Re: [orca-list] Accessible Rolling Release Distro

[Geoff Shang <geoff QuiteLikely com>]

On Tue, 1 Sep 2020, Nimer Jaber via orca-list wrote:

> I am looking for a system that works, but I do want a rolling release.

With any distribution, you are always going to have to tradeoff stability 
against newness of software.

I've not used it myself, but Debian Testing is probably a pretty good 
compromise.  It gets packages from unstable after 10, 5 or 2 days, 
depending on the urgency of the upload.

> From the Debian FAQ:

   Packages are installed into the `testing' directory after they have 
undergone some degree
   of testing in unstable.

   They must be in sync on all architectures where they have been built 
and mustn't have
   dependencies that make them uninstallable; they also need to have fewer 
release-critical
   bugs than the versions currently in unstable. This way, we hope that 
`testing' is always
   close to being a release candidate.

You can read more about how this is all managed at 
https://www.debian.org/devel/testing

A couple of things to note that I've discovered while reading this:

1.  Testing may not get security updates in a timely manner, particularly 
shortly after a new stable release.  If security is important to you then 
Testing may not be the way to go.

2.  Because the whole point of Debian is to put out stable releases, 
Testing will freeze for awhile prior to a release.  So you may lose the 
rolling nature that you want for awhile.

The real thing to consider is that most packages depend on a set of core 
libraries, such as libc6.  Regardless of which distribution you run, at 
some point, one or more of these libraries will be updated, either when 
you update to a new version of your distribution or when your rolling 
release gets a new version of the library.  At that point, there will need 
to be a rash of new packages compiled against the new libraries.  The more 
on the edge you are, the less work will have been done to avoid things 
breaking when this happens.

Personally, I don't have any time for messing with broken systems, so I 
run Debian stable and in fact am a couple of versions behind on my 
day-to-day machines.  But I'm also not using the GUI and I can see where 
using something more recent might have benefits.  I'm also now out of 
security updates, so I will need to bight the bullet soon and upgrade.

Cheers,
Geoff.