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For anyone still on the fence about the merits of Linux vs. OS X after the beating Apple has taken this week, there are rolling release distributions that allow
by ohazi 6y ago
For anyone still on the fence about the merits of Linux vs. OS X after the beating Apple has taken this week, there are rolling release distributions that allow you to set up a Linux system once, keep it up to date with small updates, and pretty much never have to deal with scheduling around a "major upgrade" that might work, or might require a reinstall. I've had desktops / laptops like this that have worked continuously for over ten years. EOL for these machines is usually a migration or a replacement.
Yes, little things do break every now and then, just like they do on your Mac. These regressions are rare, and they're usually easy to fix. Once you've gotten past the initial install, blanking displays and fubared bootloaders aren't nearly as common as the doubt peddlers would have you believe.
Major upgrades are a pain no matter what software you're running. But commercial vendors like Apple and Microsoft are incentivized to make these updates flashy in order to sell you stuff (new hardware/software), or to market themselves ("look at our cool new/repainted stuff!"). You're always going to get big updates from these companies, and installing them never going to be boring.
But for the most part, these rolling release Linux machines end up being just that... boring! They chug along looking and acting the same for 5, 10, 15 years straight. If you wake up one day feeling like you want something flashy, you can always change your wallpaper. But for most days when you don't, there's really no good reason to have these big, catastrophic updates every year or two. They're a waste of everybody's time and energy.
- AntiImperialist 6y agoI would highly advise against rolling release distribution of Linux. Please hear me out. The idea behind having a rolling release is that your upgrades happen in small chunks and therefore the breakages are small and manageable. The problem? The can come in anytime. When you do LTS release upgrades for example, you know when you have to do that and can do proper preparations and set aside time to do it. While the rolling distro upgrades work fine most of the time, the odd time it doesn't takes away all the supposed benefits... and it can happen at a time you're not prepared for.
- ohazi 6y agoFor servers? Yeah, I'd agree with you. For desktops / laptops, I think either approach can work, depending on your personal preferences. If you prefer a big update that you can schedule, and are okay with setting aside a few days every year or two, and are okay with a repository that gives you "stable" application software that may be quite old, then a release-based distribution might work better for you. If you'd rather deal with smaller updates, and if you like having a repository that delivers application software updates closer to when they're released upstream, then a rolling release might work better for you.
- dxdm 6y agoNobody's forcing you to upgrade anytime. Don't run upgrades just before you need your computer to work. I do upgrades once or twice a week, when I know I have time to fix if anything breaks. Maybe once a year I need to spend a couple of minutes to manually fix a problem, like re-running the updater with a special flag, or deleting a certain file. The steps are usually to be found on the distro's home page, announced in the mailung list or posted in a forum dedicated to updating. It's really not a big deal.
- f6v 6y agoI’d go for XPS 13 with Linux in no time if buying that laptop wasn’t such a lottery even with Windows. See, the laptop has to work well in the first place. As bad as they are, MacBooks are terribly predictable.