What exactly is the point of rolling release? My pc (well, the cpu) is 15 years old, I dont need bleeding edge updates. Or is it for security ?
Where did the idea come from that rolling releases are about hardware?
Hardware support is almost entirely about the kernel.
Many distros, even non-rolling ones like Mint and Ubuntu, offer alternative kernels with support for newer hardware. These are often updated frequently. Even incredibly “stable” distros like Red Hat Enterprise Linux regularly release kernels with updated hardware support.
And you can compile the kernel yourself to whatever version you want or even use a kernel from a different distro.
Rolling releases are more about the other 80,000 packages that are not the kernel.
I use ancient hardware (as old as 2008 iMacs) and I greatly prefer rolling releases.
Open Source software is always improving and I like to have the best available as it makes my life easier.
In my experience, things just work better. I have spent years now reading complaints online about how Wayland does not work, the bugs in certain software, and features that are missing. Almost always I wonder what versions they are running because I have none of those problems. Lots of Wayland complaints from people using systems that freeze software versions for years. They have no idea what they are missing. This is just an example of software that is rapidly evolving. There are many more.
Next is performance. Performance improvements can really be felt on old hardware. Improvements in scheduling, network, and memory handling really stand out. It is surprising how often improvements appear for even very old hardware. Old Intel GPUs get updates for example. Webcams get better support, etc.
Some kinds of software see dramatic improvements. I work with the AV1 video codec. New releases can bring 20% speed improvements that translate to saving many minutes or even hours on certain jobs. I want those on the next job I run.
I work on my computer every day and, on any given day, I may want or enjoy a feature that was just added. This has happened to me many times with software like GIMP where a job is dramatically easier (for example text improvements tag appeared in GIMP 3).
If you do software development, it is common to need or want some recently developed component. It is common for these to require support from fairly recent libraries. Doing dev on distros like Debian or RHEL was always a nightmare of the installed versions being too old.
And that brings me to stability.
On systems that update infrequently, I find myself working against the software repos. I may install third-party repos. I may build things myself. I may use Flatpak or AppImage. And all of that makes my system a house of cards that is LESS stable. Over time, stuff my distro does not maintain gets strewn everywhere. Eventually, it makes sense to just wipe it all and start fresh. From what I see online, a lot of people have this experience.
On of the biggest reasons I prefer rolling releases with large repos is because, in my experience, they result in much more stable systems in practice. And if everything comes from the repo, everything stays much more manageable and sustainable.
I use Debian Stable on servers and in containers all the time. But, to single it out, I find that actually using it as a desktop is a disaster for all of the above reasons but especially that it becomes an unstable mess of software cobbled together from dozens of sources. Rolling releases are easier to manage. This is the opposite of what some others say, I realize.
In fact, if I do have to use a “more stable” distro, I usually install an Arch Linux Distrobox and use that to get access to a larger repo of more frequently updated packages.
What exactly is the point of rolling release?
Newer features. At the cost of a higher risk of stuff breaking.
Or is it for security?
No, point release OSs do have security updates. It’s feature updates that they avoid.
I have a relatively new PC and eventually I decided at Debian Stable.
Granted, I was already somewhat familiar with APT and Debian based systems, but I also was thinking to choose something different or even a rolling release distribution…
…but at the end of the day, I wanted a stable, useable, tested and functional system that I can’t easily fuck up or can restore if needed, because, well, it won’t be a first time I bork a Linux system with misconfiguring stuff or doing something straight out stupid. But this is irrelevant this case.
I ain’t that super familiar with Linux world, so I deliberately chose the safe way. My hardwares are working fine, I have the drivers that work for everything, games running amazingly well… in the past 2 years I use Linux as main OS, I had no problems not being bleeding edge. I kinda had some minor FOMO when Plasma 6 came out and I was “stuck” on 5 with Debian 12, but didn’t had to wait too much for Debian 13 that has Plasma 6 by default. Though, I reinstalled everything when 13 came out - but only because I wanted some changes on my partition table, I added a new disk and… I wasn’t quite happy how I managed some things with it so I wanted a fresh start - so wasn’t upgrading to 13, but I assume it wouldn’t be a problem either, not too long ago I upgraded my server from Debian 10 to 12, without issues. (From 10 to 11 and to 12. First I tried from 10 to 12, that was a disaster though. However, the documentation explicitly said not to do such thing, so it was on me.)
I was tinkering with my tech stuff all my life, I now really just want a stable, working OS. But it’s just personal preference, I have nothing against rolling release and I can imagine that there are scenarios where rolling release is the better choice.
I use a rolling release for mainly 3 reasons.
- Faster access to new (shiny) software/applications. Flatpak and the like could solve this for LTS distros.
- Security updates come faster and smoother.
- Less chance of an update breaking things. Lots of small and frequent updates, instead of rare and large update packs/stacks.
Less chance of an update breaking things. Lots of small and frequent updates, instead of rare and large update packs/stacks.
I would say a rolling distro update has a higher chance of it breaking something. Each one might bring in a new major version of something that has breaking changes in it. But that breakage is typically easier to fix and less of a problem.
Point release distros tend to bundle up all their breakages between major versions so breaks loads of things at once. And that IMO can be more of a hassle then dealing with them one at a time as they come out.
I tended to find I needed to reinstall point release distros instead of upgrading them as it was less hassle. Which is still more disruptive then fixing small issues over time as the crop up.
I would say
Is this based on experience? Or are you guessing?
I ask because my lived experience is that rolling releases break less in practice
Before I used rolling releases, I spent more time dealing with bugs in old versions than I do fixing breakages in my rolling disto.
And non-rolling “upgrades” were always fraught with peril whereas I update my rolling release without any concern at all.
Good point. Yes. Small breakage means it’s easier to fix. Although, the years I’ve run my rolling release system, I’ve had it break maybe one of two times. Easily fixed. Both of those was because there was a change that needed a manual intervention, which I did not read about until after, so those were my own fault.
I tend to use rolling release because I tend to update my hardware with some regularity. Also I hate opening an app or a desktop environment and when I go looking for newly announced features they aren’t there within a day or two. Considering current hardware prices the latter has been my primary motivation last couple years.
This is admittedly anecdotal, but my experience with point releases is that things still break, and when they do, you’re often stuck with the broken thing until a new release comes out. For this reason, among others, dist-upgrades tend to be extremely nervewracking.
With a rolling release, not only are fixes for broken things likely to release faster - if something does break, you can pin that package, and only that package, to an older version in the meantime. Then again, I’ve been using Arch almost exclusively on my desktop for about 7 years and I’ve never had to do this. I don’t doubt that things have broken for people, but as far as I’m concerned, Arch just works.
As far as security goes, I don’t think there’s much, if any, advantage. Debian, the stablest of them all, still gets security updates in a timely fashion.
Rolling vs. point release is not about whether a breaking change happens or not but when.
With rolling, breaking changes could happen at any time (even when inconvenient) but are smaller and spread out.
With point release, you get a big chunk of breaking changes all at once but at predictable points in time, usually with migration windows.Dist upgrade is only dangerous for the people who do it. Wait a few weeks before upgrading to the new release and most broken things will be fixed already. I used arch a lot, and I do like the idea of rolling releases, but at this point for the couple programs I need new features in, I just build them from source.
It is not just about your pc hardware. I much prefer running the latest software on it as I regularly use features from tools added in the last version of something. I would hate to have to wait 6 months to a year to be able to use new features that make my life easier. That might not be every bit of software I use but enough core things that I would notice.
For me its security patches. I frequently lock app versions manually.
I do have an old laptop that uses a fixed release, because it sees infrequent use.
One needs to adjust whats needed per usecase. For me that means daily drivers get semi-rolling or rolling. Where stability is neede/older systems, fixed releases.
What exactly is the point of stable release? I don’t need everything pinned to specific versions—I’m not running a major corporate web service that needs a 99.9999% uptime guarantee—and Internet security is a moving target that requires constant updates.
Security and bug fixes—especially bug fixes, in my experience—are a good enough reason to go rolling-release even if you don’t usually need bleeding-edge features in your software.
To be able to predict when something you depend on breaks.
This “something” could be as “insignificant” as a UI change that breaks your workflow.
For instance, GNOME desktop threw out X11 session support with the latest release (good riddance!) but you might for example depend on GNOME’s X11 session for a workflow you’ve used for many years.With rolling, those breaking changes happen unpredictably at any time.
It is absolutely possible for that update to come out while you’re in a stressful phase of the year where you need to finish some work to hit a deadline. Needing to re-adjust your workflow during that time would be awful and could potentially have you miss the deadline. You could simply not update but that would also make you miss out on security/bug fixes.With stable, you accumulate all those breaking changes and have them applied at a pre-determined time, while still receiving security/bug fixes in the mean time.
In our example that could mean that the update might even be in a newer point release immediately but, because your point release is still supported for some time, you can hold on on changing any workflows and focus on hitting your deadline.You need to adjust your workflow in either case (change is inevitable) but with stable/point releases, you have more options to choose when you need to do that and not every point in time is equally convenient as any other.
I’d just roll back the problem package to the last acceptable version until I have the time to address whatever the issue is (or block the new version of just that package if I have advance notification). That way, I get the fixes for everything else without breaking my workflow. If a rolling-release distro has a package manager that doesn’t allow that, I’d contend that said package manager is broken.
Stable will still get security patches and bug updates, just no new major kernel jumps or new features.
Many smaller projects not explicitly supported by the vendor only make new releases and don’t also maintain a stable version.
. . . until something in the stack requires a significant kernel upgrade, and then you’re stuck.
That’s a very odd example to choose given how trivially interchangable kernels are.
At NixOS, we ship the same set of kernels on stable and rolling; the only potential difference being the default choice.
I’m pretty sure most other stable distros optionally ship newer kernels too. There isn’t really a technical reason why they couldn’t.Yep, it is helpful for corporate applications, where nothing can introduce possible behavioural changes, that affect users, program function or the application development.
Rolling release means that you won’t be forced to reinstall the whole system when the number after the name flips. And you won’t be locked out of some newer version of a package because the distro you use decided they’re cutting off the updates to “old” versions
This…is not accurate. Not being pedantic, just correcting the misunderstanding so you know the difference.
LTS releases are built to be stable on pinned versions of point release kernel and packages. This ensures that a team can expect to not have to worry about major changes or updates for X years.
Rolling Releases are simply updating new packages to whatever versions become available when released. Pretty much the opposite of an expected stable release for any period of time.
Doesn’t have anything to with “forced reinstall” of anything. If you’ve been having to fully reinstall your OS every time a new LTS is released, you are kind of doing extra unnecessary work.
what happens after those x years?
The same that happens when you update to receive a breaking change on a rolling distro. It’s version number go up, just at a different point in time.
Depends on the exact system but there will be a method to switch to a newer release channel without reinstalling. Rinse and repeat every x years.
Minimal delay between a program releasing new features or bugfixes and you getting to use them. Even as an avid Debian user, sometimes I get bummed out when they freeze a package for release right before a feature I would have really liked makes it in.
As for security, there’s not a huge difference I’m aware of. On Debian, features stay where they are, but maintainers will backport just the security fixes of each package to the current stable release.
- I like having the upstream versions of software instead of it being patched by package maintainers.
- I like having up to date software. It means that issue trackers for software I use are relevant
- Doing distro upgrades when they end support never works gracefully and i have to completely reinstall. I’d rather just use a rolling release which in practice works and is supported indefinitely
- I do like bleeding edge updates. For wine for instance
Yeah, Point 1 here is exactly why I moved from Ubuntu to Arch ~10 years ago.
I was trying to get something working and found that the bug / feature had been fixed ~1 year earlier, but that version wasn’t in the repos… I couldn’t move forwards.
With Arch, all is well. And, I’m either reporting new bugs and helping to get things fixed, or I’m updating the wiki with any changes I notice.
I run Debian Testing so I can report, and very rarely fix, bugs that I find. This way there are less bugs in Debian Stable.
They are cool cos you get to say “btw I use <insert-distro-name>”.
Also, one big advantage is the end of big disruptive updates - e.g. the one from Win10 to Win11.
You don’t have to live on the edge either. Arch for example has an LTS version.
Interesting. I did not know Arch had an LTS version.
It has an LTS kernel. Not a separate version. This does not make everything LTS. This is very different from LTS distros.
Ah. Not as interesting then
