surprise, so I stick to boring distros like Debian. I used to use CentOS but it was too boring.

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[–] brisk@aussie.zone 28 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I've been an Arch user for more than a decade and I'll usually be first in line to defend it from dodgy claims about unreliability.

But that forum response is bizarre. Literally the last two RSS items right now are about how splitting packages will require intervention for some users (plasma and Linux firmware). VLC is an officially supported package, and surely this change would impact almost every VLC user?

New opt-depends is a nice pacman feature, but it hardly implies that things have been removed from the base package.

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[–] dajoho@sh.itjust.works 26 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I got burned by something like this on Manjaro when a rolling update completely borked my graphics card. The devs reacted in a similar way and it made me realise that my priority is stability over bleeding edge and tinkering.

On that day I moved to Fedora. Stable as hell, no fuss. My main OS should just work and not kill itself.

I still love it but jumped over to Bazzite Gnome recently, which is like Fedora with a few bells on top, coupled with having a read-only root-filesystem (stability, man!). It also comes with distrobox, which will let you run arch natively in a container if you need the AUR.

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[–] pineapple@lemmy.ml 25 points 1 week ago (7 children)

Sorry for not answering your questions, I haven't used arch before. But dang that sucks I've been wanting to try arch for a little while but I didn't know they would happily push updates they know will break certain programs.

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[–] M0oP0o@mander.xyz 25 points 1 week ago (6 children)

Ah yes, the issue with modern Linux, the community.

I feel the shift to the current "git gud" style of blaming the user in any support has done more damage to Linux then any part of the software.

[–] freewheel@sh.itjust.works 3 points 6 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] M0oP0o@mander.xyz 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I would make a joke here about arch and gatekeeping but its not just an arch issue.

[–] freewheel@sh.itjust.works 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

It is most certainly not. (He says, as he comes fuming out of yet another meeting about a ticket that could have been solved at Tier 2 if support would learn how to read a log)

[–] M0oP0o@mander.xyz 1 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Oh pebkac is alive and well, no doubt about it. But expecting any level of expertise from an non commercial end user while simultaneously shooting down their questions is not going to help.

[–] freewheel@sh.itjust.works 1 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I absolutely agree, but here's the problem in this context:

  • OP isn't non-commercial. By their own words, they'd been doing desktop support for MacOS - plastic-wrapped and glittery, but still a *nix. Five years in, one's search-fu and tolerance for reading docs should be well developed.
  • Their question was answered by the page they found. OP's argument is they didn't like the tone used to reply to THAT post's OP and concluded from that tone that their expertise wouldn't be valued "in the way they would like". There's room to develop some grit here.
  • Arch isn't intended for inexperienced users, and that is made clear in the docs. "It is targeted at the proficient GNU/Linux user, or anyone with a do-it-yourself attitude who is willing to read the documentation, and solve their own problems." (https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Arch_Linux#User_centrality) Getting this upset over a single package readjustment, no matter how badly it was communicated, tells me OP doesn't have a ton of experience with bare metal linux. There's just no way to sugarcoat that.

Arch gatekeeps on occasion, yes, but this isn't that. This is the simple rules of that particular distro. OP is free to find something that better fits their needs; and it appears they have.

[–] M0oP0o@mander.xyz 1 points 6 days ago

I see no problems with someone showing frustration, and in this case I don't think arch should be proud of this example.

This is very much that, and why arch has the reputation it does. It will always be a fringe distro with the way the people (you included) shame and gatekeep.

[–] jumping_redditor@sh.itjust.works 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

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

[–] M0oP0o@mander.xyz 0 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Sure, but when I am looking for an answer toxic positivity and RTFM are often the same thing. The number of times people jump up to defend the manual and glaze the program without even checking if the info is in the manual (or if the manual even makes sense at all) is way too high.

I used to have to work on new stuff all the time and would have to read whitepapers or engineering change docs on the daily, and no the tangled mess most Linux documentation is in does not count as a functioning source of information.

The part that still grinds my gears is why bother to type out nothing of value like RTFM at all? Forums are filled with terrible posts belittleing the question instead of just answering the question. Its not helping anyone and at least to me makes little sense.

[–] BullCrapDetekta33@lemmings.world 2 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] M0oP0o@mander.xyz 2 points 6 days ago

Why even type this?

Do you feel better doing so?

This is not a support forum, this is not tech support, this is lemmy and other then giving a great example of what the OP is getting at what does your comment address?

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[–] jenesaisquoi@feddit.org 20 points 1 week ago

I use Debian, for the stability.

[–] BETYU@moist.catsweat.com 20 points 1 week ago (9 children)

https://endeavouros.com/ https://garudalinux.org/ both arch based maybe you will like the forum style better and they will probably also give you this information.

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[–] scoobford@lemmy.zip 17 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I'd recommend opensuse tumbleweed. Codecs can be a little weird, so I recommend installing a flatpak for VLC and your browser. Otherwise, I've found it to be a very similar experience.

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[–] Bogasse@lemmy.ml 16 points 1 week ago (1 children)

After having a similar feeling as yours I went for NixOS.

My thoughts then : if it breaks I can rollback, and the unstable channel is quite comparable to what arch offers.

Now : I've moved to stable channel, because it's updated enough and allows me to only deal with breaking changes twice a year. Moving to NixOS was time consuming (but fun) because it required to rewrite all my dotfiles and learn something new.

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[–] RedSnt@feddit.dk 15 points 1 week ago (2 children)

The closest to Arch, a rolling cutting edge distro, is probably openSUSE Tumbleweed. openSUSE has excellent snapper integration that takes a snapshot before and after you touch zypper, so it's easy to undo changes that might ruin your system. CachyOS also has that same great snapper integration, but that's still Arch.

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[–] rumba@lemmy.zip 15 points 1 week ago

IMHO the actual problem here is the Arch moderator being an ass.

This happens in all operating systems from time to time. An update kills an app. Usually, the app is wildly out of date and hanging on to the last vestiges of a deprecated call that finally gets removed. I recently experienced this with V4L (for OBS virtual camera) and a kernel update in NixOS. Had one hell of a time tracking it down. It was one of the twice-yearly OS upgrades. Luckily, I had only updated one of my devices, and it still worked on the old one. After tearing apart the changes, I was finally able to specify V4L and a Linux kernel version. Immediately, the problem popped right out. The new kernel now needs a specific value passed for the expected video stream, where it used to use a default if it wasn't specified.

Apple breaks apps all the time. Windows does, but less so. The difference is usually before an update happens, Windows and Apple have had TONs of people testing on their own teams and their insiders people.

In the end, I just needed to roll back the kernel one revision until the V4L guys make the change, or I needed to recompile V4L myself with the option defaulted to something useful.

I don't think you can safely get away from this kind of issue. (app incompatibility on upgrade, not mods being an ass)

Debian or Mint seem to be pretty welcoming and easy going to get rid of the asshole issues, but chances are, you're going to break something eventually, and it's going to be super hard to figure out why and how to get around it.

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