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?
Kubuntu (Ubuntu but KDE), both great KDE UI and stable kernel. I use Kubuntu LTS.
Devuan testing branch.
NixOS would fit the bill if you’re not afraid of something different. With Nix it’s trivial to cherry pick from unstable channel if you still want a stable base.
Is this not solved by using the “unstable” nixpkgs channel or is that something different?
I’m a NixOS newbie and still learning a lot about it haha
What is your definition of stability? I have used Arch for about ten years without any major breakage, but sometimes you do have to do some manual tinkering if a package stops working. So it’s stable enough for me, but maybe not for others. Since it is a rolling release, packages are generally being updated quite rapidly.
I think that any modern rolling release distro would fit the bill though.
This here! I actually have had really good luck using Arch. I’ve been running it for only a month now and I make certain to patch/update once a week. Thus far it has not left me stranded. I think Arch is underrated as an OS.
I think Arch is underrated as an OS.
I don’t think Arch is anywhere near “underrated”. The “I use Arch, btw” meme didn’t come out of nowhere. A lot of distros are based on Arch too. Even SteamOS (so the Steam Deck is essentially powered by Arch).
In that regard: yes, Arch is awesome. I use it, btw.
Depending on your definitions of up to date and stable:
Any of the releases every 6 months distros are more stable and reasonably up to date - something like Fedora even keeps the kernel updated during those months
OpenSUSE Tumbleweed is rolling release with something called “openQA” that is run on the distro before releasing the snapshot to help stability. It also uses BTRFS with something called “snapper” by default, so if something breaks, you can pick the previous version from the bootloader
