Converting Ubuntu To A Rolling Release Using Rolling Rhino · The Kernal
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Ubuntu is a point release distro, meaning that it has multiple releases that you update between. However, there are many people who would instead prefer to have a rolling release distro, where there is one release that gets continually updated. While some people would move to another distro, like Debian Sid, or even Arch Linux, there is a way that you can turn Ubuntu Linux into a rolling release distro. The method that I am going to show you today, it a lot faster than doing it manually, and it entails downloading a shell script which will automatically change you to the ‘devel’ release.
  • Arthur BesseM
    1•2 years ago

    As someone wrote in 2017 at Ubuntu Bug #1728616: using ‘devel’ in sources.list causes apt-get update to fail [via]:

    The whole ‘devel’ thing has been half-broken in one way or another since it was introduced. My advice is just to not use it. And I honestly think we should remove all remnants of it from launchpad and the Ubuntu/PPA archives as well. Trying to treat “the latest at any given point” as the same thing as a “rolling” distribution may have been fun to score some political points, but it doesn’t actually do useful things.

    Looking at the issues for “rolling-rhino” it looks like that is still the situation today.

  • @beansniffer@lemmy.ml
    1•2 years ago

    What is the use case for doing this compared to just using a different distro with newer packages? Fedora is very nearly as well supported for most software but has newer packages than Ubuntu while also innovating by including newer technologies first. With also Ubuntu pushing Snaps heavily as well makes me question why anybody runs Ubuntu at all anymore when better distros exist.

    • @Whom@lemmy.ml
      2•2 years ago

      I agree that Fedora or a proper rolling release would be a better choice, but re: using Ubuntu at all as a desktop user, there’s a few reasons. First of all, its install and setup process is absolutely painless. Fedora for example requires quite a bit of extra things out of the box. dnf isn’t configured very well, additional repositories aren’t enabled, it’s missing a ton of codecs, it won’t handle nvidia drivers automatically (though they’ve made that easier lately), etc. mostly as a result of its free software policy. Ubuntu has no qualms with delivering proprietary software and otherwise putting principles to the side if it makes the process smoother.

      In addition to that huge one, the vast majority of answers you’re going to find when looking things up will be catered toward Ubuntu, it’s still common for projects to only provide .debs (though this has been made MUCH better since flatpak and appimage came around), or they might be familiar with it from work.

      Depending on your preferred desktop environment they may have the best implementation of it. Ubuntu MATE is to MATE what Fedora is to GNOME, you’re not going to find a MATE experience half as good anywhere else. I wouldn’t be surprised if the same was true for lxqt or something.

      I don’t think Ubuntu is one of the better distros and am more likely to nudge people toward Fedora, Debian, or Arch, but there’s definitely valid reasons to use Ubuntu.