Probably a stupid question, but Google searches are not giving up an answer, so I'll ask it anyway. Linux distros that use the 'rolling release' format seem to be geared to update automatically. Can this auto-updating be turned-off, or is it set-in-stone and beyond user control?

The point of rolling release is that it tends to push every update as soon as they are available, as a whole.
Advantage - latest and greatest of everything.
Disadvantage - hours of frustration when something breaks down.

I played with OpenSUSE tumbleweed long time back(and switched to OpenSUSE 11.4 within a month or two, I was just beginning my Linux journey back then)

But hey, as user, you have control on it. Once you are set on a specific version (some distros call it 'snap'), if you don't update, it won't update. Just ignore the GUI notification and do not turn on auto update. [or that's what it used to be in 2011]

Yes you can turn it off. I use Arch flavored distros. It is not always the latest and greatest. There are stable repos that you can run or testing or unstable. Stay with stable and things aren't as likely to break.

Could you give us a link or a specific example of a Linux distribution that does this and please, no youtube links. I"m not familiar with all Linux rolling release system but, one that I use regularly (PCLinuxOS) absolutely requires user input using the Synaptic package manager. The update automatically without user input is more of a windows thing but if you have legitamate links to Linux systems which do that, it would be helpful to post them.

https://pclinuxoshelp.com/index.php/...Your_PCLinuxOS

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Any distro can be set to upgrade automatically, or not. 'Rolling release' is kind of a vague term. But it basically means 'many continuous upgrades'.

Rolling release comes in 3 basic flavours:
1. Real bleeding-edge stuff, like SUSE Tumbleweed or Fedora Rawhide. The only guarantee is that when it breaks, you get to keep the pieces.
2. Arch, which is generally safe providing you don't update automatically and read the documentation before doint it manually.
3. PCLinuxOS and Manjaro, which just choose a rolling release model to avoid big changes with new versions, but avoid being too innovative for the average user.

Any decent distro will allow you to switch off automatic updates.

I've had tumbleweed on a 2nd partition for some years now. I know nothing of fedora but I've always found tumbleweed pretty stable. The only (very rare) problems I've had have been of my own making and it's usually easy to fix.

Just my 2 pen'orth (that's 2 cents to our American cousins).

Not sure I'd equate rolling release to auto update exactly.

Tumbleweed and Rawhide are quite different critters. Prior to branching of release-next, Rawhide is frequently broken for extended periods and after branching often contains older packages than release-next. Its own people consider it bleeding edge. Tumbleweed devs do not consider it bleeding edge, for good reason. Bleeding edge packages are kept in BS until they appear to have stabilized, at which time they may be moved into TW, where they go through continuous extensive automated QA before being released. A specific example of the Fedora/openSUSE difference is that supported Fedora releases are rather quickly moved up to latest release kernel, while Rawhide gets pre-release kernels early. TW never gets pre-release kernels, while OS distribution releases stick with the nominal base kernel version they were released with, subject to considerable hardware backports, plus security updates.

I'm not sure you would call it a rolling release, but Slackware's -current (read, development branch) could be used in such a manner.
Updating is not automatic, but there is a system, IIRC, called, "slackpkg" that makes it easy. Personally, I prefer to do it manually.
Some say Slackware's -current branch is more stable than some other distributions' stable releases. OTOH, it is the development branch and every now and then a update does break something, but the developers are pretty good about fixing it, sometimes within hours or a day or two.

http://www.slackware.com/changelog/

Changes are actively discussed here on Linuxquestions in the Slackware forum.
https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/

The Slackware documentation project,
http://docs.slackware.com/

I would not consider Slackware --Current or Debian Sid to be rolling releases, though they sort of mimic them in that you never have to install a new version because, as long as you keep your repos updated, you don't have to install a new static version v. x.x.x. They are "testing," not "rolling," and those who choose to use them should realize the hazards.

I would reserve the term "rolling releases" for distros that don't give you the option of fixed versions.

Though I have used --Current (I'm not using it now because of reasons) and Sid (which I am using now and it's rock solid), I have no interest in distros that are "rolling releases" out of the box. I have not yet in over 30 years of using computers and 13 years of using Linux encountered a situation in which I absolutely had to have the most newest version bleeding edge software to do what I needed to do. I use computers to get things done, not to bleed on the edge.

Just my two cents.

And Debian, which can be maintained as either a branch (stable, testing, unstable) or a release (etch, jessie, squeeze).

In the release form it has to be upgraded every so often. In the branch form it just rolls on forever.

After I posted this thread, I installed openSUSE Tumbleweed. I can say that so far it has been rock solid. It has even a lot fewer problems than Ubuntu's regular release 18.04. With Ubuntu, I've had all sorts of problems that I don't want to go into here, but none of those problems have shown up in Tumbleweed.

Generally, I'm very happy with Tumbleweed, but I must admit that I get tired of the daily substantial (200-400 Mb) updates.

Does everyone who has a rolling release distribution update it every day? What happens if I miss updating it?

1. I doubt it.
2. You get just twice as much to download the next day!

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I highly doubt any distro has 200-400MB/day of upgrades. I mirror the i386 and amd64 architectures of the Debian archive (stable, testing and sid), by far the largest there is, and a typical days changes are 100MB. But no one has a system with every package installed.

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