Normally, once in the morning and once in the evening. (Arch Linux) At the very latest, once a week. Why? Well, updates are important, and with a rolling release distribution, you get them when they're ready, which means multiple package updates each day. I sometimes skip the morning update if it's a huge update or if I need my system ready right now. My update process is scripted, but every action is still triggered manually (to remain in control during the process, also to answer any installation-related questions that might happen). When I type "_u" (I use the underscore as a leader character for several custom functions), first a regular pacman update from the Arch repos is started, then an AUR packages update (I don't mix both), then flatpak, then fwupdmgr. Also, there are several pacman hooks which also automate some things e.g. deleting old packages from the cache or displaying whenever there are new .pacnew or .pacsave files lying around. The whole process is very fast but still admin-controlled. If I ever see a problematic update, I can skip or delay the update. Also, I can always roll back to a previous btrfs snapshot if something breaks.

every 15 minutes (i use Arch btw)

Everytime I randomly remember to run sudo pacman -Syu I do it and that's almost everyday.

Rolling release doesn't mean that no testing is done. All updated packages are tested by maintainers before being released into the official repository. A rolling release simply means that there are no individually marked OS versions and you always get the latest packages.

In contrast, take Debian for example. It uses a point release system with major named versions (e.g. Debian 13 "Trixie"), minor point releases (e.g. 13.1), and security and bugfix patches between those. New feature updates are released only between point releases, and breaking changes are only introduced between major versions. This allows the maintainers to practice a greater amount of care in testing that the packages work well together, but also means that new features are always held back to some extent. This does not happen in a rolling release system. All upstream changes are pulled, tested, and released, regardless of whether a breaking change is introduced.

By its nature, a rolling release distribution will require a greater amount of maintenance. If a package update requires manual intervention, it will be published on archlinux.org. For as long as I've been a Linux user, I've only seen one package update that made systems temporarily unbootable, and I was saved from that by being a Manjaro user at the time.

But, to answer the question, I usually update my home and work PCs (both Arch) about once every week or two, or as required by a new software or important security update.

How are you handling it?

I handle it by not using a rolling distro. I get security updates, but I'm not interrupted every time a new version of something becomes available. I do the periodic release upgrades on my own terms: when I have time.

And how are your experiences?

Wonderful. My system is very low maintenance, which means I have more time to get work done or play games.

I’m unsure how much testing is done on Cachy. I’m on Tumbleweed, which is a rolling release with a focus on stability.

There isn’t much point in waiting to apply updates because new builds roll in fairly frequently. It’s not always the same packages of course, but most rolling release distros are on the bleeding edge, it’s kind of the point.

I update a couple of times a month. Around every 7-14 days. You want to avoid letting it go for too long, because as changes accumulate the risks of more complicated conflicts and breakages arising increase.

I update daily sometimes, other times I'll go weeks. Nothing really fixed, just when I think of it. I used to set a cron entry to update nightly, but figured that was pretty pointless for my use.

My understanding is that unless you're explicitly configuring yourself with Testing repos, you're getting already tested software in your updates and should be fairly stable even with a rolling release.

For my gaming PC (Fedora) I'm pretty much updating whenever there's updates. Non-gaming Laptop? Debian stable, i don't need or want bleeding edge.

once a week is about how often I do it if I am not installing something

Once a day or so

🎶 I upgrade my system at least twice a day 🎶

🎶 I'm strictly plug-and-play, I ain't afraid of Y2K 🎶

🎶 I'm down with Bill Gates, I call him Money for short 🎶

🎶 I phone him up at home and make him do my tech support 🎶

Once a week on the systems I use the most. Whenever I turn the computers on for all other systems.

With Arch based, like CaxhyOS or Manjaro? Whenever I install new things or at weekends or when something important is fixed. But god beware, not every day. There is no reason for that.

At this point it's usually just whenever i feel like it. Probably at the very least once a month on average.

I update pretty much as they're available (on Linux mint but I'd do the same on any flavour), but I also keep a rolling daily Timeshift backup to recover from any issues that might crop up. (Backup should be stored externally but I'm not too worried, I keep all my critical data backed to a NAS)

I do the package update stuff every session or so. It's not a priority for me but the GUI has a little notification, so I just click it sometimes.

Bigger updates like moving to a new LTS of the distro- I put off. I'm on pop!_os now and mint previously.

Roughly once a week on my two main machines, or whenever I install or uninstall something.

On arch? Usually every other day

Normal day-to-day updates are applied daily. Even back when I used to use Arch. In my experience, there were very few breaking changes and if you checked the blog, you could take measures to prevent such measures.

With fulll distribution upgrades, I normally wait a week or so. Just in case.

Whenever I turn on my computer I tend to update it if I see an update available

I have no cadence. Unless whatever software you're using is unstable, you probably won't notice updates. I update on a whim which is often because it's habit. Though sometimes it can be weeks between when I run the update

When I have time to fix it.

Too many times I've thought "just a quick update" and something broke. So now I update when I have a bit of time up my sleeve, otherwise if it breaks and I can't fix it straight away it stays in my head taking up most of my thoughts until I can fix it.

never because im insane and i live in a cave

This is why I use Bazzite. It just updates on the background and I don't have to think about it. Although ideally there would be an "update and shut down" option like in Windows. Kinda baffling that that doesn't already exist.

I don't. But dnf-automatic (fedora) does it automatically about once a day based on a systemd timer. dnf needs-restarting indicates if a reboot is required (or just configure dnf-automatic to do it).

I run apt update && apt upgrade every few days at slowest, or whenever i want to install or remove something with apt. That's Debian.

I'm pretty sure the only programs on my computer that automatically update are those by Mozilla, since i don't know how to stop them.

Debian is known for being very stable so i trust that when it tells me to do a system update i should, and so far nothing has broken except what i break.

Usually i only don't use the latest version of something if either the latest version is worse than an older version (KiCAD seems to get less usable over time, from what i know) or the latest version isn't available to me for some reason (PolyGlot has unsatisfyable dependencies so i use an old version).

multiple times a day for me

I don't update often unless there's something specific that I want or something is broken, maybe every of week or 2

It's based on Arch to my knowledge so yeah rolling updates. Linux updates, on most distros, don't run unless user starts them, as for picking and choosing, I'm not familiar with catchy package manager but I think you can pick which to update, check the wiki.

Daily

Whenever I boot up the machine tbh

Once a month.

I find that there's an almost constant stream of updates, most of which I don't care about. So I tend do the security updates once every few days, and do all the other updates (mostly for flatpak stuff) once every few months - unless there is a particular update that I actually want.

I update immediatly, never broke something. I use Ubuntu 25.10 and update everyday and upgrade it when there is something to upgrade since 2 years or so.