Except, if any random program that you want to install requires a new version of a low-level library, you’re gonna have to do full system update today and not when upgrading the major version of the distro.
This is all entirely theoretical. In practice, yes, it’s easier if you don’t go too long between updates on Arch.
But “not to long” means once a month, not every day. And you should really not go more than a month between updates on any distro.
If you mean the system being screwed over by a dependency on a newer lib version, I’ve had that exact scenario triggered multiple times in Debian testing. (And in other distros too, really.)
FancyApp depends on libbutt >= 1.1. You have 1.0 installed.
libbutt 1.1 was compiled against glibc 2.43 and lists it as a dependency. You have 2.42.
Upgrading glibc triggers reinstalling half of the system, including low-level components, which in turn pull in updates of other low-level components that don’t themselves depend on glibc. Including the kernel.
But at least, with Ubuntu or whatever, this shouldn’t change the general workings of the system that would require manual adjustments from me.
It’s not more hassle than updating other distros after one year, cause they’ll throw a whole new major version at you. Here’s Debian’s upgrade instructions for a comparison:
https://www.debian.org/releases/trixie/release-notes/upgrading.en.html
What I wrote fits in a 6 line bash script, and there are much more sophisticated ready-made updaters available, too.
Joke’s on you, Pop hasn’t had a major update in years!
they released 24 last month
Well I haven’t updated yet, so still true for me :3
Except, if any random program that you want to install requires a new version of a low-level library, you’re gonna have to do full system update today and not when upgrading the major version of the distro.
This is why I use Nixos.
It can update single apps independently.
In theory you could update single kernel modules, but that obviously makes the shit unstable.
This is all entirely theoretical. In practice, yes, it’s easier if you don’t go too long between updates on Arch.
But “not to long” means once a month, not every day. And you should really not go more than a month between updates on any distro.
If you mean the system being screwed over by a dependency on a newer lib version, I’ve had that exact scenario triggered multiple times in Debian testing. (And in other distros too, really.)
FancyApp depends on libbutt >= 1.1. You have 1.0 installed.
libbutt 1.1 was compiled against glibc 2.43 and lists it as a dependency. You have 2.42.
Upgrading glibc triggers reinstalling half of the system, including low-level components, which in turn pull in updates of other low-level components that don’t themselves depend on glibc. Including the kernel.
But at least, with Ubuntu or whatever, this shouldn’t change the general workings of the system that would require manual adjustments from me.