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?
Tumbleweed
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.
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.
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.
Happy I switched to NixOS to solve this issue for myself
SuSE Slowroll. Not rolling release. Also not super-conservative like Debian is.
Note, that it is still in experimental state.
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.
Void linux
which Debian? Have you considered Debian testing or unstable?
Debian and learn to use the nix package manager for your bleeding edge stuff
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.
Ah okay, I’m not sure then.
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.
Debian Testing.
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?
That’s Void Linux, exactly how I would describe Void…
My thoughts exactly. It may take more time to set up (I, for example, never got my laptop speakers working when I installed it there), and it may not have as much hardware support (a shitty old HP pre-built was giving me ACPI errors and refusing to boot; and yes, I had updated the BIOS), but update-wise, it’s super stable, but also quite up-to-date. It’s not crazy (kernel updates take some time occasionally), but it’s a great experience, and the inclusion of runit is fantastic. Hearty recommendation.
You might want to check if your drivers are in the nonfree repo for your speakers/ACPI…
My laptop need those for, let me check… the sound and the ACPI :D
I have a gentoo desktop but for a convenient middle ground just put Debian on my laptop. It’s stable, things just work out of the box, maintainers/devs are competent, they haven’t drunk the snap/flatpack kool-aid…
Switching to Testing is always an option but I’ve not found the need to do that yet when I can install programs from a deb package or just compile from source and install it in ~/.bin in my home directory.
