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?
openSUSE Tumbleweed. It’s not stable as in unchanging but it is stable as in reliable.
+1 for Tumbleweed, it works so incredibly well. In the very rare case where an update doesn’t work out for you, you can easily roll back to a previous btrfs snapshot.
Fedora is quite nice, too, but I’ve come to prefer rolling distros over a release based one.
Kalpa / Aeon might be interesting, too, if your use case fits an immutable distro.
+1 openSUSE Tumbleweed is my favourite here too.
After many years on Ubuntu I switched to a Tumbleweed and couldn’t be happier. Apparently a rolling distro can be more reliable than a traditional point-release one.
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.
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.
+1 for Arch
OpenSuse Tumbleweed is a great choice for a rolling-release distro that is also really stable too.
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tbf neither does Fedora.
But yeah, I would recommend either Debian or NixOS, depending on how stable you want it.
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
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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).
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.
Nixos
Fedora. Switched after years of Ubuntu and never looked back.
Debian testing (more up to date than ubuntu, rolling release, much more stable than the name suggests, truly free as in freedom)
debian unstable or opensuse and flatpaks
manjaro KDE
They did mention stable, which is not something Manjaro can claim in my experience. They tend to hold back packages in the name of stability but it causes problems when using the AUR sometimes.
@CrescentMadeJr @Sleep4288 isn’t the AUR a use at your own risk proposition? The manjaro system is stable if you use the manjaro packages, using the AUR means you are adding variables of potential instability yourself, and if you don’t take it upon yourself to mitigate them, the instability is your fault not theirs.
I’m always confused by this statement. It seems to conflict with the other common statement about AUR being the reason to use an Arch based distro.
How can both be true?
Yes. But it’s really what makes using an Arch based distro worth while. You can’t use Manjaro without it because not all software one would require or want to use is on the Manjaro repos.
“Manjaro is not stable because it ensures no breaking updates are pushed to users” is such a weird statement to make.
That would be a weird statement to make. But that’s not really what I said. At all.
Pretty sure all they do is.simple syncing their repos with arch Linux in a interval of 2 weeks
Mint is stable.
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)
Tumbleweed. And if a weekly does break something, jusr rollback.
Thanks to everyone who commented. After all the suggestions I’m still a bit uncertain on which distro I will use, but now I have basically 2 distro in my mind: Debian and OpenSuse. I will do my researches. Thanks again to everyone, this community really rocks.
I use to be like you. I used Arch for a long time then tried everything else that was similar like tumbleweed etc. Then I used Fedora and forgot about distrohopping entirely. I still use Arch on my pi4 though because it works nicely for use cases like that.
However I will warn you anything can and will be unstable eventually. Its the nature of software, bugs will happen. For instance recently a package called ostree was pretty much broken on all distros even Fedora which is crazy.
Manjaro OS is stable and gives upto date packages seems this should meet your requirements.
I use manjaro, but it isn’t what I would call stable.
Manjaro’s delayed package system can actually make things less stable if you use AUR. I’d recommend EndeavourOS for that experience, it’s very similar to Manjaro but in my experience hasn’t broken as much
