When comparing Chakra vs Debian Unstable, the Slant community recommends Debian Unstable for most people. In the question“What are the best rolling release Linux distributions?” Debian Unstable is ranked 29th while Chakra is ranked 37th. The most important reason people chose Debian Unstable is:
It is great for your daily desktop Linux due it good balance of stability and recent packages - it is also recomended by the debian project as the distro you should choose for desktop systems.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Focuses on KDE/Qt Apps
comes with none GTK apps per default
Pro Independent from Arch
its not just another Arch Spin-off
Pro Keeps Gnome apps tidier even than Gnome distros
Pro Great for Desktop use
It is great for your daily desktop Linux due it good balance of stability and recent packages - it is also recomended by the debian project as the distro you should choose for desktop systems.
Pro Up-to-date software
Cons
Con Weak base
Sometimes updates will not execute hooks(full update always misses to run mkinitcpio) so you get an unbootable system.
Con Small development team
The team is very small
Con No real installer
Has no installer just a big bloated LiveCD that gets unpacked to your disk.
Con Pacman
Compared to deb or rpm it takes ages to update the system, it's also very dumb in dependency tracking.
Con Unreliable Servers
The CCR or the community forums are often down or unreachable.
Con Overwrites your default EFI config
It overwrites your default EFI config wich can make you PC unbootable if something goes wrong.
Con Uses systemd
Which is very hard to debug and not a *nix standard.
Con Only available for x86-based CPUs
Con Wont let you install the system to USB drives
Chakras weak installer Calamares does not allow you to install it to a USB drive.
Con Weak update process to a recent release
For example, you can install the Goedel Release and update it to the current release which then fails to boot due to some systemd-errors.
Con Development version
Debian Unstable is intended as a development release, and as such is much more likely to break.
Con Not for users new to Linux
You need to know how to maintain Debian Unstable or you can easily bork your system. There isn't very much information available on how to maintain Debian Unstable either. I was fortunate enough to be involved in a now defunct Linux distribution where a forum member put together a how-to on how to upgrade Debian Stable to Debian Unstalble, as well as a separate forum where users could post tips or ask questions about Debian Unstable. One source I would recommend is the Siduction forums.
