The clock updates every minute.

Strapping tape and cardboard is way cleaner.

I do the same as OP with my Fedora workstation, which is wait till I have to summon all the available mirrors just to serve me several gigs of software updates every other week.

For my servers I have an ansible script to update most of the machines. I fire that up every start of the month after the automatic backups. Seems like I'm a week late again already. In these I use apt dist-upgrade since that seems more robust, but I'm still to shy to run it in a cron job.

"no backup style" hits just right.

That's the lightly slangy version I would normally use, but as long as I was being pedantic I thought I'd better avoid any contractions in that part.

The system files aren't writable, instead you download a new system image when you want to update. No dependency hell or weird issues because these system images are all tested. Your system also keeps one or two old ones around and if by some chance something does go wrong you just select the old one at boot.

Downside is you're more limited on installing software. You can force install things the traditional way but that kinda defeats the point. Instead you have to use things like FlatPak or AppImages which covers most GUI apps you could want. For command line apps you will have to use something like DistroBox.

It's a trade off but for casual desktop users it is super stable and pretty simple. Updates come out daily (depending on distro) and they just get all their software from the software center app with a nice GUI.

(correct me if I'm wrong, I'm also new at this)

There are two partitions. One with the current system, one with the previous system. Updates are applied in a whole batch at once, once in a while.

Current system is cloned into the old one and an update is applied to the clone.

Once the update is complete, system reboots in the clone, and what was the current system becomes the previous one.

If something goes bad, you can reboot into the previous system and fix the clone.

The atomic distro would do a backup and if update goes wrong, it automatically boots back into the previous one.

Agreed! I think a part of the "problem" is that with Nix, there's now at least 3 sides: application specific knowledge, system knowledge, and you have to use the nix language, architecture and tools to interface with it. so for a seasoned linux user, there's maybe just a new programming language, but if you're new to Linux, it's quickly gonna overwhelm you. which in a way is a bit ironic because I'd argue that it's easier to manage a NixOS system, and getting help is so much easier when your problems can be replicated by just aharing your config.

So many Linux problems are solved by using NixOS, it's amazing. Immutability? NixOS. Atomic upgrades? NixOS. Whole system rollbacks? NixOS. Versionned system settings? NixOS. Impermanence? NixOS. Multiple versions of the same program installed at once? NixOS. Containers? NixOS. Multiple hardware profiles on a single installation? NixOS.

At this point, I think the only thing remaining is a Flatpak-like sandbox.

I had success in upgrading a core ubuntu server with only apache and PHP installed … But I don’t think there is a less complicated ununtu install possible.

As long as you update frequently (I do it whenever I think about it, usually once every few days to a week) you shouldn't run into any issues

I recently updated an old laptop from Ubuntu 16 to 24 with no issues whatsoever. Do not start with Arch if you don't have any Linux experience yet.

I've had two different arch based distros have issues when trying to update after long periods. I also had an Ubuntu server fail completely when doing a major version upgrade and had to restore it from backup. But then again I've also had no trouble updating an Ubuntu machine that was a couple years behind.

I'm on Fedora now for my desktop and it's been great so far, but I also do updates at least weekly. My advice would be if you expect to go months between updates your best choice is probably Debian.

Honestly if you are that worried about updates breaking stuff, you might be better off using an immutable distro. These work using images and/or snapshots so it's easy to rollback if something goes wrong. It's also just less likely to go wrong as you aren't upgrading individual packages as much, but rather the base system as a whole. Both Fedora and Open Suse have atomic/immutable variants with derivatives like Universal Blue providing ready to go setups for specific use cases like gaming and workstation use.

Alternatively the likes of Debian rarely break because of updates as everything is thoroughly tested before deployment. Gentoo and void are the same deal but in rolling release format so they are at least somewhat up to date while still being quite well tested.

Was gonna say this. As long as you run dnf update before you upgrade and make sure there aren't any left (you know, like their upgrade dpcs explicitly tell you to), you're chilling.

Only issues I've had with fedora upgrades so far are plasma incompatibilities (not a fedora issue) and nvidia bullshit (not a fedora issue).

He's dead, Jim

2,409 updates could mean like two days of restarts... I'm just going to turn on some bagpipe music and stand on a hill in the wind looking out at the computer shaped clouds on the horizon.

Light the signal fires.

pacman -S without update is safe and will just install a version that was in the repos at the time you last dis an update. stuff gets removed from repos after like a month though..

How long should you wait before installing? It was midnight over 9 hours ago so am I good to go?

Basically reinstalling your OS because of an GCC update is the only gripe I have with Tumbleweed.

I wonder though, did I have the same with Arch? I don't remember.

We're getting things ready for you ( )

The quick way