this post was submitted on 28 Jun 2024
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Linux
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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Stable has nothing to do with outdated packages.
That's a personal decision by a distro.
Fedora is a stable distro because generally the packages stay on the same major version throughout the version, however they have a list of exceptions for certain applications that should be updated for security or perhaps they don't follow a major/minor/bugfix release and it's bad practice to hack together your own versions.
Fedora rebases it's packages every 6 months, so it's never left far behind.
I see! Thank you for the explanation, I'm still very new as this is my first Linux and I did no planning or intentional research before swapping over, I just got mad at Windows and was formatting my main dive 15 minutes later. I avoided Mint specifically because I'd seen lemmy threads saying it was using old packages on purpose for stability reasons, and that for actual gaming I'd want rolling release?
It all depends on what you actually want to do.
I have a computer connected to the TV with Chimera installed because that's SteamOS 3 with emulators preconfigured and is completely couch + controller friendly.
My laptop has Fedora because it's up to date, but everything is tested before release, and all upgrade paths are automated unlike Arch which burnt me in the past with breaking changes.
On my Pi's I have Diet Pi, which is Debian but has images for each of the different ARM boards and has a bunch of scripts for setting up print servers, Home Assistant, etc. I want Debian for it's slow unchanging nature there.
On my desktop, less so.
But underneath they are all Linux, and they all behave in very similar ways, it's all about the initial setup.