so a common claim I see made is that arch is up to date than Debian but harder to maintain and easier to break. Is there a good sort of middle ground distro between the reliability of Debian and the up-to-date packages of arch?
Arch lacks consistency as they are constantly pushing the latest versions of everything. If you want that then that is fine but calling is stable is not really arcuate. They entire system is changing and updates are pushed weekly. You also can’t setup automatic updates safely.
I called it “stable enough”. For a home user, it’s stable enough. It’s a myth that Arch will break every update or it is unstable. Arch is as unstable or stable as you make it be.
You also can’t setup automatic updates safely
That’s partially true. If you’re trying to run a server, yeah, don’t set any automatic update. If you’re home user, you may do it and you’ll be fine, but be aware of your system.
It is updated almost everyday. That doesn’t seem very stable as it is constantly changing
Well, it is. Is so stable that many of Arch users install Arch once and don’t have to format the computer again in years.
Of course you can’t say that Arch is as stable as Debian, cause it’s not. But it’s totally unfair compare these distros, cause the use cases are completely different.
Don’t use a ruler to measure how loud a sound is.
