Sorry for this probably newbie question. Is it important which version of a rolling release I start from? For example, if I download a version of Arch Linux 6 months older than the latest on the website, and then run update & upgrade, isn't it the same of running the same command on the latest version?
Rolling releases starting version
upgrade;rolling release
In a perfect and smooth world, you would be able to start with a several years-old version and get the same thing after update as if you had started with the very last version available.But as Basile said, the evil is in the details. The Arch wiki recommend to do regular upgrades, mainly to avoid having plenty of manual interventions required at the same time on different packages.Most of the time, when you upgrade your system, everything will work like a charm. But it only needs a few tricky updates (like the systemd/SysV) among the hundreds to get a real mess. And the chance of having such updates grows with the age of the system you upgrade.So, maybe starting from a monthly-old system will work fine, but I don't get the point of taking the risk to loose time doing boring stuff to get things work when you just have to download a fresh iso to reduce this risk dramatically.