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I've been reading a lot about how CentOS Stream is like a rolling release between RHEL point releases. Is running apt full-upgrade or apt-get dist-upgrade on a daily basis essentially doing the same thing to my Ubuntu LTS installation?

Or am I (theoretically at least) insulated from potentially breaking changes because I'm on an LTS? What's the best practice / tradeoffs for how often you should upgrade packages? Security patches obviously as soon as possible, hopefully with some quick testing first to verify they don't cause stability problems, but what about the bug fix upgrades on an LTS? Like you aren't intended to park on an Ubuntu LTS point release until the next one are you?

Mohamed Hafez
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The normal Ubuntu releases are not rolling releases; installing all package updates daily doesn't change that.

I would say that apt full-upgrade / apt-get dist-upgrade daily on Ubuntu would be compared to running yum update daily on "traditional Centos" (with the standard base + updates repos).

Håkan Lindqvist
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  • is running `yum update` daily on traditional CentOS that different from CentOS Stream? – Mohamed Hafez Jan 30 '21 at 17:15
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    @MohamedHafez The action of `yum update` (or `dnf update` for newer versions) has not changed, it still just installs the latest package versions in your specified repos. It's what the distro chooses to package for the same distro version that has changed, such that installing the latest package versions means potentially bigger changes as it's now a rolling release rather than a stable release. Note that this is not necessarily a bad thing depending on your requirements, but it's definitely a different thing. – Håkan Lindqvist Jan 30 '21 at 17:22
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    Note that the man page says: `full-upgrade performs the function of upgrade but will remove currently installed packages if this is needed to upgrade the system as a whole.` This does occasionally happen, e.g. when a package is renamed. If you don't use this, you risk missing updates. `yum`/`dnf` doesn't make this artificial distinction and will replace packages whenever necessary. – Michael Hampton Jan 30 '21 at 18:04