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Maybe you are using the incorrect distro model for you and would benefit of a slower release distro? I am fine with fedora on my main and professional laptop b

Maybe you are using the incorrect distro model for you and would benefit of a slower release distro? I am fine with fedora on my main and professional laptop because they are used almost daily and then are kept updated regularly. And honestly I had one small breakage in 10 years and I could just boot with the previously installed kernel for a week until the problem was fixed so it wasn't that big of a deal. I have another computer that serve as a streaming box in my leaving room connected to my video projector. I use this one much less frequently, especially in summer so I don't want to have to spend a lot of time doing updates. For this one I decided to install almalinux. Since it is a very long term support distro it only receive security updates and major bug fixes so it is very reliable, the kernel version is well tested and the frequency of system update is very low. In the past, people would have complained these distro were lacking important newer versions for their own usage and needs. This is not an issue anymore with flatpaks, container tools, distrobox, VMs + that trend of dev/devopa software installed on your homedir directly via curl | bash or some versions manager like nvm, sdkman, pyenv. Nowadays you can use the very latest versions of software on top of a dinosaur.

josephg 2y ago
Maybe. But personally, I hate running all my actual software in docker or a VM. It chews through drive space, slows down IO, and it makes sharing files around a headache. (Like, run tool X on directory Y - oh, oops - the tool and the data are in different containers. Ugh what was the command to fix that?). I'd much rather a "native" linux distro that has a reasonably modern kernel, with support for io_uring and recent nvidia drivers. And I want a good, modern window manager with hidpi support. And I need to be able to install modern compilers, toolchains and software - like rustc, intellij, nodejs, spotify, firefox, davinci resolve, zfs, automatic1111 and so on. Maybe these problems wouldn't show up as much with another distro? But if I spend time distro shopping to avoid tinkering with mint, I'm worried I'll end up wasting more time doing that than I would save. Most of the bugs I've run into with mint are actually bugs in ubuntu, that mint is based on. Is fedora / arch / etc really more stable than ubuntu? If I use a dinosaur, I'm worried I'll then need to work around its issues - can I easily install modern lldb on an old distro with an ancient glibc? I've tried that before, and it was a huge headache.
- prmoustache 2y ago
  > Is fedora / arch / etc really more stable than ubuntu? Can't give you a definite answer on that, I am quite happy with Fedora but only using ZFS on my almalinux and freebsd system and my only experience with Ubuntu in recent years were LTS releases on servers and that was pre v20. I remember that the kernel changed something a few years ago that broke openzfs and it took time to get back support on some distros so I would be afraid the kernel break something and force me to avoid kernel security upgrades while it is worked on if I was relying on it on a Fedora. I believe running nvidia hardware and ZFS, or anything that is not using a driver included in the mainline kernel, is unsuitable for a distro running fairly recent kernels if you care about potential breakage. That is what LTS distro are for. One alternative to super bleeding edge distro such as Arch is to use something like opensuse slowroll which is a kind of hybrid model between standard and rolling release. Every month or so it gets an upgrade to the lastest snapshot from the OpenSuse Tumbleweed rolling release and between each snapshot it only gets security updates correcting major bugs or CVEs. I only have used it for a few weeks in a VM but I guess if a major breakage would impact tumbleweed you would continue getting security updates until tumbleweed is fixed. But I have no idea if OpenSuse is an openzfs friendly shop, I think they are full on btrfs adoption instead. > If I use a dinosaur, I'm worried I'll then need to work around its issues - can I easily install modern lldb on an old distro with an ancient glibc? I've tried that before, and it was a huge headache. When I say a dinosaur, I was exagerating. For example all the toolchains and software you mention in your posts are perfectly usable on a long term distro such as almalinux 9. I can't speak about nvidia because I don't have any machine with it but Almalinux is a better proposal for openzfs. Nodejs is easily installed through nvm, I am using the most recent firefox, librewolf and ungoogled chrommum from the flatpaks, etc. It is not using an old glibc. Apparently lldb is part of almalinux 9 but I have no idea if the version is modern enough for your use case: https://almalinux.pkgs.org/9/almalinux-appstream-x86_64/lldb-17.0.6-1.el9.i686.rpm.html https://almalinux.pkgs.org/9/almalinux-appstream-x86_64/lldb... But as said before, you are just 2 commands away from a more recent Fedora toolbox available at your keyboard fingertips [1]: $ toolbox create --distro fedora --release 40 $ toolbox enter fedora-toolbox-40 [1] and distrobox is available as a package on EPEL repos so you would have an arch or ubuntu available easily the same way.

josephg 2y ago

Maybe. But personally, I hate running all my actual software in docker or a VM. It chews through drive space, slows down IO, and it makes sharing files around a headache. (Like, run tool X on directory Y - oh, oops - the tool and the data are in different containers. Ugh what was the command to fix that?). I'd much rather a "native" linux distro that has a reasonably modern kernel, with support for io_uring and recent nvidia drivers. And I want a good, modern window manager with hidpi support. And I need to be able to install modern compilers, toolchains and software - like rustc, intellij, nodejs, spotify, firefox, davinci resolve, zfs, automatic1111 and so on. Maybe these problems wouldn't show up as much with another distro? But if I spend time distro shopping to avoid tinkering with mint, I'm worried I'll end up wasting more time doing that than I would save. Most of the bugs I've run into with mint are actually bugs in ubuntu, that mint is based on. Is fedora / arch / etc really more stable than ubuntu? If I use a dinosaur, I'm worried I'll then need to work around its issues - can I easily install modern lldb on an old distro with an ancient glibc? I've tried that before, and it was a huge headache.

prmoustache 2y ago
> Is fedora / arch / etc really more stable than ubuntu? Can't give you a definite answer on that, I am quite happy with Fedora but only using ZFS on my almalinux and freebsd system and my only experience with Ubuntu in recent years were LTS releases on servers and that was pre v20. I remember that the kernel changed something a few years ago that broke openzfs and it took time to get back support on some distros so I would be afraid the kernel break something and force me to avoid kernel security upgrades while it is worked on if I was relying on it on a Fedora. I believe running nvidia hardware and ZFS, or anything that is not using a driver included in the mainline kernel, is unsuitable for a distro running fairly recent kernels if you care about potential breakage. That is what LTS distro are for. One alternative to super bleeding edge distro such as Arch is to use something like opensuse slowroll which is a kind of hybrid model between standard and rolling release. Every month or so it gets an upgrade to the lastest snapshot from the OpenSuse Tumbleweed rolling release and between each snapshot it only gets security updates correcting major bugs or CVEs. I only have used it for a few weeks in a VM but I guess if a major breakage would impact tumbleweed you would continue getting security updates until tumbleweed is fixed. But I have no idea if OpenSuse is an openzfs friendly shop, I think they are full on btrfs adoption instead. > If I use a dinosaur, I'm worried I'll then need to work around its issues - can I easily install modern lldb on an old distro with an ancient glibc? I've tried that before, and it was a huge headache. When I say a dinosaur, I was exagerating. For example all the toolchains and software you mention in your posts are perfectly usable on a long term distro such as almalinux 9. I can't speak about nvidia because I don't have any machine with it but Almalinux is a better proposal for openzfs. Nodejs is easily installed through nvm, I am using the most recent firefox, librewolf and ungoogled chrommum from the flatpaks, etc. It is not using an old glibc. Apparently lldb is part of almalinux 9 but I have no idea if the version is modern enough for your use case: https://almalinux.pkgs.org/9/almalinux-appstream-x86_64/lldb-17.0.6-1.el9.i686.rpm.html https://almalinux.pkgs.org/9/almalinux-appstream-x86_64/lldb... But as said before, you are just 2 commands away from a more recent Fedora toolbox available at your keyboard fingertips [1]: $ toolbox create --distro fedora --release 40 $ toolbox enter fedora-toolbox-40 [1] and distrobox is available as a package on EPEL repos so you would have an arch or ubuntu available easily the same way.