Stable vs Rolling, another look

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Goz
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Re: Stable vs Rolling, another look

Post by Goz »

Beerislife wrote: Mon Sep 20, 2021 6:53 am I got my 11? year old ThinkPad running Kubuntu 20.04 LTS backed up and made a live thumb drive of Endeavour and booted it up. Nice, I thought, but I'm not a fan of Xfce and seeing as I had nothing else to do, I installed the KDE version.

Sigh...

You could see Neofetch writing each line in Konsole! Moving windows around was slow too!

Ohhhhh,I can just imagine..Rather like the W10 lappy given to me in 2018 with the Celeron processor... :roll:

I wasn't in the mood to troubleshoot it or try a different DE so I found a Neon ISO I had and installed that. That's it, no more distro hopping for me!
I gave up on hopping years ago.
Think of Windows 10 as Hotel California for computers.
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MurphCID
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Re: Stable vs Rolling, another look

Post by MurphCID »

Goz wrote: Mon Sep 20, 2021 2:01 pm
Beerislife wrote: Mon Sep 20, 2021 6:53 am I got my 11? year old ThinkPad running Kubuntu 20.04 LTS backed up and made a live thumb drive of Endeavour and booted it up. Nice, I thought, but I'm not a fan of Xfce and seeing as I had nothing else to do, I installed the KDE version.

Sigh...

You could see Neofetch writing each line in Konsole! Moving windows around was slow too!

Ohhhhh,I can just imagine..Rather like the W10 lappy given to me in 2018 with the Celeron processor... :roll:

I wasn't in the mood to troubleshoot it or try a different DE so I found a Neon ISO I had and installed that. That's it, no more distro hopping for me!
I gave up on hopping years ago.
I am firmly wedded to Mint, but since I have an extra laptop suddenly, I can use it to play. I think, however, that I will keep Manjaro on that one, and leave it alone. I am VERY impressed with the 5.14 kernel, things just work, and work right. There is no laggy shutdown like in the 5.11 series. I cannot say that I am disappointed.
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Re: Stable vs Rolling, another look

Post by JerryF »

MurphCID wrote: Tue Sep 21, 2021 6:33 am ...
I am firmly wedded to Mint, but since I have an extra laptop suddenly, I can use it to play. I think, however, that I will keep Manjaro on that one, and leave it alone. I am VERY impressed with the 5.14 kernel, things just work, and work right. There is no laggy shutdown like in the 5.11 series. I cannot say that I am disappointed.
I too am intrigued with Manjaro. At the moment, I have it installed as a virtual machine. Just playing with it now, but could be in line as a replacement OS when my Chromebook gets to end-of-life in 2024. We'll see how that goes.
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Re: Stable vs Rolling, another look

Post by MurphCID »

JerryF wrote: Tue Sep 21, 2021 12:24 pm
MurphCID wrote: Tue Sep 21, 2021 6:33 am ...
I am firmly wedded to Mint, but since I have an extra laptop suddenly, I can use it to play. I think, however, that I will keep Manjaro on that one, and leave it alone. I am VERY impressed with the 5.14 kernel, things just work, and work right. There is no laggy shutdown like in the 5.11 series. I cannot say that I am disappointed.
I too am intrigued with Manjaro. At the moment, I have it installed as a virtual machine. Just playing with it now, but could be in line as a replacement OS when my Chromebook gets to end-of-life in 2024. We'll see how that goes.
I am really impressed with it. I am less impressed with their forum where every topic I started was deleted by their mods, for unknown reasons. I left and came back here as my only Linux forum. I was very happy with the easy installation, and the massive selection of Kernels as well as AUR and flatpak support. I will keep playing with it.
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Re: Stable vs Rolling, another look

Post by JerryF »

MurphCID wrote: Tue Sep 21, 2021 8:06 pm ...
I am really impressed with it. I am less impressed with their forum where every topic I started was deleted by their mods, for unknown reasons. I left and came back here as my only Linux forum. I was very happy with the easy installation, and the massive selection of Kernels as well as AUR and flatpak support. I will keep playing with it.
That's sad to hear about their forum, but not surprising. I find that several of the other forums I had joined for other distros were not very welcoming and not very patient. I got the impression that they had no time for beginners.

That's one big reason I love Mint! The forums are fantastic!!!
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Re: Stable vs Rolling, another look

Post by Shadow in Fire »

For stable releases, I recommend Devuan (as close to old school Debian as possible). Even their "unstable" branch (Ceres, which is the Devuan equivalent to Sid) is way more stable than other "stable" distros.

For rolling releases, I recommend Artix GNU/Linux. It's a lot more stable than Manjaro. They officially ship ISOs for Xfce, LXQt, and other DEs. No reason not to try it out!
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Re: Stable vs Rolling, another look

Post by MurphCID »

JerryF wrote: Thu Sep 23, 2021 12:24 pm
MurphCID wrote: Tue Sep 21, 2021 8:06 pm ...
I am really impressed with it. I am less impressed with their forum where every topic I started was deleted by their mods, for unknown reasons. I left and came back here as my only Linux forum. I was very happy with the easy installation, and the massive selection of Kernels as well as AUR and flatpak support. I will keep playing with it.
That's sad to hear about their forum, but not surprising. I find that several of the other forums I had joined for other distros were not very welcoming and not very patient. I got the impression that they had no time for beginners.

That's one big reason I love Mint! The forums are fantastic!!!
I agree, but I will say this, Manjaro is FAST! The Cinnamon DE looks great and works the way it should. I am seriously enjoying this distro. I Just need to understand their terminal commands.
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Re: Stable vs Rolling, another look

Post by JerryF »

MurphCID wrote: Thu Sep 23, 2021 3:27 pm ...
I agree, but I will say this, Manjaro is FAST! The Cinnamon DE looks great and works the way it should. I am seriously enjoying this distro. I Just need to understand their terminal commands.
I have the Xfce version of Manjaro (I'm a fan of Xfce). I too agree! It's FAST. Also in agreement is the different terminology for terminal commands.

I do find that setting up a printer not that great. You have to go through the CUPS interface. You can more easily install an HP though.
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Re: Stable vs Rolling, another look

Post by MurphCID »

JerryF wrote: Fri Sep 24, 2021 12:30 pm
MurphCID wrote: Thu Sep 23, 2021 3:27 pm ...
I agree, but I will say this, Manjaro is FAST! The Cinnamon DE looks great and works the way it should. I am seriously enjoying this distro. I Just need to understand their terminal commands.
I have the Xfce version of Manjaro (I'm a fan of Xfce). I too agree! It's FAST. Also in agreement is the different terminology for terminal commands.

I do find that setting up a printer not that great. You have to go through the CUPS interface. You can more easily install an HP though.
I have not been able to install the HP printer, which Mint found right away. Ugh, CUPS, I still have bad memories of that from the old Mandrake Linux days....
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Re: Stable vs Rolling, another look

Post by JerryF »

MurphCID wrote: Fri Sep 24, 2021 12:36 pm ...
I have not been able to install the HP printer, which Mint found right away. Ugh, CUPS, I still have bad memories of that from the old Mandrake Linux days....
Sorry to hear that. I haven't tried that much to install my Brother printer because it's a virtual machine and I don't use Manjaro much at all, just as an extended test.
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Re: Stable vs Rolling, another look

Post by MurphCID »

JerryF wrote: Fri Sep 24, 2021 12:50 pm
MurphCID wrote: Fri Sep 24, 2021 12:36 pm ...
I have not been able to install the HP printer, which Mint found right away. Ugh, CUPS, I still have bad memories of that from the old Mandrake Linux days....
Sorry to hear that. I haven't tried that much to install my Brother printer because it's a virtual machine and I don't use Manjaro much at all, just as an extended test.
Completely understand, I just happened to have an excess laptop hanging around to play with. I might try XFCE Manjaro again now that I am getting more comfortable with it. The Cinnamon version is really nice though.
ajgringo619

Re: Stable vs Rolling, another look

Post by ajgringo619 »

Lots of talk about Manjaro, but I'll take my EndeavourOS XFCE over it any day! Back to the debate...

For me, the most important part of a stable release is the core - kernel, drivers, system libraries - which Mint is great at maintaining. But I can see the older software base as being a turn-off to LTS releases in general. I guess this is why Ubuntu is pushing snaps so hard - self-contained, up-to-date software that won't affect the core OS.

If you think about it, the most important piece of software that we use is the web browser, which (by definition) is a rolling release. As long as that and my kernel are stable, I'm a happy camper.

One more thing: I think there's a misconception of rolling-release distros forcing you to run the latest-and-greatest kernels; this is just not true. I'm currently running the 5.10 LTS kernel, with the 5.14 version available if needed. I think Mint was really smart giving users the option to run the 5.11 kernel so newer rigs could run it.
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Re: Stable vs Rolling, another look

Post by MurphCID »

ajgringo619 wrote: Fri Sep 24, 2021 1:31 pm Lots of talk about Manjaro, but I'll take my EndeavourOS XFCE over it any day! Back to the debate...

For me, the most important part of a stable release is the core - kernel, drivers, system libraries - which Mint is great at maintaining. But I can see the older software base as being a turn-off to LTS releases in general. I guess this is why Ubuntu is pushing snaps so hard - self-contained, up-to-date software that won't affect the core OS.

If you think about it, the most important piece of software that we use is the web browser, which (by definition) is a rolling release. As long as that and my kernel are stable, I'm a happy camper.

One more thing: I think there's a misconception of rolling-release distros forcing you to run the latest-and-greatest kernels; this is just not true. I'm currently running the 5.10 LTS kernel, with the 5.14 version available if needed. I think Mint was really smart giving users the option to run the 5.11 kernel so newer rigs could run it.
I completely agree with you here. That is why I tend to use Flatpaks as much as I can, the software is more up to date. Especially Libre Office where they are constantly making patched so that it works better with Microsoft Office files.
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Re: Stable vs Rolling, another look

Post by JesseRBassett »

Personally I have used Manjaro and like it. However, I am a devout Mint user and the whole Arch piece of Manjaro bugged me too much. Not to mention you could not install basic programs easily like Google Chrome or any normal .deb file. Hence why I am back on Mint. :) Not to mention Arch cannot find my wireless printer right away but Mint found it when I booted up the USB!
Sincerely,
Jesse R Bassett

My PC Specs:
https://onedrive.live.com/?cid=1B828140 ... ot&o=OneUp
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Re: Stable vs Rolling, another look

Post by MurphCID »

JesseRBassett wrote: Mon Sep 27, 2021 6:49 am Personally I have used Manjaro and like it. However, I am a devout Mint user and the whole Arch piece of Manjaro bugged me too much. Not to mention you could not install basic programs easily like Google Chrome or any normal .deb file. Hence why I am back on Mint. :) Not to mention Arch cannot find my wireless printer right away but Mint found it when I booted up the USB!
It show the printer is there, but for the life of me I cannot get it to connect. Oh well, I don't plan on printing off of that computer anyway. On the old Darter Pro with Gen 1 Coreboot, Manjaro with the 5.14 kernel works the best. I got Chrome installed from the AUR and it works fine. My two main machines are 100% Mint, and will remain that way. The old Darter Pro is my distro testing laptop since my brother in law did not want it. and I am stuck with it.... I use it as my easy chair computer, and it surfs the web, and that is about it. I remains downstairs next to my chair that I use when watching TV.
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Re: Stable vs Rolling, another look

Post by JesseRBassett »

Have you tried looking in AUR for your printer driver? Sometimes it is located in there right under your nose! Just a thought. Good luck! :D
Sincerely,
Jesse R Bassett

My PC Specs:
https://onedrive.live.com/?cid=1B828140 ... ot&o=OneUp
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Re: Stable vs Rolling, another look

Post by MurphCID »

JesseRBassett wrote: Mon Sep 27, 2021 6:55 am Have you tried looking in AUR for your printer driver? Sometimes it is located in there right under your nose! Just a thought. Good luck! :D
Tried, and not there yet. Have a good one!
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Re: Stable vs Rolling, another look

Post by JosephM »

I think DT's entire idea is built on a broken premise. Your typical user doesn't watch Linux podcasts. Doesn't hang out on Linux user forums. Not only that, far too may typical users don't even run updates. So the benefit gets lost on many users. And going too long without updating on a rolling release can really increase your chances of issues when you do. The other problem is the idea that latest and greatest is always best. Over even better. A new kernel can break something as easily as fix or improve it. Rolling can also unexpectedly change things. Like your favorite app might upgrade and totally change it's look and how it works.

There are better solutions in my opinion. The availability of flatpak and snap allows a user to get newer versions of apps without breaking or changing the underlying system. Are these perfect now? No. But they should only get better with time. And they are also a boon for developers who only have to develop and package once and have their app work all across Linux.
When I give opinions, they are my own. Not necessarily those of any other Linux Mint developer or the Linux Mint project as a whole.
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Re: Stable vs Rolling, another look

Post by mshmm »

JosephM wrote: Mon Sep 27, 2021 12:58 pm I think DT's entire idea is built on a broken premise. Your typical user doesn't watch Linux podcasts. Doesn't hang out on Linux user forums. Not only that, far too may typical users don't even run updates. So the benefit gets lost on many users.
True for many.
JosephM wrote: And going too long without updating on a rolling release can really increase your chances of issues when you do. The other problem is the idea that latest and greatest is always best. Over even better. A new kernel can break something as easily as fix or improve it.
Yes, if you are running a rolling distro you need to ideally update at least weekly, and have fallbacks (the LTS kernel, Timeshift, regular backups etc) in case there is breakage.
JosephM wrote: Rolling can also unexpectedly change things. Like your favorite app might upgrade and totally change it's look and how it works.

There are better solutions in my opinion. The availability of flatpak and snap allows a user to get newer versions of apps without breaking or changing the underlying system. Are these perfect now? No. But they should only get better with time. And they are also a boon for developers who only have to develop and package once and have their app work all across Linux.
Of course, getting the latest version of an app from flatpak or snap can also mean that the app totally changes it's look and how it works :wink:

But yes, wider adoption (and improvement of) flatpak can only benefit both users and developers.
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Re: Stable vs Rolling, another look

Post by MikeNovember »

Hi,

Mint distributionss 18.x / 19.x or Ubuntu 18.04 / 20.04 are presented as LTS, Long Term Support.

They are not presented as "stable" or "rolling".

For a user, LTS means he will not have to reinstall the distribution for some 5 years.

And, at a first glance, LTS DOES NOT mean that the user will get stuck with obsolete applications... It is something that he discovers after having installed Mint or Ubuntu.

Note that LTS and fresh applications would be possible: it would need a lot of efforts of compiling each version of an application for each distribution (with dynamic linking to its libraries). And this effort is not done by Ubuntu, and not by Mint (Mint simply adds a supplemental layer over Ubuntu and relies on Ubuntu for applications).

What is really supported, and updated, are the kernel, the GNU terminal programs, the libraries, when there is a security issue; browsers and mail clients for the same reason. And applications are abandoned...

There are lot of examples of obsolete, outdated, unsupported applications in Mint or Ubuntu (LibreOffice, VLC, Calibre, youtube-dl, OBS Studio, Handbrake, Avidemux, Filezilla, Evince, Inkscape, Geeqie, Gimp, Firejail, ClamAV, Chkrootkit...). And some missing ones (the closed source ones, that's normal; and some OpenSource ones).

So, does the user needs to go to a rolling distribution (ArchLinux, Manjaro...) to get applications updates?

User can stay with Mint or Ubuntu!

- Lots of applications can be downloaded from their respective websites; they are delivered with their own libraries, or don't use libraries (static linking or pure C), or have a simple compiling procedure. Examples: LibreOffice, Calibre, youtube-dl, Firefox, Thunderbird, FreeFileSync, ClamAV, Linux Malware Detect, Chkrootkit...

- Some fresh versions can be installed form PPAs, with two dangers: unofficial PPA (unsupported by the application authors), and the replacement of system libraries by the PPA ones, with risk of instabilities and difficulties to upgrade the distribution.

- Some are delivered as AppImages, the AppImage including all which is necessary to run the applications; though the launch is slow, it works. Examples: SquishPic, Avidemux...

- And, in order to avoid to compile an application several times for several distributions, there are flatpaks and snaps.
In both cases, a "runtime environment" needs to be installed, then the application.
Flatpak launch is fast, snap launch is slow (like AppImages, snaps use squash-fs, and virtual disk has to be mounted before the application is launched). Flatpak is "a bit more" open solution than snap (purely Ubuntu one).
Flatpaks present the same risk as AppImages (unofficial ones, not related to the author of the application).
Flatpak or snap applications are run in sandboxes, adding a supplemental security layer. This is of great interest for browsers, mail clients or any application connecting to internet.
Flatpak is enabled in Mint 19.x / 20.x, snap is enabled in Mint 19.x and disabled in Mint 20.x but can be enabled.

Because flatpak launch is fast, I prefer to use flatpak than snap or AppImage. Here is the list of my flatpak apps:

Code: Select all

$ flatpak list --app
Name                          Application ID                          Version               Branch         Installation
OBS Studio                    com.obsproject.Studio                   27.0.1                stable         system
HandBrake                     fr.handbrake.ghb                        1.4.1                 stable         system
Audacity                      org.audacityteam.Audacity               3.0.4                 stable         system
Avidemux                      org.avidemux.Avidemux                   2.7.8                 stable         system
Chromium Web Browser          org.chromium.Chromium                   94.0.4606.61          stable         system
FileZilla                     org.filezillaproject.Filezilla          3.55.1                stable         system
Evince                        org.gnome.Evince                        40.1                  stable         system
Inkscape                      org.inkscape.Inkscape                   1.1.1                 stable         system
VLC                           org.videolan.VLC                        3.0.16                stable         system
I have one AppImage, Geeqie.

I use one PPA, in order to have a recent version of flatpak (1.11.2 instead of outdated 1.6.5), which allows to run Chromium flatpak.

I have also installed some applications with downloaded debs (more recent or not in the distribution): BlueGriffon, Epson scanner drivers, laser printer drivers, LibreOffice 7.1.6 (stable), PdfSam, XnView MP...

Thunderbird (91), FreeFileSync, TorBrowser, Foxit PDF Reader, Calibre have been downloaded as tars from their websites; they have their own install procedures. Youtube-dl, with pip, can be updated as needed.

And I have compiled SmillaEnlarger from source.

Finally, I run in a Windows 10 guest in VMware Player some programs not existing for Linux (raw "developing" program for my camera; Captvty, allowing to view French replay TV; StereoPhotoMaker...), or that I prefer to run under Windows (Gimp, with much more plugins and external program calls than in Linux).

Yes, it is far from using purely what is in Mint distribution (I use 20.2 Mate). But it works! And it is stable, and rock solid.

Regards,

MN
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