this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2026
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Linux
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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I ran sid in serious production when I was younger and more foolish. The trick with unstable distributions is to test before you deploy and know the incompatibilities and have the fixes ready in advance. The problem is you are basically taking a snapshot approach and doing the work of the debian release system yourself and doing it half-arsed. An urgent security update comes out and you can't rush to deploy it without risking a dependency being pulled in that breaks under your config. For servers it ends up being a huge amount of work for no gain and you can actually miss out on security updates.
BTW this approach is why Valve can release Steam OS based on Arch or Google can base ChromeOS on Gentoo and release them to millions of consumers safely. They freeze updates to create a release candidate and test it and they deploy a limited subset of packages.
At home I update one arch desktop machine to work out what breaks, how to fix it and seed the package cache on our server before I do the rest and break everyone's systems. I could do the same with Sid but Arch, despite being unstable intentionally isn't all that unreliable compared with Sid though my experience with Sid is dated.