

this year
And one post earlier (2025-12-20) that the image likely could be about:
NVIDIA 590 driver drops Pascal and lower support
Install nvidia-580xx-dkms from the AUR
Impact: Updating the NVIDIA packages [without manually changing to AUR packages] on systems with Pascal, Maxwell, or older cards will fail to load the driver, which may result in a broken graphical environment.













It’s absolutely true. And that my outdated Arch system is likely still more fresh than Debian.
That said yeah I would like something that can update itself whenever without breaking, certainly if it expects me to update frequently. And manual interventions (ideally used for things that actually have a choice/fix, not just what ends up being a pasted command or two) should be a warn-step/update-blocker (depending on situation).
Though what the image is probably about (2025-12-20, nVidia 10-series turned legacy, legacy driver put onto AUR) is a bad situation in its own right particularly later when the AUR issues started happening. And it is really an update-or-don’t (or get an AMD card somehow) issue.
Other distros likely do solve the issue of updating, though from what I can see aren’t as good with packaging (dependency handling, lacking optional dependencies) and package availability. Which can be worked around somewhat too, but still needs more trial/input.
Annoyances are also multiplied for me by having non-fiber internet (also shared).