Jeff Nowakowski Wrote: > On 01/19/2011 04:18 PM, Gour wrote: > > > > That's why we wrote it would be better to use some rolling release > > like Archlinux where distro cannot become so outdated that it's not > > possible to upgrade easily. > > https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/FAQ : > > "Q) Why would I not want to use Arch? > > A) [...] you do not have the ability/time/desire for a 'do-ityourself' > GNU/Linux distribution"
This is something the Gentoo and Arch fanboys don't get. They don't have any idea how little time a typical Ubuntu user spends maintaining the system and installing updates. The best solution is to hire some familiar with computers (e.g. nephew with chocolate). It's almost free and they will want to spend hours configuring your system. This way you spend none of your own time maintaining. Another option is to turn on all automatic updates. Everything happens in the background. It might ask for a sudo password once in a week. In any case the Ubuntu user spends less than 10 minutes per month maintaining the system. It's possible but you need compatible hardware (Nvidia graphics and Wifi without a proprietary firmware, at least). You can't beat that. > I also don't see how Archlinux protects you from an outdated system. > It's up to you to update your system. The longer you wait, the more > chance incompatibilities creep in. I personally use CentOS for anything stable. I *Was* a huge Gentoo fanboy, but the compilation simply takes too much time, and something is constantly broken if you enable ~x86 packages. I've also tried Arch. All the cool kids use it, BUT it doesn't automatically handle any configuration files in /etc and even worse, if you enable the "unstable" community repositories, the packages won't stay there long in the repository - a few days! The replacement policy is nuts. One of the packages was already removed from the server before pacman (the package manager) started downloading it! Arch is a pure community based distro for hardcore enthusiastics. It's fundamentally incompatible with stability. > > However, the tradeoff is that if you update weekly or monthly, then you > will spend more time encountering problems between upgrades. There's no > silver bullet here. Yes. Although I fail to see why upgrating Ubuntu is so hard. It only takes one hour or two every 6 months or every 3 years. The daily security updates should work automatically just like in Windows. > > Personally, I think you should just suck it up, make a backup of your > system (which you should be doing routinely anyways), and upgrade once a > year. Dissing Walter has become a sad tradition here. I'm sure a long time software professional knows how to make backups and he has likely written his own backup software and RAID drivers before you were even born. The reason Waltzy feels so clumsy in Linux world is probably the Windows XP attitude we all long time Windows users suffer from. Many powerusers are still using Windows XP, and it has a long term support plan. The support might last forever. You've updated Windows XP only three times. Probably 20 versions of Ubuntu have appeared since Windows XP was launched. Ubuntu is stuck with the "we MUST release SOMETHING at least every 3 years" just like WIndows did before XP: Win 3.11 -> 95 -> 98 -> XP (all intervals exactly 3 years).
