(New to) Arch Linux (actually Endeavour) Advice on Upgrading Schedule?

Linux Discussion
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I come from Fedora (longest used distro 8 months or more, yeah I know I’m a hopper). I generally updated via DNF every day. I’ve been seeing some places saying I should update everyday and others just weekly when it comes to Arch, but no longer than that otherwise I might break packaged or worse.

I know that I should be checking online for issues from the Arch community and Endeavour before doing any updates. I was thinking once a week should be good for Arch/Endeavour. I figure any issues might get resolved by then before I update. I wanted to get advice from the DLN community. I figured Sunday morning, where I still have time to fix anything or totally wipe before Monday rolls around it I have work to do… or should I be doing it every day?

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Somewhere around that schedule. Daily, every other day, weekly. Something like that. I find myself updating daily, but I’ve got a good backup plan, and can easily rollback if something goes terribly wrong.

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I’ve been using Endeavour on my main desktop for about fourteen months without any major issue. I’ve been updating whenever the notification for the update pops up. So far any minor issue that happens is cleared up within a few days. I generally reboot a couple of times a week because of core package updates. Endeavour is my go to OS. I think you’ll be happy with it.

It’s been several years since I’ve used Manjaro. At that time it would break after a couple of months. Maybe the issues have been cleared up since then.

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I also found that Manjaro broke its self quite often. I was updating whenever the notifications came in.

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Update whenever you want as long as it’s AFTER you read the release notes in case any special actions or manual intervention is needed.

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I used to be on Manjaro until an update killed my system back in 2020. That was my first Arch based distro before switching to Fedora.

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I have set eos-update-notifier to check for updates daily. Usually I do perform an update daily if new packages are available.

To perform the update I prefer the EndeavourOS tools. “Update System” in the “Welcome” application or UpdateInTerminal on the command line.

I use BTRFS as filesystem. This allows me to use snapshots as safety net and be able to rollback if anything goes wrong with an update.

I am using snapper to make hourly snapshots from my HOME directory in case I mess up some configuration or shoot myself in the foot with Git.

Using snapper + snap-pac + snap-pac-grub + grub-btrfs creates a snapshot of the system and a GRUB entry to fallback to if something goes wrong with an update. This is something that Manjaro has also recently introduced. OpenSUSE Tumbleweed does have this sort of thing for quite a while (as far as I know they actually invented snapper).

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I appreciate the replies and information. I’ve been using the “update system” in the Welcome app too. It seems to cover it all? I also have Pacaur and it seems to cover more than the AUR for updates. I chose BTRFS because of the same reasons as you did and I am used to it coming from Fedora.

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I update EndeavourOS weekly, every Sunday with rare exceptions. It works for me without breaking anything and I really prefer this way than how Manjaro does it.
I am not saying Manjaro will break, I just do not need their “babysitting” of updates because you then forget it still can break at some point but you will update blindly and you should not, not even on Manjaro. Underneath it is Arch and a rolling release. With EndeavourOS you are completely in control just like proper Arch.

Though I would recommend doing snapshots like already mentioned by others. I am conservative and still use ext4, so I use Timeshift.

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I think this is something that many people (like me) worry about when first trying out Arch or a distro closely based on Arch.
However, I find it less of a worry after using vanilla Arch for 2+ years now. I generally update every Saturday morning, but sometimes I forget it, and sometimes I do it more often, such as when I want to install a new software, and the version compatible with my system is not in the repository anymore.
If you are aware of how to roll back Arch to a previous date using the Arch Linux Package Archive, you don’t need to worry about packages breaking at all, as that would probably solve most issues temporarely that would arise from a botched package update (like the one with Gnome 3.34 2 years ago or the Spyder IDE issue from this year).

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I’ve been using Arch for a few years, now. I’ve yet to find an issue with installing Arch and ever having a problem updating. The one thing that does happen from time to time is signing keys being newer in the repo than the archlinux-keyring package you have installed. Update that package first, then do the full upgrade.

Now, you can run into conflicts with AUR wrappers and changes to pacman major versions. Easy fix is to simply uninstall the AUR wrapper, do a full upgrade, then reinstall the AUR wrapper.

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Or, you can always elect to use a bare bones AUR helper like AURUTILS, that doesn’t abstract away pacman functions, so you don’t get that kind of conflicts.

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I’m a few weeks into my own trial of EndeavourOS. I’m trying it out because it sounds like the Steam Deck will be running something similar. Haven’t had any system breaking updates yet. On the one hand, I’m glad that it is actively maintained, but on the other hand I’m not thrilled that there are updates literally EVERY DAY. It makes me worry that I’m using an OS that is half-baked and might break at any moment. That would be fine for a test machine, but I’m not comfortable with it on my primary machine.

The KDE Plasma 5.23.1 performs better than I expected from past experience with KDE. Booting up takes too long, but perhaps that is because I chose the encrypted BTRFS filesystem.

I think I might adopt your plan of updating on weekends - when I have time to deal with any potential problems. I’ll also need to figure out the btrfs snapshot system.

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That is actually the fun with rolling releases and at the same time like we mentioned, I really do not think there is any need of updating daily. To me it is like watching the outside temperature on an app every minute just because we can.
Slow down and enjoy the ride and every weekend you will get your fix of new stuff. Some people do it even monthly and it is OK. Arch is pretty stable, really.

But Arch and its derivatives are not for everybody because of the very same reason, the update cadence. You are in charge all the time and you are the admin.

Edit: The first thing I disable on Endeavour is the applet with updates. Proper Arch has no such applet anyway. It gives you the “false” impression that you have to update daily.

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The first thing I disable on Endeavour is the applet with updates. Proper Arch has no such applet anyway. It gives you the “false” impression that you have to update daily.

Yeah, that’s why sometimes I forget to update for a few weeks, but I just don’t want to be bothered every time some python library gets bumped up a minor version.