this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2025
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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Based on what you describe, I would strongly recommend going with OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. It's just as bleeding-edge as Arch, but all packages go through automatic testing to ensure they won't break anything, and if some manual actions are required, it will offer options right before update. Moreover, snapper in enabled by default on btrfs partitions, and it makes snapshots automatically before updates, so even if something breaks somehow, reverting takes a few seconds.
One small footnote is that you'll need to add separate VLC repo or Packman for VLC to have full functionality - proprietary codecs are one of the rare things official repos don't feature for legal reasons.
On Arch rant: I've always been weirded out by this "Arch is actually stable, you just have to watch every news post for manual interventions before every update, oh, and you better update very often" attitude.
Like, no, this is not called stable or even usable for general audience. Updating your system and praying for it not to break while studying everything you need to know is antithetical to stability and makes for an awful daily driver.
You have to watch the factory mailing list and make any manual interventions for Tumbleweed, and frankly, you should be watching the news and taking any action required no matter the os.
This is not really true for fixed release distros. I can’t remember when was the last time I had to read through the release note before Ubuntu version upgrade, or upgrading any package.
I used to think that, then I learnt the truth. Now-a-days, I say that you may as well use a rolling release because it's not really any more work that a fixed release and you have up to date software.
Just to reiterate the same point - in fixed release, a package version is not released until all known issues are resolved.
At no point, it is end user responsibility to bother checking anything before installing a new version.
That's not really true. It's more important that the issues are known. Sometimes they actually wait longer to fix issues since it would introduce changes
My bad, I meant "known major issues". If minor issues are not fixed, they document it on release note. But, at no point any fixed release distro ever released breaking changes "knowingly".
Oh yes, the most mythical of software. Bug free.
Bugs are of two types - known (found during testing by Distro maintainer) and unknown.
Fixed release fixes known bugs before pushing packages.
It is following the standard development life cycle.
So do rolling releases. What's your point?
Are you familiar with the term "Regression testing"?