[mythtv-users] Backend OS - opinions on Archlinux

[Kenni Lund]

2013/1/6 Nick Rout <nick.rout at gmail.com>:
> I am looking at updating my backend, made necessary by the fact that it is
> mythbuntu 10.04 (no myth 0.26 packages).
>
> I really hate this 2 yearly cycle of updating ubuntu distros, even on LTS. I
> thought maybe a rolling release like Arch would alleviate me from having to
> do that.

IMHO, you'll run into more issues when running a rolling release
distro than you would with a server distribution, like Ubuntu LTS
server, RHEL or BSD.

I've been using Arch Linux as my primary OS since 2005, including on
my home server/MythTV backend from 2005 to 2011. I'm still using it on
my primary laptop.

The issue with rolling release distributions on servers are that every
application on the server suddenly can receive a major update which
requires your attention. So when you perform a regular system update,
which you expect to spend 5 minutes on, you'll end up spending 3
hours, since you need to update some configuration file to be
compatible with the new major release of some application which was
updated. You can choose to avoid updating some of your applications,
but it will only be a matter of time until other packages on the
system becomes incompatible with your hold-back packages, and hence
forcing you to update the packages anyway.

You avoid this issue when using a server distribution which only have
minor updates (security and bugfix updates). With these distros you
can plan in advance to spend one day every 2-5 years and do a major OS
update there, instead of unwillingly spending a couple of hours every
now and then to fix issues introduced by major version release updates
and bugs in bleeding edge software versions.

My point being: Rolling release is nice for systems where you would
like to have the latest and greatest software versions, but not so
much on a "critical" (WAF, etc) server appliance which should "just
work" and have zero (unplanned) downtime.

Best regards
Kenni