twice a year hell, better than constant hell ?

Posted Jul 10, 2009 8:54 UTC (Fri) by langagemachine (guest, #56890)
In reply to: Another factor why people don't test development distributions by kamil
Parent article: Why people don't test development distributions

>I'm just pointing out that there are alternatives to the "reinstall >everything twice a year"-hell. There are costs involved, but to me at >least, they are worth it.

Not 100% convinced about this. After 2 years running Gentoo, I have just decided to drop it in favor of an other 'rolling' distro (Arch Linux) on the ground that I spent more time fixing upgrade conflicts than actually using the computer (well, maybe not more time, but too much time).

I am fairly pleased with Arch Linux, although this week, a system upgrade hosed bash-completion; I could get it back thanks to a gross hack, but this has left me wondering about the whole 'rolling' distro concept: do constant upgrades not mean that you are constantly unsettling your system ?

So, update every week or upgrade twice a year, the hassle is probably the same ?

Come to think of it, perpetual unstability is character of life, as my biology teacher would teach us ...

twice a year hell, better than constant hell ?

Posted Jul 10, 2009 14:54 UTC (Fri) by kamil (guest, #3802) [Link]

There's some hassle with either approach, I'd just say it's a different sort of hassle.

If I update, say, the X server in Gentoo, I can expect and be prepared for some problems with, say, 3D, but I still expect the kernel to boot, sound to function, etc.

If I upgrade the whole distro, all bets are off. Will the printer still work afterwards? No idea.

I don't know which approach ultimately costs more time, I just know from experience that I personally found the distro upgrades more frustrating than individual package updates.