Maybe what I’m looking for is the holy grail, but what do you guys suggest as a Distro with a good balance between stability and up-to-date packages?
If you like Plasma or one of the other supported desktops, I suggest trying Siduction for this.
Gentoo, obviously.
I use it since it works. But it also has up to date packages. Number of times I tried moving away from it and it is just not possible.
I use Mint on side-desktop (one with graphic card I use for gaming and deep learning) and while it is easy to use it also has old software, python is stuck on 3.7 or 3.8 so it is becoming unusable even.
Will gentoo give you some problems? Probably, but those are always solvable and you will spend less time on other stuff.
Tumbleweed. And if a weekly does break something, jusr rollback.
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I started using nixos this week and love it; it’s like everything I love about containers made into an OS.
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Yeah I’ve been pretty happy with Mint. It’s a deb/Ubuntu base but they add some stuff plus still provide packaged versions of various desktop apps that Ubuntu has pushed to using snaps for (which I hate)
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Did you try AUR?
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Could always install endeavouros and or arch if you prefer more work with btrfs and snapshots. Arch is mostly stable despite the laughter erupting from this post. Even if it does fall down you have the snapshots to fallback to in order to bail you out. Arch is like riding and steering a rocket but having btrfs is like having extra lives so crashing doesn’t really kill you forever. Depends on what you want.
The good news is if you try arch long enough and spend hours tinkering with cutting edge software you too can come to the point where you are exhausted and just want a machine that does what the hell you want without screwing around with it. Or you can change your avatar to some sort of anime character and bask in the superiority of not only using arch but enjoying it like some sort of digital masochist.
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In the end you could use any distro which desktop you like (which could be Debian stable, or something immutable) and then get your applications from the latest and greatest with Distrobox
Thanks, it seems a really insteresting project
Distrobox looks really interesting. Do you know the memory or CPU overhead for using it? I have older hardware. Will distrobox perform well on it? Thanks.
No, cpu wise there should not really be an overhead, as it just uses docker or podman to run the application in question. the only bottleneck i see could be host filesystems that are not supported by docker/podman and therefore could lead to slow file access in the container.
Just like the holy grail, a stable and up-to-date distro doesn’t exist. Stability and recency of software typically constitute a tradeoff. Human software developers produce some number of bugs per line of code. Unless all changes made to a piece of software are bug fixes, new changes mean new bugs, almost invariably. Therefore the only way to stop the increase of bugs in a piece of software is to stop the changes to it or only do changes that address bugs. In the context of distros, a stable one is a distro where the number of bugs stays constant or decreases over time. This is how Debian, Ubuntu and every other distro that locks its software versions for a certain release work. After a release is out, only bug fix changes are permitted, with some special exceptions. The idea that there are multiple types of stability is a bit of a false narrative. Adding features, adds lines of code, which increases the number of defects. This is a fundamental fact of software engineering that’s actively managed during the development cycle of most software. A collection of software like a rolling Linux distro that receives a constant stream of new features may feel bug-free to specific users, however that is typically a coincidence. Just because those X number of people didn’t hit any significant defects during their usage, doesn’t mean that you won’t. This is true for every distro, however stable distros generally have an ever-decreasing number of bugs over their lifespan. In addition, bugs that are never fixed can be documented, workarounded and the workarounds will keep working for the lifespan of the release because there are no changes.
With all of that out of the way I hope it’s clearer why there’s a tradeoff between stability and recency of software in distros. There are various strategies to have a bit of both and they typically revolve around letting the bits you want be recent, while keeping everything else stable. These days the easiest and most foolproof way to get new software is via Flatpak or Snap.
You could of course abandon stability and go for recency via some rolling release distro and see if you step on any significant bugs. Maybe you won’t and you’ll be happy with that. Many people are.
As a personal and professional Linux user that lives with and maintains a significant number of machines, I typically go for a stable base like Debian or Ubuntu LTS and update only the software I need via Flatpak, Snap and Docker. I no longer use PPAs. This provides a great balance between stability and recency. But that’s just me.
Depending on your definitions of up to date and stable:
Any of the releases every 6 months distros are more stable and reasonably up to date - something like Fedora even keeps the kernel updated during those months
OpenSUSE Tumbleweed is rolling release with something called “openQA” that is run on the distro before releasing the snapshot to help stability. It also uses BTRFS with something called “snapper” by default, so if something breaks, you can pick the previous version from the bootloader
NixOS would fit the bill if you’re not afraid of something different. With Nix it’s trivial to cherry pick from unstable channel if you still want a stable base.
It gets close, but NixOS doesn’t have LTS releases yet, so you’ll still be updating at least every six months. Combining the Nix package manager with a Debian stable or Ubuntu LTS might be an option, that gives you a stable base and a few up to date packages on top. However integrating the Nix packages with Debian can get tricky when it comes to core packages such as window manager or DE.
Is this not solved by using the “unstable” nixpkgs channel or is that something different?
I’m a NixOS newbie and still learning a lot about it haha
The stable branches promise no breaking changes (in configuration options etc.). Unstable is a rolling release with everything that entails (personally I use it on desktops and stable on servers).
The NixOS unstable channel allows you to get the new packages, but what OP wants is also a stable system and NixOS doesn’t really offer. NixOS has new releases every six months and only provides security updates for one month after a new release is out. So you’ll be updating pretty frequently and things do break in those updates pretty frequently.
Ubuntu LTS in contrast promises security updates for up to 10 years and they have LTS releases every 2 years. So you can basically install it once and forget about it. The downside is that Ubuntu has no way to install new software on the old system by itself, which is why a mix of Ubuntu LTS and Nix might be worth a consideration in some situations, that gives you both a stable base and bleeding edge software.
tbf neither does Fedora.
But yeah, I would recommend either Debian or NixOS, depending on how stable you want it.
Devuan testing branch.
Kubuntu (Ubuntu but KDE), both great KDE UI and stable kernel. I use Kubuntu LTS.
What is your definition of stability? I have used Arch for about ten years without any major breakage, but sometimes you do have to do some manual tinkering if a package stops working. So it’s stable enough for me, but maybe not for others. Since it is a rolling release, packages are generally being updated quite rapidly.
I think that any modern rolling release distro would fit the bill though.
+1 for Arch
This here! I actually have had really good luck using Arch. I’ve been running it for only a month now and I make certain to patch/update once a week. Thus far it has not left me stranded. I think Arch is underrated as an OS.
I think Arch is underrated as an OS.
I don’t think Arch is anywhere near “underrated”. The “I use Arch, btw” meme didn’t come out of nowhere. A lot of distros are based on Arch too. Even SteamOS (so the Steam Deck is essentially powered by Arch).
In that regard: yes, Arch is awesome. I use it, btw.
Arch powers pretty much everything except my server which is Proxmox. Yep, Arch is awesome!
You will only notice the downside of a rolling release distribution when using it for years. Large breaking changes might unexpectedly be applied to your system, instead of at fixed points in time like with other distributions.
