Do you update your Arch often (daily) or not?
Which would be better?
I figure, if I update every day, I’ll likely not expect any issues, so I’d be less careful. And if something goes wrong (cause I didn’t read the news or the PKGBUILDs), I probably won’t have time to fix it right now.
Whereas if I update monthly, it’s something I’m taking my time to do, read the news beforehand, pay more attention and will have scheduled some time for it.
What’s your take?
Anything after a week or two is playing russian roulette in my opinion. Arch has so many fast moving packages, the longer you take the more likely it would break. That might not be the case anymore, but that is my opinion.
I think as long as you’re paying attention to the pacman logs and resolving your .pacnew’s, you’ll be okay. I’ve had HTPC systems that I haven’t upgraded in over a year be absolutely fine. Sure it required some minor manual fixes, but none of them surprised me because pacman told me about them or Arch news had a bulletin about it.
I actually have a small Intel NUC paired with a touchscreen monitor that I basically use as a extremely large tablet for my disabled sister to use and I only update that every time I come home (every 3 months or so). It has been upgrading flawlessly for over 2 years.
You’ve given me hope for my MythTV box.
It hasn’t been upgraded for over a year, so with ~700 updates totalling ~1GB, I was toying whether a total rebuild would be necessary… obviously a backup beforehand, but maybe doable then…
My laptop is updated almost daily, but some other devices maybe monthly…