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OpenSUSE To Offer a Rolling Release Repository
dkd903 writes "While the rumors of Ubuntu moving to a rolling release have been brought to a halt, another major Linux distribution is looking to provide a rolling release. In a message to the opensuse-project mailing list, openSUSE developer Greg Kroah-Hartman announced a new project – openSUSE Tumbleweed. OpenSUSE Tumbleweed will provide a rolling release for those openSUSE users who wishes to have a rolling release. It will essentially be a repo containing the latest stable versions of the applications."
What I like about rolling releases is you get to deal with application incompatabilities one at a time as they come up, rather than having to spend a week or few all at once when upgrading a distro.
I think it's also probably better for security, as you get the latest patches for the software. (I know the security patches get applied to downlevel releases as well by distributors, but that seems so cumbersome compared to following the application's software releases.)
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
I have to admit however that this is an issue of virtually all linux distros.
They confuse system software with user software
Ideally the system software should be fixed for a period to serve as a platform for developers, while user software would be constantly upgraded.
But alas, until this confusion is cleared you have to choose between having a stable platform or updated user software.
Rolling releases make horrible targets for 3rd party developers, specially shrink wrap software vendors.
On the other hand it is not true as you say that you don't know what release you are running or that you can't stay on that release.
When you are on a rolling distro you are effectively staying on a fixed and well know platform known as the current release . That's all you have to know when you ask for help in forums so it's not like you are lost in a limbo.
But... the future refused to change.
any stats will be very rough estimates and completely depend on what B.S. methodology you wish to use. I took distrowatches distro popularity page, took the top 23 which included everything I care about, and normalized Ubuntu 10%
Mint 8.6
Fedora 8.6
openSUSE 6.7
Debian 6.4
Sabayon 5.1
PCLinuxOS 4.3
Arch 4.1
Ultimate 3.5
CentOS 3.5
Puppy 3.5
Mandriva 3.2
MEPIS 3.1
Red Hat 3.0
Unity 2.8
Slackware 2.8
Chakra 2.7
Macpup 2.6
Tiny Core 2.5
Pinguy 2.4
BackTrack 2.2
FreeBSD 2.2
Gentoo 2.1