Good Morning from my Robotics Lab! This is Shadow_8472 and today I have another installment in how I would relearn Linux. Let’s get started!
The Linux ecosystem has a lot of moving parts within easy view of the end user. Various distributions curate these often redundant parts in line with their respective goals. For example: how new do you like/want/need your software?
If “Cutting Edge” is the latest and greatest, then developers and enthusiasts willing to volunteer time and effort reporting bugs and provide feedback for new features belong on the “Bleeding Edge” – typically using a some sort of rolling release or compile-it-yourself based package manager.
On the hand, if the system’s goal is to not need sudo every few days, a stable system like Ubuntu or one of its many downstreams may be a better choice, but know that distros aimed at an Enterprise audience may leave you spending excessive amounts of time dumpster diving through backports for missing dependencies trying to compile source code when a two-year-old feature comes up missing (ask-me-how-I-know).
My pick is that I maintain a bit of everything. I have two computers I use as daily drivers. One runs EndeavourOS and another PopOS. EndeavourOS is Arch-based and on a rolling release while PopOS is Ubuntu-based with releases every few months. This way, if major changes break something with software I use across both devices don’t hit me all at once. Just this past week, I re-booted into KDE 6 on EndeavourOS and Discord immediately started having problems displaying messages as I draft them and occasionally the whole window would black out until interacted with. Turns out KDE 6 defaults to using Wayland instead of the old graphics display system, X (also called xorg, X11, x.org, etc). These are/this is [a] bug[s] that need[s] attention before X is retired from mainstream use. I now know to look out for it/them when KDE 6 comes to PopOS – probably sometime later this year. For now, X is still around in case a fallback is needed.
Takeaway
While my alert system to changing conditions is adequate for me at this time, another approach to consider is staying current on news regarding projects you use. I didn’t note his name, but I did come across someone saying he read about the KDE 6 Wayland. Time will prove the choice pioneering or foolish.
Final Question
Where do you balance on the innovation vs. stability scale?