Rolling Linux versus Windows updates?

[NWSM]

rolling means you have newer libs but its potential unsafe, this can also break the system or apps will not work if updates for apps are late

[lunardigs]

I run Arch on a bunch of machines. I prefer rolling release to the major release style, because I actually find it easier to maintain. The biggest thing I see in terms of weirdness or trouble usually has to do with expired or missing PGP keys. The fix is simple though; update the keyring first--which is automatic usually anyways. In general though, everything else is stable enough. It's not often something really breaks. Moreover, I've never had a situation that couldn't be recovered handily.

[camsr]

There's an option for the more adventurous users, and that is to statically compile. You can continue to update libraries and other deps.

[Grizzellda]

These two concepts seem very similar to me.

But with Linux it is free. Well, we think it is "free" ...but someone must be putting in the work, because nothing in life is free, from my position.

Although I'm a big fan of Linux in general, I'm not a big fan of Rolling distros. Rolling distros give you the absolute latest, "bleeding edge" software that is available for linux. The problem with rolling distros, is that often there are breaking changes. This is just a regular part of software evolution. However, often, it requires manual intervention, in that the user has to manually fix software to bring it up to the current version and working. The Arch family of distros do this.

For some, this is not a problem at all. Some people enjoy rolling distros and enjoy actively maintaining their OS. As for myself, I prefer to have "Leading Edge" software that is still very new, but is not a rolling release. For instance, Fedora was the first to have Pipewire. However, I didn't have to do any manual intervention to upgrade to the current version. I just ran the upgrade, by selecting the upgrade button. Easy, modern, problem free. These are the ways that Linux does things.

Windows does things differently, but not too differently. Aside from very rare upgrades (ie going from Win10 to Win11), Windows generally runs very similarly to a rolling distro. There are updates that come, when they are ready. Patches generally get released to the system as soon as they are available -- like a rolling distro. However, one will almost never need to do any manual intervention--usually when you DO have to do manual intervention, it's when something goes wrong and you have to fix it. This does happen, but not too frequently.

Windows has a reputation of starting installs without warning, and at inconvenient times. This "used to" be the case, but has largely been resolved, by allowing the user to choose when to do updates. There are further settings to manage this. So, things are much better in this area than it used to be. You can even schedule when you want to do the updates. Linux is starting to do this as well. So, in essence, Windows upgrades aren't really that bad anymore. It has a bad reputation from past problems, but the OS doesn't really deserve the reputation anymore.

In all honestly, if it wasn't for the loss of freedoms and privacy, the flexibility and efficiency of Linux itself, Windows' monetization of the user, and the cost of licensing Windows (largely subsidized by hardware manufacturers) , I would probably use Windows myself--and I'm a hardcore fan of Linux. My linux preference is more ideological than for most other reasons. People complain about Windows, but it's actually a pretty solid operating system. People complain about Linux, but these days, it's a pretty solid operating system too. So is MacOS, if I'm being honest. They can all pretty much do the same as each other, it just comes down to your ideological preference, and whether you want any privacy or freedom when using a computer or not.

Nice post, you have covered alot here. I would have little problem digging Windows if I was more comfortable with the "big corporate approach". Can't these companies just chill out and relax a bit?

I am slowly learning about Linux, but am really mostly interested in native applications, that is where I feel the most awesome audio/ graphics performance will be available, and not with the Windows emulation, which is known as WINE. Also, what if Microsoft wanted to disrupt WINE? Do they care if Linux users have a nice experience running WINE apps?

[BertKoor]

> the most awesome audio/ graphics performance

It's all just code. The same, or very similar. But code all the same.
Performance differences between the OSses is neglicable. (once you removed all crap)

It's not the days of Sun Spark graphical workstations anymore. And that was the dedicated hardware making it possible, not the software (including the OS)

[chaocrator]

my 2 cents.
rolling release is not much fun for everyday use.
i was running Arch for a while but returned back to Ubuntu because Arch updates broke something pretty regularly, and lurking for fixes instead of doing my stuff was annoying.
upgrading OS once in 2 years (LTS releases) seems much more sane for me.

however, in Linux you make decisions about updating the system. Windoze decides it by itself, and that's no fun at all.

[lunardigs]

I like the latest stuff usually. Newer kernels are especially good when something like better power saving, or performance comes along for newer hardware.

I don't use WINE, except where Steam uses it internally, which I don't have to mess with really.

The nice thing about learning Linux is that it's usually a decent investment of time, because it's rare that a rug-pull moment comes along where everything suddenly changes.

[Largos]

This discussion always ends up as Arch vs the rest when it's not. Bleeding edge rolling release is not the only type of rolling release. I use OpenSuse Tumbleweed which is a rolling release which is more conservative in it's updates. Opensuse also does a distro called Slowroll which is, as the name suggests is not as fastly updated. I don't have to "actively maintain" the distro, only the rolling release has bigger regular upgrades than non rolling release.

Only once in the two years I've used tumbleweed has their ever been an issue, which was with a faulty graphics driver that was fixed in a day or two. Tumbleweed uses BTRFS snapshots, which for those unfamiliar effectively provides an undo button for updates. Meaning I could return to the working version of the computer and wait for the fix with no break in usage of the computer. I'd recommend everyone use such a system regardless of update cycle.

As for the OP. Windows has versions 7,8,10, 11 etc. Rolling releases do not have such versions. It may seem similar if Windows pulls in large regular updates but it just takes up a lot more hard drive space and bandwidth.

[chaocrator]

Tumbleweed uses BTRFS snapshots, which for those unfamiliar effectively provides an undo button for updates. Meaning I could return to the working version of the computer and wait for the fix with no break in usage of the computer. I'd recommend everyone use such a system regardless of update cycle.

BTRFS snapshots are nice — once you keep not less than ~20% of free space.
BTRFS still does not survive overflows well, and a situation of overflow can even render it unusable.
i had that a couple of times, and it eventually made me return to good old ext4 which is still one of two fastest Linux filesystems (together with XFS).

PS. regarding «Arch vs others»: Arch is the most popular rolling release distro, and it never hesitates to break things when latest version of something introduces some fundamental changes.

back in the days i used Ubuntu in rolling release mode — i mean, always lived on the development version, and i had much less breakages of my installation comparing to Arch years.

[uOpt]

Tumbleweed uses BTRFS snapshots, which for those unfamiliar effectively provides an undo button for updates. Meaning I could return to the working version of the computer and wait for the fix with no break in usage of the computer. I'd recommend everyone use such a system regardless of update cycle.

BTRFS snapshots are nice — once you keep not less than ~20% of free space.
BTRFS still does not survive overflows well, and a situation of overflow can even render it unusable.
i had that a couple of times, and it eventually made me return to good old ext4 which is still one of two fastest Linux filesystems (together with XFS).

There's also ZFS, which has snapshots, compression, deduplication and built-in-raid without exploding every now and then like btrfs.

[Largos]

I've been using BTRFS for many years over multiple systems and never had anything "explode". Currently my BTRFS snapshots take up less than 2gb of space. In total my system folders are 17.4 gb, so it'd be pretty ridiculous if I ran out of space.

[chaocrator]

There's also ZFS, which has snapshots, compression, deduplication and built-in-raid without exploding every now and then like btrfs.

ZFS is bombproof!
but requires lots of RAM.
best practice is 1 GB of RAM per 1 TB of space.

[uOpt]

There's also ZFS, which has snapshots, compression, deduplication and built-in-raid without exploding every now and then like btrfs.

ZFS is bombproof!
but requires lots of RAM.
best practice is 1 GB of RAM per 1 TB of space.

That was been lowered considerably with a series of changes, including RAM usage for dedup.

I use ZFS on 16 GB laptops just fine. You can also manually lower the amount of ARC memory taken but I don't have to do even that.

[uOpt]

There is also mixed models when it comes to rolling versus non-rolling.

FreeBSD has a none-rolling base system and rolling applications.

The base system contains everything that you need to manage applications - base config incl. networking and ssh, pkg installations, compiler and linker to compile things if needed. That is release-driven so that you can update it every now and then when you can pay attention. Meanwhile all that application nonsense is up-to-date. So you don't find yourself with a system that cannot operate packages anymore.

[EnGee]

I have both, rolling (CachyOS which is dependent on Arch) and non-rolling (Mint 22.3 which is dependent on Ubuntu/Debian). I like them both, but using CachyOS as my main while leaving Mint as a backup.
I haven't had any problem with updates in CachyOS, but anyway I decided to update weekly instead of daily.

[Update]
After about a month, the honey moon has ended with CachyOS I haven't expected that really! The latest updates might contribute to the crashes and bugs I experienced lately!
1. My keyboard (typing keyboard) has become "inactive" if I leave it for some time!
2. Bitwig is crashing/freezing if I leave it in the background.
3. VSTi/CLAP instruments crashing when I try to load the GUI

I didn't inspect that much! My impression is CachyOS is great for gaming maybe, but not as a production OS. So, I returned to my trusty Linux (Mint) where everything is working fine but without that CachyOS shine and fun environment.