Linux too fragile, coming home to Solarish again. Linux ZFS problematic.
 

I have now tried Ubuntu LTS for a couple of years, but I had too many problems to stay on Ubuntu LTS. Ubuntu LTS is soooo fragile. It pushes out updates frequently, and when I accept the updates, there is a good chance that it breaks something. I usually accept all updates on Ubuntu LTS but that is not a good strategy I have learned.

(In my experience Windows update is way more stable than Ubuntu LTS. For instance, I had yesterday a large Win10 update "This current version of W10 you are using is soon to expire, please accept this big update" - or something similar. I accepted and after 15 min of working the update caused a blue screen. But W10 immediately backed out and restored everything so W10 works fine again. No problems.)

Later I tried the latest Ubuntu, not a LTS distro. And it was even worse. More fragile and more problems. Now I am using Ubuntu 2020.10, and it is more polished, but more fragile. Every time I basically had to reinstall to fix the problems. Here are some problems I had with Ubuntu.

1) Graphics. I accepted an update and the graphics went from 1440p down to 480p. I tried to fix it, and posted questions on forum, but no one knew how to fix it. I guess it was an update changing from Nvidia driver to open source Noveua driver? I dont know, but it was unusable at 480p. Finally I reinstalled Ubuntu and did not accept updates. It did not work to rollback and try an older Kernel update, because the graphics did overwrite the global settings - or something.

2) Lag. For several versions of Ubuntu, my PC was unusable because of heavy lag. It felt like 1-2 fps or so. I suspect the lag had something to do with Spectre Meltdown Intel bug patches? I had to stay on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS for several years.

3) ZFS. I have an old SSD disk formatted with Solaris 11 ZFS. It worked fine with Ubuntu. Except. Everytime I boot Ubuntu, it adds an entry to "zpool history":
zpool import -c /etc/zfs/zpool.cache -aN
So I have now over 300 lines in the history. Will it grow to 1,000 lines? Or 10,000 lines? Solaris 11 never added those meaningless entries.

And worse. I yesterday installed Solaris 11.3 and guess what? Solaris refuses to import this ZFS disk. The disk is "unavaible" and weird. I thought that Ubuntu ZFS was compatible with Solaris 11 ZFS? But it is not. I have a large JBOD ZFS3 raid which I access with a LSI2008 SAS card. For several years I was hesitant to try to access my ZFS raid with Ubuntu, suspecting that Ubuntu ZFS would break my raid, so I never tried it out. In hindsight, I made the right decision. There would be a chance that Linux would break my ZFS raid rendering it totally unusable with Solaris 11 or another OS using ZFS.

WARNING! Linux ZFS might corrupt your Solaris ZFS disks to an unusable state!



OTOH, Solaris 11 has been rock solid through all the years. All updates worked fine, never caused any problems because the updates were heavily tested and never broke anything. If I messed up something by accident, I just did a rollback with ZFS "beadm" and the system was back to the previous working state just fine. I now had enough of Linux. I heard that Ubuntu LTS is among the most stable distros, and other distros are even more fragile. Maybe RedHat/CentOS is more stable, because it uses old versions of the software? I dont know. But my experiments with Linux is now over. I gave it a couple of years and there were way more problems than Windows. Windows just works. Just like Solaris. I am now going to install OpenIndiana I think? I heard it is similar to Ubuntu, but a Solaris kernel. That sounds fine. I look forward to a simple rollback of the system if something messes up. Just what I am used to.

Anyone have good experience of OpenIndiana? Or other Solarish distro?

BEWARE! I have imported the newly created zpool from Solaris 11.3, and imported it to Ubuntu 2020.10. Then I created a zfs filesystem and renamed it in Solaris. Then I exported and imported to Ubuntu 2020.10. Ubuntu reports the zpool is "DEGRADED".

pool: HDD_10TB
Now that is scary. I mean, Solaris 11.3 ZFS is the canonical ZFS version. Solaris is the reference implementation of ZFS. If Linux zfs cannot import and correctly handle a Solaris zpool - that means Linux zfs is not compatible. And Linux ZFS adds lots of "zpool import" entries to the "zpool history" - why? Something does not feel right about Linux ZFS. Linux ZFS is not 100% compatible, and has bugs. It does not follow the Oracle ZFS filesystem. Linux ZFS is something else. I wonder if Linux ZFS will be incompatible with FreeBSD zpools too?

I will destroy and recreate my zpool because Linux ZFS does not like it. It works fine in Solaris 11.3 though. I will not let Linux access my JBOD raidz3. Linux will probably destroy all my data.

-Something is rotten in the state of Denmark!

Most people probably won't reply to this, but I will offer one post.

You are so so wrong on many fronts.

• Linux is not Ubuntu. Don't blame linux because you don't like Ubuntu.
• You need to be able to do a modicum of diagnostics and setting up to run a computer.
• Don't ever try something, say 'it failed' and expect help. You have to give details, what you have tried to fix it and error messages minimum. You learn in the beginning by intelligent searching and reading.
• Solaris, IIRC is only offering patches (since version 12?). Stay in the past if that makes you happy.
• Stay with M$ windoze if you like. If not, don't shove failed/failing OSes the faces of people you are asking for help from. Windoze is presently trying to use the linux kernel to fix it's major issues.
• I am not recommending you another linux distribution because I am sure you would dislike that as much as Ubuntu. Take it from me, there are many better ones. Ubuntu is not leading the pack at the moment.

To be fair, Ubuntu has advantages over Solaris. Ubuntu is more up to date, and much work is done on Ubuntu today. All software you read about, is very easily available, just download and install. For Solaris the software does often not exist, so you have to work hard to make it work. But when it works, it works fine and does not break, even if you accept and update of the OS.

With Ubuntu 2020.10, I had installed Retropie to play emulatorgames. It worked fine. Until I accepted an update. And then everything broke and I had to reinstall Ubuntu again. Be-jesus.

I also read that if you install Ubuntu 2020.10 on a whole disk, you can use ZFS to rollback updates, similar to beadm Boot Environments on Solaris. But, upon googling a bit, rollback via ZFS is experimental and there are posts of people cannot rollback properly. So Ubuntu ZFS rollback is not robust, you should not count on it. Linux is fragile. Accept an update, and there is a chance everything breaks. I just want it work, and not reinstall and fix problems everytime I accept an update. Or, the best strategy might be just to never accept an update. Then your Ubuntu is frozen in time.

As of now I will use OpenIndiana, i.e. Ubuntu with Solaris kernel. And then I know all ZFS disks works fine, and my data is protected. Then I will install Ubuntu in VirtualBox, and Windows. So when I have to do work, I will use these VMs. But OpenIndiana will be my backend and provide all infrastructure to the VMs.

Ok? So there are Linux distros that are stable?
1) Do you encounter any problems at all when you upgrade?
2) If you have problems, can you just rollback and solve all problems? You never have to reinstall Linux?
3) If you import a Solaris ZFS disk, does it work? And vice versa, can Solaris import your ZFS disk? Have you tried this?

FreeBSD has ZFS and it works well. I have no idea about compatibility between Solaris's ZFS and FreeBSD however. If this is a server, fine, but FreeBSD takes more work as a desktop. I have used it as such and if you don't mind manual configuration, it's fine.

Microsoft updates are ANYTHING but stable: on my Windows 10 Enterprise workstation (work laptop), multiple reboots on patch Tuesday are required because the idiots at Microsoft have not figured out how to chain patches together like the rest of the world. Nevermind the black screens after some updates that require multiple reboots to fix.

I have not tried FreeBSD, but the only reason I am using ZFS is to protect my data. If the filesystem cannot do that, I do not see the point in using the filesystem? Then I might as well use NTFS. OpenZFS is too unstable and messes up my ZFS disks so I cannot trust OpenZFS obviously. I expect OpenZFS to be fully compatible with ZFS, if it is not, then I have to switch back to old trusted ZFS.

Regarding MS updates. I am a home user, and not a Enterprise user with patch tuesdays. For home users, I have very seldom problems with Win10. Linux is a catastrophy in comparison with numerous reinstalls. I have not done a Win10 reinstall because of update problems, Win10 rolls back just fine. I dont have to do anything.
But you have to do frequent Win10 reinstalls because patch tuesday messes up your Win laptop?

Be advised that FreeBSD does not hold your hand like Ubuntu does - be prepared for 100% command line configuration if you choose it. Not difficult, just something to be aware of.

My enterprise laptop is a nightmare on patch Tuesday. I am on a large AD domain with 100's of thousands of users so very different situation. I never lost data on my work laptop but the frustration of having to reboot 4 or 5 times during the work day is tremendously annoying.

My Windows 10 home machine has given me zero issues but I ONLY use it to game, nothing else. Linux as a desktop has given me zero issues. Any issues I have had are due to me and my inability to keep the same distro for more than a few weeks/days/hours. Long story, won't go into it. I back up data multiple times a day to my NAS using rsync and in 20 years, I never lost anything.

Having said that, The most stable distros I have ever used are Debian (vanilla) and OpenSuse Leap. I liked Leap better because it is (seems) more modern, plus Yast is a pretty awesome admin tool. My opinions are my own and not necessarily shared by others.

1. I'm on Slackware, and don't upgrade that often. Sure, there are hangs and things go belly up from time to time. The trick on distributions line ubuntu, debian, etc is to update often - weekly. Problems are minimal then, and would be for me If I did that.

2. I have shot myself in the foot, if that's what you're asking, but the problems are because I shot myself in the foot. Not because the OS or distro is deficient. When you do a big update, things have changed some settings are obsolete, etc.

3. I never installed Solaris. Don't know about ZFS. You should get yurself a usb disk, and back stuff up. then you can restore, instead of reinstalling.

Not too much, and I use Arch(Rolling release)

Yup, I can downgrade to the last kernel in 1 minute.

Nope, rolling release.

Here is some info.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ZFS

Interesting that you two guys dont have problems with Linux updates? Why am I having all these problems with frequent reinstalls? I thought Ubuntu LTS were stable? I did not want to try a bleeding edge distro because the new software is not well tested. The newer the version, the buggier it is. Old software is stable and more bug free, that is why server distro Redhat/CentOS only has old versions of the software and never new versions.

It is said that Windows becomes stable first after Service Pack 1, because then many bugs have been ironed out. I dont understand how a bleeding edge Linux distro with untried and buggy software, can be more stable than Ubuntu LTS. Something does not add up.

I have googled a bit, and people say this regarding LTS distros: The repo package contains only old versions of software that are known to work well. If you want to install a new software not in the repo, or if you install a new version of the software in the repo, then this can happen: The new software replaces an old battle tested library with a new version. This makes other old software that use the same library cringe and they complain about the new library. So you have to update the old software to a newer version that use the newest library. All these new software complains about other old library versions, so you need to update the old library to a new one.

So basically, by installing one new software, this triggers a cascade of updates so after a while you have left the LTS distro and you are using the newest bleeding edge distro.

The only way to stay with LTS, is if you never install new software and only use the old software in the old repo, i.e. it is frozen in time. That is the reason the idea behind LTS does not work in practice, because everyone installs new software which breaks the whole idea with LTS. Gahhh! This problem does not occur on Solaris. It is much more stable and tested.

I have had three flavours of LTS Ubuntu on two computers, some combination of Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Xubuntu 16.04, 18.04 and 20.04, never non-LTS (so not .10s and not odd year .04s.) I always wait for the first point release before upgrading. I update regularly, minimum once a week, and then updates go quickly (with my internet speed that’s fast enough.) Updates don’t interrupt me - you have good control of when they install. Today I regularly use Xubuntu 20.04. There are many things to criticize about the *buntus, they can do some flaky things, but I have never had to reinstall because a *buntu installation was irretrievably broken. It is also possible, at least in some cases, to install newer software than in the repos if you need it (which I have done.)

I use Slackware - my favourite Linux - x86_64 stable 14.2 and (since a few weeks ago) -current, and ARM -current on a Raspberry Pi 4. Stable 14.2 really is stable. It never does the flaky things that Xubuntu does occasionally. If its software is too old for you, current’s probably isn’t, but it is a development version so there can be the occasional glitch (watch the changelogs and LQ forum.)

I use OpenBSD stable x86_64, updating within a few weeks of release every 6 months. As of a few weeks ago, I also started using OpenBSD stable ARM 64 on my Raspberry Pi 4. In both cases, it’s stable and doesn’t do flaky things.

I even tried OpenIndiana for a short while. I don’t remember any major problems with it. I would never call it xxxUbuntu over a Solaris kernelxxx EDIT similar to Ubuntu, but a Solaris kernel, and I expect the OpenIndiana team would take exception to that.

My family and I have Windows 10 on several computers at home. It was terribly unstable at first, but has settled down a bit now. There are now ways to somewhat control updates, and we haven’t had big update problems in awhile (did have a huge, nasty one Oct 2016, that might have been Windows 8 but I’m still annoyed), but if you think people aren’t having big problems with Windows, just do an internet search, or read AskWoody or Krebs On Security around every Patch Tuesday.

My point with all that is that Ubuntu is not your biggest problem, and Linux is not your biggest problem. If you are having to frequently reinstall any Linux, you need to look elsewhere. Maybe you have incompatible or failing hardware at the moment, or maybe you are being a reckless administrator of your system, or... plenty of other possibilities.

If you want help with Linux problems, describe them specifically and be ready to provide specific information and outputs for people who might be willing and able to help.

If not, and you are just venting and are set on using Solaris or OpenIndiana, then I hope that works out for you. Good luck and enjoy.

TKS

ZFS: never used it, so can’t comment. I always use default FSs and have not (yet) noticed problems of stability or data integrity with them. Doesn’t mean they haven’t happened, just that I haven’t noticed yet. I manually back up and keep all old backups. If my FS needs ever change, I would look at ZFS or BTRFS.

TKS

Oracle ZFS and OpenZFS are incompatible file systems. You're comparing closed source and open source implementations of a file system which have diverged over a period of several years. Most of your problems stem from there - i.e your own misconceptions about these OS.

I have been using Unix 20 years back, since uni where I studied comp sci. I am no expert in Unix and I never memorize the details of all commands and have to check up it up when I want to do something, but I have a pretty good understanding of Unix and what can be done. The rest is just details that I never bother to memorize. I also used Linux back in the days many years ago. I think I used slackware? Back then Linux was stable, because I never upgraded it.

My hardware is a Supermicro motherboard (they exclusively do Enterprise grade stuff), Xeon E3 cpu, ECC RAM and Geforce GTX 1070Ti.

Maybe I was just unlucky, but I had lots of problems with Ubuntu LTS. It requires maintenance. I dont want that, I just want to work. I want to use a well tested stable OS and a stable Linux distro. And as I have understood it, Ubuntu LTS is quite modern and stable. RedHat is most stable as it is server OS - but it is too old for my taste. On my hardware, Ubuntu LTS was quite problematic.

I understand that you have no problems with Linux, and upgrades doesnt cause you problems, but for me, they do. I do prefer to work in Linux though, because it has so much software. I think I will use Solaris as a backend, and install Ubuntu in VirtualBox as a VM. Then I have the best of both worlds. A stable underlying Solaris OS with a stable trusted ZFS to store all my data, and I can work in Linux.

I wish Linux was more stable. The main problem for me was all frequent updates that broke stuff, and that OpenZFS destroys ZFS disks - what else does OpenZFS destroy? My data?

Anyway, thanx for your help and advice.

My experience of

ZFS and OpenZFS are not OSes, they are filesystems.

But yes, ZFS derivatives are based on v28 and then they diverge as they add features, which is marked with v5000. Solaris ZFS also adds other features. So OpenZFS and ZFS diverges. But, they all have v28 in common. As long as you stay on v28 and dont ever use new features, then ZFS and OpenZFS should be able to import all v28 disks and use them correctly. But that is not true. OpenZFS cannot handle v28 disks, as it destroys them.

If you create a v28 disk in OpenZFS, it should be usable by all OSes, including Solaris or Mac or Windows (when that development is ready). But that is not true. OpenZFS should remove "ZFS" from the name, as it is not compatible anymore.

Yes there are Linux distros that are stable. Ubuntu is based on Debian Unstable. If you want stability, without anything breaking because of updates, run Debian Stable. It does not change, and does not break. It doesn't have the latest and shiniest software, it's always a version or so behind, but the software is known to work, and does. Ubuntu takes a snapshot of Debian Unstable every 6 months and tweaks it until it barely runs, and kicks it out the door ready or not, for its users to debug. I am always amazed when people recommend Ubuntu to new Linux users. It would never be my first choice for anyone not very familiar with Linux.

Aha! Thanx, this is good information! I did not know this. I will surely try out Debian Stable. I hope it is much more stable than Ubuntu LTS. One of the things I like with Linux is that it has all software. If I read about a software, there is always a Linux version ready to download and install. When I use Solaris, there are great problems to install a software.

Thank you very much. This makes things quite clear. They are now two separate projects.

I've been using Mint for 10+ years - no problems.

Wow
 

Your title is entirely misleading....

First, you tried ONE distro out of many available all with varying support for various things (including ZFS). ONE.

You also might already know this but there's a pretty damn good reason why ZFS is still maturing under Linux and it's because Oracle pretty much owns it and made it very risky for people to properly maintain it.

Linux isn't "fragile", you're using an unstable technology on a platform where it isn't 100% guaranteed to work for YOUR hardware and use case. Even Linus Torvalds says not to use it.

I wouldn't use any desktop running vanilla Gnome as a legitimate baseline for judging how well updates work compared to Windows of all things. Making bold statements like "Windows updates better than Linux" is far-fetched and not at all matches with the endless results you will find on Google showing exactly the opposite...

ZFS working better on a proprietary OS? Gee, I wonder why! :doh: (btw, Oracle also owns Solaris. Coincidence?)

If you know what you're doing, the system you're using appears "stable" because you're doing things it can do. When you don't know what you're doing and start messing with the system by running random things and start messing with things that it might not support well enough, well duh.... the system will APPEAR fickle. This is true for any os—not just Ubuntu (which is the only distro you tried).

"Linux too fragile" seems to me too exaggerated and rather away from reality. We all know that Linux is perhaps the choice for the most demanding and critical IT systems that are the servers.

Quoting my post out of context and then posting a pedantic "correction" - when I had clearly posted that Oracle ZFS and OpenZFS are file systems isn't helpful. You seem to be asking for help, or are you (?), and then lecturing others on how things work, or don't, according to your own preconceived ideas.

You're talking about zpool versions. Read the link I posted. I'm no fan of iXsystems, but I can assure you that they know vastly more about ZFS than you or I...

It should be usable by OS which use OpenZFS, such as FreeBSD and Linux - it won't be usable by Solaris, because that is Oracle's proprietary diversion.

https://openzfs.org/wiki/Announcement
Considering Oracle didn't even develop ZFS, but bought Sun, then turned it proprietary and killed the openSolaris project in the process, then perhaps it is they who need to remove "ZFS" from the name?

You are, of course, entirely correct. Just like a dozen other users that got into it with this OP.

They seem to belong to a particular kind of troll that thrive in Linux forums.

They pose a question or a problem with a Linux system, often stating right from the start that "it works on Windows" (or some other OS - other than Linux, that is).
That in itself is not trolling.

But then they keep harping on this criticism of Linux "as a whole" instead of trying to solve their problem.

This works because Free & Libre Software zealots across the board are easily triggered by certain statements (and, at least for some of these statements, I am not an exception), giving OP the desired reaction.

Often paired with a mulishly stubborn refusal to listen to counter-arguments, intent only on uttering the triggering statement, again and again. But you all know what trolls are, so I'll stop here.

Maybe you should tell Amazon, Twitter, Google to re-think their software platforms - they all use Linux

https://www.tecmint.com/big-companie...g-on-gnulinux/

Yes, thanx for the link. But the link is strange. Someone writes in the comments that "Am I mistaken but I thought freenas added feature flags to their version of zfs which made their version of zfs incompatible with Linux versions of zfs".

The whole point of feature flags, is to distinguish between pools so you now which one is compatible with another. If you did not care about compatibility you would not bother with marking your zpool which features it support. If a zpool is v5000 you know it is different from v28. That is the reason you have feature flags.

In my opinion that is weird. It is like if ntfs-3g fuse driver renders ntfs disks incompatible with Win10 - wouldnt that be strange? People would complain and ask they to remove ntfs from the name.

For you Linux haters who can not accept that Linux is unstable on server grade hardware - I said I gave Linux a try for a couple of years. I ran Linux exclusively and nothing else for a couple of years. Have you tried out Solaris for a couple of years? No? Then I would say that it is you that are not willing to try out the other side - as I have done. I have server grade hardware and not weird hardware. I wanted to minimize the hassle and pain, that is why I paid for expensive Supermicro mobo, Xeon cpu, ECC RAM, LSI2008 SAS HBA, etc. And still Linux - on my server grade hardware - did not work well. I dont know why, I was expecting Linux to handle server grade hardware well, apparently not.

I will next install Debian Stable on bare metal as someone suggested. That should be more stable than Ubuntu LTS. If not, then Linux does not play well with my server grade hardware. And if you check out the forums, there are lot of complaints that people make an update, and then stuff stops working. I am not alone having these problems, there are many forum threads. Why are you not hating the other people that have problems with Linux updates? Is it just me that you hate?

I would be interested in knowing how they get a stable desktop. But they are most likely running a stripped down Linux kernel with a minimal install. Just like Supercomputers. For instance Blue Gene runs Linux, yes. Linux is used to boot the node and distribute the work load to each node. Then a special written kernel takes over and does the actual computations. Linux on supercomputers are far from desktop versions. They are minimal och stripped down. No gui, no nothing. Supercomputers are just a huge cluster with loads of nodes, just like Google server park. Google have millions of nodes all running stripped down linux. There are nothing else running on Googles cluster. In that case it is easy to keep them stable.

But why would you even need a graphical desktop on a server?

I hope one of those options works out for you, and I would be curious to hear back from you if you get what you like with one of them, so please let us know how it goes.

I agree with others here that this part of your thread title, “Linux is too fragile”, is misleading as a broad statement - and that is how you wrote it - but I wouldn’t argue that a statement like “Ubuntu has been too fragile for me” isn’t true, because how fragile is too fragile is a very individual thing, a value judgement rather than a statement of fact, based on your personal experience (regardless of the reasons for that experience of fragility)

Maybe Ubuntu has been so fragile for you that *nobody* would put up with it. Maybe every Linux would be. There’s no way for us to know if that’s so, or why. Several posters have made suggestions to help you, but you still don’t have what you’re looking for.

So I’m going to take a crack at this from another angle.

On rereading the posts, it seems to me that what you’re looking for is something that you’re at least a bit familiar with, that installs easily and runs with minimum fuss - you want to get on with your work and spend a minimum of time on system administration. That is not a criticism, in case someone might take it that way.

Assuming you don’t have hardware that just doesn’t play well with Linux (I did run into this once), and that your hardware isn’t failing or defective, the only thing I can suggest is distrohopping (or OS hopping) if the options you said you would try don’t work for you, until you find something that does.

I suspect it won’t be less work at the start to search for the “right” distro/OS than learning how to wrestle into submission what you already have, but once you find the right one, I expect you could settle into it with minimum system admin, at least until the distro/OS developers and maintainers do something you can’t tolerate, or stop maintaining it.

With no experience with ZFS, I don’t know if you can have the “right” OS *and* ZFS. That might be over specifying.

And if that doesn’t do it for you, then I don’t know if there is any solution that you will ever be satisfied with.

TKS

I dont know why?

But the thing is, people say that Linux is used by large companies to power their backend - Google, FB, etc. And therefore Linux is stable.
But as I said, that is not true. Linux is used as servers but just a minimal installation on standardized server grade hardware. They would never use Linux desktop for powering their backend. It is a carefully tested minimal installation they use. No GUI, no nothing.

I worked at a large financial company and their backend was powered by a minimal RedHat distro. No gui of course.

The Google developers also use Linux, but Google has created it's own Linux distro. I dont know why.

Yes, that is correct. I want the OS to just run and let me work, instead of spending valuable time fixing all problems. And if there are frequent problems, that is a big problem. Every hour spent on fixing problems are one hour less on working. I dont have that time. I need a working environment.

I would like to know how you get a stable Linux install. If I knew, I would use that Linux distro. However, I have some requirements of course (it is easy to get a stable Win95 installation if you never install anything and do not allow any software to be used).
- I dont want an ancient Linux distro
- I want to be able to install the newest software without breaking stuff
- I want the distro to be stable on server grade hardware: Xeon cpus, ECC RAM, etc
- If there are problematic updates - that is not a problem as long it is easy to rollback the update.

LTS distros are stable as long as you only use the software in their repos. If you install new software, then you often need to update a library, which breaks other software so you need to update them as well, and their libraries. This triggers a cascade of updates so at the end you have left the stable LTS distro, and run bleeding edge distro. This is a common complaint to LTS distros. When you install a new software, you are smoked. So LTS only works if you are frozen in time and never install new software.

But I will try out Debian Stable on bare metal for a while. If it fulfills all my requirements above, I am willing to use it as my main work OS. Maybe I should run Debian Stable in a VM, with Solaris as a backend? VirtualBox does have standardised hardware that Debian Stable works well with - I presume. And if a Debian Stable update breaks, then it easy to rollback (if I have ZFS snaphots of the VM, or use VirtualBox snapshots). Then my environment is never down, and I can always work.

Thanx for your advice and help, guys. I will abandon Ubuntu, and go to Debian Stable instead. :)

One other option: AppImage or other portable packages like 0install. It’s possible to use newer software on stable / LTS distros without library conflicts. It’s not actually installed - the whole package is a single executable. You can have more than one version saved on your drive, so if an updated version doesn’t work, you close it and and just click on the executable of the latest version that worked. Of course there are disadvantages: a limited number of packages, larger package size, appearance may not integrate well with your desktop. The last I looked, almost none was self-updating, but they were working on that option. There are probably others.

Flatpak and Snap are two others that you could look at, each with advantages and disadvantages, but I don’t know if you can roll back package versions.

Like distrohopping, it would take a bit of learning at the start to learn the ins and outs, but then you settle in

TKS

Excuse me, now I know that you don't know what you are talking about, and you are making things up. That's silly.

Use your package manager. So that everything matches.

That's what package managers are for. Stop partially updating your machines with a mix match of software.

Use your package manager, install from the distros repo. I use arch, perhaps the worst that there is for "stability". And none of that which you speak ever happens. But I don't try and install mixed software willy nilly on the machine.

Or if you want to do that, install all of it in it's own dir in home, all libraries, all executables, and don't corrupt your file tree.

Linux should not be administered like a windows machine. Windows could have 10 copies of the same library on the machine. Each program has all of it's own libraries. Big waste of space. Linux will have one copy of XXXX.so and everything will need to match it.

A fully functioning install of Arch is less that 1GB. Then when you start adding Gtk, Qt, Tcl, X, it starts getting bigger.

Install one and don't mess it all up.

Aha, cool! I did not know of Appimage et al! That sounds like a cool technology. I will check that up. Thanx for your help! :)

It is easy to get W95 to be stable. Here is how: install W95 and nothing else. Boot it up. Dont run any software, just let W95 to sit there. It will not crash for years. So you can get any OS stable, just dont run anything on it.
But that is not an interesting OS. You want to be able to use it for work, and run any software you need to run.

You are saying that if I want to get Linux stable, I should only use the software in it's repo. Never install anything else. Well, that defeats the purpose of one the requirement that I have. I want to be able to install new software without fear of breaking things. That does sound like fragile to me: "only run these software that we have accepted, if you run other software then your environment might be stable". Not robust at all. Imagine if you only could run the software that Microsoft accepted - people would say that Windows is fragile. As a user you need to be able to do whatever your work requires. Computational fluid dynamics, MCMC, gaming, word processing etc. You choose, and the OS should be stable enough to allow you to work with whatever your work is.

Of course. Or if it's something that's not in the repo, you need to build it correctly for your machine, against the libraries on your machine, and install it with your package manager.

If it isn't in the repos...

1. Look for something else that does the same thing. For example: How many different terminal emulators are there? Or how many different web browsers are there? If Firefox does not work...there are about 20 more that you could use. Or...make your own web browser, python-pyqt5, python-gobject, ruby etc.

2. If you build your own software then you are responsible for it. You are the maintainer. Build it how you wish and make it work. Or, if you don't have the understanding how to do that yet, then you will have to use what's in the repo. So, if it's unstable...look in the mirror.

If you like windows then use windows. There is no crime in that. You can bet that on a Linux forum, people like Linux.

I know good and well that it works good. I've been using it for about 17 years now I think.

If you need some software that is not available, then write it, and share it with everyone, like all of the other open source developers have done.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php...f_Applications

The only way to get a stable Linux environment is to build everything yourself? So let me summarize how to get a stable Linux environment:
- Dont install any other binary packages than in the repo
- If you want to install other software, then you need to recompile it yourself instead of using binary packages

If I follow these rules, then Linux will be stable?

How about all updates that the distro pushes out, should I reject them in general? Never accept any update?

I don't know why you are having such a hard time with this.

Update your machine, the flavor of linux that you are using, with your distros package manager, from your distros official repositories.

The packages will usually be signed, so you can be assured that you are getting non tampered with software, and that it will work with all of the other software on your machine.

That's a good idea. You can't see what is in a binary package. How do you know if it will do you any harm?

Does that binary package that you got from somewhere, match all of the libraries on your machine? Or does it add/overwrite a library that will mess up other software on your machine? Was it compiled in a clean chroot environment? It's a binary, how was it compiled, with what flags, is there documentation for it etc? What kind of bugs will it introduce? Is there a bug report list for it, and what is being done to fix it, what patches are needed. What kernel was if compiles for?

Thank you Linux distribution developers for taking care of all of this so that I can sit on my backside, issue one command, and update the whole machine.

Then, the kernel is always changing, software developers are constantly adding new features, and that introduces unforeseen bugs. Fixing bugs is a constant process.

If you compile/install/develope the software yourself, outside of your distros repo/package manager, then you are the developer and you are responsible for it. If it's unstable, then fix it developer.

If they are official distro updates, they shouldn't do any harm to your system. What does harm and makes a system unstable is mixing software from different sources. My rules would be:

1) Use your package manager whenever possible. If the software is available by that route, install it by that route.
2) Use only the official repositories, which are enabled by default. Don't add extra repos to your package manager's configuration files. They may contain incompatible versions of libraries.
3) If it isn't available from the repos, download source code and build the program locally. That way it will be built against your local libraries and will be compatible with them. But in that case, you become responsible for updating it.
4) Don't install binaries from websites unless they are designed to install in a sandbox. This is the case for some packages like firefox and virtualbox and for some formats like appimage.

Ok, great information! Thanx a lot! I did not know these rules. I used Linux as I used all other OSes like windows and Solaris: I installed all binary files I wanted, without worrying. I should be much more careful with Linux apparently and not do anything wild, like installing any binaries I wanted like in Windows. In Windows I install any binary I want: Spotify, 7z, Torrent, etc.

Regarding the updates, they have caused me massive problems. I think I will be very restrictive with accepting updates. I will try these rules you wrote and be very careful with my Debian Stable. But this rules out Spotify, netflix, etc. I need to run these software in VM maybe, or on my mobile. Thanx again guys! :)

(If you come up with another rule for keeping Linux stable, please write it here so I can stabilize my work environment)

Because I got so much help from you guys, I want to share this link. For future reference, if someone has the same problems as me with Linux getting unstable, read this!
https://wiki.debian.org/DontBreakDebian

Oh, another one fell into that trap.

"Since Linux software installation works so differently from what I'm used to, and I simply cannot wrap my brain around it, I'm going to choose the one thing that reminds me of Windows software installation!"

We look forward to your "why doesn't this Appimage-installed software work like normal software" or "why is Appimage installation so complicated" threads.

Ok, so are you saying that Appimage does not make my Linux environment more stable? Should I avoid Appimage if I care about stability?

Can I ask what softwares that you are wanting/needing to use that isn't in your distros repos?

I understand that if someone needs to to use Adobe photoshop, because "nothing else works as good", then you'll need to run that in wine, or go get a windows machine.

But as far as web browsers, email clients, text editors, networking tools, proxies, dns servers, firewalls, web servers, python-perl-ruby-c-c++, cloud servers, ftp-ssh-ftps, p2p, irc, instant message, rss, podcast, remote desktop, multimedia, media players, encoders, image viewers-generators, animation, webcam, DVD-CD-BLURAY, terminals, bash-sh-fish-csh-korn, file sync, debuggers, html-xml parsers, disk-filesystem tools, office suites, pdf viewers-makers, scanning, OCR, security, backup, forensic, science, education, blah blah blah.

What is missing in your disto of linux repos that you need to install more than 1 or 2 things outside of your repos softwares?

Of if what you are using has very small repos, then try something else.
For example, take a look at arch, and I think debian is even larger maybe.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php...f_Applications

You are telling me that you can't run a machine on that?

Say the latest version of Wine, GZdoom, VI, Java compiler, Rust, etc etc etc. I am a fond user of VMware Workstation. And Spotify. etc.

(I do hope the repos contain all these software?).

I don't know, it's your machine, what does the search function of your package manager tell you?

I don't know about this GZdoom, but everything else that you said is a non event. Also don't know what linux users do with spotify. Do a search on LQ for that. I've seen that talked about before.

I will abandon Ubuntu and install "Debian Stable" instead. I need to check that repo to see which software is included. The latest GZDoom has some new hot graphics I want to try. Maybe it is better that I create a Windows VM to separate Spotify and other software, so that "Debian Stable" does not become unstable.

If you mix lots of bloatware in the windows machine you will have bad surprises too.
Critical professional software needs always a more controlled IT environment/system to run safely. That's a rule for any IT system.
You can't install "anything" in a system without fear. Don't forget what "malware" is, or security holes. As an administrator you can do almost anything you want, even things that are dangerous for the stability and security of your system. This means that you have to be always careful otherwise no o.s. or antivirus s/w can save your system.

The more fancy and "easy to use" or "easy to administrate" the system, the more vulnerable is, for me. And I think it is true for security as well as for stability. "Robust" systems are usually more restrictive and less fancy. Critical systems are always restrictive. A server that has to work 24/7 for months or a production workstation can be a critical system for the business. A desktop computer that someone uses at home for news surfing, youtube and facebook isn't really that critical from an admin's or developer's point of view.


Those software categories belong to very specific/scientific software, out of the "general" user's software like the remaining. So, let me share my experience on this domain.
Most of the times, the developer tries to get the best for the calculations to be performed (usually a very big computational load), to solve the problem within the available RAM, to shrink as much as possible the execution time that can be from hours to days, etc. Factors like running under every o.s. version or any distro etc are often left behind. Very often, older language versions and/or libraries are used because they are already available and well tested. Hardware requirements can be very different than, say, a game.

My company bought an expensive commercial software (domain of the marine engineering), and we had to make decisions on the hardware specification. I did suggest that we need to know if the software makes use of a performant graphics card for the calculations. The man from the vendor/support confirmed (orally) that it makes use of the graphics card, and then my company bought a mswindows machine 32GB RAM, Xeon (or perhaps i9) 16 thread (=8 core) with a very expensive graphics adapter. However, running times seemed to be very long. I did inspect the system's activity and found: RAM at less than 50%, CPU at 115% for all cores, GPU activity zero! This meant that the software didn't use the graphics adapter, at least for its principal heavy task, and lots of money went to an unnecessary device instead of, say, another faster CPU! and that "support" staff was non competent at all.
By the way, looking in the user's forum I found many users that confirmed that the software was running faster under linux than under windows (it was originally a Unix software around 1990-92, at the time there was no windows, no linux, just unix or vms for serious applications).

Very often developers specify the linux distributions and versions that they did test with their software. It seems that distributions like Red Hat Enterprise or Suse or CentOS are well respected. Nevertheless I found forum reports about finite element computational software running under Ubuntu too. You can try to get info from the developers or users of those s/w packages on specific o.s. requirements/details.

To summarize, I think it would be safer to not "mix" heavy computational software with internet, gaming and multimedia user's software. Perhaps 2 separate VMs with separate OSs (or 2 separate computers) could solve the issue.