← Back to context

Comment by Milpotel

3 days ago

> Depending on the particular distro, only certain core packages are likely to get updates on LTS releases.

All LTS distros fix only some core packages sporadically as no one is able to back port all the patches esp. since most packages do not use CVEs and just fix bugs on the go. "Stable" for non-rolling distributions simply means "horribly broken and outdated".

5 comments

Milpotel

Reply
manwe150  3 days ago

It’s not horribly broken any more than your toaster is for not needing constant updates. Though I do have such a longstanding love/hate relationship with Ubuntu because of this. It is why it runs everywhere and just works (even powers the WSL2 defaults), but everything it provides also always so very far behind I end up recompiling so much important stuff by hand.

  • Milpotel  3 days ago

    > It’s not horribly broken any more than your toaster is for not needing constant updates.

    I don't know where this sense of "stable" in the community comes from. Software isn't perfect and gets fixed all the time. Yes, there are packages with different maintained stable branches that you can pin for your LTS distribution but this is by far the minority. For the other stuff you constantly have to work around missing features or existing bugs. E.g., why do I have to compile "jq" by myself just because the outdated package crashes on certain inputs?!