Rolling release distro

TheProf

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So I've been watching DT's channel for a little while now, love his content!

I came across this video a little while ago:


Here he mentions about recommending rolling releases to new users.

Personally, I am not really sure if this is a great idea, I understand the reasons for it, like being on the latest kernel, latest versions of packages, etc... but I still cannot agree with the fact that with rolling releases, you always have a risk for breaking the system/apps by doing updates, for new users, that might be a huge turn off if they have to spend time troubleshooting various different packages to get their games to work, or to get their sound to work, etc...

For people who enjoy tinkering around like myself and I am sure many of the folks here, I dont see that an issue, but I just cant personally recommend a rolling release to a new Linux user unless I know they will enjoy troubleshooting and learning Linux.

Did I miss something here?
 


Many say that Manjaro is stable enough but I broke my install with an update. Though it was fixed in a couple days. I'm with you I recommend a Debian based Distro Mint, Ubuntu or PCLinuxOS.
 
I'm with you I recommend a Debian based Distro Mint, Ubuntu or PCLinuxOS.
I use PCLinuxOS (LXQT) which is a semi-rolling release and it's stable and problem free on my old outdated desktop computers.

It's pertinent to keep a semi-rolling release updated as failure to do so can cause problems with future updates.
 
I ran Manjaro for a while and after an update one day I couldn't boot into my other Linux installations.
I'm pretty sure Grub was broken.
 
I wouldn’t recommend a rolling release for a newbie.

Some years back, I had an Arch system. And I’ve been using Linux for over 15 years.
And I have to admit, I loved Arch. Ran it for a couple of years. Admittedly, at that time, the Arch devs were starting to make some big changes to the system. I had a couple of updates that temporarily broke things, but fixing them was usually easy.
Then I went on holiday for a month. When I got home and updated, I completely borked my install. Then I spent a few days trying to reinstall.

But the install wiki hadn’t been updated to reflect some of the recent changes and was slightly out of date, so there were a few extra steps that were missing in the configuration part of the install. So I had to look at the notes on all of the updates from the date I went on holiday to see if I could spot what I was missing.
Once I finally understood what was missing, I reinstalled again and got my system working again, only to discover that an update to the kernel had introduced some major performance regressions and a newer version of Mesa had triggered a hardware bug/flaw in my laptops Intel graphics card. Rendering my PC almost completely useless.

At that point, rather than trying to roll back the affected packages, I just went back to Debian Testing. Testing is kinda semi-rolling. Not on the bleeding edge, but up to date enough. And generally pretty stable. I haven’t ever had any major problems with Debian Testing.
And I’ve never had a single problem with Debian stable!

The reason I use Debian is - I can simply install it, add whatever extra bits I need and then get straight on with my work (or play)!

My preferred method of installing is via the minimal net installer. That way I can select which components I want to install and avoid the god awful mess that is Gnome 3!
 
i switched from Slackware current (basically a rolling none release ) to vanilla Arch .

I make sure i take manual snapshots with Timeshift. I messed up about a week ago running composer with root permissions on a web dev, messing up some config files . I ran timeshift and it sorted everything back to how it was !

Its still early days with Arch , there's been about three updates to kernel so far and no glitches. I've read up and manual roll backs to revert to older kernel and pkgs


Time will tell - the only pain is the updates ,but you can't have everything can you .
 
I personally wouldn't advice a rolling release distribution to a beginner, maybe only if they are a gamer because with games you are better off running bleeding software and libraries even though Ubuntu or PopOS will still do fine for gaming. I think a distribution like Ubuntu, Mint or PopOS are quite suitable for beginners and when the current version is no longer supported it is easy enough to run a do-release-upgrade or dist-upgrade.

As for myself I have grown to love Arch as my daily driver, if I were to change distribution again I would probably go for Debian testing branch. Why? Because I moved to a rolling release distribution because I hated the fact that with Fedora and Ubuntu I had to do a major upgrade once every 6 months or so. I did run Ubuntu LTS at one point but even then you have to do a major release upgrade at one point. So far I haven't really had any major breakages with Arch that I wasn't able to fix within a few minutes, just a couple minor things.
 
I appreciate users who have the patience to learn Arch Linux.

I tried Arch Linux and discovered how much I didn't know about Linux.

I used the Arch Linux Revenge Installer which I'm uncertain is even currently active nowadays.

I decided Arch Linux ain't for me as I lack the patience and ain't got the time to learn the Arch Linux ways and how to.

I'm an OOTB install / update and use Linux kind of guy with no desire to become a Linux guru or Linux geek.

I'll learn what I need to learn as I go to keep my Linux distro's updated / secure and working.

I guess that makes me a lazy Linux user. o_O

I'm cool with that. ;)
 
I appreciate users who have the patience to learn Arch Linux.

I tried Arch Linux and discovered how much I didn't know about Linux.
Arch isn't that different from other distributions, what you click together in most other distributions during installation you use the command-line in Arch to do the same following a set of instructions called the Official Arch installation guide. The Arch installation iso does now come with an installation script if you are still interested in trying it ;)
 
There's a few ins and outs , which if you've read the docs you will be ready for
eg Excerpt from my notes :
Code:
reflector : gave me a headache 
----------------------
Mirror List 
----------------------
Arch requires a heafty download during install so mirrors will need to be checked 
/etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist
Reflector can be used to generate mirror list but a list can be generated via : https://archlinux.org/mirrorlist/
Then its just a case of copy and past into /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist using nano  (ctl +k and ctl +u)

pacman -Sy reflector // this installs reflector if needed ( I didn’t) 



Graphics: inxi -G
 Device-1: AMD Stoney [Radeon R2/R3/R4/R5 Graphics] driver: amdgpu 

Therefore : sudo pacman -S xf86-video-amdgpu mesa
Which Desktop ?
xfce : 	sudo pacman -S xfce4 xfce4-goodies  lightdm lightdm-gtk-greeter

etc So basically make it easy , so during the install script you are ready for the choices.
An install script , will go through the process as if you were doing it manually ,so it helps if you have a print out of the steps and possible choices .Also maybe try a few of available install scripts
 
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Therefore : sudo pacman -S xf86-video-amdgpu mesa
You don't actually need xf86-video-amdgpu, I only use mesa and it loads the amdgpu driver from the kernel. I was using it at one point and than just to experiment removed it and my display was still working fine, try it?
 
One of these days, I will install a Linux desktop again. It looks like the landscape has really changed and what really concerns me is the incredible lack of stability and standards that are happening. It's almost like each different distro / distro-based-on-a-distro is going in different directions.

In my opinion, this isn't a positive for Linux on the desktop. It seems to be that the desktop is going in the wrong direction.

When I did run Linux desktops, I ran Ubuntu and Fedora. I actually preferred Fedora by a large margin due to I primarily used Redhat in the Enterprise, and b) it's bleeding edge support was superior to Ubuntu's. I was primarily a hacker / gamer back in the day and that bleeding edge was good for me.

These days, I would likely be more geared towards stability and basically LTS, but I still occasionally run games and would definitely want my setup to run smoothly and not a choppy malfunctioning mess.
 
One of these days, I will install a Linux desktop again. It looks like the landscape has really changed and what really concerns me is the incredible lack of stability and standards that are happening. It's almost like each different distro / distro-based-on-a-distro is going in different directions.
What kind of standards are you talking about and what do you mean with lack of stability?
 
Well, they all seem to function a little different. As for stability, hell. I'm just reading threads here.
 
Actually, the more I read here. The less sure I am as to what distro to actually use. Fedora is no longer an option because if my deep hate for IBM based on professional experience. Maybe SUSE is the answer, though I would be interested in some bleeding edge as it comes to being able to install games and them function well enough.
 

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