Hi all, Relatively long time Linux user (2017 to be precise), and about two 3rds of that time has been on Arch and its derivatives.

Been running Endeavour OS for at least 2.5 years now. It’s a solid distro until it’s not. I’d go for months without a single issue then an update comes out of nowhere and just ruins everything to either no return, or just causes me to chase after a fix for hours, and sometimes days. I’m kinda getting tired of this trend of sudden and uncalled for issues.

It’s like a hammer drops on you without you seeing it. I wish they were smaller issues, no, they’re always major. Most of the time I’d just reinstall, and I hate that. It’s so much work for me.

I set things the way I like them and then they’re ruined, and the hunt begins. I have been wanting to switch for a long time, and I honestly have even been looking into some of those immutable distros (that’s how much I don’t want to be fixing my system.

I’m tired, I just want to use my system to get work done). I was also told that Nobara is really good (is it? Never tried it). My only hold back — and it’s probably silly to some of you— is the AUR. I love it.

It’s the most convenient thing ever, and possibly the main reason why I have stuck with Arch and its kids. Everything is there.

So, what do y’all recommend? I was once told by some kind soul to use an immutable distro and setup “distrobox” on it if I wanted the AUR.

I’ve never tried this “distrobox” thing (I can research it, no problem). I also game here and there and would like to squeeze as much performance as I can out of my PC (all AMD, BTW, and I only play single player games).

So, I don’t know what to do. I need y’all’s suggestions, please. I’ll aggregate all of the suggestions and go through them and (hopefully) come up with something good for my sanity. Please suggest anything you think fits my situation. I don’t care, I will 100% appreciate every single suggestion and look into it.

I’m planning to take it slow on the switch, and do a lot of research before switching. Unless my system shits the bed more than now then I don’t know. I currently can’t upgrade my system, as I wouldn’t be able to log in after the update. It just fails to log in.

I had to restore a 10 days old snapshot to be able to get back into my damn desktop. I have already copied my whole home directory into another drive I have on my PC, so if shit hits the fan, I’ll at least have my data. Help a tired brother out, please <3. Thank you so much in advance.

  • Communist@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyzEnglish
    51·
    1 day ago

    You want bazzite, for this usecase, disregard anyone who suggests something that isn’t immutable, all of the immutable suggestions are valid, but if it’s not immutable, it is huge downgrade for this usecase.

    • DonutsRMeh@lemmy.worldOP
      1·
      19 hours ago

      I’m leaning towards an immutable, but to be fully honest, they’re a very, very new thing to me and understand nothing about them. Like when you give an idiot a grenade. That’s me with an immutable distros. Lol
      I need to learn more about them and how things work, because they do sound like what I’m looking for.

      • Communist@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyzEnglish
        1·
        10 hours ago

        with bazzite it’s just regular fedora essentially except substitute the normal rpm commands for rpm-ostree and you’re essentially golden

        • DonutsRMeh@lemmy.worldOP
          1·
          8 hours ago

          So, when you install things with rpm-ostree, will whatever I install stick, or will it be overridden whenever the system updates?

          • Communist@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyzEnglish
            1·
            7 hours ago

            It’ll stick, but you’re really meant to use flathub/flatpak to install things wherever possible, rpm-ostree is kindof a backup method.

            • DonutsRMeh@lemmy.worldOP
              1·
              7 hours ago

              I get that, but sometimes I need dependcies or packages that I can’t get as flatpaks. Like today, I wanted to install a driver (or whatever it is) that’s called “ntfs-automount” and it needs to be built from source with

              sudo make install

              And that I couldn’t do on an immutable distro. And it is not available anywhere except the AUR and GitHub.

                • DonutsRMeh@lemmy.worldOP
                  1·
                  5 hours ago

                  Awesome and good to know. I’m actually experimenting with distros to see where this takes me. I’m currently running Nobara with snapshots set up in grub. It also has other kernels entries in grub after big updates so you can roll back if things break.

                  • Communist@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyzEnglish
                    1·
                    4 hours ago

                    Yeah, nobara and bazzite extremely similar, and snapshots are a decent workaround to not having immutability, but immutability is still a significant upgrade.

                    Although, i’m pretty sure what you’re seeing only rolls back the kernel, not all of your modifications, so, you may still be screwed if you mess up. Is this worth worrying about? Probably not. But I see no reason not to just go with bazzite and have slightly more peace of mind in that .01% of situations.