Whoah .. seems a bit aggressive. And it was hardly a fabrication.
The firmware packages .. and especially one that is only for wireless .. have no dependencies and have nothing depending on them (except linux-firmware-whence which is a single license file that in turn has no dependencies). And those were the specific packages in question and what the other poster was referring to.
So in those cases its a partial upgrade of a single unrelated package. Not exactly the dire circumstance that partial upgrades usually entail. Of course downgrades should always be among the last resort and only a temporary measure.
Even if we assume that the two approaches are roughly equal in effort and ability to get the user a working system again .. there are other considerations as well. If the user has to rely on a rollback instead of this single firmware downgrade - for an unforeseen amount of time - then what else happens when they are stuck in that situation? They might have to live with vulnerabilities that have since been patched but that they cannot apply for example.
Are we expected to read your mind when you don’t reply and quote a specific post, and assume that when you say “worst-case” you’re actually only referring to one specific situation? Especially when one of the preceding posts in this very thread referenced a “couldn’t boot at all” situation?
If you’re only posting about one very specific situation, why would you not make it explicit?
Of course (n this case) - but the type of person that doesn’t immediately know what package to fix also doesn’t likely know immediately what they need to fix, or whether it’s safe.
That’s the core of issue - they are very much not and that’s very much the point. Reverting a snapshot is as simple as rebooting and selecting the snapshot to roll back to. It’s significantly quicker and easier - even for a simple package issue - unless the user already knows the problem and resolution. It’s a guaranteed resolution of the issue in the time that it takes to reboot and doesn’t even require the user to identify what caused the issue (even in the worst case of complicated dependencies)
No one’s forcing users to do anything. Most serious issues are short-lived. If it looks like a longer-term issue or they have the time/knowledge to troubleshoot they can still downgrade, or temporarily hold the package and upgrade (with the security of having a mostly foolproof fallback to a known-working configuration.)
Heck - having the ability to rollback can give users the confidence to upgrade more frequently knowing that if they hit issues they won’t need to resolve them RIGHT THEN and can defer troubleshooting to a more convenient time if they catch a bad update, resulting in LESS time with an unupdated system. It makes it easier to follow best practices consistently.
It was in response to the post directly above mine.
If you quote the whole post before you discourse wont allow you to post either.
And that post itself contained reference to the wireless.
It was also posted directly after identifying noted packages in another thread .. but that is context you might not be expected to know.
I would agree, but in the opposite direction.
A whole framework, special options after boot, and then your whole system is out of date .. seems less good and more work to me.
I might also mention that pacman holds a cache by default for a reason.
Its not like you are not supposed to ever use it.
I understand different levels of experience exist so something like snapshots might be more attractive to others. Understanding how the ALPM system works and having a familiarity with Arch/Cachy may also be a barrier to using something like downgrade. Let alone knowing how or when to use it effectively.
Like all things the whole circumstance must be weighed and any given approach can be compared .. but its only with experience that we can make those determinations.
Should you cross the road?
Are there vehicles on it?
Are they in motion?
Is it a highway?
Are you being chased with murderous intent?
Are you a chicken?
For my part I have never kept personal backups and have never needed to use one or perform a clean install in the last 10+ years of using Arch, excepting on new hardware.
Sometimes I think reliance on backups has only made it so more people learn even less about how to properly maintain their systems, but maybe thats a little wingnutty.
It seems that you don’t have any experience with modern filesystems with snapshot capability, so what you’ve been doing for 10 years is “easier” for you. Which is fine - but ends up being bad advice when given to others when you don’t have familiarity with alternatives.
It’s literally set up automatically for several bootloader/filesystem combos. This isn’t arch. Useful things are frequently set up with sane defaults for the user. You don’t need to invent every wheel and configure everything from scratch yourself. You literally just get some extra entries in your boot manager. You’re building up this complex experience that just doesn’t exist.
just running pacman -Syu again in a few days isn’t exactly strenuous labor.
On the contrary Cachy is Arch. A lot more so than something like Manjaro.
Yes it has optimized builds and some of its own tools. But its linked up directly to Archs repos.
In fact many installs do not even originate from a Cachy ISO in the first place.
And I still think a sudo downgrade linux-firmware-marvell is simpler than any of the scenarios you have laid out.
I have continually tried to strike a friendly tone but it seems it is to no avail.
So you like BTRFS and backups. Thats fine.
But I dont know that there is a lot more purpose to this exchange. Cheers.
Optimized builds, some of its own tools which notably includes the installer that sets up snapshots by default for most relevant configurations, and various default settings and configurations.
So no, it’s not Arch. It’s close, but the availability of conveniences like “snapshots automatically configured by the installer” is literally one of the main differences.
You’ve only retconned to talking about that specific package in the first place. The original claim was:
And continued to pretend that using snapshots in Cachy is more involved than just…rebooting. You’re building up this gigantic straw-man of complexity that simply doesn’t exist because you’re not personally interested.
Actually I prefer and primarily use ZFS for a variety of reasons (including integration of backups, better pooled storage, etc.) Setting up my preferred ZFS with nice bootable snapshots is somewhat more involved so I’m not recommending that here in a thread where a novice user is asking for help, but rather suggesting that they take advantage of the work that the Cachy devs have put in to making snapshots with BTRFS just work.
You can bold it all you want, but it just makes it seem like you are emphatic about a somewhat confused perception.
As to the downgrades .. I dont know what to tell you.
Downgrades are an effective and accepted approach to ameliorating certain problems.
I have repeated that it should not be the sole, first, or lasting fix for any problem.
I havent gas-lit anything into a specific package .. it was about a specific package .. and continuing to use it as an example of a pretty non-invasive/non-destructive downgrade is both accurate to the flow of the original post as well as instructive for the purposes of the argument. There are likewise many other examples of packages that would not have a large dependency web and/or one that is negligible. To say nothing of usefulness in actually running down a problem.
But it seems there is some other intention with these posts besides the technical considerations and/or benefit to the community here. As such I will repeat my lack of willingness to participate.
I even tried to make it fun with chicken crossing the road jokes and calling myself a wingnut for ‘not believing in backups’. But I guess it was not to be.
And for someone like the OP who is asking about switching to cachy from a non arch-derived distro almost certainly would install via the cachy installer, the features of that installer are pretty obviously relevant - which include several ways to get snapshots OOTB when using the Cachy-recommended filesystem.
Thus vanilla arch requiring manual setup of snapshots is indeed irrelevant.
