I just personally wish the COVID lifestyle was more accessible.

Same, it suited me quite well and I feel bad saying I missed it because so many others, including some of my own family and friends, suffered. Now that I'm back in the office 5 days a week, I lose >2 hours a day with my kids. I had my own parents say "i don't get why you're complaining, we got by before COVID" while refusing to acknowledge it's different because one of them stayed home with us, while my wife and I must both work to survive.

I grew up in a religious conservative family. These and other experiences drove me to the left in a big way. I see now that thinking we can solve systemic issues with individualism is bullshit. I want a world where my wife or I could stay home (or some communal solution) to raise our family right rather than having a bunch of latchkey kids and being stuck doing chores from the moment we get home until the moment we lie down. Some people say "well that's how I was raised" but it isn't right.

I very seriously doubt that but cope away haha

You doubt I'll be having a blast playing Battlefield 6? Why?

Why?

A few things here.....

1. I've already played the game for 20+ hours. I loved almost every second of it, and some of the things I didn't have already been addressed. They're taking player feedback seriously.

2. Battlefield 6 is made by a whole new studio, not "EA DICE", helmed by one of the best in the history of the industry for these games - Vince Zampella.

3. Not everything by EA is bad, and anyone saying anything like that is immediately showing they shouldn't be listened to.

4. Again - I've already played the game via the beta. I know I'm going to have an absolute blast. I didn't like the last few BF games, so I didn't buy them. This one is a return to form from what everyone has seen and played.

5. You tell me to "cope away" while basing your entire opinion on a wikipedia article that's pretty much got nothing to do with the actual game that's being discussed lol. Who is "coping"?

In my opinion also Arch is usable on grandma desktop.
True, it is a rolling release but I would suppose that on such machine there would not be that many packages installed and if the network is configured correclty (so nothing can connect from the outside) it would be not be a big problem, after all what grandma use is not updated on a daily basis.

But that means she’s not getting security updates and since she’s grandma she really needs them. On the other hand, if you’re automatically upgrading her Arch install then there will be breakage she is hopeless to fix.

So what advantage does Arch offer grandma over a traditional release LTS distribution which will be nice and stable, not breaking or changing unexpectedly on her but still remaining current with security patches?

But that means she’s not getting security updates and since she’s grandma she really needs them. On the other hand, if you’re automatically upgrading her Arch install then there will be breakage she is hopeless to fix.

True, but that would be the end result in any case where an update do something wrong or require some sort of manual intervention, it is not strictly tied to Arch. But you have a point here.

So what advantage does Arch offer grandma over a traditional release LTS distribution which will be nice and stable, not breaking or changing unexpectedly on her but still remaining current with security patches?

Only to have some newer software, but you can also update Arch every once in a while, the fact that it is a rolling release does not mean you need to update every day. The everything will depend on which distro normally uses the person who install the grandma machine

I used Arch for about 7 years. I still have it installed on an old PC but I haven’t used it recently. Every time I told pacman to update everything it felt like an adventure. Never knew if I was going to reboot to a working desktop or to a console printing cryptic error messages that take a while to Google on my phone before I get things back up and running. I wouldn’t wish that experience on my worst enemy’s grandma!

It all comes down to the maintainers of Arch putting all of the responsibility for breakage (especially due to old configuration files) 100% on the user. That’s not a system any normal person should use, that’s a system for Linux hobbyists. A LTS distribution where “don’t break the user’s install no matter what” is the rule is absolutely the only system I’d ever trust for grandma.

It’s fine if you want to assume all responsibility for updating grandma’s system and fixing breakage every time. I don’t have any interest in doing that. If I’m at grandma’s house I want to spend time talking to her, not fixing her computer.

I used Arch for about 7 years. I still have it installed on an old PC but I haven’t used it recently. Every time I told pacman to update everything it felt like an adventure. Never knew if I was going to reboot to a working desktop or to a console printing cryptic error messages that take a while to Google on my phone before I get things back up and running. I wouldn’t wish that experience on my worst enemy’s grandma!

The only times I got this kind of problems where when I didn't read some announcement or for some reason some packages (the kernel) were way too old, normally never had it on a normal update. But as I said, you have a point, even if in the end I would point out that a grandma would never be able to solve any problem caused by an update, irregardless of the distro or the OS.

It all comes down to the maintainers of Arch putting all of the responsibility for breakage (especially due to old configuration files) 100% on the user. That’s not a system any normal person should use, that’s a system for Linux hobbyists.

Only partially. Normally Arch put the new configuration file as a [something].pacnew and it is the user that should then do something, but as long as the software that use the new file could undertand that it is using an older file and it is able to handle the eventually missing new keys or removed ones there will be no problem. On my desktop I have a bunch of [some_program].conf.pacnew and everything works. Is it optimal ? Maybe not but it is not broke.

It’s fine if you want to assume all responsibility for updating grandma’s system and fixing breakage every time. I don’t have any interest in doing that.

Honestly, a grandma would just need Firefox with a couple of extension (uBlock Origin and really few others) and a network with all inbound ports blocked (so no one can connect from outside) and few outbound ports open (very few, just the common ones to use a browser). Maybe she need Openoffice, probably a DE (but a window manager could be enough) but she don't need a lot of software we all install on out machine. It is true that Arch could be a problem when updating but I think we are talking of a very small set of packages that need to be constantly updated and in my years of Arch usage, basic packages rarely break something while updating.