Rolling release vs. time based release

Posted on February 14, 2008
Filed Under arch, distros, linux |

I was wondering if a rolling based distro could be stable enough to met my needs. I use Ubuntu since dapper, and I’ve used suse, fedora, redhat, mandrake and others since my first steps into the linux distros world. Almost all this distros caused me troubles during upgrade process except Ubuntu. Ubuntu upgrade process got always smootly on my system and I’m almost satisfied with this distro. Anyway I’m tired to download hundred megabytes and wait hours to finish the update process each time a new Ubuntu release come out. Following the ubuntu development (using the next version repositories each time a new version come out) is nearly impossible, becouse they become very unstable and unusable as working environment. So I’m searching to test a rolling based distro.

For sure I will try Arch linux as soon as I find some time hoping it will be stable enough. Any other distro to suggest? Please take in mind that I’m an experienced user but I want to spend my time to use my system and not to frequently tweak it. So please no gentoo or not well supported distros!

Comments

3 Responses to “Rolling release vs. time based release”

  1. Vadim P. on February 15th, 2008 5:41 am

    Arch would be the best bet.

    Otherwise… just leave the download on for the night. It’s only twice a year heh, not every week.

  2. ferama on February 15th, 2008 8:12 am

    Sure but with a rolling distro you have always the on the edge software.

    Anyway It’s more a curiosity probably :)

    My intent is to first try to install it on an external usb disk becouse I don’t have enough disk space to make a new partition on my main disk.

  3. SpookyET on February 16th, 2008 3:04 pm

    I’ve switched to Linux (Ubuntu) in the middle of December 2007. I’ve used it for 1.5 months. Then I switched to Arch Linux. I’m very happy. Rolling release rocks. It’s almost 0-day. Rolling release is less likely to fail then 6-month release.

    It’s easier to manage config file chages to 1 or 2 packages per week or month than 100 packages every 6 months.

    You’ll need a few days to get a full working system configured the way you want. But, you’ll have a working system in a few hours.

    Pacman (best package manager, inspired by apt)
    ABS (arch build system, like ports, portage)
    AUR (aur user repository, like getdeb.net, but accessible from the command line)

    cGmail? 0.4.0. I’ve adopted the package, but I can’t find python-build-extra and pycentral because debian/ubuntu do not put the URLs i their debs. I’m not goin to repackage debs. I need the source. If you could release cGmail using the old method with less dependencies, that would be awesome.

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