fedora is a good middle ground

OpenSUSE tumbleweed is a good compromise IMO. it is also a rolling release distro with built in snapshotting. So if anything does go wrong it takes ~5 mins to roll back to the last good snapshot. You can set the same thing up on arch but it isn't ootb and YAST is a great management tool as well.

Is there a good sort of middle ground distro between the reliability of Debian and the up-to-date packages of arch?

This guy:

(OpenSUSE Tumbleweed).
Or maybe Slowroll.

Fedora is a good middle ground, it's what Asahi Linux uses as its official distro

Absolutely. Here's three options

Fedora updates every, or around every, 3 months. This is very stable but very up to date.Most professional devs particularly ones working in Linux projects use it fornit's relative stability while having modern packages.

There's also PopOS! which is a rolling release, updating daily, but much more delayed than arch thus being much more usable.

Now for my favourite, OpenSuse Tumbleweed. Same style as PopOs but with a KDE, or gnome spin or of the box. A bit more sleek too. It also has YAST which is the best GUI based managment system on Linux.

I use arch (btw) but have a second duel booted tumbleweed install for work related stuff in order tonensure stability

OpenSUSE Tumbleweed.

I've found openSUSE tumbleweed to be the perfect mix between stable and constant updates. By default uses brtfs so if you break something the fix is a simple as rolling back to the snapshot that was automatically made right before the update

To be honest PopOS is great. Frequent updates, good (subjective) design and ui choices, just works. If it fits your vibe I would say it is a good balance!

Fedora is generally pretty good

Debian Stable isn't the only way to run Debian though people often act like it. That said, if you want the stability of Debian Stable then run it with the nix package manager (nix-bin).

You could.. of course also try to use Debian Testing (which is more stable than Debian Unstable), but also more up to date than just Debian Stable.

https://wiki.debian.org/DebianTesting And see also: https://www.debian.org/releases/testing/ (currently "trixie" is the testing release).

EDIT: I mention this, because nobody mentioned it yet.

What's wrong with Ubuntu/Mint/PopOS/Fedora or any of the distros usually recommended? They're easier to maintain and more up to date than Debian

For private use? Hot take, but Arch. It's easy to maintain and not easy to break at all. I think I spend zero time on maintenance other than running package updates. I only reinstall when I get a new computer.

(I say for private use only because you'll be getting weird looks from people if you use arch on a server in a professional setting, and it might break if you try to update it after five years of not doing it since there aren't any "releases" to group big changes - in practice I run arch on my home server too with no issues)

OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. Rolling release, but has QA on the weekly builds. It fits between Debian and Arch for sure.

This may be an unpopular opinion, but NixOS. It has package up-to-dateness comparable to (and sometimes better than) Arch, but between being declarative (and reproducible) and allowing rollbacks, it's much harder to break. The cost is, of course, having to learn how to use NixOS, as it's a fair bit different to using a "normal" Linux distro.

Arch is easy to maintain and is stable enough. Of course you can make Arch unstable if you do greedy stuff, but if you use like a normal person, it will be fine

It's using Arch for 5 years now and I never broke my system, for example

Tumbleweed

fedora maybe?

I would say:

• Fedora if you like a point release, which means that every 6 months you do a big update of core stuff like the desktop environment, and on Fedora everything else is always generally up to date.
• OpenSUSE Thumbleweed if you like a rolling release, which means that you don't do big updates, everything is kept to the last version that the software repository has, this is how arch works except in Thumbleweed the repositories are updated slower than in arch and less likely to break.

But you could also go for any more up to date debian-based distro, like Pop_OS or even Ubuntu, they might be easier for a newbie user. Fedora and OpenSUSE will be more up to date though.

If you do use Ubuntu, don't stick to just LTS versions, use the last version available (which right now happens to be an LTS version). The "extra support" it offers is not something desktop users care about, it's outweighted by the benefits of more updated software.

Fedora and Debian testing

Nobody here for Mint? I’m a long time Ubuntu user but when i do my next upgrade it will be to mint.

Debian-Testing (Trixie) is the way to go. It's a rolling release, but it's very stable, because packages end up there after being tested in Sid (their unstable rolling release). Whatever makes it out of Trixie, ends up on the normal Debian. I've been running it since April without any breakages.

SuSE Slowroll. Not rolling release. Also not super-conservative like Debian is.

another recomendation for Fedora from me

Debian and learn to use the nix package manager for your bleeding edge stuff

Debian Testing has a lot more current packages, and is generally fairly stable. Debian Unstable is rolling release, and mostly a misnomer (but it is subject to massive changes at a moment's notice).

Fedora is like Debian Testing: a good middleground between current and stable.

I hear lots of good things about Nix, but I still haven't tried it. It seems to be the perfect blend of non-breaking and most up-to-date.

I'll just add to: don't believe everything you hear. Distrowars result in rhetoric that's way blown out of proportion. Arch isn't breaking down more often than a cybertruck, and Debian isn't so old that it yearns for the performance of Windows Vista.

Arch breaks, so does anything that tries to push updates at the drop of a hat; it's unlikely to brick your pc, and you'll just need to reconfigure some settings.

Debian is stable as its primary goal, this means the numbers don't look as big on paper; for that you should be playing cookie clicker, instead of micromanaging the worlds' most powerful web browser.

Try things out for yourself and see what fits, anyone who says otherwise is just trying to program you into joining their culture war

Probably not the place to ask, but. Say In a n00b and have Arch (EndeavourOS BTW) on a 15+ year old laptop. Everything works fine hardware wise. Software is fairly basic web, Inkscape, LibreOffice.

Do I really need all the latest Arch updates? Or can I just do an update say every 6 months?

My server has been on Endeavour OS (arch with a gui installer) for at least 18 months. I run updates roughly every 10 days (basically whenever I remember). Never had a problem with it. I dare say it could go horribly wrong at some point so I keep the LTS kernel installed as well just as a fall back.

My main pc is also running Endeavour OS (dual boot with windows 11). Other than having to keep Bluetooth downgraded to support the ps5 dual sense controller, it runs great.

My only gripe is that updates often contain something that forces the kernel rebuild process and so it needs a reboot afterwards.

Every other Linux I've run has had some sort of "rebuild to fix" type issue at some point, or had been hard to find good support information for. Endeavour OS has been the most reliable and the easiest to fix and find support for.

I guess I'm kind of confused as to the debate between Bleeding Edge vs Stable. I get the concept on paper, but what packages are so imperative that you need a Distro that is "Bleeding Edge". I run Pop_OS and it works great on my hardware(System76 so it kind of has the home field advantage). I have an old laptop running LMDE that doesn't ever need rebooted and it has every package I need for it to accomplish its job.

Others have given better advice than I will, but maybe determine why you need something that's bleeding edge. If the only answer is "Cuz Shiny new stuff!" I don't think it's needed that bad and tailor your setup for stability and functionality. I prefer Just Works Distros though. VM's are also a thing if you want to do some Distro Hopping

Manjaro has been specifically designed to have fresh packages (sourced from Arch) but to be user friendly, long term stable, and provide as many features as possible out of the box.

It requires some compromises in order to achieve this, in particular it wants you to stick to its curated package repo and a LTS kernel and use it's helper apps (package/kernel/driver manager) and update periodically. It won't remain stable if you tinker with it.

You'll get packages slower than Arch (depending on complexity, Plasma 6 took about two months, typically it's about two weeks) but faster than Debian stable.

I'm running it as my main driver for gaming and work for about 5 years now and it's been exactly what I wanted, a balanced mix of rolling and stable distro.

I've also given it to family members who are not computer savvy and it's been basically zero maintenance on my part.

If it has one downside is that you really have to leave it alone to do its thing. In that regard it takes a special category of user to enjoy it — you have to either be an experienced user who knows to leave it alone or a very basic user who doesn't know how to mess with it. The kind of enthusiastic Linux user who wants to tinker will make it fall apart and hate it, and they'd be happier on Arch or some of the other distros mentioned here.

That's Void Linux, exactly how I would describe Void...

Atomic distros + distrobox/toolbx. Bluefin is a good start for general desktop or Bazzite for gaming (But Bluefin can be more stable, I use it for some games with steam in flatpak). If something breaks roll back to any release in the last 90 days with a single command. Install all of your packages in a distrobox (Arch if you need it). Otherwise in general Fedora is pretty good.