this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2024
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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?

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[–] [email protected] 54 points 2 months ago

fedora is a good middle ground

[–] [email protected] 52 points 2 months ago (2 children)

OpenSUSE tumbleweed is a good compromise IMO. it is also a rolling release distro with built in snapshotting. So if anything does go wrong it takes ~5 mins to roll back to the last good snapshot. You can set the same thing up on arch but it isn't ootb and YAST is a great management tool as well.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago (9 children)

I would say Tumblewees is better than traditional Fedora.

But the lack of desktops, variants, adoption, as well as the lack of being able to reset a system, makes it less stable than Fedora Atomic Desktops.

Resetting is huge. You can revert to a bit-by-bit copy of the current upstream.

It is not complete at all, but already works as a daily driver. uBlue deals with almost all the edges that are left.

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Is there a good sort of middle ground distro between the reliability of Debian and the up-to-date packages of arch?

This guy:

(OpenSUSE Tumbleweed).
Or maybe Slowroll.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (3 children)

Absolutely. Here's three options

Fedora updates every, or around every, 3 months. This is very stable but very up to date.Most professional devs particularly ones working in Linux projects use it fornit's relative stability while having modern packages.

There's also PopOS! which is a rolling release, updating daily, but much more delayed than arch thus being much more usable.

Now for my favourite, OpenSuse Tumbleweed. Same style as PopOs but with a KDE, or gnome spin or of the box. A bit more sleek too. It also has YAST which is the best GUI based managment system on Linux.

I use arch (btw) but have a second duel booted tumbleweed install for work related stuff in order tonensure stability

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

Pop OS is very much not a rolling release

[–] muhyb 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Wait, Pop_OS switched to rolling release?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago (2 children)

From their website:

"Update on Your Terms

Pop!_OS provides the latest features and security patches through rolling updates and periodic OS version upgrades, to be performed at your discretion. And if you want a clean slate, the Refresh Install feature resets your OS while preserving the files in your Home folder. "

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

Fedora is a good middle ground, it's what Asahi Linux uses as its official distro

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

Another upvote for Fedora. I tried SO many flavors over the years and every single one of them, while cool and neat up front eventually developed “something” that was too problematic.

So I asked for a recommendation with a very specific set of things that I needed from a distribution. Everybody told me to just stop messing around with different flavors and just go with plain old vanilla Fedora.

It has been rock solid and perfect in every way, and I no longer have that need to distrohop because I’m missing something.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

+1 for Fedora. It is exactly what OP is asking for.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 2 months ago

I've found openSUSE tumbleweed to be the perfect mix between stable and constant updates. By default uses brtfs so if you break something the fix is a simple as rolling back to the snapshot that was automatically made right before the update

[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 months ago

OpenSUSE Tumbleweed.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (3 children)

To be honest PopOS is great. Frequent updates, good (subjective) design and ui choices, just works. If it fits your vibe I would say it is a good balance!

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago

It also has the benefit of being able to apply the vast majority of Ubuntu tutorials, etc. since it's based on it. Plus it doesn't force you to use snaps for everything.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Debian Stable isn't the only way to run Debian though people often act like it. That said, if you want the stability of Debian Stable then run it with the nix package manager (nix-bin).

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 months ago

Fedora is generally pretty good

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 months ago (4 children)

What's wrong with Ubuntu/Mint/PopOS/Fedora or any of the distros usually recommended? They're easier to maintain and more up to date than Debian

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago (3 children)

You could.. of course also try to use Debian Testing (which is more stable than Debian Unstable), but also more up to date than just Debian Stable.

https://wiki.debian.org/DebianTesting And see also: https://www.debian.org/releases/testing/ (currently "trixie" is the testing release).

EDIT: I mention this, because nobody mentioned it yet.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago

OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. Rolling release, but has QA on the weekly builds. It fits between Debian and Arch for sure.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago (5 children)

This may be an unpopular opinion, but NixOS. It has package up-to-dateness comparable to (and sometimes better than) Arch, but between being declarative (and reproducible) and allowing rollbacks, it's much harder to break. The cost is, of course, having to learn how to use NixOS, as it's a fair bit different to using a "normal" Linux distro.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

Double this, nix has entirely changed my perspective on what I should expect from software and my operating system. It’s so rock solid and roll backs are easy. Reproduction with all the customization you could ever want with incredible transparency.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago
[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago

fedora maybe?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago (2 children)

For private use? Hot take, but Arch. It's easy to maintain and not easy to break at all. I think I spend zero time on maintenance other than running package updates. I only reinstall when I get a new computer.

(I say for private use only because you'll be getting weird looks from people if you use arch on a server in a professional setting, and it might break if you try to update it after five years of not doing it since there aren't any "releases" to group big changes - in practice I run arch on my home server too with no issues)

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago

I would say:

  • Fedora if you like a point release, which means that every 6 months you do a big update of core stuff like the desktop environment, and on Fedora everything else is always generally up to date.
  • OpenSUSE Thumbleweed if you like a rolling release, which means that you don't do big updates, everything is kept to the last version that the software repository has, this is how arch works except in Thumbleweed the repositories are updated slower than in arch and less likely to break.

But you could also go for any more up to date debian-based distro, like Pop_OS or even Ubuntu, they might be easier for a newbie user. Fedora and OpenSUSE will be more up to date though.

If you do use Ubuntu, don't stick to just LTS versions, use the last version available (which right now happens to be an LTS version). The "extra support" it offers is not something desktop users care about, it's outweighted by the benefits of more updated software.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

another recomendation for Fedora from me

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (2 children)

They don’t package LTS kernels which is pretty concerning—especially if using out-of-kernel modules that don’t always get released in lock step that could leave you with a machine that won’t boot.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

SuSE Slowroll. Not rolling release. Also not super-conservative like Debian is.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Nobody here for Mint? I’m a long time Ubuntu user but when i do my next upgrade it will be to mint.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

Both Ubuntu and mint are debian based.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago

Debian-Testing (Trixie) is the way to go. It's a rolling release, but it's very stable, because packages end up there after being tested in Sid (their unstable rolling release). Whatever makes it out of Trixie, ends up on the normal Debian. I've been running it since April without any breakages.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

My server has been on Endeavour OS (arch with a gui installer) for at least 18 months. I run updates roughly every 10 days (basically whenever I remember). Never had a problem with it. I dare say it could go horribly wrong at some point so I keep the LTS kernel installed as well just as a fall back.

My main pc is also running Endeavour OS (dual boot with windows 11). Other than having to keep Bluetooth downgraded to support the ps5 dual sense controller, it runs great.

My only gripe is that updates often contain something that forces the kernel rebuild process and so it needs a reboot afterwards.

Every other Linux I've run has had some sort of "rebuild to fix" type issue at some point, or had been hard to find good support information for. Endeavour OS has been the most reliable and the easiest to fix and find support for.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (4 children)

Arch is easy to maintain and is stable enough. Of course you can make Arch unstable if you do greedy stuff, but if you use like a normal person, it will be fine

It's using Arch for 5 years now and I never broke my system, for example

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (3 children)

install debian

apt install flatpak

flatpak install theThingYouWantTheLatestOf

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

I don't get the down votes. This is a perfectly reasonable approach

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (4 children)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

You should probably use fedora instead of debian testing.

Fedora is intended to be used as a more up to date distro. While debian testing is just that. Testing

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Probably not the place to ask, but. Say In a n00b and have Arch (EndeavourOS BTW) on a 15+ year old laptop. Everything works fine hardware wise. Software is fairly basic web, Inkscape, LibreOffice.

Do I really need all the latest Arch updates? Or can I just do an update say every 6 months?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Replace Arch with Ubuntu and the answer is yes. Arch based that's not a good idea.

The reason is that in 6 months lots can have changed, and Arch is not guaranteed a stable base, so updates might assume you have certain versions or things might break because you should have done a middle step during the upgrades that you didn't which is now buried in months of update news in the wiki.

If you want to only update your system every six months, Arch is not ideal, it's likely to work, but not guaranteed.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

Debian Testing has a lot more current packages, and is generally fairly stable. Debian Unstable is rolling release, and mostly a misnomer (but it is subject to massive changes at a moment's notice).

Fedora is like Debian Testing: a good middleground between current and stable.

I hear lots of good things about Nix, but I still haven't tried it. It seems to be the perfect blend of non-breaking and most up-to-date.

I'll just add to: don't believe everything you hear. Distrowars result in rhetoric that's way blown out of proportion. Arch isn't breaking down more often than a cybertruck, and Debian isn't so old that it yearns for the performance of Windows Vista.

Arch breaks, so does anything that tries to push updates at the drop of a hat; it's unlikely to brick your pc, and you'll just need to reconfigure some settings.

Debian is stable as its primary goal, this means the numbers don't look as big on paper; for that you should be playing cookie clicker, instead of micromanaging the worlds' most powerful web browser.

Try things out for yourself and see what fits, anyone who says otherwise is just trying to program you into joining their culture war

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

Debian and learn to use the nix package manager for your bleeding edge stuff

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (2 children)

That's Void Linux, exactly how I would describe Void...

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