Which distros have Ubuntu-style LTS releases?

Quite frankly, I don't like the direction Ubuntu is headed towards, so I don't think I'll be upgrading to 12.04 LTS when it comes out.

Unfortunately, that leaves a hole in my Linux lineup - VMware doesn't really support major guest OS upgrades (something always goes wrong, leaving the VM crippled at best and unusable at worst), so I'm forced to create a new VM and reinstall every time I want to upgrade a VM. I'd like to do that as little as possible, so I need a distro with an LTS style release.

 

Keep an eye on Mint 13 LTS with Cinnamon DE. You'll have to wait until may though.

 

What do you mean LTS style release? Can you be more specific? CentOS/Scientific Linux and Debian are two examples that provide support (updates) for a few years. All others are short term distros, i.e. updates are stopped after a year or so and you have to upgrade = reinstall.

Then there's rolling distros like Arch or OSuse Rolling that pretty much get updated continuously without having to reinstall, but certain specialy software not maintained by the maintainers might break once in a while.

 

LTS as in updates are provided for several years.

Unfortunately, none of the rolling release distros work with VMware, or they would definitely be my first choice.

 

So you're actually looking for distros that you don't have to reinstall for several years. I would go Debian stable, or if you don't mind RPM base distro, Scientific Linux 6. I'm using CentOS 6 myself, and they're pretty much the same thing (as is RHEL 6).

 

Unless you have a definite need for VMWare, almost all distros work excellently in Virtualbox.

 

It's not really a definite need, it's just that VMware still has much better support for Windows guests. For instance, VMware has invested tons of time and money over the past few years to keep up with Parallels in things like DirectX and now does almost everything a DX9 era GPU can, whereas VirtualBox still considers 3D graphics support as a medium-low priority issue at best.

I tried running both at the same time (VMware for Windows, VirtualBox for Linux) about a year or two ago, but they don't play nice together - VMware is fine with sharing, but VirtualBox demands exclusive use of the VT-x bit so it won't boot any VMs if VMware is running anything.

I've always seen VirtualBox as having lots of potential, but also very rough around the edges - if VirtualBox were to polish those edges, I'd drop my VMware license in a heartbeat.

 

Stable Debian is probably too outdated for most users. Using a less known distro means a lot more headaches at troubleshooting, so I would suggest well supported and user-oriented releases such as Ubuntu (and the derivatives), Suse, Fedora and Mageia.

 

Debian is not a "lesser known distro". In fact, since Ubuntu is based on it, if anything it's one of the biggest distros with some of the most widely-deployed package collections in the world.

And "outdated"? Depends on what you want. You can have stability or the latest greatest software, but you can't have both. Debian is more up to date than SLED or RHEL/CentOS/SL. It's also got backports.debian.org, which means that for most software for which recent versions are a near-necessity (browsers, IM programs, X.org drivers) you can get them without having to move to testing or unstable (or another distro).

Really, it depends on the user. For most users, no, it's not outdated. For people who just want a working, stable system it's probably fine. For people who want to know they're running the latest/cutting-edge/etc. there are other distros that focus on that -- just don't expect the level of reliability and stability that Debian offers.

 

CentOS and Scientific Linux are both great choices if you are looking for long term support, but not bleeding edge hardware support.

Of course Debian Stable (with backports) would get my vote too.

 

-.-

I know Debian pretty well...They are well known for their long running history and their great focus on stability and security as they are willing to push back release dates for that... The reason I switched to Debian in fact because I was tired of the repeated crashes on my Mint Debian. I even got X crashes when trying to view large images, X crashes when switching monitors. Pidgin visual bugs that made it unusable for me. So I was willing to invest time into getting the Debian to work if it meant getting a stable computing environment...

But here are my experiences from running a default Debian 6 installation: Noticably slow graphics due to old video drivers. Multiple sudden shutdowns doing different tasks (log error of "Critical Temperature Reached") including when running a CPU-heavy convert task, in the middle of installing packages, when viewing a video, etc. I have put my laptop under a lot of strain and this rarely happened. I used a Thinkpad T400 that has been recently thoroughly cleaned.

Installing the backport firefox/pidgin would also mean potentially exposing myself to the bugs I experienced at Mint Debian... Same goes for having to install newer X drivers/kernel/other modules. My reason for taking all the trouble to use old version software with Debian was the hope that having a Thinkpad meant that my installation of Debian Squeeze would be rock solid.

And just getting Debian to work was a major pain. I didn't have a network connection at the time of installation, so I had to connect using ethernet, then setup network by editing the interfaces file, then I had to install the firmware apt package just to get the wifi to work. Then I had to do manual editing to get sudo to work.

I am not dismissing the good points of Debian Stable. It's a solid distro with good security and a very skilled user base. But I wouldn't suggest this to the average users...

 

I don't get it. How can you say you know Debian well and went on about how you couldn't solve the video over heating problem? Doesn't that just contradicting yourself in the same post? And he has a good point, you said, among other things, Debian is a lesser known distro. He's correcting you on that.

Besides, the OP is asking about long term supported distro. Thus the Debian suggestion. The default kernel is 2.6.32, which is not too old.

 

What about PCLOS?
I've tried it some time ago, very great distro
It's a rolling release too.
Check it out:
So cool ice cubes are jealous PCLinuxOS

 

I have been familiar with Linux and am using it as my main OS. I was pointing out that I am familiar with Debian's legendary status for stability and security as well as the fact that it serves as upstream for a ton of distros. Despite all this, Debian is less known and less used by end users*

I have done my fair share of troubleshooting, but what I am saying I did and do not expect this sort of stuff to happen at all with a well-tested distro.

The solution for overheating under stress appears to be the installation of a newer version of kernel which deviates from the stable tree which is what you have to further do with an updated video driver, Firefox, etc.

*I will never ever claim that Debian is not known with the tech community in general, I was referring to end-users which would result in far more actual testing.

 

I would say that Debian is a great choice for server use. I'm not as sold on it as a desktop OS. Desktop-style use, I like things that are more recent.

But we're also talking running inside of a VM. That's a different beast than running directly on the metal, and would negate many of your experiences. VM device support is very solid, and has been for a while. I would agree with recommending either Debian or CentOS as good choices for long-term support.

Even better would be making a system that's got separate virtual drives for user data versus the system. That should make updates almost seamless. Heck, you could even use your home directory and software configurations and such on multiple virtual machines in that case.

 

Kernel 2.6.32 was released on December 3rd 2009! When it comes to Debian, "stable" can mean positively prehistoric - something that can be a big problem with newer hardware. You might have major issues with 2.6.32 even on two generation old hardware. Forget Ivy Bridge, and even Sandy Bridge, you might note be able to use 2.6.32 with some Nehalem generation hardware.

 

Well thankfully Debian doesn't ship 2.6.32. It ships a variant of 2.6.32.54/55, which was released in January of 2012.

But yes, it doesn't support some recent hardware... which is why 2.6.39 is available in backports (also a fully-supported part of Debian.)

?

The solution for your machine's overheating under stress is... well I don't know. I do know that I ran Debian Lenny on a T500 with quite heavy usage for almost a year with no such issues. The T500 and T400 share a lot of hardware, so I'm a little puzzled as to why you were getting thermal shutdowns. I'd really be quite surprised if it were a kernel issue.

Not necessarily. Backports packages are different than those from testing. Mint uses Debian's testing repository for most of its packages (despite the fact that testing isn't intended to be used as a rolling-release repo.) I'm not surprised that you ran into issues with testing. I would be surprised if those same issues were present in bpo packages. I'm running Squeeze on my T61 as I type this, and I'm using many of the xorg packages and several other packages from backports with no such issues.

 

It was Debian Squeeze, and it was a quite irritating issue. I think it was a problem with the temperature measurement, although some suspected the fan controller firmware.

My googling led to a number of complaints with the particular kernel version, along with a suggestion to update the kernel. Feeling up against the wall and being really short on time forced me to at least postpone my attempt at tracking down this issue.

Yes, after I discussed these issues with friend, he pointed out that Backports are different from Testing. What is confusing is that the website for backports clearly states that:

Anyhow, I feel the thread was hijacked. I am deeply sorry to the OP.