What is the update frequency with Gentoo?

[NeddySeagoon]

Team,

It's a wise man that knows he can have the last word but chooses not to.
Please stop the pantomime.

I would split the panto out of this topic but I only have a mobile phone to work wrth for a few weeks.
Posting at all is difficult enough, never mind more complex moderator tasks.
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Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

[pietinger]

lars_the_bear,

I did not read anywhere that our developer @asturm wrote a “Lars is stupid”, it is inappropriate to put words in his mouth.

This thread started with the question “How is the update cycle with Gentoo?” from a NEW Gentoo user. Your assumption “I'm sure that people reading this forum have sufficient smarts to work out whether my experience is relevant to them or not.” can therefore not apply to new users.

I can only recommend all new users to listen to our developers or users who have been active here for many years.

Of course, everyone is free to use their Linux installation as they wish. But if best practice is asked for, the answer must be: You should update often. If you do it differently, it is your personal pleasure, but should NOT be a recommendation. I even believe that our developers not only have the right, but even the duty to disagree.

I don't think our developers @sam- and @asturm enjoy having to make corrections all the time. It also costs them valuable time. So please refrain from recommending anything to NEW users that does not correspond to our Gentoo philosophy.
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https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/User:Pietinger

[asturm]

Maybe there is a language/culture barrier but I am at my wits' end how else to tell someone that it is not in any way accurate for them to show up in every other thread with the same story of how they struggled to deal with Gentoo, without disclosing the special setup they tried to run on multiple systems while not realising the implications of syncing sources at different times from a rolling release distribution. We've all been there, in one way or the other, learning from our first failed attempt at running a Gentoo system [and there's no shame in that].

[NeddySeagoon]

The problem is one of unstated assumptions.

Lars has gone off the 'Gentoo piste' and encountered problems of his own making.
The regulars here know that. He has recounted his personal experience accurately but without the context that would help a new user realise that his experience is not typical.

asturm called him for that, which is how the forums work. I've been called for getting it wrong too.

Lars, the correct course of action would have been to add it to your 'Things I Learned Today' list, post an acknowledgment and move on.

None of this helps the OP, so it does not belong in the topic.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

[xanrer]

[psycho]

You will from time to time encounter the kind of pain you experienced with Arch: it's inevitable with rolling release. People in the GNU/Linux world often use the term "stable" in confusingly different ways. Some people are thinking of stability in the sense that the system works and doesn't break down... but that can be a case of good luck. A genuinely stable OS is not rolling release: it's "stable" in the sense that nothing changes (except for necessary security patches and bugfixes), so you can actually count on its having the other kind of stability, rather than just hoping things will keep working after updates.

So Gentoo "stable" is rolling release and therefore can never be as dependable as the likes of Debian stable... but in terms of the first kind of stability (stuff working properly) it's great, and if you update regularly you won't hit many problems. Gentoo is an excellent OS, arguably the best general purpose OS in the world in the sense of its supporting so many radically different potential goals with so little effort from users; but whether or not it's "better" in any pragmatic sense, it's certainly the most fun.

[dmpogo]

Going back to the topic:

In my case, I distinguish part of OS that makes hardware run, which is basically kernel, on some machines nvidia drivers, and I'll put virtualbox here and userspace.

I update the kernel only until all my hardware is supported. Usually, with a new machine, it is a first year after purchase. After that I basically freeze the kernel.
I stayed on 4.19 from 2018 to 2023 on all my machines, switching to 5.15 only this January, since support to 4.19 was completely dropped. I do update the kernel withing the family fi some serious security issue arises.

Two of my machine are production, which run codes, sometimes for several people, most all the time. Updating kernel and reboot is a not an easy decision.

Userspace I update fairly frequently. Actually it is a time of relaxation for me to look what new packages came out. So I synch frequently. But updates, especially of large parckages, I delay a bit, since often within short period there will come up -r1 correction

I never had problems with updates in 20 years - it is like 'what do people talk about' ? But I run strictly stable, with just couple of packages that have no stable version. Such as nethack