Question:
is a Linux Distribution that is a Rolling Release Better? Or potentially More problematic?
2011-07-02 08:06:23 UTC
i understand the concept of a rolling release. But i am Not sold on it. i personally Feel that Rolling releases have the potential to be less stable and More problematic then a standard release. two examples of this are two Distros that i use. openSUSE and Pardus. Suse is a rolling release. i have problems with dependencies Randomly breaking all the time and Repositories changing at random so i have to Let yast do Vender changes on the Repos. it can become a very stupid issue to have to deal with. it can be a pain. Pardus is Slow to keep up with all the new Features and software that Linux has to offer. they are just now getting around to releasing KDE 4.6 on their Distro come But i feel that their 4.6 release will be More stable then openSUSE because they have been working on it for the last 6 Months in With universities and developers in Turkey. in a rolling release like openSUSE the bugs are the end users Problem to Deal With until somebody makes a Fix. at least that's how i assume it works. So when it comes to a system that you will Set up For somebody else that will run Linux Full time wouldn't a Standard non rolling release release be a better option because of the less likely change of Bugs and stuff? or am i totally wrong?
Four answers:
ratter_of_the_shire
2011-07-02 11:18:06 UTC
A rolling release can be nice if you are confortable messing with cofig files every one in a while and writting dependency files for programs you build from source.



However I wouldn't just foist it upon someone. A distro that oes by discrete versions and is somwhat conservative is probably the best bet. Mepis, Mint, CentOS.
jerry t
2011-07-02 15:57:35 UTC
I agree that rolling releases could have more problems with bugs and "not ready for prime time" software. The non-rolling release could be more stable and have less problems.

On the other hand non-rolling releases like Debian do not always have the latest versions of software. It is a trade off between stability (some call it boring) and having the latest and greatest releases as soon as possible. Of course for a server you would want the non-rolling release.

You could look at distrowatch and see what versions of the packages are used by the various distros. Some have the very latest and some are using older versions in their latest release. Debian stable is still using KDE 4.4.5.

So again it is a matter of choice: do you want stability or the latest eye candy? You really can't have both.
Max Otto von Stirlitz
2011-07-02 15:08:58 UTC
Yes, a standard release would be better. If you want a really stable system, I would suggest using Debian, which releases a new version "when it's ready," (I believe it's roughly every two years).
VenuG
2011-07-02 15:14:32 UTC
Your logic seems to be correct. Ubuntu has LTS releases meaning Long time support.


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