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Anecdata: I've used Arch Linux for several years and it's been probably 3-4 years since I've had any stability issues with it after upgrading. And the last time

Anecdata: I've used Arch Linux for several years and it's been probably 3-4 years since I've had any stability issues with it after upgrading. And the last time I did run into problems, it was from bugs in the open source AMD GPU drivers due to how relatively immature they were at the time. Would I use it for a mission critical workstation or server? Probably not. But for daily personal use, it's been completely fine for me and I would highly recommend it to others. Slightly tangential question: Is there a distro that has a stable "core" (kernel, maybe some userspace libraries) but uses rolling releases for everything else? Ideally, that would probably give you the best of both worlds for a personal machine.

bamfly 3y ago
> Slightly tangential question: Is there a distro that has a stable "core" (kernel, maybe some userspace libraries) but uses rolling releases for everything else? Ideally, that would probably give you the best of both worlds for a personal machine. I'm aware this isn't exactly what you were asking for—and with the disclaimer that I spent a lot of years as a Linux desktop user, so I do have a great deal of experience with how that "half" lives, but: this is one of the things that's so nice about MacOS + Homebrew. It's a very stable core (up through and including the graphical environment—after all, if that breaks on a workstation/desktop, that's nearly as bad as the whole OS breaking) that only updates every couple years (and I can ignore the updates a long time without notable consequences) with a very-high-package-count package manager that's rolling-release on top of it, for most of the software I directly use. I'd love to see a Linux distro that worked that way—I don't think I could go back to doing package management the typical Linux way, on my workstation. I've done rolling-release, I've done everything-stable-and-maybe-some-bodged-in-extra-repositories-for-newer-stuff, and both suck, for my needs, compared to this arrangement. Stable core + rolling applications is great, would be thrilled to see more Linux distros explore that kind of thing.
- kitsunesoba 3y ago
  Homebrew has its issues, but yes I also like the approach of the system and the packages I install living in two entirely separate worlds, with the system being boring and stable and other packages lining up with whatever is currently shipping for Windows/macOS. The extra space consumed is negligible and well worth the turbulence reduction. Immutable distributions like Fedora Silverblue seem to lean in that direction, though I've never used them personally.
- vineethkm 3y ago
  I have heard good things about NixOS but I am also told its not a normie daily driver.
  - anotherhue 3y ago
    You better love Unix to run NixOS. I do love Unix, I was a FreeBSD fellow, but Nix is so incredible that everything else feels like poking at your hard drive with a stick. Editing a file in /etc/ feels like PEEK/POKEing to memory now. Barbaric.

bamfly 3y ago

> Slightly tangential question: Is there a distro that has a stable "core" (kernel, maybe some userspace libraries) but uses rolling releases for everything else? Ideally, that would probably give you the best of both worlds for a personal machine. I'm aware this isn't exactly what you were asking for—and with the disclaimer that I spent a lot of years as a Linux desktop user, so I do have a great deal of experience with how that "half" lives, but: this is one of the things that's so nice about MacOS + Homebrew. It's a very stable core (up through and including the graphical environment—after all, if that breaks on a workstation/desktop, that's nearly as bad as the whole OS breaking) that only updates every couple years (and I can ignore the updates a long time without notable consequences) with a very-high-package-count package manager that's rolling-release on top of it, for most of the software I directly use. I'd love to see a Linux distro that worked that way—I don't think I could go back to doing package management the typical Linux way, on my workstation. I've done rolling-release, I've done everything-stable-and-maybe-some-bodged-in-extra-repositories-for-newer-stuff, and both suck, for my needs, compared to this arrangement. Stable core + rolling applications is great, would be thrilled to see more Linux distros explore that kind of thing.

kitsunesoba 3y ago
Homebrew has its issues, but yes I also like the approach of the system and the packages I install living in two entirely separate worlds, with the system being boring and stable and other packages lining up with whatever is currently shipping for Windows/macOS. The extra space consumed is negligible and well worth the turbulence reduction. Immutable distributions like Fedora Silverblue seem to lean in that direction, though I've never used them personally.
vineethkm 3y ago
I have heard good things about NixOS but I am also told its not a normie daily driver.
- anotherhue 3y ago
  You better love Unix to run NixOS. I do love Unix, I was a FreeBSD fellow, but Nix is so incredible that everything else feels like poking at your hard drive with a stick. Editing a file in /etc/ feels like PEEK/POKEing to memory now. Barbaric.