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Mercury305 12-24-2012 08:58 PM

Arch Stability due to rolling release?
 
I was curious on using Arch lately as I have never tried. Mostly used Fedora, Centos and Slackware distros. The one thing I have been hearing is the breakages that happen due to updates with the rolling release system. How often do these problems happen in Arch?

snowday 12-24-2012 09:28 PM

Rolling release is by definition "unstable" in the sense of "tending strongly to change, not constant, fluctuating." (definition from thefreedictionary.com/unstable)

That being said, Arch is a popular and high-quality distribution. Many users successfully run it with minimal breakage with the help of the update warnings on archlinux.org (always check there before updating), the excellent wiki, and the Arch forums. I personally prefer a stable distribution (Debian, CentOS, Slackware, Ubuntu, etc.) but my experiments with Arch have been overwhelmingly positive, I would recommend it without hesitation for someone seeking a rolling release for whatever reason. :)

Mercury305 12-24-2012 09:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by snowpine (Post 4856349)
Rolling release is by definition "unstable" in the sense of "tending strongly to change, not constant, fluctuating." (definition from thefreedictionary.com/unstable)

That being said, Arch is a popular and high-quality distribution. Many users successfully run it with minimal breakage with the help of the update warnings on archlinux.org (always check there before updating), the excellent wiki, and the Arch forums. I personally prefer a stable distribution (Debian, CentOS, Slackware, Ubuntu, etc.) but my experiments with Arch have been overwhelmingly positive, I would recommend it without hesitation for someone seeking a rolling release for whatever reason. :)

Thanks for the Reply, I have been reading the wiki about it. To be honest I pretty much like almost everything about Arch except for the "rolling release" part. I kept questioning in my mind how can this distro keep going without breaking if any user can just upload the new repos without having tested first. At least Fedora updates are tested to a degree... However I am not too familiar with how Arch's updates are tested. Also another important thing about systems is the incompatibility issue between packages. I guess distros with a release schedule tend to focus a lot more on the overall compatibility of packages to make sure things don't crash as often.

Even though Fedora is considered a "testing distro for RHEL" I must admit that it felt more "Stable" then using Ubuntu. I definitely prefer Ubuntu's software Repo over Fedora's however, the amount of bloatware and the design of the clunky system has totally pushed me away from using Ubuntu so I stopped using it and switched to Fedora instead.

I was wondering if maybe the same could be true about Arch? If it might be more stable then Fedora due to its Minimalist design and lack of bloat.

snowday 12-24-2012 09:39 PM

Arch, like most distros, has a Testing repo.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php...#.5Btesting.5D

Mercury305 12-24-2012 09:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by snowpine (Post 4856352)
Arch, like most distros, has a Testing repo.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php...#.5Btesting.5D

I consider this thread solved wasn't thinking clearly. Thank you again. I will be trying out Arch very soon... hope all is good.


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