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This depends entirely on the distribution you choose, not in any way on Linux. As a sibling pointed out, Arch is a rolling release distribution, and is consist

by greggyb 11y ago

This depends entirely on the distribution you choose, not in any way on Linux. As a sibling pointed out, Arch is a rolling release distribution, and is consistently running the latest kernel along with the latest version of any software. In the rare case that something is not maintained in the official repositories, or you need a non-standard installation, there is the community maintained Arch User Repository, with anything you might want. It is very common to see builds in the AUR that are maintained directly against GitHub main branches. You only mention PPAs and Debian-based distributions. Debian is known to be conservative in its release cycle, though testing is often quite up to date, and unstable keeps you on par with Arch. Fedora, with a 6-month release cycle, also keeps you quite up to date compared with tracking Debian stable. Package management is a fairly well solved problem in the Linux space. You just need to find a distribution with a release cycle that aligns better with your own needs.

pdimitar 11y ago
Unless, god forbid, you need the latest ImageMagick on Debian. Or heckloads of other software. I believe the commenter you replied to is much more correct than you. Application packaging / tracking up-to-date system and user packages is very far from a solved problem. On many Linuxes doing a system-wide upgrade is 90% of the time guarantee that part of your system will stop working. This has been mine, and many other people's, experience. I tinker with Debian ever since [circa] 2005 and periodically try to install it on an ancient laptop I keep around. Many commenters above are right in saying that desktop Linux has actually been more stable years ago, and I agree with them. I want to have a universal OS based on Linux but let's face it, nobody has gotten it right just yet, and let's face even more harsher truth, I don't think this generation of users will ever see anything even remotely close to what it will eventually look like in the future.

by greggyb 11y ago

pdimitar 11y ago

Unless, god forbid, you need the latest ImageMagick on Debian. Or heckloads of other software. I believe the commenter you replied to is much more correct than you. Application packaging / tracking up-to-date system and user packages is very far from a solved problem. On many Linuxes doing a system-wide upgrade is 90% of the time guarantee that part of your system will stop working. This has been mine, and many other people's, experience. I tinker with Debian ever since [circa] 2005 and periodically try to install it on an ancient laptop I keep around. Many commenters above are right in saying that desktop Linux has actually been more stable years ago, and I agree with them. I want to have a universal OS based on Linux but let's face it, nobody has gotten it right just yet, and let's face even more harsher truth, I don't think this generation of users will ever see anything even remotely close to what it will eventually look like in the future.