OpenSUSE Tumbleweed
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Tumbleweed
I love openSUSE Tumbleweed. It has a solid automated testing process that means packages will be held back rather than updating and breaking things.
Most Linux distributions are quite reliable, even rolling ones. What usually causes instability are the closed source applications people choose to run on them.
I'm not just pointing out nVidia drivers, I've seen Teams and Visual Studio Code crash an otherwise stable Ubuntu LTS.
I've been running the same arch install for atleast 5 years... I honestly can't recommend any other distro because I haven't used many for a long enough period of time
I have used debian for 20 years, I am very happy with it. Also zero problems with gaming nowadays
NixOS because you can roll back when anything breaks, install stable versions of packages, and put your configuration in version control
And if you need to reinstall -- look at that, your whole config is documented as code.
Have you considered a fixed release in combination with rolling applications (i. e. Flatpak, Snap)?
If you choose Fedora (preferably one of the atomic variants, like Silverblue), you would also get a rolling kernel and rolling KDE Plasma desktop, so overall the experience can be quite close to a rolling release distribution if you install the desktop applications via Flatpak.
Ubuntu "interim" (non-LTS) releases are usually also fairly current and could be a good choice if you don't mind Snap. There's also the option of following the Ubuntu "devel" branch, which always refers to the current pre-release version of Ubuntu (e. g. 24.04 at the moment) and is rolling.
Just wanted to give you a different direction to think about. ;)
just use arch and don't do anything stupid (like not updating regularly)
I don't know how there are people that wait a month between updates, it's like they don't actually want a rolling release.
As someone who used Arch for several years and has been on Tumbleweed for a few years now, life happens. I ran Arch on my laptop, desktop, and a server, and I could go weeks if not 1-2 months between actively using one of those. But when I do, I want the latest software.
So I now use Tumbleweed on my desktop and laptop and Leap on my server. Updates are no longer painful whether it's been a week or a month. I also switched to AMD GPU, which further reduced my issues.
I think Arch is fine, Tumbleweed just fits my lifestyle more. I'll probably move my server to MicroOS one of these days, probably when Leap 15.6 EOL is announced.
life happens
Impossible! Everyone knows Arch users don't have a life. /j
But damn you have a pretty computer free life if you can go weeks between usage.
I have a work computer, Steam Deck, and video game console as well. Sometimes I just don't get around to using my desktop PC or laptop.
I also have kids, and they use my computers more than I do (mostly Minecraft). But I don't personally use them every day (usually 1-2x/week, if that), and I don't run updates every time I use my computer. I do try to remember to update them once/week (usually Saturdays), but that doesn't happen very consistently.
And then there are vacations and whatnot (e.g. we went on a family trip for 3 weeks last year). Life gets busy, and mine doesn't revolve around my computers, my computers are merely tools I use to play games, work on personal projects, and sometimes watch shows.
I'd say Tumbleweed is what you're looking for. They have some sort of automated testing process (OpenQA, I think) and are far more stable than Arch, while oftentimes having newer versions of packages before Arch.
Debian hands down delivers the most stable experience of em all -- even after updating from stable to sid.
t. Did exactly that on a unsupported sbc, "Orange pi zero 3", and everything works.
I'm curious -- what's your motivation for doing this?
Why do you want to use a rolling release over something built for gaming?
If you want a desktop distro up to date with kernel, DE, etc. which does't crash I can advice Fedora. Aftet the six month release cycle it is easy to update. I used it for a couple of years on my home pc and it was very good.