Off the bleeding edge

dtw · 2014-12-15 11:14:15

After 10+ years I can't be arsed with this bleeding edge business any more. I'm getting to that point in life where one breakage is one too many. I blame the children.

Problem is I've never used any of the major distros other than Ubuntu (I was at college and needed the money) on a laptop so I'm interested in the opinion of the community when the time comes for a bit more "stability".

I'm considering Debian or Fedora. I guess they're solid choices?

clfarron4 · 2014-12-15 11:21:20

dtw wrote:

I'm considering Debian or Fedora. I guess they're solid choices?

In my experience, the standard release of Fedora is only a week or two behind ArchLinux at most in versions of packages (they are known on occasion to push packages before ArchLinux, which doesn't ever end well). Then there's the (supposedly) 13 month life cycle per release, unless you go for the Fedora rolling release.

I've no idea about Debian, as I've never used straight Debian.

tomk · 2014-12-15 11:30:44

dtw wrote:

After 10+ years I can't be arsed with this bleeding edge business any more. I'm getting to that point in life where one breakage is one too many.

Nothing to suggest, but I'm curious how many breakages you've been having? I have run Arch with the testing repo for a similar period, and it rarely give me trouble - although I will acknowledge that I probably have good-Arch-user habits ingrained into me at this stage. Can't imagine using anything else, really.

Oh, and I have kids too.

fukawi2 · 2014-12-15 11:35:28

I stick with Mint on my laptop; where I just want (need) it to work. (I keep Arch as my desktop distro)

drcouzelis · 2014-12-15 13:49:07

dtw wrote:

I'm getting to that point in life where one breakage is one too many.

What kind of breakage are you trying to avoid?

You will ALWAYS experience some form of breakage no matter which operating system you use, the reason being perfectly summed up in this 30 second video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bm7JH1FT_yM

dtw wrote:

I'm considering Debian or Fedora. I guess they're solid choices?

For what reasons would you consider using Fedora? The Wikipedia describes Fedora as "focusing on innovation, integrating new technologies" and having "a relatively short life cycle". ..."Having no breakage" is not on the list of features for Fedora.

Debian has a great history of very little breakage. ...But that also means you will be using old software. The current stable version of Debian ("wheezy") was released in May 2013. If you were to install it today you would get an incredible and stable operating system with available software packages in the tens of thousands. You would also be using Linux 3.2 (Does it support all the hardware you need?), LibreOffice 3.5 (Does it open the documents you need like the current version 4.3 does?), ~~and Firefox 10~~ (I've been corrected. ). Of course these are just specific examples, but my point is that "stability" means "feature frozen", so if the operating system you choose does not have software with the features you need when you install it, then you're not getting those features until you install the next version. You COULD chose to install newer software from unofficial repositories, but you will have no guarantee that they won't break something, which is what you're trying to avoid.

The NEXT stable release of Debian is (probably) happening within the next few months. If you were to install and configure Debian today, you would be RE-installing and RE-configuring it in a few months. Is that something you are willing to do every two to three years?

Debian (and Red Hat Enterprise Linux and others, I'm sure) are VERY GOOD operating system, and are used extensively around the world, especially in situations where "no breakage" is a requirement. But they come with a trade off. Make sure you are willing to accept those trade offs before jumping in!

In recent years, there seems to be a trend in some Linux distributions of keeping the "operating system" packages stable and only upgrading the fast-paced "user software" packages. So the latest Firefox might crash but the operating system won't, that sort of thing. So that's another thing to consider.

Also, keep in mind that I've been using Arch Linux for the past five years, so I may be out of touch with the latest developments in Linux distributions.

Last edited by drcouzelis (2014-12-15 14:55:53)

olive · 2014-12-15 14:02:12

From my experience Archlinux is not really more unstable than other distros. The problem however is that your risk a breakage at every upgrade (distros that have fixed discrete releases don't have this problem). Contrarily to the advise of many people, simply not upgrading might be a solution (well only upgrade from time to time when you have time). The security problem it can bring has been IMHO greatly exaggerated. Before contradicting me answer to question: do you know someone who has been affected by a malware that could have been avoided if the system has been upgraded? All of malware that I am aware of are simply Windows malware that has been launched careless people.

If you run a critical server, things might be different, though...

Head_on_a_Stick · 2014-12-15 14:24:36

drcouzelis wrote:

The current stable version of Debian ("wheezy") was released in May 2013. If you were to install it today you would get an incredible and stable operating system with available software packages in the tens of thousands. You would also be using [...] Firefox 10.

Debian wheezy is actually using version 31 (ESR) now
https://packages.debian.org/wheezy/iceweasel

I would recommend Debian Stable for an ultra-reliable, stress-free operating system.

As @drcouzelis points out though, jessie is currently frozen and slated to transfer to Stable next summer (ish).

It's probably best to wait 'til then -- the software in jessie will be relatively new and the hardware support should be good.
This is probably not true for wheezy.

Trilby · 2014-12-15 15:23:27

My admittedly limited experience with other distros has lead me to one definite conclusion that I will never use a release-based distro again. I'm not sure if they are ever more stable than arch - but I do know that every year or so they are not only unstable, they just need to be nuked and restarted from scratch if you ever want to install a new package as all the "old" repos simply disappear. To build on the video drcouzelis posted, my experience with "stable" release distros is a lot like my experience with Macs:
http://www.funnypictures.net.au/images/ … a-mac-.jpg

dtw · 2014-12-15 15:31:01

Thanks for your responses so far everyone.

If I could reply broadly...

Fedora, excuse my ignorance, clearly isn't a stable distro.

The last "breakage" I had was with cacerts on my netbook. I followed the instructions and it "broke". I fixed it. I lost some productivity. It wasn't a big deal.

The worst breakage I currently have (not that this thread is a cry for help) I’m still not sure what the problem actually is. I do know that I have to do a selective upgrade or I get an unusable system. That, in turn, means I can't reliably add any new packages because I'm not up to date and until I can take some time to troubleshoot and fix, then potential problems snowball.

Olive has hit the nail on the head: breakages are inevitable but I want to be able to deal with those breakages on my own timetable. Sometimes stuff just breaks and I'm OK with fixing it. Hey, even Windows break sometimes. As for security, the only instance I am aware of with someone having a security issue in Arch is this.

Thanks for the Debian info, Head. Debian almost seems like the only choice. I’d be interested to hear from anyone else who’s moved to Arch from Debian or runs it on other systems.

ANOKNUSA · 2014-12-15 15:32:58

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:

I would recommend Debian Stable for an ultra-reliable, stress-free operating system.
As @drcouzelis points out though, jessie is currently frozen and slated to transfer to Stable next summer (ish).
It's probably best to wait 'til then -- the software in jessie will be relatively new and the hardware support should be good.

If Debian 8 is just around the corner, is there any reason not to just install Debian 7 now and track the Testing repositories? You'll effectively have the same thing you'd get if you installed Debian 8 in the near future.

I've never really liked Debian myself, but their sort of development model is one of the reasons I just switched my production machine to FreeBSD 10-STABLE. Regular bug fixes, security patches and (mostly) up-to-date ports/packages without the need to update more than once per month, and with a little more certainty about whether something might potentially break before I perform an update. A nice middle road between bleeding-edge and half-decayed, with about the same degree of control over the system that Arch offers. Of course switching to a fundamentally different OS like that might not be an option for the OP.

dtw · 2014-12-15 15:46:17

ANOKNUSA wrote:

I just switched my production machine to FreeBSD 10-STABLE.

I looked at FreeBSD but I don't think it's an option.

drcouzelis · 2014-12-15 16:08:19

dtw wrote:

Debian almost seems like the only choice.

Since I didn't see anyone mention it, you can also consider CentOS. The current release is version 7. It's rock solid stable and has full support until the end of 2020.

EDIT:

dtw wrote:

The last "breakage" I had was with cacerts on my netbook.

Would this problem not have happened in Debian? Or another operating system? (Windows, Mac OS X...)

I don't do anything "special" with cacerts, so the upgrade went flawlessly for me...

Last edited by drcouzelis (2014-12-15 16:18:00)

lucke · 2014-12-15 16:25:08

Ubuntu LTS releases are supported for 5 years (Debian releases are supported for around 3 years) and should be pretty stable.

clfarron4 · 2014-12-15 16:37:19

lucke wrote:

Ubuntu LTS releases are supported for 5 years (Debian releases are supported for around 3 years) and should be pretty stable.

And then there's the funky thing that the Linux Mint developers are doing with Linux Mint 17, takes the Ubuntu 14.04 LTS release as a base and will be using that for the next couple of releases (so 17.1 (already released), 17.2 and 17.3) as a base (so you can think of Linux Mint as an LTS based distribution).

From what I've heard, the upgrade from 17 to 17.1 went smoothly for damn near everyone because it's just a UI upgrade, not an upgrade of the entire base.

Last edited by clfarron4 (2014-12-15 16:40:09)

nomorewindows · 2014-12-15 16:41:22

fukawi2 wrote:

I stick with Mint on my laptop; where I just want (need) it to work. (I keep Arch as my desktop distro)

I have Arch on my laptop, AND FreeBSD as a panic option if something unexpectedly goes wrong with Arch out in the field. Crazy idea? But the desktops are rock solid for the most part, and if there's a machine that hasn't seen Linux on the hard drive, there's always the PXE client to tease it with.

drcouzelis wrote:

The Wikipedia describes Fedora as "focusing on innovation, integrating new technologies" and having "a relatively short life cycle". ..."Having no breakage" is not on the list of features for Fedora.

Sorry, but breakage is just not a standard feature of Fedora, if you want breakage you'll have to choose some of our other offerings. Either that or you'll have to "update" wikipedia.

dtw wrote:

After 10+ years I can't be arsed with this bleeding edge business any more. I'm getting to that point in life where one breakage is one too many. I blame the children.

Just how often do you break (I mean update), your system?

jasonwryan · 2014-12-15 17:25:33

lucke wrote:

Ubuntu LTS releases are supported for 5 years (Debian releases are supported for around 3 years) and should be pretty stable.

Debian now has an LTS: https://wiki.debian.org/LTS/

Head_on_a_Stick · 2014-12-15 17:28:52

^ Just to follow up on that -- it looks like wheezy will almost certainly go LTS thanks to the systemd controversy.

If your hardware functions with it and you like retro software (who doesn't?), this looks like a good choice.

drcouzelis · 2014-12-15 18:17:02

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:

If your hardware functions with it and you like retro software (who doesn't?), this looks like a good choice.

Haha, that reminds me of a story. A long time after GTK2 came out I became so frustrated with just how slow everything was. And do you know what functionality I gained by the conversion of applications from GTK1 to GTK2? Because I sure as heck don't! So, I decided to use only GTK1 applications because GTK1 applications are blazingly fast. Good memories.

In the end, my little GTK1 crusade only lasted about a day.

Alad · 2014-12-15 21:53:47

Going to mention the same I did on the last "hopper" thread: Slackware, particularly Salix. KISS, an "AUR" with slackbuilds, just works(TM) and BSD resemblances (namely BSD rc).

Last edited by Alad (2014-12-15 21:55:53)

chaonaut · 2014-12-15 22:27:35

dtw wrote:

I'm considering Debian or Fedora. I guess they're solid choices?

not fedora. it has a lot of bleeding edge things that get broken quite often.
debian is a reasonable choise, as for me. but LTS flavors of ubuntu are better IMNSHO there were things that did not work (at least as expected) in debian, but worked in ubuntu out of the box (ZoneMinder, for instance, or libvirt/qemu stuff), but YMMV.
centos is commonly considered very stable, but it scares me with its ancient versions of software. would not recommend it.

dtw · 2014-12-16 11:31:42

I've spent about 3 hours trying to fix my main issue this AM and I'm no closer. Seems to be a general problem with linux 3.17 so it's not an Arch bug (and I never thought it was). It's just made me realise that there are some things I just don't need to upgrade once a fortnight.

Of all the suggestions for alternatives, I think Debian jessie would be best choice at the moment. As Head_on_a_Stick said it's frozen for release now so that just means it gets more and more "stable" and the major package versions are good enough for me.

Before that though I'm going to swap to linux-lts and see how I get on for a few months.

Last edited by dtw (2014-12-16 12:46:06)

superbia · 2014-12-16 14:53:57

dtw wrote:

I've spent about 3 hours trying to fix my main issue this AM and I'm no closer. Seems to be a general problem with linux 3.17 so it's not an Arch bug (and I never thought it was). It's just made me realise that there are some things I just don't need to upgrade once a fortnight.
Of all the suggestions for alternatives, I think Debian jessie would be best choice at the moment. As Head_on_a_Stick said it's frozen for release now so that just means it gets more and more "stable" and the major package versions are good enough for me.
Before that though I'm going to swap to linux-lts and see how I get on for a few months.

Since we have no idea what do you use your Arch for
I would suggest you see OpenBSD (although bare in mind you would be trading speed for stability/security)

(assuming you are a common "joe" using the common apps).

Last edited by superbia (2014-12-16 15:05:21)

Asta666 · 2014-12-22 15:20:06

LTS distros claim to provide support for a long time but is there any explicit source where the maintainers of any of them state precisely which packages will get updates/backports during it's life cycle?

arinlares · 2014-12-22 19:46:51

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:

^ Just to follow up on that -- it looks like wheezy will almost certainly go LTS thanks to the systemd controversy.
If your hardware functions with it and you like retro software (who doesn't?), this looks like a good choice.

Because of some odd support-related issues (Squeeze being used on the ISS, for example), Debian's releases are likely to all be LTS anyway.

Last edited by arinlares (2014-12-23 04:40:22)

codingman · 2015-01-02 20:08:12

You may want to look into CrunchBang, base of Debian Stable, but with Openbox and Tint2.

Arch Linux

#1 2014-12-15 11:14:15

Off the bleeding edge

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