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?

  • BioMyth@lemmy.mlEnglish
    531·
    2 months ago

    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.

    • boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net
      12·
      2 months ago

      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.

      • EuroNutellaMan@lemmy.world
        4·
        2 months ago

        Tbh my main gripe with Tumbleweed is the package manager as someone who likes to use the CLI, the weird naming convention, renames, etc are annoying. Also found some minor annoyances that all put together made me choose Fedora over Tumbleweed. I can see why some people would like it tho.

        • boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net
          1·
          2 months ago

          You can use dnf on OpenSuse, and it actually uses the correct /etc/dnf.repos.d !

          zyppers UI is horrible, no idea at what internet speed those animations make sense, not on an even 2,4GHz wifi.

          I used QGis as a Fedora Distrobox didnt install the language package, because it installs only the one from the OS. on Tumbleweed all languages were always installed, but it had some issue where no plugins worked or something.

          Same with RStudio, which works creat with iucar/cran COPR and the R-CoprManager app that makes it use dnf underneath.

          Rstudio should absolutely install them as libs though, into /var/lib. Then the Flatpak could be made working too I guess.

          • BCsven@lemmy.ca
            2·
            2 months ago

            I found zypper package speed for download seems to vary a lot, sometimes superfast and other times it drips in like old dialup. Maybe server load or what default server it hits is too many hops away or something. It also does delta downloads, which makes sense if your data is capped, but takes a lot longer to negotiate the lookup for update, compare versions, and pull delta only.

            Good thing about zypper and SUSE setup is you can use the various patch, patches, list patches commands to see what is unneeded, recommended or critical, CVE, and if has already been applied to your system or not. Great tool for sysadmin

            • boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net
              1·
              2 months ago

              Yes I would love to have mail notifications etc for security updates.

              Currently setting up a server, CentOS installer didnt boot so my lazy ass just rebased to securecore (Fedora IoT -> uBlue uCore -> secureblue) which is very nice but rolling.

              With LUKS encryption, which I want and need, this is problematic, as I need to manually type the password afaik. TPM unlock didnt work even though I have a Nitrokey with a TPM integrated afaik.

              • BCsven@lemmy.ca
                2·
                2 months ago

                I am not 100% sure, but I had something similar with passworded drive. There was a way to edit crypt tab stuff so that when system looks for pwd input on boot it went to the hashed file to get password. I forget the steps I did, but online there is a walk through and it was not too difficult to configure…just a few manual file edits

            • boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net
              2·
              2 months ago

              Because they have Slowroll and working, automatic BTRFS snapshots.

              I have no idea what dnf Fedora is doing, using BTRFS but no snapshots.

              • EuroNutellaMan@lemmy.world
                1·
                2 months ago

                I think fedora does have some automatic snapshots, just not as much as OpenSUSE. Still tho, why not setup better snapshots on Fedora rather than switch package manager and repos altogether on openSUSE?

  • houndeyes@toast.oooEnglish
    382·
    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.

  • sudoer777@lemmy.ml
    261·
    2 months ago

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

    • Apalacrypto@lemmy.world
      5·
      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.

  • sorrybookbroke@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    272·
    2 months ago

    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

      • Kory@lemmy.ml
        10·
        2 months ago

        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. "

    • JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world
      2·
      2 months ago

      It also has YAST which is the best GUI based managment system on Linux

      Semi-offtopic. Suse was my first distro 20 years ago and in those few months I had such a nightmarish experience with dependency hell in YAST and Yum, and such a contrastingly good experience with APT after I finally moved to Debian, that I have only ever used Debian and Ubuntu since then and I am still traumatized by the mere sight of the name YAST.

      Silly but alas true! Of course I didn’t understand anything back then and I’m sure YAST is much better these days.

  • Cenotaph@mander.xyzEnglish
    24·
    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

  • spicystraw@lemmy.world
    17·
    2 months ago

    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!

    • Revv@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      7·
      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.

    • mumblerfish@lemmy.world
      2·
      2 months ago

      I’m running PopOS on a computer for wathing media at home. I’m not too impressed. I read a bunch of comment threads recommening it so I treid it out. They seem a bit unstable – that at least falls in OP middle ground. I made an update and dpms management was just different, like the screen is no longer turning itself off. I’ve had some thing like this happen on it. It’s not breakage, it’s a bit annoying. “Just works”? Eh, sure, kinda’.

      • spicystraw@lemmy.world
        2·
        2 months ago

        Sorry to hear that, milage varies depending on hardware, I suppose. I have had it running on a Lenovo laptop for over a year without issues. Hope you find good distro fitting your needs and hardware specs out of the box!

  • Elieas@lemmy.ml
    16·
    2 months ago

    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).

  • Nibodhika@lemmy.world
    161·
    2 months ago

    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

    • Possibly linuxEnglish
      41·
      2 months ago

      I wouldn’t call them up to date but they are a little newer than Debian with the exception of Pop OS.

    • melroy@kbin.melroy.org
      2·
      2 months ago

      Yes somebody did mention Debian Sid, which is Debian unstable. Which is maybe even more up to date (I still don’t consider it rolling release, because there will be a package freeze, if not multiple).

      • Possibly linuxEnglish
        1·
        2 months ago

        Sid is very much living on the edge. I wouldn’t advise using it. (Although I don’t advise Arch either)

    • beleza pura@lemmy.eco.br
      1·
      2 months ago

      please do not use debian testing. it is not fit for production use and will give you headaches, especially when a new release starts approaching

  • BCsven@lemmy.ca
    14·
    2 months ago

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

  • Darohan
    111·
    2 months ago

    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.

    • thedeadwalking4242@lemmy.world
      5·
      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.

    • Possibly linuxEnglish
      2·
      2 months ago

      While I never saw the benefit (it is to complex) I do think it isn’t a bad choice

      • EuroNutellaMan@lemmy.world
        3·
        2 months ago

        to be honest it’s actually not that hard depending on what you do with your PC. If you want something you can set up once and forget about NixOS is perfect, put auto-updates and the stable channel and you will be able to forget about it for months, only having to occasionally edit your config file to switch to a new release. In fact I’d argue that if they manage to get a GUI package manager, and auto-update + auto-clean setup on installation, they’d probably be one of the best noob-friendly distros out there even.

        The issue is that they sometimes tend to do big changes to how things are handled, documentation is sorely lacking and if you’re a tinkerer (especially if you like ricing) you may have a harder time than regular distros. That said the convenience of having a list of all the programs you use in a single file is amazing and I hope every package manager adopts a similar declarative way of installing software.

        • Possibly linuxEnglish
          21·
          2 months ago

          I find it much easier to just use something more “normal”

          • EuroNutellaMan@lemmy.world
            1·
            2 months ago

            fair enough it’s one of the reasons I switched out of NixOS but it’s not too much harder if your usecase doesn’t involve programs not in the repo or building from source tbf