So now what distro are we running for LTS desktops?

Ubuntu has too many problems for me to want to run it. However, it has occurred to me that there aren’t a lot of distros that are like the Ubuntu LTS.

Basic requirements for a LTS:

  • at least 2 years of support
  • semi recent versions of applications like Chrome and Firefox (might consider flatpak)
  • a stable experience that isn’t buggy
  • fast security updates

Distros considered:

  • Debian (stable)
  • Rocky Linux
  • openSUSE
  • Cent OS stream
  • Fedora

As far as I can tell none of the options listed are quite suitable. They are either to unstable or way to out of date. I like Rocky Linux but it doesn’t seem to be desktop focused as far as I can tell. I would use Debian but Debian doesn’t have the greatest security defaults. (No selinux profiles out of the box)

crispy_kilt,

Debian.

gerdesj,

My wife’s laptop absolutely has to work. For some mad reason I decided on Arch for it. Actually a rolling distro is not so mad. You get the latest stuff and in general issues are fixed as quickly as a LTS jobbie or you get a work around in the forums or you dig out the source and a compiler. It’s no accident that the Arch wiki is an oft cited resource. Its not for everyone!

I’ve been looking at a similar thing for my company and Kubuntu so far is my choice and I’ve already ditched the LTS bit. I need to run AV and the usual corporate bollocks to pass silly tick box exercises, so my options are rather limited.

There is no perfect one size fits all distro, that’s what we have rather a lot of them to choose from - they rise and fall according to natural selection and not artifice. Imagine if all computers were sold with a free/libre OS or none at all and Windows or Apples were a paid for add on. Monolithic OSs are completely deluded about being able to cater for all, without some dreadful contortions.

Anyway, back to the job in hand! If you want a LTS then you must accept older software or you use an LTS as a base and add newer stuff yourself. Most Linux distros allow you to run your own add-ons formally or informally. Gentoo has a rather nifty user patching mechanism for distro ebuilds and you can have your own ebuilds take over entirely. RPM and pkg distros can handle user packages and Ubuntu has PPAs too. I could go on. Also you can go off piste and put stuff into /opt and/or /usr/local!

Please reconsider your use of the term “unstable”. I suggest you write down a list of your requirements and score them according to importance. Then grab a list of OSs and distros - all of them, don’t preclude Windows and Apples: they have their uses. Then score the OSs/distros against your requirements. The scoring might be in the form of a matrix (table). I suggest keeping it simple with a score of -1 to 1 for each item (-1=dislike, 0=neutral/whatevs, +1=like)

Do a pilot project and see how that goes. Take your time. If it is for personal use then run your tests in a VM. Most modern hardware can easily run a VM or two. Virtualbox or VMware Worskstation or KVM (libvirt is a good effort)

The choice is yours. Note that word “choice” - its very important.

possiblylinux127, (edited )

Yeah I do not want Arch or recent packages. I want something I can set and forget.

Right now Pop OS and Linux mint seem like the best options even though they both lack the support of a larger company.

furycd001,
@furycd001@lemmy.ml avatar

Arch can definitely be a “set & forget” type of distro. Just install it, use it correctly, and that’s really it. No need to upgrade to new releases; just keep the system up to date…

sparr,

just keep the system up to date…

The idea that downloading gigabytes of packages every week is a normal and required aspect of using a computer is part of why I left Windows…

furycd001,
@furycd001@lemmy.ml avatar

Doesn’t have to be every week. Could be every other week or at least once a month. I haven’t used Windows since 2002, but personally, I update once a week, and it never takes all that long, maybe 2-3 minutes tops. But I understand that it’s not for everyone…

sparr,

2-3 minutes on what kind of internet connection? How long at 10Mbps?

furycd001,
@furycd001@lemmy.ml avatar

Computer is connected to the router via ethernet. The connection to the router is I believe fiber optics…

possiblylinux127,

I don’t want to keep the system up to date

furycd001,
@furycd001@lemmy.ml avatar

Fair enough…

LeFantome,

Both Pop and Mint offload much of the heavy lifting to Ubuntu. They are not rolling everything from scratch.

possiblylinux127,

True, but unlike Ubuntu they get it right

LeFantome,

I was responding to “they both lack the support of a larger company”.

elucubra, (edited )

I run Mint Cinnamon. It’s been Rock solid for me. You can modify, add, remove whatever you want. With Flatpacks you are mostly up to date. If you want to install a newer kernel you can, and if you have Timeshift running and something breaks, you just roll back.

I see Mint as an Un-enshittified Ubuntu.

I find cinnamon very frienly and comfortable, which I need in a daily driver. To play I have things like NixOS. I could Arch, but I’m not vegan. :)

That said, I’m giving Fedora Kinoite (Atomic) a try in a VM

KISSmyOSFeddit, (edited )

If you want to run Linux on enterprise workstations and expect enterprise level release cycles and support durations, you’re not shopping for one of the free (as in beer) distros.
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop is the best offering. It comes with 7 years of standard support and another 3 years of extended support.

Andromxda,
@Andromxda@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

I’d say or OpenSUSE Leap or Debian

LeFantome,

“I would use Debian but Debian doesn’t have the greatest security defaults. (No selinux profiles out of the box)”

reintech.io/blog/securing-debian-12-with-selinux

Depending on where you fall in the release cycle, Debian Stable will give 2- 3 years of support.

There is also the Debian LTS effort:

wiki.debian.org/LTS

exanime, (edited )

As far as I can tell none of the options listed are quite suitable. They are either to unstable or way to out of date. I like Rocky Linux but it doesn’t seem to be desktop focused as far as I can tell. I would use Debian but Debian doesn’t have the greatest security defaults. (No selinux profiles out of the box)

Check your requirements … I get that you may need 2 year support and you cannot control that, but are you really going to dismiss one of the greatest Linux distros of all time because the “defaults” are not to your liking? You know you can configure it however you want after the installation right?

If you are going to value stability and nice wallpaper with the same importance, you’ll never find a “quite suitable” match

exanime,

I’m running Garuda as a daily driver for work and casual gaming. No problems

Before I was running debian and loved it as well

Ubuntu was a good intro but I left them when they made Unity default (and not ready imo) and was surprised to find I never missed it

jkrtn,

A Universal Blue derivative and rollback if there’s an issue is LTS enough for me.

For an LTS LTS, I’d be looking at Alma or Debian.

What is “way” out of date, in your mind? I thought all LTSes were on kernel version 5-something at the moment.

LeFantome, (edited )

The latest Ubuntu LTS ships with a 6.8 kernel.

Debian Stable ships with a 6.1 kernel.

Even RHEL ( and so Alma too ) ships with a 5.14 kernel ( RHEL 9 ) but it is newer than that really as Red Hat back ports stuff into their kernel.

TheAnonymouseJoker, (edited )
@TheAnonymouseJoker@lemmy.ml avatar

Ubuntu LTS is based on Debian Unstable branch, funnily. So you can probably try Debian Testing or Unstable branches, if Stable is too hardcore for you. I daily drive Bookworm Stable on 2 machines and it is fantastic. I use it with a few Flatpaks and Appimages.

The XZ malicious package did not get pushed to Stable branch, which is one of the reasons why I prefer updating late rather than being an idiot obsessed with consooming updates released 5 minutes ago. I always wait for updates, vet them, read forums and changelogs before hitting the green button.

Tundra,

Debian stable + Flatpak

jakepi,

Debian Testing + flatpak

Testing is shockingly stable, kind of up to date, and rolling. Since you will use Flatpak for all your apps it really removes a lot of risk that dependencies will break an app.

I use this combo as my daily driver for my work PC, knock on wood it’s been super solid!

dino,

I also use Debian Testing as a work computer. But I am used to more bleeding edge distros. So if somebody strives for rock solidness, I think default debian stable is even a better choice.

mactan,

what is the actual use case of LTS on regular desktop non-workstation anyway?

possiblylinux127, (edited )

Low maintenance and repeatability

dino,

what is a regular desktop non-workstation??

Shareni,

Is the system working after the install? If yes, it’ll work for years until the next version and you don’t need to worry about it. With rolling release every update can mess up your system.

mactan,

it’s software, every update can mess up your system. your only guaranteed good media is the install ISO, after that it’s only as good as the packager, even for LTS

Shareni,

If you’re going to be pedantic, not even an ISO is guaranteed to work perfectly. The point is that a security patch is far less likely to cause issues than some random release. And that’s even before going into broken releases like GRUB on arch.

mactan,

LTS ISO aren’t guaranteed to work? isn’t that the point, install once and run forever?

Shareni,

That’s why I started my first comment with:

Is the system working after the install?

Linux devs aren’t magic men who can test an absurd number of hardware combinations. Also, they depend on package maintainers to release a non-security fix before they start freezing packages and testing them.

The point is that if there’s an issue, it’s well researched and you can usually easily find a solution as people have been having that same issue for the last few years.

Tattorack,
@Tattorack@lemmy.world avatar

Enjoying a stable OS?

Presi300, (edited )
@Presi300@lemmy.world avatar

Except, that older versions of desktop environments tend to be less stable…

Tattorack,
@Tattorack@lemmy.world avatar

Cutting edge versions aren’t stable either. You’re essentially a beta tester for new features that may end up in an LTS release.

I’d rather have an LTS release where things have generally been tested well enough to warrant an LTS release.

azvasKvklenko,

I’d say it depends and it’s mostly just a theory that applies in some cases (like with kernel, critical infrastructure, server software) but usually desktop stack in LTS is just stinky old, which doesn’t make it any more stable, in some cases less stable.

Usually desktop environments are locked to some old versions and in theory fixes should get applied by the distro maintainers. In practice, actual developers behind desktops long moved on and don’t support it, bugs can only be fixed by huge code rework and it can’t be easily applied on top of old version (or can introduce new bugs and require testing). You end up with bugs that were fixed in upstream like 2 years ago and you will only get it improved upon new LTS upgrade cycle.

For example, LTS absolutely sucks for Plasma, because for last few years, each version is less and less buggy. On Debian/Ubuntu you won’t even get current version as they release the new OS, let alone recent inprovement

SpaceCadet,
@SpaceCadet@feddit.nl avatar

Stable means unchanging in this context.

Presi300,
@Presi300@lemmy.world avatar

No, stable for me means “it’s not buggy and broken”

SpaceCadet, (edited )
@SpaceCadet@feddit.nl avatar

That’s a you problem. Your interpretation is wrong.

Quoting from the Debian Manual:

This is what Debian’s Stable name means: that, once released, the operating system remains relatively unchanging over time.

Presi300,
@Presi300@lemmy.world avatar

Yes, and that’s exactly the reason why I’d never recommend debian for a desktop

rezifon,

Just to be clear, the “reason” here is that your expectations are not correctly aligned with the project goals.

wyrmroot,

a stable experience that isn’t buggy

Stable has a particular meaning with distros but I think the context here is using the plain English definition of the word.

SpaceCadet, (edited )
@SpaceCadet@feddit.nl avatar

We are talking about LTS distros, not about bridges. The context is pretty clear.

Shareni,

STABLE definition: 1. firmly fixed or not likely to move or change

dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/…/stable

LeFantome, (edited )

I am not going to say that you are wrong. Make your own choices.

For words to be useful though, they have to mean the same thing for the person sharing them and the person receiving them. Definitions matter.

In the Linux community, “stable” means not changing. It is not a statement about quality or reliability. The others words you used, “buggy” and “broken”, are better quality references.

Again, you do you. But expect “the community” to reinforce their definitions because common understanding is essential if something like Lemmy is going to work.

Shareni,

Stable in the Linux world means that it doesn’t change often, not that it never has anything wrong with it. That means that if you come across a bug, it’s most likely well researched and has solutions. When you use a bleeding edge distro you’re left to your own troubleshooting skills or begging for help.

LeFantome, (edited )

As suggested elsewhere, I think your requirements map quite well to Linux Mint. I prefer the Debian Edition but it has a shorter support window ( not LTS ).

If you want / need selinux then you may prefer the RHEL camp. Others have proposed Rocky. I would do Alma ( especially given your security focus ). Either way, the desktop software is going to be ancient and package selection limited. One solution is Flatpak. Another is distrobox.

An Alma desktop with applications coming from an Arch install via Distrobox would be the best of both worlds. The desktop and overall environment would be rock stable, secure, and boring. Yet the library of applications would be huge and, once installed, they would stay very up-to-date.”

SELinux is available on Debian though: reintech.io/blog/securing-debian-12-with-selinux

danielfgom,
@danielfgom@lemmy.world avatar

Linux Mint Debian Edition

boblemmy, (edited )

Tails. It may not be designed for LTS, but it appears to be stable and secure.

dvdnet62,
@dvdnet62@feddit.nl avatar

Kubuntu and other Ubuntu derivatives are okay. they still use apt/flatpak on their software center

possiblylinux127, (edited )

Not the official ones

dvdnet62,
@dvdnet62@feddit.nl avatar

as long you stayed away from Ubuntu GNOME made by canonical and stick to other Ubuntu derivatives like Kubuntu,Xubuntu etc. they are good and stable distros without forced snap (I know Thunderbird,Chromium and Firefox got snapped because of the backend side. So, this is not their fault and you can switch to other ppas to mitigate this) and their software center app like discover still prioritise apt and flatpak.

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