I use arch because it is the boring but stable system. Rolling release means you just keep updating it and it works forever rather than having to do big bang upgrades between LTS versions that always break something
Nah. It just means that the breaking updates could surprise you at any time.
With a LTS version upgrade, I can plan for the potentially breaking updates. I can set aside time when my schedule is free to do the big update and work through any potential bullshit. It won’t interrupt my work.
But in a rolling release, you’re still going to get that same breaking update … but with no warning this time. It might come at a crucial time when you’re trying to get other work done, forcing you to stop your more important work and fix your computer first.
And that’s not even counting the number of breaking updates. A relatively ‘bleeding edge’ rolling release distro like Arch is going to include much newer software versions that haven’t gone through as much real-world testing and bug reporting as the stale old packages in a LTS release. The price you pay for more updated software is that it’s less thoroughly tested software and more likely to include undiscovered, unfixed bugs.
By the time the same package update finally makes it to some stable LTS distro, more of the bugs have been discovered, reported, and hopefully fixed … before you ever even see it.
(Not to say that nobody should run cutting-edge rolling release distros. I’m glad you guys are out there. You’re the ones reporting those bugs that end up getting fixed before it makes it into the LTS version. If everybody was running LTS stuff, it would lose that advantage because nobody would be testing things before they make it to the LTS.)
Overall, I think cutting-edge rolling release is fine for a computer that doesn’t really matter, like a gaming PC. (And you’ll probably get a gaming performance boost from having the latest and greatest versions of things.)
But for an essential computer that you need for doing important things, a LTS stable release is the way to go 100%.
You can write a whole essay of theory, but my experience is running several arch devices for years and years with no problems and having ubuntu distro upgrades break so badly I just reinstall completely every single time.
Another hiccup is that LTS are not actually running stable packages. They are running Frankenstein versions of packages with backports that are not supported by the project maintainers, because the software has to be maintained for security if nothing else.
It just means that the breaking updates could surprise you at any time.
I keep hearing this but in my roughly 20 years of running Arch that’s happened no more than a handful of times. And usually because I missed an announcement. I don’t know what y’all are doing to your systems but Arch has been incredibly solid for me.
And complete distro version upgrades like with CentOS/Debian have always been such a fucking massive hassle. And CentOS often deprecates hardware shit I need which of course I never find out until after I run the update and the shit won’t ever boot again.
I use arch because it is the boring but stable system. Rolling release means you just keep updating it and it works forever rather than having to do big bang upgrades between LTS versions that always break something
Nah. It just means that the breaking updates could surprise you at any time.
With a LTS version upgrade, I can plan for the potentially breaking updates. I can set aside time when my schedule is free to do the big update and work through any potential bullshit. It won’t interrupt my work.
But in a rolling release, you’re still going to get that same breaking update … but with no warning this time. It might come at a crucial time when you’re trying to get other work done, forcing you to stop your more important work and fix your computer first.
And that’s not even counting the number of breaking updates. A relatively ‘bleeding edge’ rolling release distro like Arch is going to include much newer software versions that haven’t gone through as much real-world testing and bug reporting as the stale old packages in a LTS release. The price you pay for more updated software is that it’s less thoroughly tested software and more likely to include undiscovered, unfixed bugs.
By the time the same package update finally makes it to some stable LTS distro, more of the bugs have been discovered, reported, and hopefully fixed … before you ever even see it.
(Not to say that nobody should run cutting-edge rolling release distros. I’m glad you guys are out there. You’re the ones reporting those bugs that end up getting fixed before it makes it into the LTS version. If everybody was running LTS stuff, it would lose that advantage because nobody would be testing things before they make it to the LTS.)
Overall, I think cutting-edge rolling release is fine for a computer that doesn’t really matter, like a gaming PC. (And you’ll probably get a gaming performance boost from having the latest and greatest versions of things.)
But for an essential computer that you need for doing important things, a LTS stable release is the way to go 100%.
You can write a whole essay of theory, but my experience is running several arch devices for years and years with no problems and having ubuntu distro upgrades break so badly I just reinstall completely every single time.
Another hiccup is that LTS are not actually running stable packages. They are running Frankenstein versions of packages with backports that are not supported by the project maintainers, because the software has to be maintained for security if nothing else.
I keep hearing this but in my roughly 20 years of running Arch that’s happened no more than a handful of times. And usually because I missed an announcement. I don’t know what y’all are doing to your systems but Arch has been incredibly solid for me.
And complete distro version upgrades like with CentOS/Debian have always been such a fucking massive hassle. And CentOS often deprecates hardware shit I need which of course I never find out until after I run the update and the shit won’t ever boot again.
this
you can just choose to use software that isn’t dev/nightly versions, and you’re fine
unless you want to see stuff break… then you install all of the nightly versions and have stuff break sometimes!