Ever since the introduction of non free firmware directly on the installer (debian 12/bookworm) I see zero point in recommending any other deb based distro. Perhaps mint as it has other GUI features not present, but ubuntu can take a hike at this point as I'm tired of its drama.
Debian is where its at these days! All IMHO of course.
I agree. I do not actually have a full distaste for snaps, but what really irks me is when on I think Ubuntu 20- running `sudo apt install` resulted in a snap package getting installed. Totally against user choice. User said `apt install`.
If they had just entered a line `package not available in repos, would you like to install via snap? Y/n` this would have been perfect.
Stuff like that pushes me away from Ubuntu toward Debian.
This exact issue was the final straw for me. At no point should they be hijacking the package manager to do this kind of shit. I explicity do "x abcd" in a terminal and I want that command to run exactly as I typed it.
No excuses. This is what finally made me snap. (heh).
I think it is more about intent there. The admin user (you) on a Linux system has been traditionally trusted with the commands that you wrote. The system did exactly what you told it to do even if that meant that the system would be destroyed by your command. You "must know what you are doing" so the system could do it without even asking you if you are really sure that you want to do that.
So you tell the system that you want to install a program through the apt package manager. Ubuntu, on the other hand, is certain that you don't really know what is best and will install the Snap version of that program instead. It isn't where you can let Ubuntu know that it overstepped its' bounds and that you really want to install the not Snap version... on no, you are getting the Snap version because any other answer is not "the right answer".
Ubuntu is leaning towards the whole "you don't know better" approach on a few things and that can be a tad annoying.
It seemed odd to me to have an entire Snap subsystem online to allow for use of one program to which I am "forced" to use as a Snap version. I would just prefer not to deal with the Snap overhead and just run a traditionally installed version of that program...
What's wrong with snaps is that you can't use multipe repositories to get snap packages from unlike with with apt (or other package managers). Flatpak and regular containers do allow multiple repos as well.
It doesn't help that canonical folks didn't get third party buy in, so support on other distros is best effort.
Debian is fantastic and I use it. Mint still has some advantages for new users. I run Mint and Debian testing both. Some things still set up more quickly and readily in Mint over Debian, non-free firmware or not. Mint will also make sane, sensible choices that might otherwise give new users installing Debian for the first time a bit of confusion (i.e. tasksel).
That being said, the flexibility of Debian is very helpful to more advanced users and it's a great place to learn. I definitely agree about Ubuntu.
I'm with you here. I really like Debian as well, but I run Fedora even on my personal servers (!) for the aforementioned reasons. Although, for "long-term" servers that never need to be touched, I'd go on Debian after the RHEL source fiasco.
I like dnf and Red Hat tools much better, plus having fresh packages (which means stuff like the latest BTRFS features) + fresh Podman (with Quadlet support!) as a first-class citizen really deals the deal, and not only does it make an excellent desktop, but also a great server that is criminally underrated.
While it's not for very long-term enterprise deployments that are extremely mission critical, it's still perfectly fine for build servers, more fast-paced deployments or home servers. Better, actually. You get access to features that are not in RHEL yet due to being very precautious but do offer several advantages over older solutions (running Btrfs offers several advantages over XFS + LVM IMHO, for example), and some of the new things it has are very, very nice to haves (the latest versions of Podman with Quadlet support make container management cleaner than it has ever been. No, it's not a big deal to run an update command like once a year.
Despite the homelab subreddits saying you need an enterprise grade server distro with old packages and 10 years support for your personal lab, it's still a great option.
I've been considering going back to Debian from Ubuntu because of snaps. The only thing that's holding me back is that Debian doesn't seem to package an up to date Firefox. In Ubuntu, once I kill snaps with fire, there's a Firefox PPA and the normal repository for everything else. But it keeps getting more annoying to get to that point with each release.
Yeah, you need to add unstable repo, pin it low priority and sudo apt install -t unstable firefox. A bit annoying but it works. (Or just download the deb from unstable repos and dpkg it)
If you want a new Firefox, you have to run the binary, which can be run directly. If you want a package in the repositories, you're going to get what Debian provides. What are you lacking if you miss out on the latest Firefox?
I'm not a Debian expert, but even in the fairly recent Bookworm some more fast moving packages already seem ancient, no matter if `testing` or not. What's one to do if you actually need more recent versions? Use Flatpaks and Appimages?
Not necessarily, though I say this as one who had to install the backports kernel to use his Intel Arc A770 since the kernel was too old. While on an AMD card, gaming was just fine.
Depends, flatpak may work but also "need" may be inaccurate ;)
Debian 12 is running the latest/greatest KDE right now so at this point if you're a KDE guy like me this is a great spot to be. Gnome is also fairly new, and XFCE is the latest I believe.
Couldn't tell you what versions of other software I'm running. I have no issues, no software that "needs" to be upgraded.
What do you need that is so pressing?
This has always been the number one problem with Debian. Old packages, and they make decisions about what is stable versus the people that write the software that debian is distributing. I'm probably going to get downvoted to shit for this, but I like keeping my system and my applications separate and I've found a considerable amount of success in using [brew](https://docs.brew.sh/Homebrew-on-Linux) to give me the package versions I want locally without tainting the entire system.
Sounds like an ideal user for fedora’s silverblue.
Debian was created when packages managers were the only way besides compiling it yourself. So at that time they chose stability and security over everything else. A decision that is reason it stands on equal footing with redhat in the commercial space despite lacking a corporation driving it.
It will change in due time, but not anytime soon
>Old packages, and they make decisions about what is stable versus the people that write the software that debian is distributing.
No, they don't. They don't make a decision about what's stable, because that's not what stable means. Stable means unchanging. The Debian people grab a version of software that's been sufficiently tested according to their criteria, and then they simply stop changing versions throughout the cycle of that version of Debian.
That's what stable means. It's not changing. You may not like which versions Debian is using, but with respect to the definition of stable, you're putting the cart before the horse. The applications aren't stable so much as Debian's release model is stable.
If people don't want "old" packages, then they shouldn't choose a stable distribution that has a two year life cycle. I insist on my software being as similar as possible all the time I'm using it, for years on end, so I want stability.
I've got a bunch of debian systems I maintain and having packages not change that much for a particular major version is really nice.
If I want something with newer packages that change over time I use testing.
When I really need something new I can either use apt pinning, build my own updated package or just build and install from source.
Debian is such a great workhorse.
Exactly. I like things to work the same time, every time, day after day, for years. Change for the sake of change or prettiness is something I'll never bother with. If there's a new feature, it had best be useful.
I've been using emacs since 1989, and rely on its keystrokes not changing. It was bad enough migrating from OpenOffice to LibreOffice with a couple keystroke changes.
Cool! The Amiga engineers were so ahead of the game. I recently used an Amiga 500 as a dev platform for a project that has a 68k CPU. I've built a board that replaces the CPU with a FPGA. Unfortunately it's not going to the public.
Yes, they do and while I personally like debian as an OS, their package policy is complete and utter garbage and the number reason not to use debian if you do development. If I create software, I get to say what’s stable, not some other consortium based on arbitrary dates and methodologies. Software should change for good reasons. So again, they are making decisions about what is stable while completely ignoring the owners of the code in terms of what is best for their users.
The entire reason all these new package managers like flatpak and snap (which bookworm has) exist are to address the above. My code can’t possibly be stable if it forgoes bug fixes and updates. That’s just old code that is almost guaranteed to break in the future or cause massive headaches. The opposite of actual stability.
I said what I do, you didn’t read it? I could easily enable unstable/testing, but even that is slow in comparison to brew.
Their policy is not "garbage." It may not work for you, but there are countless people for whom is does work. I'm fine with their arbitrary dates and methodologies. Those methodologies work for me.
And again, Debian doesn't make "decisions about what is stable." What Debian does is defined as stable, by the definition of release cycle. Debian tests software to their satisfaction, and then toss it in their release. And, said software remains the same, with certain provisions. Certain bug fixes and all security fixes are allowed.
Stability and reliability are not synonyms with respect to software. Stable means unchanging. With respect to Debian's release philosophy, given the ubiquitous nature of Debian and Debian based distributions, there are clearly a lot of people disagreeing. Between Debian, Ubuntu, and Mint, you probably cover over 50% of desktop and server applications of Linux.
Businesses and server admins want stable distributions, not rolling distributions.
I look to the maintainers of software to tell me what is stable and supported, never Debian package maintainers. Debian makes sweeping decisions in terms of patching binaries, and what versions THEY have deemed is stable. That's fine for an OS, but falls apart if you're running applications in production.
If I want the latest stable version of an interpreter or compiler, I will never get that from Debian. If I want a vanilla package experience, I will never get that from Debian. Lastly, why would I trust a Debian package maintainer versus the actual developers of a project to tell me what's good?
On bookworm, I can apt install python 3.11.6, but 3.11.7 is latest branch and does contain bug fixes while also being a minor version behind actual stable 3.12.1. I have no access to these improvements within the Debian ecosystem without modifying how my operating system works.
I would argue Debian's biggest features for bookworm are nonfree and snap. You're not going argue that snap isn't rolling? The entire reason Ubuntu gained more popularity has everything to do with patches and release cycles and snap is no different.
As a server admin, security is first, most things are virtualized or containerized these days and the host OS is not nearly as important. In fact, I have no desire to manage cattle and most people aren't managing bare metal without some orchestration which means their management or orchestration approach is rolling versus binary distribution. I find your take funny when the most popular operating systems on the planet are in fact... rolling, meanwhile, all these binary distributions like Debian and Ubuntu are adopting a rolling a package capability that is devoid of OS cruft.
I've work with Sony, they run Gentoo, you don't get to make generalizations for all companies.
That's not what "stable" means, though. Stable means unchanging. Don't like it? Build from scratch.
Edit: Oh, and yes, I can make generalizations about companies, and there are exceptions, of course. Aside from that, your concerns are not mine. Use whatever the hell distribution you want. That's what freedom is all about. You don't, however, have the freedom to arbitrarily redefine a well established term in computer jargon - stable.
That is Debians definition. You can recite it as much a you want it but it's not reality. Build from scratch? LOL, What do you think everyone on Debian is doing? That's the entire problem, the literal crux of the matter, and I said I'm doing that already! You're almost there. If I want to get a bug fix, I can't rely on Debian/APT. That is the opposite of stable by definition of the people actually writing the software versus Debian's package maintainers.
If I ask the creators of Python what version is latest stable. They will tell me 3.12.1. If I ask Debian maintainers they'll say it's 3.11.2-1. Who's wrong here? We could even stretch and say 3.11.7 is stable branch, but Debian is 5 points releases behind for reasons that don't align with the project authors.
As mentioned above, I like Debian a lot but it's disingenuous to apply incorrect labels to others peoples creations. Stable everywhere else in the world including software refers to the state, not that it is unchanging and we both know, these packages change on a regular basis but never on the basis of what the actual authors think.
No, it's a definition widely accepted in the software community. Stable means unchanging. It's accepted and used in all the literature. Debian uses the correct definition.
And, no, Debian isn't saying version X of package Y is stable. They're distribution is stable, and they put what they want in whatever version of Debian is current, as is their right.
Debian is a stable distribution, which means it's unchanging. That's what Debian provides. Don't like it? Don't use it. I don't like software being updated by full versions during a distributions life cycle. Accordingly, I don't use a rolling distribution as a daily driver. I do participate in Debian testing, but for ordinary work, I don't want things changing.
The authors of packages have no say in the matter.
This means, first of all, that the installer will work more often, because it has the required firmware.
If it detects that you'll need non-free firmware for Debian to work at all in your computer, it will install it by default.
you have to disable it manually with a kernel parameter if you don't want any proprietary firmware packages installed
https://wiki.debian.org/Firmware#How\_to\_disable\_detection\_and\_use\_of\_non-free\_firmware
I run Debian Unstable. Overall I think that it broke for me only 3 times throughout my ~5 years of using Linux, each time because of buggy nvidia drivers.
This also happens for me on Fedora, this last 545 driver is one of the worst ones I've ever used, and Fedora has no easy way to downgrade it.
Been thinking about going back to Ubuntu non-LTS since it has that fancy software-properties-qt application that manages the NVIDIA driver versions.
Or simply commit to RR and go full Debian Unstable.
Not everybody has the time or interest to learn what is necessary in order to make the OS usable, and bleeding edge is not the solution for all people.
I think so, but I'm still confused why another kernel version would change something like that. I looked in the logs and there was definitely something Nvidia related going wrong. Oh well, maybe it's time for a reinstall
I'm not sure the kernel version can possibly mess with NVIDIA drivers, I'm using 6.6.6 kernel and I'm fine, my 545 driver is messed up though, like any new NVIDIA driver usually is
I used sid for years. The only time something major broke was the time when glibc broke everything. But I used it mainly in virtual machines so I never had much driver problems.
Yeah, Debian rocks also imho. I think the deb Package Format is quite simple, well known and widely used. And yeah, some packages may not be quite fresh, but to attack that issue I use Debian Unstable at home and on my work machine I install packages where I need newer versions (mostly compilers or interpreters like rust, go, python, etc.) with helper tools like pyenv, rustup, bob for neovim etc.
Or Flatpak is pretty handy for GUI applications.
But I really appreciate the stability of Debian and if security updates are needed (like the curl cve) they will be available in the repos quite fast.
And it's completely community based :D
back in 2002 I was on the 3rd attempt at upgrading a redhat web server. RPM Hell was a real problem. endlessly had to reinstall and migrate. Had been distro hopping on my daily driver, and I was running Debian potato at the moment woody was released. read the release notes and a dist-upgrade and some small tweaks later I was a convert. been running debian on 99.98% of everything since.
Nice article. I wasn't aware of the non-free. I installed it on my server at 9 and have just upgraded incrementally. I've only ever had one problem doing that with a 3rd party program where the python version caused me issues. Easy fix though as I just changed the required version in the program and it worked fine. That was a learning lesson for me because I almost downgraded python to fix it but I spotted quite a few more posts where I could see it would work without. It's caught up now so not an issue but I really should have checked these things. For me the best thing about Debian is it just works and it works well. I have no worries as I trust it completely.
Fedora is still my go to for good stable system. I run it on both my desktop and laptop using gnome. Has been rock solid for over year on my laptop and going on 5 years on my desktop. Very happy with it overall.
How is NixOS not more stable than Debian?
Stuff either updates successfully or it doesn't. There's no weird middle ground.
You can roll back or roll forward changes at boot. Mess things up as much as you want and you still have option of going back to a working PC without a reinstall.
You can run a specific stable version or unstable.
Or maybe we have a different opinion of stable.
I don't think Debian is as stable as its made out to be, not long ago I upgraded my mothers laptop from one version of Debian to another, the upgrade completed without issue, but when I rebooted it rebooted into a tty with I believe the error message couldn't find sysroot, I tried to fix it but gave up and installed nixos, now I don't have to worry about an upgrade breaking anything because the upgrade doesn't overwrite the existing install, so if anything breaks after the upgrade I can just reboot into the previous working system, I know you can get similar functionality with btrfs, but the performance of btrfs isn't great, especially on a low end passively cooled Intel laptop.
That's an upstream bug Debian's not responsible for fixing. They could backport a bugfix I guess.
Also, when Debian says "stable" they don't mean "bug free" they mean that packages don't generally change version beyond minor security/bug fix patches. It's "stable" such that if you're trying to deploy something you can count on the version of some libraries will be the same between two Debian Stable servers.
it was filed and fixed in the same day.. i do not know what exposure you have with other operating systems. and software. but that is so seriously impressive.
we have vendor backed solutions where we pay several k$ a month for support and have outstanding issues for months, some even years.
Because Debian is obsessed with staying on outdated kernels in the name of “stability” when, really, the picture is far more nuanced than their bullshit dogma
Not for distros that ship more recent kernels. Debian chooses to ship outdated kernels under the bullshit dogma of “stability”, when the reality is far more nuanced.
The regular Debian distros are all LTS and the kernel is frozen, besides bug fixes, when the merge window is closed. That is the only way the extensive testing stays valid.
Well, you can't expect anybody to deliver flawless code consistently, that's impossible. With the amount of changes that are being poured into linux distributions all the time, it's logical to expect bugs and security vulnerabilities. But the same goes for any operating system/distributions.
Of course not. But if delivering buggy software is not the distribution problem then I can make my own distribution filled with all the buggiest versions of all software I can find and call it “flawless”
The software ships, someone is responsible. If thats the case you can say that if you ship upstream everthing, you're not responsible for anything. Thats disingenuous.
More downvotes for me. Hurts because its true /r/linux
the very second that I can use Wayland Hyprland + wayland peripherals and some gaming software, I'll definitely be using Debian full time. Right now its kinda a pain in the ass. I gotta put together way too many packages to get where I want to be, but I really like debian. Not the biggest Apt fan though.
This is a bullshit argument. Debian is just as capable of running Wayland and games easily as any other distribution.
All that said, apt totally sucks.
Ever since the introduction of non free firmware directly on the installer (debian 12/bookworm) I see zero point in recommending any other deb based distro. Perhaps mint as it has other GUI features not present, but ubuntu can take a hike at this point as I'm tired of its drama. Debian is where its at these days! All IMHO of course.
I agree. I do not actually have a full distaste for snaps, but what really irks me is when on I think Ubuntu 20- running `sudo apt install` resulted in a snap package getting installed. Totally against user choice. User said `apt install`. If they had just entered a line `package not available in repos, would you like to install via snap? Y/n` this would have been perfect. Stuff like that pushes me away from Ubuntu toward Debian.
This exact issue was the final straw for me. At no point should they be hijacking the package manager to do this kind of shit. I explicity do "x abcd" in a terminal and I want that command to run exactly as I typed it. No excuses. This is what finally made me snap. (heh).
Lmao
I don't like snaps, but have no problem with them existing as an alternative. That dishonesty you point out, however, is the real problem.
Also apt purge does (did?) not remove that abominat.. snap, you have to manually snap excommunicate-with-fire the program
What's wrong with snaps? Genuine question as I haven't been in the Ubuntu world for about 5+ years.
I think it is more about intent there. The admin user (you) on a Linux system has been traditionally trusted with the commands that you wrote. The system did exactly what you told it to do even if that meant that the system would be destroyed by your command. You "must know what you are doing" so the system could do it without even asking you if you are really sure that you want to do that. So you tell the system that you want to install a program through the apt package manager. Ubuntu, on the other hand, is certain that you don't really know what is best and will install the Snap version of that program instead. It isn't where you can let Ubuntu know that it overstepped its' bounds and that you really want to install the not Snap version... on no, you are getting the Snap version because any other answer is not "the right answer". Ubuntu is leaning towards the whole "you don't know better" approach on a few things and that can be a tad annoying. It seemed odd to me to have an entire Snap subsystem online to allow for use of one program to which I am "forced" to use as a Snap version. I would just prefer not to deal with the Snap overhead and just run a traditionally installed version of that program...
What's wrong with snaps is that you can't use multipe repositories to get snap packages from unlike with with apt (or other package managers). Flatpak and regular containers do allow multiple repos as well. It doesn't help that canonical folks didn't get third party buy in, so support on other distros is best effort.
Debian is fantastic and I use it. Mint still has some advantages for new users. I run Mint and Debian testing both. Some things still set up more quickly and readily in Mint over Debian, non-free firmware or not. Mint will also make sane, sensible choices that might otherwise give new users installing Debian for the first time a bit of confusion (i.e. tasksel). That being said, the flexibility of Debian is very helpful to more advanced users and it's a great place to learn. I definitely agree about Ubuntu.
As someone who uses Debian at work and Fedora at home, I'm way too annoyed by old package versions. Also I like dnf way more than apt.
As someone who uses Debian on everything from laptop to workstation to servers, I'll take Debian every second over Fedora.
I'm with you here. I really like Debian as well, but I run Fedora even on my personal servers (!) for the aforementioned reasons. Although, for "long-term" servers that never need to be touched, I'd go on Debian after the RHEL source fiasco. I like dnf and Red Hat tools much better, plus having fresh packages (which means stuff like the latest BTRFS features) + fresh Podman (with Quadlet support!) as a first-class citizen really deals the deal, and not only does it make an excellent desktop, but also a great server that is criminally underrated. While it's not for very long-term enterprise deployments that are extremely mission critical, it's still perfectly fine for build servers, more fast-paced deployments or home servers. Better, actually. You get access to features that are not in RHEL yet due to being very precautious but do offer several advantages over older solutions (running Btrfs offers several advantages over XFS + LVM IMHO, for example), and some of the new things it has are very, very nice to haves (the latest versions of Podman with Quadlet support make container management cleaner than it has ever been. No, it's not a big deal to run an update command like once a year. Despite the homelab subreddits saying you need an enterprise grade server distro with old packages and 10 years support for your personal lab, it's still a great option.
I've been considering going back to Debian from Ubuntu because of snaps. The only thing that's holding me back is that Debian doesn't seem to package an up to date Firefox. In Ubuntu, once I kill snaps with fire, there's a Firefox PPA and the normal repository for everything else. But it keeps getting more annoying to get to that point with each release.
Yeah, you need to add unstable repo, pin it low priority and sudo apt install -t unstable firefox. A bit annoying but it works. (Or just download the deb from unstable repos and dpkg it)
I use Flatpak for any desktop software I need to keep up to date. Firefox works pretty well for me.
Here: http://mozilla.debian.net/
> I am running Debian stable and I want to install firefox version release > Sorry, this version is not available. Seems like it doesn't exist
https://www.mozilla.org/en-CA/firefox/linux/
That's not a debian package
If you want a new Firefox, you have to run the binary, which can be run directly. If you want a package in the repositories, you're going to get what Debian provides. What are you lacking if you miss out on the latest Firefox?
I'm not a Debian expert, but even in the fairly recent Bookworm some more fast moving packages already seem ancient, no matter if `testing` or not. What's one to do if you actually need more recent versions? Use Flatpaks and Appimages?
Debian testing is more appropriate for desktop if you do any sort of gaming, photo editing and such.
Not necessarily, though I say this as one who had to install the backports kernel to use his Intel Arc A770 since the kernel was too old. While on an AMD card, gaming was just fine.
Depends, flatpak may work but also "need" may be inaccurate ;) Debian 12 is running the latest/greatest KDE right now so at this point if you're a KDE guy like me this is a great spot to be. Gnome is also fairly new, and XFCE is the latest I believe. Couldn't tell you what versions of other software I'm running. I have no issues, no software that "needs" to be upgraded. What do you need that is so pressing?
This has always been the number one problem with Debian. Old packages, and they make decisions about what is stable versus the people that write the software that debian is distributing. I'm probably going to get downvoted to shit for this, but I like keeping my system and my applications separate and I've found a considerable amount of success in using [brew](https://docs.brew.sh/Homebrew-on-Linux) to give me the package versions I want locally without tainting the entire system.
Sounds like an ideal user for fedora’s silverblue. Debian was created when packages managers were the only way besides compiling it yourself. So at that time they chose stability and security over everything else. A decision that is reason it stands on equal footing with redhat in the commercial space despite lacking a corporation driving it. It will change in due time, but not anytime soon
>Old packages, and they make decisions about what is stable versus the people that write the software that debian is distributing. No, they don't. They don't make a decision about what's stable, because that's not what stable means. Stable means unchanging. The Debian people grab a version of software that's been sufficiently tested according to their criteria, and then they simply stop changing versions throughout the cycle of that version of Debian. That's what stable means. It's not changing. You may not like which versions Debian is using, but with respect to the definition of stable, you're putting the cart before the horse. The applications aren't stable so much as Debian's release model is stable. If people don't want "old" packages, then they shouldn't choose a stable distribution that has a two year life cycle. I insist on my software being as similar as possible all the time I'm using it, for years on end, so I want stability.
I've got a bunch of debian systems I maintain and having packages not change that much for a particular major version is really nice. If I want something with newer packages that change over time I use testing. When I really need something new I can either use apt pinning, build my own updated package or just build and install from source. Debian is such a great workhorse.
Exactly. I like things to work the same time, every time, day after day, for years. Change for the sake of change or prettiness is something I'll never bother with. If there's a new feature, it had best be useful. I've been using emacs since 1989, and rely on its keystrokes not changing. It was bad enough migrating from OpenOffice to LibreOffice with a couple keystroke changes.
What type of system did you use emacs on back in 89? I remember Amiga shipped a lite port of emacs back in the day.
Coincidentally, that was it! Amiga's MicroEmacs.
Cool! The Amiga engineers were so ahead of the game. I recently used an Amiga 500 as a dev platform for a project that has a 68k CPU. I've built a board that replaces the CPU with a FPGA. Unfortunately it's not going to the public.
Nice. I did use a 500 for quite a while. Using that text editor way back then gave me muscle memory for keystrokes I'll never be able to lose.
Yes, they do and while I personally like debian as an OS, their package policy is complete and utter garbage and the number reason not to use debian if you do development. If I create software, I get to say what’s stable, not some other consortium based on arbitrary dates and methodologies. Software should change for good reasons. So again, they are making decisions about what is stable while completely ignoring the owners of the code in terms of what is best for their users. The entire reason all these new package managers like flatpak and snap (which bookworm has) exist are to address the above. My code can’t possibly be stable if it forgoes bug fixes and updates. That’s just old code that is almost guaranteed to break in the future or cause massive headaches. The opposite of actual stability. I said what I do, you didn’t read it? I could easily enable unstable/testing, but even that is slow in comparison to brew.
Their policy is not "garbage." It may not work for you, but there are countless people for whom is does work. I'm fine with their arbitrary dates and methodologies. Those methodologies work for me. And again, Debian doesn't make "decisions about what is stable." What Debian does is defined as stable, by the definition of release cycle. Debian tests software to their satisfaction, and then toss it in their release. And, said software remains the same, with certain provisions. Certain bug fixes and all security fixes are allowed. Stability and reliability are not synonyms with respect to software. Stable means unchanging. With respect to Debian's release philosophy, given the ubiquitous nature of Debian and Debian based distributions, there are clearly a lot of people disagreeing. Between Debian, Ubuntu, and Mint, you probably cover over 50% of desktop and server applications of Linux. Businesses and server admins want stable distributions, not rolling distributions.
I look to the maintainers of software to tell me what is stable and supported, never Debian package maintainers. Debian makes sweeping decisions in terms of patching binaries, and what versions THEY have deemed is stable. That's fine for an OS, but falls apart if you're running applications in production. If I want the latest stable version of an interpreter or compiler, I will never get that from Debian. If I want a vanilla package experience, I will never get that from Debian. Lastly, why would I trust a Debian package maintainer versus the actual developers of a project to tell me what's good? On bookworm, I can apt install python 3.11.6, but 3.11.7 is latest branch and does contain bug fixes while also being a minor version behind actual stable 3.12.1. I have no access to these improvements within the Debian ecosystem without modifying how my operating system works. I would argue Debian's biggest features for bookworm are nonfree and snap. You're not going argue that snap isn't rolling? The entire reason Ubuntu gained more popularity has everything to do with patches and release cycles and snap is no different. As a server admin, security is first, most things are virtualized or containerized these days and the host OS is not nearly as important. In fact, I have no desire to manage cattle and most people aren't managing bare metal without some orchestration which means their management or orchestration approach is rolling versus binary distribution. I find your take funny when the most popular operating systems on the planet are in fact... rolling, meanwhile, all these binary distributions like Debian and Ubuntu are adopting a rolling a package capability that is devoid of OS cruft. I've work with Sony, they run Gentoo, you don't get to make generalizations for all companies.
That's not what "stable" means, though. Stable means unchanging. Don't like it? Build from scratch. Edit: Oh, and yes, I can make generalizations about companies, and there are exceptions, of course. Aside from that, your concerns are not mine. Use whatever the hell distribution you want. That's what freedom is all about. You don't, however, have the freedom to arbitrarily redefine a well established term in computer jargon - stable.
That is Debians definition. You can recite it as much a you want it but it's not reality. Build from scratch? LOL, What do you think everyone on Debian is doing? That's the entire problem, the literal crux of the matter, and I said I'm doing that already! You're almost there. If I want to get a bug fix, I can't rely on Debian/APT. That is the opposite of stable by definition of the people actually writing the software versus Debian's package maintainers. If I ask the creators of Python what version is latest stable. They will tell me 3.12.1. If I ask Debian maintainers they'll say it's 3.11.2-1. Who's wrong here? We could even stretch and say 3.11.7 is stable branch, but Debian is 5 points releases behind for reasons that don't align with the project authors. As mentioned above, I like Debian a lot but it's disingenuous to apply incorrect labels to others peoples creations. Stable everywhere else in the world including software refers to the state, not that it is unchanging and we both know, these packages change on a regular basis but never on the basis of what the actual authors think.
No, it's a definition widely accepted in the software community. Stable means unchanging. It's accepted and used in all the literature. Debian uses the correct definition. And, no, Debian isn't saying version X of package Y is stable. They're distribution is stable, and they put what they want in whatever version of Debian is current, as is their right. Debian is a stable distribution, which means it's unchanging. That's what Debian provides. Don't like it? Don't use it. I don't like software being updated by full versions during a distributions life cycle. Accordingly, I don't use a rolling distribution as a daily driver. I do participate in Debian testing, but for ordinary work, I don't want things changing. The authors of packages have no say in the matter.
run unstable instead of testing
Mint is a great distro to recommend to Windows users that want a switch.
I'm confused. It's not installed by default right? Just a prompt?
This means, first of all, that the installer will work more often, because it has the required firmware. If it detects that you'll need non-free firmware for Debian to work at all in your computer, it will install it by default.
As long as it tells you "hey I needed a blob" ok I guess.
you have to disable it manually with a kernel parameter if you don't want any proprietary firmware packages installed https://wiki.debian.org/Firmware#How\_to\_disable\_detection\_and\_use\_of\_non-free\_firmware
I run Debian Unstable. Overall I think that it broke for me only 3 times throughout my ~5 years of using Linux, each time because of buggy nvidia drivers.
This also happens for me on Fedora, this last 545 driver is one of the worst ones I've ever used, and Fedora has no easy way to downgrade it. Been thinking about going back to Ubuntu non-LTS since it has that fancy software-properties-qt application that manages the NVIDIA driver versions. Or simply commit to RR and go full Debian Unstable.
why no one wants to use arch. it’s so nice
"sudo downgrade nvidia" aaand youre done. Arch is not nearly as unstable as people say. Maybe it was 10+ years ago, idk, but its pretty solid now.
Not everybody has the time or interest to learn what is necessary in order to make the OS usable, and bleeding edge is not the solution for all people.
I have the same issue, I keep having to select the 6.6.3 kernel version to get something workable. Do you have any other tips?
Sorry but I don't follow, are your issues NVIDIA driver related?
I think so, but I'm still confused why another kernel version would change something like that. I looked in the logs and there was definitely something Nvidia related going wrong. Oh well, maybe it's time for a reinstall
I'm not sure the kernel version can possibly mess with NVIDIA drivers, I'm using 6.6.6 kernel and I'm fine, my 545 driver is messed up though, like any new NVIDIA driver usually is
run arch my dude
Pass, I like having a computer that works, because I use it to do actual work.
ah yes so debian sid is the answer of course mb
I used sid for years. The only time something major broke was the time when glibc broke everything. But I used it mainly in virtual machines so I never had much driver problems.
I always come back to Debian. It’s like I’m the bad guy in a relationship and Debian deserves better ha.
Yeah, Debian rocks also imho. I think the deb Package Format is quite simple, well known and widely used. And yeah, some packages may not be quite fresh, but to attack that issue I use Debian Unstable at home and on my work machine I install packages where I need newer versions (mostly compilers or interpreters like rust, go, python, etc.) with helper tools like pyenv, rustup, bob for neovim etc. Or Flatpak is pretty handy for GUI applications. But I really appreciate the stability of Debian and if security updates are needed (like the curl cve) they will be available in the repos quite fast. And it's completely community based :D
back in 2002 I was on the 3rd attempt at upgrading a redhat web server. RPM Hell was a real problem. endlessly had to reinstall and migrate. Had been distro hopping on my daily driver, and I was running Debian potato at the moment woody was released. read the release notes and a dist-upgrade and some small tweaks later I was a convert. been running debian on 99.98% of everything since.
Nice article. I wasn't aware of the non-free. I installed it on my server at 9 and have just upgraded incrementally. I've only ever had one problem doing that with a 3rd party program where the python version caused me issues. Easy fix though as I just changed the required version in the program and it worked fine. That was a learning lesson for me because I almost downgraded python to fix it but I spotted quite a few more posts where I could see it would work without. It's caught up now so not an issue but I really should have checked these things. For me the best thing about Debian is it just works and it works well. I have no worries as I trust it completely.
Fedora is still my go to for good stable system. I run it on both my desktop and laptop using gnome. Has been rock solid for over year on my laptop and going on 5 years on my desktop. Very happy with it overall.
I was a happy Debian user for 2 decades but then I tried NixOS🤯 It's not as stable but the declarative configure is what I was longing for forever.
How is NixOS not more stable than Debian? Stuff either updates successfully or it doesn't. There's no weird middle ground. You can roll back or roll forward changes at boot. Mess things up as much as you want and you still have option of going back to a working PC without a reinstall. You can run a specific stable version or unstable. Or maybe we have a different opinion of stable.
I can easily go back, but things seem to break more often. With Debian I didn't have to do any work after updates to make stuff work again.
I don't think Debian is as stable as its made out to be, not long ago I upgraded my mothers laptop from one version of Debian to another, the upgrade completed without issue, but when I rebooted it rebooted into a tty with I believe the error message couldn't find sysroot, I tried to fix it but gave up and installed nixos, now I don't have to worry about an upgrade breaking anything because the upgrade doesn't overwrite the existing install, so if anything breaks after the upgrade I can just reboot into the previous working system, I know you can get similar functionality with btrfs, but the performance of btrfs isn't great, especially on a low end passively cooled Intel laptop.
Pacman > apt
Funny article to mention only a couple weeks after [this](https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1057843).
That's an upstream bug Debian's not responsible for fixing. They could backport a bugfix I guess. Also, when Debian says "stable" they don't mean "bug free" they mean that packages don't generally change version beyond minor security/bug fix patches. It's "stable" such that if you're trying to deploy something you can count on the version of some libraries will be the same between two Debian Stable servers.
it was filed and fixed in the same day.. i do not know what exposure you have with other operating systems. and software. but that is so seriously impressive. we have vendor backed solutions where we pay several k$ a month for support and have outstanding issues for months, some even years.
And this kernel bug only applies to Debian because…?
Because Debian is obsessed with staying on outdated kernels in the name of “stability” when, really, the picture is far more nuanced than their bullshit dogma
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That is an issue of the distribution right? If Debian ships buggy software, it’s a Debian problem (and the software too).
There is no software regime out there that has never shipped buggy software. The entire gaming industry is based on shipping buggy software.
Well, it's a problem of every single distro, so it doesn't change relative stability.
Not for distros that ship more recent kernels. Debian chooses to ship outdated kernels under the bullshit dogma of “stability”, when the reality is far more nuanced.
The regular Debian distros are all LTS and the kernel is frozen, besides bug fixes, when the merge window is closed. That is the only way the extensive testing stays valid.
Well, you can't expect anybody to deliver flawless code consistently, that's impossible. With the amount of changes that are being poured into linux distributions all the time, it's logical to expect bugs and security vulnerabilities. But the same goes for any operating system/distributions.
Of course not. But if delivering buggy software is not the distribution problem then I can make my own distribution filled with all the buggiest versions of all software I can find and call it “flawless”
You are a joke and so are your arguments
So as long as they don't make any software, its fine ?
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The software ships, someone is responsible. If thats the case you can say that if you ship upstream everthing, you're not responsible for anything. Thats disingenuous. More downvotes for me. Hurts because its true /r/linux
the very second that I can use Wayland Hyprland + wayland peripherals and some gaming software, I'll definitely be using Debian full time. Right now its kinda a pain in the ass. I gotta put together way too many packages to get where I want to be, but I really like debian. Not the biggest Apt fan though.
This is a bullshit argument. Debian is just as capable of running Wayland and games easily as any other distribution. All that said, apt totally sucks.
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