rolling distros becoming more popular

[Bulkley]

My first experience with Linux came on a 3 1/2" floppy glued to the back page of a magazine. That floppy contained an operating OS (Caldera) with enough stuff to keep me busy. As oswaldkelso says, the quantity and size of packages just keeps getting bigger.

[neuraleskimo]

I was wondering what the effect of this trend is on Debian. Are users moving away from stable distributions? Debian is still popular for servers, but what's the future with desktops Running Debian?

I don’t know that they are. Here is an example from Google Trends:
https://trends.google.com/trends/explor ... %2F02pxwz1
If we accept that web searches are an imperfect, but close enough, measure of interest, then Fedora doesn’t seem to be gaining on RHEL or CentOS. BTW, I chose these because the Debian ecosystem is huge and Ubuntu has LTS and pseudo rolling releases. Thus complicating things.

Anyway, play around add Arch, for example, and I still don’t see any significant trends in searches.

[sgage]

To me, the big (huge!) value-add of Debian stable is... stability! I am at a point now that I just don't like surprises, and I don't need or want shiny.

I've been running Debian for ages, since the late 90's. For a while, I ran Ubuntu (you know, to get the latest software!), then distro-hopped, and whatnot, but repeatedly returned to Debian. I tried a couple of rolling distros in there somewhere, but the amusement of constant updates soon turned into a distraction and annoyance as the inevitable bugs and glitches showed up.

And then I finally came to my senses and realized that, for what I do with my computer, 2-year-old battle-tested software is just fine. From talking to people, and reading various online forums, this seems to be a common pattern. In any case, no rolling distros for me. If I need some excitement in my life, I'll have a look at testing once in a while...

[dvk]

arch linux means: the computer may not turn on after the update.

[Nili]

arch linux means: the computer may not turn on after the update.

Sure, for those who are not so competent in Arch Linux, don't read the Arch News or Arch Wiki, of course the computer doesn't turn on sometimes.

[Head_on_a_Stick]

I can confirm that sometimes Arch doesn't boot even if you know what you're doing and follow the news page. It's not usually a huge problem for Arch users though because installing it in the first place requires that they chroot in from the live environment and install the bootloader manually so they should already have the skills required to repair it. This is also why Arch spin-offs are such a terrible idea for n00bs because they don't learn how to fix it properly.

[Wheelerof4te]

There is a reason why Arch is so "hard" to install. Hard for Linux newbies, at least. Having it installed for you by someone else because it is "cool" is a huge disservice to both you and the Arch Linux community.

[KBD47]

I'm glad I started with Debian, because after years of distro-hopping and seeing my system continue to break and need constant fixing with other distros, I probably would have quit using Linux. Debian Stable is the main reason I still use it, and will continue to do so.

[jmgibson1981]

I went the other way. I tried rolling release for quite awhile but it was always something. Every single day something was a problem. I just lost interest in constantly fixing. Moved back to where I started, Debian and haven't looked back. I've had to backport Makemkv and snapraid from their respective Ubuntu ppas. I also use the LXD snap package. With those 3 exceptions I'm all repo based, no random compilations floating around. And the stability shows plain as day. I haven't had to fix anything in some time now. My uptimes are significantly better as well (not sure that is a good barometer).

[Nili]

More than difficult to install Arch or similars, I think distro-rolling are difficult to maintain by frequent nature of the changes. At the end of the day Arch it is not easy distro, it is not to look more 1337 than others, It's not a joke, it's not for sleepfuls or those that afk too much.

rolling distros becoming more popular?
Well, depends, relative seems to me. Mostly we all use a laptop, desktop or virtualization box for tests, on other hand we need a stable distro for servers, daily desktop tasks, parents etc etc... I think each distro have its own piece on this large GNU/Linux plate.

[Hallvor]

PCLinuxOS is by far the easiest rolling release* I have ever tried. I had almost zero problems with it back in the day.

Pros:
* Very easy installation and setup
* Very good GUI tools
* Extremely easy to remaster your whole system with mylivecd
* Offers many different desktop environments
* No Systemd (for those who care)
* Very good hardware compatibility
* Developers are very active in the forum

Cons:
* Probably the daftest distro name ever
* Don't care if they include non-free software
* Fewer packages than Debian (but if you need something, the developers may package it for you)



* Before anyone says it's not really a rolling release: Yes, it is a rolling release, since they only have one code branch...

[MALsPa]

I was wondering what the effect of this trend is on Debian. Are users moving away from stable distributions? Debian is still popular for servers, but what's the future with desktops Running Debian?

I dual-boot Stable and Arch, but I'm not part of any trend of users moving away from Debian. My favorite "stable" distro and my favorite "rolling-release" distro, why not enjoy both?

[esp7]

What trend? Sources, please.

I think many Debian users have followed this pattern:

1. Gets tired of Windows, starts using GNU/Linux.
2. Gets annoyed by all the "old" packages of the largest distros.
3. Moves to rolling release distro.
4. Gets annoyed by all the breakage. Just wants a system that works all the time.
5. Moves to Debian.

this perfectly sums it up