Arch is bleeding edge and has no qualms pushing updates that break things and telling you to fix it. That's fine for workstations (and I've used Arch as my workstation OS for over 10 years), but it doesn't work well for servers.
IMO, LTS should be transformed to a yearly release cycle with 2 years of support, not bi-annual with 5 years. This would fix a lot of problems, especially considering that distros can get frozen with versions of packages that are already pretty old when they go gold. Keeping support around for 5 years (which is basically a myth anyway) is just a big waste for everyone.
There is a rational middle ground -- Ubuntu's regular semi-annual releases.
If Ubuntu doesn't meet your needs, maybe try Centos + EPEL. You get a lot of stability with the option to install more recent versions of some packages.
Then again, you seem to be taking all this pretty personally, so my comments are probably wasted on you.
> and has no qualms pushing updates that break things and telling you to fix it.
I've been using Arch for 4 or 5 years and can only recall a couple instances where I needed to force-install a package to accomodate a backwards-incompatible change.
>There is a rational middle ground -- Ubuntu's regular semi-annual releases.
I'm aware of Ubuntu's normal releases. These aren't labeled enterprise-ready, so enterprises won't use them.
They also frequently contain experimental/unstable stuff, not because they need to, but because the LTS release cycle causes the release team to treat non-LTS releases like a beta.
>Then again, you seem to be taking all this pretty personally, so my comments are probably wasted on you.
I'm really not sure how you came away with the impression that I'm taking Ubuntu's release cycle as a personal affront. I'm not the top-2000 guy you initially replied to.
Rest assured, I do not believe that Canonical has selected its release process specifically to offend me. :)
>I've been using Arch for 4 or 5 years and can only recall a couple instances where I needed to force-install a package to accomodate a backwards-incompatible change.
Yeah, it's very rare to need to force install (has become more rare in recent years, but was still quite rare). When I say "break things", I don't mean you have to pass the force flag to the package manager.
I mean that configuration formats change, binary formats may change, a lot of system expectations may break that could take you offline for a while, even if you know how to fix them (for example, significant PostgreSQL updates require the data to be reimported to the new version).
Their transition to Python 3 as the default /usr/bin/python about 2 years before anyone else broke all kinds of stuff, for example. That's fine, you sign up for it when you use Arch. But that's not the kind of experience most people expect for a server distro.
2 years support :-) That would be really nice for us (Canonical). But we just announced ESM (Extended Security Maintenance) for Ubuntu 12.04, which is just about to EOL after 5 years of support. There are still over 10 million Ubuntu 12.04 machines that install security updates every day!
Arch is bleeding edge and has no qualms pushing updates that break things and telling you to fix it. That's fine for workstations (and I've used Arch as my workstation OS for over 10 years), but it doesn't work well for servers.
IMO, LTS should be transformed to a yearly release cycle with 2 years of support, not bi-annual with 5 years. This would fix a lot of problems, especially considering that distros can get frozen with versions of packages that are already pretty old when they go gold. Keeping support around for 5 years (which is basically a myth anyway) is just a big waste for everyone.