The word “stable” usually means unchanging through a release. I.e. functionality of one release is the same if you stay in that release even if you update (security and bug fixes mostly). The experience of the system not doing anything unexpected like crashing is reliability. A rolling distro is by that definition not stable, but it can be more or less bug free and crash free.
No, it doesn’t the only unchanging distro is debian, and they do it mostly out of resourse constraints not because it is a good idea.
Like the only lts package that debian does update is linux kernel. Everything else is patched for vulnerabilities at best, left to rot as stable as a rule.
A bold claim. RHEL updates are mostly security patches, are they doing that due to lack of resources too? Is it that hard to imagine that enterprise distros don’t want surprises from changing functionality?
The word “stable” usually means unchanging through a release. I.e. functionality of one release is the same if you stay in that release even if you update (security and bug fixes mostly). The experience of the system not doing anything unexpected like crashing is reliability. A rolling distro is by that definition not stable, but it can be more or less bug free and crash free.
No, it doesn’t the only unchanging distro is debian, and they do it mostly out of resourse constraints not because it is a good idea. Like the only lts package that debian does update is linux kernel. Everything else is patched for vulnerabilities at best, left to rot as stable as a rule.
A bold claim. RHEL updates are mostly security patches, are they doing that due to lack of resources too? Is it that hard to imagine that enterprise distros don’t want surprises from changing functionality?
Yes, you are correct, reliable is the term needed there 👍.