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I mean, I just don't understand the fascination with rolling update models for the core os. I've got other things to worry about than playing with config files

I mean, I just don't understand the fascination with rolling update models for the core os. I've got other things to worry about than playing with config files, so I just install a new LTS distro every couple years or so and amortize the pain to less than the yearly macos updates.

moshmosh 6y ago
I, too, dislike rolling updates for my workstation OS. I don't like using anything OS- or package-manager-provided on my dev workstation for per-project development dependencies, since usually it's much less painful (sooner or later) to manage those with a special tool for that purpose, or to vendor them, or to pick some OS that you might not like for your workstation as your deployment target (Alpine, say, or a very vanilla stable Debian) and just use scriptedly-reproduceable VM or docker or whatever. I do like rolling updates for my actual tools and programs that I, personally, use. Editors (code or otherwise—image, video, audio, document, whatever), multimedia programs, browsers, quality-of-life improvement tools, command-line tools that aren't build dependencies, that kind of thing. If I hit a bug, then see that it's fixed in the latest release, I want there to be a very good chance I can just update my packages and get the fix, no further effort required. Or at worst wait a day or two for the package to be updated, and get it that way. If I read that a tool has some functionality, and install it specifically for that functionality, I don't want to lose time wondering why the hell I don't see it in the program, only to realize that it's because Ubuntu's packages serve a version that dates to before that feature was added (real thing that's happened to me on Linux). That's where LTS Linux distros end up being a bad fit for me, because I want most of the stuff I actually use to be newer than what's in the repos. macOS with Brew is about as close to perfect (for me) as I've seen. Slow-paced and relatively-reliable major OS updates, but my tools and programs stay up-to-date, and I can install damn near anything though the package manager (the closest I've seen to being as good as Brew as far as likelihood of my asking it to install something without checking that it has it first, and that actually working nearly every time, including for closed-source software, is Gentoo's Portage). I wouldn't prefer to install a project-dependency (say, PostgreSQL) through my workstation package manager anyway, so I don't care that it's rolling, since if I need something pinned I'll be fetching it some other way. Given how fragmented Linux's GUI desktop is, and the way so much of it blurs the line between system- and user-packages, I think it'd be very challenging for a Linux distro to deliver as clean an experience, if that's the workflow you prefer (as, I've discovered, I do).
- narwally 6y ago
  My solution for this on linux has been to run Linux Mint Debian Edition while using Nix for package management of stuff I want to stay reasonably up to date.
kelnos 6y ago
I guess that's just personal preference; I prefer to keep my systems up-to-date at least on a monthly basis. Most of the time the updates go without a hitch, and maybe once a year something very minor breaks. If I were to only update once a year (aside from security updates), I would expect many more things to break. And that's what I see from the complaints of my co-workers when they update macOS on their laptops once a year: a lot of pain in the ass issues that take a while to resolve. And this is after our IT dept has taken 3-6 months to test things on the new OS version and allow people to upgrade. For reference, I run Debian testing until it becomes stable, and then 4 months or so later I switch to the new testing release name. I get an up-to-date system (Debian stable has a reputation for being old and outdated almost at release day), but also skip the part where Debian testing has a lot of churn and possible breakage. The newstable->newtesting upgrade, even though it's a larger one, rarely causes problems, and happens once every two years.

moshmosh 6y ago

I, too, dislike rolling updates for my workstation OS. I don't like using anything OS- or package-manager-provided on my dev workstation for per-project development dependencies, since usually it's much less painful (sooner or later) to manage those with a special tool for that purpose, or to vendor them, or to pick some OS that you might not like for your workstation as your deployment target (Alpine, say, or a very vanilla stable Debian) and just use scriptedly-reproduceable VM or docker or whatever. I do like rolling updates for my actual tools and programs that I, personally, use. Editors (code or otherwise—image, video, audio, document, whatever), multimedia programs, browsers, quality-of-life improvement tools, command-line tools that aren't build dependencies, that kind of thing. If I hit a bug, then see that it's fixed in the latest release, I want there to be a very good chance I can just update my packages and get the fix, no further effort required. Or at worst wait a day or two for the package to be updated, and get it that way. If I read that a tool has some functionality, and install it specifically for that functionality, I don't want to lose time wondering why the hell I don't see it in the program, only to realize that it's because Ubuntu's packages serve a version that dates to before that feature was added (real thing that's happened to me on Linux). That's where LTS Linux distros end up being a bad fit for me, because I want most of the stuff I actually use to be newer than what's in the repos. macOS with Brew is about as close to perfect (for me) as I've seen. Slow-paced and relatively-reliable major OS updates, but my tools and programs stay up-to-date, and I can install damn near anything though the package manager (the closest I've seen to being as good as Brew as far as likelihood of my asking it to install something without checking that it has it first, and that actually working nearly every time, including for closed-source software, is Gentoo's Portage). I wouldn't prefer to install a project-dependency (say, PostgreSQL) through my workstation package manager anyway, so I don't care that it's rolling, since if I need something pinned I'll be fetching it some other way. Given how fragmented Linux's GUI desktop is, and the way so much of it blurs the line between system- and user-packages, I think it'd be very challenging for a Linux distro to deliver as clean an experience, if that's the workflow you prefer (as, I've discovered, I do).

narwally 6y ago
My solution for this on linux has been to run Linux Mint Debian Edition while using Nix for package management of stuff I want to stay reasonably up to date.

kelnos 6y ago

I guess that's just personal preference; I prefer to keep my systems up-to-date at least on a monthly basis. Most of the time the updates go without a hitch, and maybe once a year something very minor breaks. If I were to only update once a year (aside from security updates), I would expect many more things to break. And that's what I see from the complaints of my co-workers when they update macOS on their laptops once a year: a lot of pain in the ass issues that take a while to resolve. And this is after our IT dept has taken 3-6 months to test things on the new OS version and allow people to upgrade. For reference, I run Debian testing until it becomes stable, and then 4 months or so later I switch to the new testing release name. I get an up-to-date system (Debian stable has a reputation for being old and outdated almost at release day), but also skip the part where Debian testing has a lot of churn and possible breakage. The newstable->newtesting upgrade, even though it's a larger one, rarely causes problems, and happens once every two years.