Like this:

I have been reflecting on the topic for a while now. So far from the more “current distros” I have used Suse, Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian Testing; tried Mandriva, Arch. From the stable ones I am using Debian Stable, have tried CentOS. I will try to be as straightforward as possible.
The good about the bleeding edge is that you can enjoy the current trends in FOSS. The user has the latest version of their favorite apps and should they buy brand new hardware, it will run.
What I don’t like about them: the maintainers do not do their job. Seriously. Maintainers should test software before they upload it; instead, all garbage comes into the repos and after installation, system does not work as it should. In my case with Ubuntu (under virtualbox) after every update something did not work. Either the system hang, or some app wouldn’t work. Freezes were constant. The last tine under Fedora when I tried Firefox, it crashed every 15-20 sites. Excuse me, but I don’t find this acceptable. Nevertheless, it seems that the majority of users prefer those distributions to the archaic stable.
I prefer stable distributions, however. In Debian stable there are no such instabilities. Everything is tested and works. There are two problems that I see with those stable ones: first, if I decide to buy a brand new piece of hardware, it will refuse to work because the kernel I use is a little old. Not what the average user would want. And second, there are no perfect programmers in the world. There will always be bugs. When one reports a bug, there are two responses from the maintainers, all others are similar: either 1 : “I don’t maintain this version anymore, check the newest version” or 2: “The patch will be included in the newest version, so check it out when it is released.” Okay, should all users to be beta-testers? I don;t think so. In spite of this, this is what actually happens.
In the end, most users prefer the more bleeding edge distributions. I don’t like those. When I want something fresh, I can always compile it. When I buy new hardware, if it refuses to work, then I install a newer kernel and that does the magic. But unlike others I hate when the system gives me headaches because of the stupid decisions of the maintainer, so I don’t think I will track something non-stable anytime soon. My current Debian Stable does its best to serve till the last days of my hardware.

Advertisement