🚀 How can Arch Linux get by without releases?

Arch Linux does not have discrete releases -- it is a rolling distribution where individual packages are continuously updated. Most people still raise an eyebrow at the mention of Arch Linux -- how can that possibly work and be stable?

Having run Arch for many years, I can affirm it works very well. It is fast, efficient, and lets me run the latest software of everything with minimal fuss.

Today, a Linux distribution release is an artificial notion. A distribution's main job is to deliver a collection of software to a computer. Each application has its own release cadence. Imposing a distribution release cadence on top of the package release cycle does not make sense.

But the distribution's job is ensuring everything is stable and works together? Really? Does a distribution really test every one of the 1000's of packages before every release?

If there is a serious problem in an application, it will be fixed soon in the main development branch. Requiring these fixes to be back-ported to an old release in a distribution is a lot of work. In some cases, it is nearly impossible to backport a change if things have changed significantly in the codebase.

A Linux distribution delivers the most value when each software package can be deployed to its users as soon as it is ready. Arch does this and then gets out of the way.