so a common claim I see made is that arch is up to date than Debian but harder to maintain and easier to break. Is there a good sort of middle ground distro between the reliability of Debian and the up-to-date packages of arch?
I’d say Fedora is the middle-ground. You get up-to-date software in a stable distribution with daily security updates, and fixed OS upgrades each year.
Debian Testing.
I like the idea of a stable distro as the host OS and Distrobox with Arch and the AUR for applications.
For most of my machines, I do not need the latest kernel or even the latest desktop environment. But it is a pain to have out of date desktop apps and especially dev tools.
I think this strikes a nice balance.
Opensuse tumbleweed. The packages go through a testing process unlike Fedora AFAIK.
Several months ago I installed Tumbleweed on a VM just for kicks and giggles. A week later it refused to install updates at all due to some weird conflict, even though the system was vanilla to the goddamn wallpaper. In a week I try upgrading and magically the conflict is gone. I’ll be honest, this was my only experience with Tumbleweed and it managed to have its update system broken in the meantime. I’ve never had anything close to this on Debian Unstable lol.
Not hating on Tumbleweed, on the contrary - I have been testing it for quite a while to see if it’s as good as they say. But it doesn’t look like a middle ground between Arch and Debian. At least in my short experience.
Was that updating with “zypper dup”? I’ve heard going through discover or zypper update isn’t the recommended way strictly speaking, so its worth mentioning.
It was a kde update centre which is installed by default and suggests updates when they’re available. But zypper was also failing.
Nobody here for Mint? I’m a long time Ubuntu user but when i do my next upgrade it will be to mint.
Both Ubuntu and mint are debian based.
which Debian? Have you considered Debian testing or unstable?
fedora atomic desktops (silverblue, kinoite, and derivatives like bluefin etc) are really great. They are as up-to-date as fedora, with an additional layer of stability provided by its atomic and image based nature.
Tumbleweed
another recomendation for Fedora from me
They don’t package LTS kernels which is pretty concerning—especially if using out-of-kernel modules that don’t always get released in lock step that could leave you with a machine that won’t boot.
That’s true. i do sometimes have issues with the ZFS package not compiling because of a too new kernel not being supported yet.
My recommendation would be Debian + Flatpak & Appimages (or + Snaps if you’re the devil). Super stable, but also access to the latest.
Fedora is also a middle ground too, but they’re pushing flatpaks heavily so it might not matter anyway since Fedora + flatpak and Debian + flatpak are about the same.
My server has been on Endeavour OS (arch with a gui installer) for at least 18 months. I run updates roughly every 10 days (basically whenever I remember). Never had a problem with it. I dare say it could go horribly wrong at some point so I keep the LTS kernel installed as well just as a fall back.
My main pc is also running Endeavour OS (dual boot with windows 11). Other than having to keep Bluetooth downgraded to support the ps5 dual sense controller, it runs great.
My only gripe is that updates often contain something that forces the kernel rebuild process and so it needs a reboot afterwards.
Every other Linux I’ve run has had some sort of “rebuild to fix” type issue at some point, or had been hard to find good support information for. Endeavour OS has been the most reliable and the easiest to fix and find support for.
Garuda. It’s an Arch derivative that creates a snapshot of your system every time you update. That way, if the update breaks something, you can just roll your system back to the last working snapshot.
SuSE Slowroll. Not rolling release. Also not super-conservative like Debian is.
Note, that it is still in experimental state.
I’ve been using Arch for a year and nothing has broken. Did have to “fix” a lot of stuff after install because it was my first time using Arch and didn’t realize all the other stuff I had to install… Mainly to get my Nvidia GPU to work. But a few hours later and it’s been rock solid since.
I guess I’m kind of confused as to the debate between Bleeding Edge vs Stable. I get the concept on paper, but what packages are so imperative that you need a Distro that is “Bleeding Edge”. I run Pop_OS and it works great on my hardware(System76 so it kind of has the home field advantage). I have an old laptop running LMDE that doesn’t ever need rebooted and it has every package I need for it to accomplish its job.
Others have given better advice than I will, but maybe determine why you need something that’s bleeding edge. If the only answer is “Cuz Shiny new stuff!” I don’t think it’s needed that bad and tailor your setup for stability and functionality. I prefer Just Works Distros though. VM’s are also a thing if you want to do some Distro Hopping
Really? There aren’t updates with new features that you look forward to? Ever?
