Tuesday, February 23, 2021

Stable and Rolling distributions of Windows/Linux, what are best?

 In an era where Linux has clawed its way into being a quite viable secondary alternative for Windows except for a few niche cases and Windows is now the same, if you have no worry about those nice cases, either one does nicely, and the question becomes "do I get a stable or rolling release distributions".


Windows 10 has a "Long Term Service Release" option, and Linux has what is called Stable versions. These tend to not get a lot of updates save for occasional critical bug fixes, but after a few years they get long in the tooth and you need to upgrade. Both of these are great for business environments, server operators, and someone who just wants to do simple stuff like browse the internet and listen to music. They are poor for gamers, people doing development and coding work, and anyone who needs the newest bells and whistles because they sacrifice innovation for stability.

Windows 10 by default is "semi-rolling", and Linux can either be this too or you can modify certain stable releases into this model. It's a mix of keeping everything save certain system drivers and programs static, while otherwise using the latest newfangled drivers and programs otherwise on Linux. Windows is more along the lines of doling out massive updates every few months, and otherwise just sticking to critical bugfixes releases from time to time.

A semi-rolling distro is a good/bad mix. True, you keep a mostly stable experience, but all the newfangled experimental stuff (which you can often pick and choose) may not play nice with older drivers and system components, and these distros tend to force a major update sooner or later, and if too much that requires stable components changes, you could brick your system install.

A rolling distro is when you get CONSTANT updates nigh every day for every new thing that is shipped with your distro. This obviously could lead to instability, but if you are doing bleeding edge development, gaming (on Linux especially), or you like to live on the wild side and don't mind the fact you are effectively being a beta tester for the guys with semi-rolling and stable distros, then this is a good idea. Certain Windows features can be tweaked to use this model and some Linux distros like Arch are always rolling releases.

These are typically terrible for server use because servers are notoriously fickle and if key software changes, it could break quite a lot if the newest update doesn't play nice with everything else.


With the above in mind, I suggest picking whatever is best with your needs and sticking with it.

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