so a common claim I see made is that arch is up to date than Debian but harder to maintain and easier to break. Is there a good sort of middle ground distro between the reliability of Debian and the up-to-date packages of arch?

  • lengau
    3·
    3 months ago

    I’m sure I’ll get shouted down for this suggestion by the haters, but I’m going to make it anyway because it’s actually really good:

    Use an Ubuntu LTS flavour like Kubuntu. Then, add flatpak and for apps you want to keep up to date, install either the flatpak or the snap, depending on the particular app. In my personal experience, sometimes the flatpak is better and sometimes the snap is better. (I would add Nix to the mix, but I wouldn’t call it particularly easy for beginners.)

    This gets you:

    1. A reliable Debian-like base that you only have to upgrade to new releases every 2 years
    2. Up-to-date apps, including confinement for those apps
    3. New kernels every 6 months (if you choose - you don’t have to, though)
    • Possibly linux@lemmy.zipEnglish
      21·
      3 months ago

      Ubuntu not only lacks some basic packages but they make apt install them with snap instead.

      I would go Debian testing as it has a huge selection of apps and has good support for Flatpak (like pretty much all Linux as Flatpak is build on standard kernel components)