this post was submitted on 06 Mar 2024
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It can be done, but I wouldn’t recommend it. Containers and VMs running a stable distro on top of something like Fedora, Tumbleweed, or whatever else is my preferred setup.
Something like Fedora also has a more mature in-place upgrade ability than the EL distros have.
Strange...
Usually you'd run the more stable distro on the bottom and the more cutting-edge on top, not the other way around.
The cutting edge distro will have better consumer hardware support, which matters in a laptop/desktop.
Just why?
RHEL gets a new version every 5 years, not every 6 months. It's not really relevant since OP has 3 more years before maintenance support starts. By that time a full format is definitely in order.
You answered your own question. Maintaining software will eat up lots of time. It’s fine when there is a team to maintain software for installs, but not really something a single person running a desktop/laptop probably wants to deal with.
The 5yr release cycle is a pain starting about year 3 even for people who get paid to deal with it. 😆
VMs and containers on top of something more up to date is the best of both. Up to date distro with features, and all the distros one could want!
In-place upgrades are very relevant. Who wants to destroy their setup and reinstall everything when a new OS is released?
There is leapp for EL in-place upgrades, but it’s new and rather rough, from my testing.
Flatpak has made software support better, but I’d still recommend something else without a concrete reason, like proprietary CFD software or something which only supports EL.
But you have to do more maintenance the more your system is up to date. I've never had to fix a faulty grub update on a stable distro, but I did on arch.
It really depends on the user. Think of the vast majority of people who use their personal machine only to browse, play media, and occasionally edit text files or spreadsheets. Just having to press a button to update the system and a few flatpaks for a decade is pretty appealing.
I wouldn't try it though...
I'm currently on mx + nix unstable. It will always boot, and half of all of my installed packages are near the edge. That's what I consider the best of both worlds. No need to take the VM penalty if you don't need to.
It's good for cleanup, and I got used to it in on windows. Even when I did everything manually, the longest I've spent between full reinstalls was 2 years. I literally did it the other day because I was switching back to xfce from kde.
The biggest issue was reinstalling all of the packages I need, but with
home-managerI've made a list. A single command installs all of the packages on it, no matter the distro.Keep your dotfiles in a repo, for safety if nothing else. Then you can resurrect your setup pretty easily.
Arch. There’s the problem. 😆
Fedora and Tumbleweed keep up with Arch while being easier to maintain. Fedora is a semi-rolling release, and Tumbleweed is rolling release. Both are much more stable than Arch is.
Arch is great for people who want to tinker with their desktop/laptop install. I do not, so I run Fedora.
Run Fedora or Tumbleweed. They will be continuously updated, and an install will last years.
Your basis for comparison is Arch which is known to be highly unstable and a handful to maintain. 😆
For my work, I need different OSes and distros for testing. If someone needs a stable distro for something, a VM or container will work. There are ways around the needing a stable.
Also, containers aren’t a penalty.
You can break the cycle. Just because some you suffered doesn’t mean others have to. 🙂
Everyone says they’re going to clean up their profiles, but no one does. 😆
I have that because I run through so many test servers and temp installs.
Then there are Ansible playbooks to setup my systems.
They can only dream about keeping up, TW especially from what I've seen, and that just proves my point: arch is harder to maintain because it's more up to date.
Also, I ran fedora for a few weeks after giving up on arch, it failed to boot multiple times after an update, and programs would randomly stop working after a reboot. I somehow had none of those issues on nobara.
It will break more often, and if you only use it to browse you'll still get all the updates you need if you used a stable distro. The only thing you're missing out on is testing the newest version of the DE. I've installed fedora for a friend like that, but I'm pretty sure it was a mistake even though they haven't had any issues so far.
I need stable because I want my machine always to work. There's no going around that if you're running rhel on top of fedora, if fedora craps out you're not getting to rhel. Specific compatibility requirements are different story, and I agree with you on that.
My basis is that I've been using linux for close to 20 years, and have tried every popular distro. In that time, only stable distros like debian never crashed or failed to boot.
But you do take a performance penalty when using them...
I literally did it the other day, made a cup of coffee, and finished with both around the same time. The only thing I had to suffer through was waiting for files to transfer to and from an external drive. And I'll survive that easily if it means I'll avoid possible bugs and performance impacts.
Sweet, makes sense really