Ubuntu has too many problems for me to want to run it. However, it has occurred to me that there aren’t a lot of distros that are like the Ubuntu LTS.
Basic requirements for a LTS:
- at least 2 years of support
- semi recent versions of applications like Chrome and Firefox (might consider flatpak)
- a stable experience that isn’t buggy
- fast security updates
Distros considered:
- Debian (stable)
- Rocky Linux
- openSUSE
- Cent OS stream
- Fedora
As far as I can tell none of the options listed are quite suitable. They are either to unstable or way to out of date. I like Rocky Linux but it doesn’t seem to be desktop focused as far as I can tell. I would use Debian but Debian doesn’t have the greatest security defaults. (No selinux profiles out of the box)
what is the actual use case of LTS on regular desktop non-workstation anyway?
Enjoying a stable OS?
Except, that older versions of desktop environments tend to be less stable…
Stable means unchanging in this context.
No, stable for me means “it’s not buggy and broken”
I am not going to say that you are wrong. Make your own choices.
For words to be useful though, they have to mean the same thing for the person sharing them and the person receiving them. Definitions matter.
In the Linux community, “stable” means not changing. It is not a statement about quality or reliability. The others words you used, “buggy” and “broken”, are better quality references.
Again, you do you. But expect “the community” to reinforce their definitions because common understanding is essential if something like Lemmy is going to work.
That’s a you problem. Your interpretation is wrong.
Quoting from the Debian Manual:
Stable has a particular meaning with distros but I think the context here is using the plain English definition of the word.
We are talking about LTS distros, not about bridges. The context is pretty clear.
Yes, and that’s exactly the reason why I’d never recommend debian for a desktop
Just to be clear, the “reason” here is that your expectations are not correctly aligned with the project goals.
what is a regular desktop non-workstation??
Low maintenance and repeatability
Is the system working after the install? If yes, it’ll work for years until the next version and you don’t need to worry about it. With rolling release every update can mess up your system.
it’s software, every update can mess up your system. your only guaranteed good media is the install ISO, after that it’s only as good as the packager, even for LTS
If you’re going to be pedantic, not even an ISO is guaranteed to work perfectly. The point is that a security patch is far less likely to cause issues than some random release. And that’s even before going into broken releases like GRUB on arch.
LTS ISO aren’t guaranteed to work? isn’t that the point, install once and run forever?
That’s why I started my first comment with:
Linux devs aren’t magic men who can test an absurd number of hardware combinations. Also, they depend on package maintainers to release a non-security fix before they start freezing packages and testing them.
The point is that if there’s an issue, it’s well researched and you can usually easily find a solution as people have been having that same issue for the last few years.