this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2024
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so a common claim I see made is that arch is up to date than Debian but harder to maintain and easier to break. Is there a good sort of middle ground distro between the reliability of Debian and the up-to-date packages of arch?

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[–] GlenRambo@jlai.lu 6 points 1 month ago (4 children)

Probably not the place to ask, but. Say In a n00b and have Arch (EndeavourOS BTW) on a 15+ year old laptop. Everything works fine hardware wise. Software is fairly basic web, Inkscape, LibreOffice.

Do I really need all the latest Arch updates? Or can I just do an update say every 6 months?

[–] sorrybookbroke@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

The issue with that is potentially keeping software which has security bugs on your system for longer than needed. Also, if you install new software you'll have a partial upgrade which can degrade your system. If you don't install anything though, your system should work as it currently does without issue. Unless a particular app takes something from the internet which may need the upgraded software (say, discord, spotify, etc. as they're electron based.)

If that's what you want to do I would suggest switching to xubuntu, mint xfce edition, DSL, etc. as they'll still patch security updates in. You do you though of course as with your stated usecase I can't see any functional issue. I don't see the reason for arch though.

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