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"rolling" distros vs. "fresh install" distros


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I've seen some complaints in other forums about distros that most people just choose to do a reformat and a complete, fresh install when they want to "upgrade" to the newest version... This is versus distros that can just be "rolled forward" to keep yourself on the latest version...

 

Some "rolling" distros mentioned include Debian and Gentoo. And maybe Arch...?

 

I have limited distro experience (RH 9, FC 2,3 & 4, and Mandriva 2006), and I've always just reformatted, and done a fresh install when I wanted to upgrade to the newest version... With the fresh installs, you have to keep 'fixing' things again (things that don't work 'out of the box').

 

I was looking for some comments about the distros that can be "rolled forward" without needing complete, fresh installs. Maybe I should try one...

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PCLinuxOS. A Mandrake 9.2 spinoff. And I found this is what Mandriva should be on the desktop.

Advantages: Fresh,stable and great looking not to mention that they are not license trolls so propietary stuff is preinstalled you don't have to setup codecs etc.

LiveCD so it's very easy to install and it's full of apps very likely what you need is already there or in the repo.

Big and helpful community. There are already several PCLinuxOS spinoffs e.g. for kids, gamers edition etc.

Disadvantages: poor localization meaning it's not done automatically you have to setup languages other than English.

KDE centric. If you like GNOME there is only 2.10 yet though a GNOME version is on the way and other wms are available like fluxbox.

Broadband is required.

 

Usually rolling release is for community distros which has no intention to be in the enterprises. They are more fresh but has smaller repos since they have to keep it fresh. Like PCLOS has about 5000 packages while Mandriva has about 10000.

Point release is for enterprise\corporate distros or for those distros which are the base of enterprise distros. They want stability over freshness so their packages are more outdated but more likely to work and they have bigger repos.

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what are the "rolling" distros?

 

and what exactly do they do differently...? I mean, do you just tell it to upgrade itself, and then you have the latest version of the distro? That usually doesn't work too good with the distros I have used (FC etc).

 

what are some examples?

 

edit: I don't care about having 'enterprise' distros. I just want to do simple "home" type stuff - browse the web, burn CDs & DVDs, mess around with my digital still camera & movie camera, stuff like that.

 

another edit: this probably should be in Other Linux Distros. Feel free to move it... all my threads get moved anyway...!

Edited by null
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I think slackware, gentoo and debian are the classics ... indeed if you include RedHat that is more or less 90% of all linux distro's ...if you include Suse as a slackware derivative and Mandriva as a RH one.

 

However the idea they don't have many packages is wrong ...

A good place to look for an idea is http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/i386...s/index.en.html

This shows know issues with a apt-get dist-upgrade for Stable.

This new release of Debian again comes with a lot more software than its predecessor woody; the distribution includes over 9000 new packages. Most of the software in the distribution has been updated: almost 6500 software packages (that is 73% of the number of packages in woody).

However this is the official stable ONLY .. there is also non-free and coutless other sources like debian-multimedia.org where Christianne Marillat has his MM packages. Also there are quite a few x86 packages that are not counted because they don't exist for obscure arch's like SPARC etc.

 

If you look in unstable/testing the list is even bigger.

 

My system is a mix of unstable/testing .. some of the bleeding edge stuff I downgrade and Debian lets you do this and control it using apt-pinning and also priorities on distribs...

 

My server runs a mix of unstable and stable .. security stuff is largely stable and php/mysql are stable.

 

I find it weird that people have probs for instance mixing distro's in Mandriva certainly to the point of borking their system. I have done 20-30 dist upgrades on this MIXED dist install (and if anything is going to break a dist-upgrade its mixed dists) but it just keeps working ... I borked an xorglibfont the other day in a DU and just dropped out of the GUI to RL3 and did a fix and restarted kdm and its working perfectly.

 

I'd probably recommend Debian for a starter ... nothing wrong with the others just you can get a nice mixed system in 12 mins (last time I installed) in kanotix ... and its got almost everything I need ... drop in the marrillat sources and get MS fonts, win32codecs and mplayer etc. and its all working but ready to dist-upgrade

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So Debian is a "rolling" distro? meaning it can be upgraded completely to newer releases without the need for a fresh intall? Where is Debian now as compared to, say, mandriva 2006? Is it way behind, or is it at a similar place? I mean, for the "current-ness" of the included software...

 

I hardly ever use my "second" machine (win2k) anymore, and its still a decent machine: AMD XP2000+, 1GB ram, 2 hard drives. I'm thinking about making it a dual-boot (with a "rolling" linux distro) or just getting rid of win2k and making it a rolling distro. And keeping my "working" mandriva 2006 box, which I really like...!

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On packages, I'd like to quote AdamW:

[For Mandriva] ... there are around 13,000 packages in main and contrib combined, which is, last time I checked, way more than Fedora or Ubuntu, in the same area as SUSE, and just a little short of Debian.
(http://linuxmint.com/content/view/149/32/1/5/)

 

Now what is a rolling release? Very simple: A distro that you set up once and then constantly upgrade, like Gentoo. Distros like Fedora or Mandriva have special development mirrors that will get frozen at a set date. Once the mirrors are frozen, the new distro is built from the packages in there. In Gentoo or Debian unstable e.g. this is not really the case. The mirrors are not "frozen" but constantlyupdated with new packages.

 

Oh, I forgot to mention: Basically you can upgrade almost any distro without a reinstall from scratch. It is only more complicated, the more you cutomize your machine and add e.g. third-party repos like livna or dag in Fedora or SoS in Mandriva.

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So Debian is a "rolling" distro? meaning it can be upgraded completely to newer releases without the need for a fresh intall? Where is Debian now as compared to, say, mandriva 2006? Is it way behind, or is it at a similar place? I mean, for the "current-ness" of the included software...

 

I hardly ever use my "second" machine (win2k) anymore, and its still a decent machine: AMD XP2000+, 1GB ram, 2 hard drives. I'm thinking about making it a dual-boot (with a "rolling" linux distro) or just getting rid of win2k and making it a rolling distro. And keeping my "working" mandriva 2006 box, which I really like...!

Its hard to say because some packages in cooker might be ahead of Debian testing or the other way round.

You still need to reboot after a dist-upgrade if it changes the kernel but otherwise it just keeps rolling...

Dist-upgrades also work better with broadband :D do it frequently and problems are minimised .. indeed you don't feel its a new system you just open an app and find it was upgraded ...

 

 

The best place to compare is probably tracked packages in distrowatch so you can compare versions directly.

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I never heard the term "rolling release" until today - on another forum somewhere. I like the concept. One of the things I don't like about the FC, Mandriva distros, is "fixing" stuff over & over again - like mp3, etc. Its not hard, just a hassle...

 

what rolling releases are kind of similar to mandriva 2006 - meaning how current are the packages included - kde, gnome, and all the other apps ?

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I was sorta looking for a rolling distro too but I don't want alfa versions, like cooker is now and what i am using atm because that's a bit to broken atm. I do want the latest stable software and don't mind using betas for less critical programs, as long as I can downgrade easily. I also prefer to have a distro with nice gui tools and not fussy about proprietary stuff nor other legal (patent) stuff.

 

Which distro would you recommend then?

 

(btw: one tool that made upgrading in mandriva easier for me is "etc-update" )

Edited by ffi
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I think I remember doing an "apt-get dist-upgrade" under FC2 or maybe FC3. I don't remember if it worked ok... If FC can do the dist-upgrade, why isn't it considered a rolling distro? Ok... now I see... as artic said before, FC is "frozen" after a while...

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Let me just put in my two cents on rolling and point releases.

 

A rolling release is one where updates are put directly into the repositories even if they are new versions - that is, if I install Arch Linux and it has GNOME 2.12, when GNOME 2.14 is released (yes, it already was) then upgrading through the package management system will give me GNOME 2.14 - without having to reinstall or grab the "new" version of Arch Linux. With these distributions, they release CD's when big changes occur so that you don't have to grab a bunch of updates after an install. They also release when there are updates to the installer. However, you could grab any of the releases, install it, and update from that install to the most recent version through the package manager. The repositories are only seperated by stable/unstable/testing/what have you, not by version (10.1, 10.2, etc.)

 

With a "point release" cycle, which is what Mandriva, Red Hat, Novell/SuSe use, they release a new version that includes version upgrades of the software - but the new versions of software aren't released for the old versions of the distribution. That is, if I have Mandriva 10.1 I can't really expect to install packages made for 10.2 on it. I have to actually upgrade to 10.2 - whether I do this through a fresh install or through the "upgrade" choice in the installer, I still have to go through the whole install process. And with a point release, version upgrades for the packages are only released when the new distribution version comes out. That is, GNOME 2.14 won't be out for Mandriva until the next release after GNOME 2.14 is released - which could be a whole year with their new release cycle.

 

With rolling release, I get GNOME 2.14 as soon as it's packaged, which may be a few weeks at most.

 

I hope that makes sense...

 

Basically: Rolling release "rolls", upgrades are just made for the distribution and not for a specific version, so you don't have repositories for each release but just for the current. This often means you get the new versions of packages/programs at a much faster rate, and therefore are more bleeding edge. Point releases only get big upgrades (GNOME, KDE, etc.) when a new version of the distribution is released, not on-the-fly. This tends to mean you are more likely to fall behind if you only use official packages for the distribution. And with rolling release, once installed you never have to grab and install the "next version" because you already have it ;)

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Like tyme explained rather well its all about how things are released.

I find it works better in Debian if you keep them regular since you don't end up with huge changes .. and occaisionally something needs rolling back which in Debian is done by specifiying or pinning to a specific version.

 

Its actually easy but .... like riding a bike it takes a bit of practice to work it out.. Gentoo and Debian have so many packages its hard to begin to understand them all.

 

Debian does have point releases as well as rolling but they are very far apart.

I haven't tried arch but it gets raves from its enthusiasts and Gentoo means a lot of CLI .. but you understand it afterwards and the documentation is excellent because of this.

 

Debian has different levels of notification during upgrades so you can be informed of everything or ask it totake the defaults or 3 levels inbetween ...

 

However you need to be prepared to answer the questions (though you can always redo the config step)

 

I'd recommend a Kanotix install simply because Debian/Gentoo and I guess arch have steep learning curves and kanotix lets you use it at the same time...

 

The nice thing in Gentoo and Debian is nothing happens in a GUI you can't easily edit by hand and visa versa (I guess with arch and slackware too).

Witrh debian and even Ubuntu I found tools doing things that I couldn't work out how to edit by hand. (In Ubuntu it was the network config) and in Mandriva this seems pretty common until you know it back to front.

 

In some ways i think the learning curve is steeper in Mandriva between taking their choices and the MCC and doing stuff by hand than the initial learning curve of Gentoo because in Gentoo you just follow VERY detailed instructions wheras working out what MCC just did to your network can be a nightmare.

 

Gentoo is problematic on an only machine in that to really benefit you need to compile everything which is a great leanring experience but on a slower machine takes away the immediacy of trying a new package quickly ...

 

Debian more or less installs everything running (far more than urmpi on complex apps because of the interaction in the configure phase) but if your thinking of a learnig experience on a spare machine then why not try arch or gentoo ....

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tyme, very good summation of the differences...

 

Since all my linux experience is with "point" releases, I'm all fired up to try a rolling release. When I said before, that I would install a rolling release on my win2k box cuz I didn't use win2k anymore - I forgot that I'm taking a few "distance education" courses (online university courses) that require winblows (I'm currently taking a project management class, and have to use MS Project). And upcoming courses will also require winblows, I'm sure - like Dreamweaver, etc...

 

Anyway, I hate to turn this into a "what distro should I use" thread... everyone's tired of those. So, what distro should I use...? :D Ha, just kidding...

 

but I am interested in the major diffs (if any) between the rolling releases. I mean, how do the installers compare (the easier the better), how about the pkg mgmt (also the easier the better)... blah blah...

 

thanks !!

 

what are all the rolling releases? debian, gentoo, and arch? (and is it like "archie' or is it like "ark") ??

 

edit: gowator, also a good summation. I was posting this before seeing your post.

Edited by null
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Kanotix is a very good distro. However I prefer to install a pure Debian system to a customized Kanotix installation (which is almost pure Debian). If I want to install Debian the fast way with the latest packages from the stable tree, I use GenieOS, which is basically only a basic debian installation with a script that asks you if you wan to install Gnome or KDE as GUI and then downloads everything from the mirrors. Once the system is up and running, you can easily switch to Debian unstable, if you want with apt-get. GenieOS makes the installation and initial configuration of Debian VERY easy (compared to a traditional Debian installation).

 

Gentoo is probably the most complicated installation as you have to also decide for yourself if you want to do a stage 1, stage 2 or stage 3 installation, apart from all the other things to consider. And it is CLI only, unless you ue the Live-CD that has a graphical installer, which works sometimes and sometimes simply stalls for whatever reason.

 

Arch is not overly complicated to install (If you can install Slack, you should be able to install Arch, too), but the documentation is definitely not top-notch imho, compared to other distros, thus you should know your way around in a linux system if you plan to install Arch. I guess that they are working on improving their documentation though.

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