I have a laptop that is running an Arch install that was first installed in 2011. It runs great. It has, to my memory, twice required manual intervention.
(to be fair, it once required manual intervention when I moved the hard drive into an entirely new chassis, and once again when I migrated it from 32bit to 64bit, so 4 times total.)
And I have several other arch boxes that are less old but have had no trouble.
In fact, the distro that's given me the most trouble has been Fedora, but at least when its upgrades fail they now just roll back and make you try again...
Arch really wants you to keep up to date. Run those - Syu's. Often. Never more than a week. If you let it sit for months and months that's when things can get hairy.
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Just a for-the-record counterpoint:
I have a laptop that is running an Arch install that was first installed in 2011. It runs great. It has, to my memory, twice required manual intervention. (to be fair, it once required manual intervention when I moved the hard drive into an entirely new chassis, and once again when I migrated it from 32bit to 64bit, so 4 times total.)
And I have several other arch boxes that are less old but have had no trouble.
In fact, the distro that's given me the most trouble has been Fedora, but at least when its upgrades fail they now just roll back and make you try again...
Arch really wants you to keep up to date. Run those - Syu's. Often. Never more than a week. If you let it sit for months and months that's when things can get hairy.