Maybe what I’m looking for is the holy grail, but what do you guys suggest as a Distro with a good balance between stability and up-to-date packages?
Manjaro OS is stable and gives upto date packages seems this should meet your requirements.
By definition that’s impossible, stable means packages don’t get updated, so their version is stable. If you meant stability outside of the Linux world, as in “doesn’t break” then most rolling release would fit, personally I use Manjaro, and have used Arch and Gentoo in the past, Tumbleweed is also a good option that others have recommended.
The holy grail, stable and up-to-date, it exists, it’s called Debian with Flatpaks.
Install Debian. Avoid doing any changes to your package selection, try to get things from flatpaks.
Problem with debian is it’s stable in the sense of unchanging, not necessarily a lack of bugs.
He’s saying he wants up to date packages and stability, which seems to mean he was current software without bugs. That’s not debian stable.
None, but bugs stick around way longer in debian stable because of how old the software is.
Did you… really think I was talking about a bugless distro?
This is my preferred way off doing things, but trying to glue VSCode + Android Studio + the Flutter SDK + Docker + … together via Flatpack was an exercise in pain and sadness last time I tried it.
Getting all my normal boring desktop apps via Flatpack is awesome, but for a developer it just doesn’t seem practical right now
Devuan testing branch.