4 ms·

This is particularly useful in the context of today's release policies. Between the ease of updating, the (perfectly justified!) "release early, release often"

by alxlaz 7y ago

This is particularly useful in the context of today's release policies. Between the ease of updating, the (perfectly justified!) "release early, release often" policy and the occasional rewrite frenzy, many open source projects never have a truly stable release. On every release, at least some of the components or new features are, at best, beta-quality. The next release (typically) solves some of the bugs, but introduces new ones -- because it includes a new (and pretty much unfinished) feature, or something got rewritten and so on. So if you're running an "unstable" system, you get a new set of bugs each time you upgrade, and a new set of workarounds, and so on. Debian's stability means that, at the very least, you get to work around one set of bugs every two years or so. It's not ideal, but a lot of people prefer it that way, and frankly, I understand where they're coming from. It is a trade-off, just like it's a trade-off to run distros with more frequent releases or a rolling-release distro.

dmix 7y ago
While this is true it widens the gap between stable -> unstable. So your only choice is either have really old [1] or really new. This is why I prefer Archlinux’s package selection which is nicely in between new & stable. You get the latest packages but not the alpha/beta or broken RCs. (Not to start a distro flame war, but it’s a reality of using Debian unstable is that it’s going to break often.) [1] a while back the 2yr+ old Gnome 3 package in Debian was way uglier than a new redesign HiDPI/retina-friendly version around 3.10 I believe, but took 2 yrs to show up. Which was around the time Gnome was finally catching up to Apple in the basic attention to detail at the pixel level. Which makes Debian a non-starter for Linux desktop to me, but fine for lower security servers.
- alxlaz 7y ago
  > While this is true it widens the gap between stable -> unstable. So your only choice is either have really old [1] or really new. It does. It's not necessarily something that I consider a good approach in every way, I just understand it. I myself took it for a few years, during the Great Rush to Rewrite Everything between cca. 2012 and 2017. I used to run Gentoo (at home) and Arch (at work) up to that point but I temporarily moved over to Debian (which I hadn't used since 2007 or so) until the storm settled for a bit. Yeah, it does mean that things that are broken tend to remain broken for two years, but you also don't need a set of new workarounds for two years. I very un-fondly remember that back in 2013 or so when I said no more, my machine was perpetually broken in some way. (FWIW, I've been back on Arch on my main station for more than two years now, it's gonna be hard to start a flamewar with me by arguing about Arch's package selection :-) ). I guess it depends a lot on everyone's usage patterns, too, there's a lot of diversity in this space, more than many younger FOSS developers (and UX designers!) realize. Some of the nastier things I do to my station are deeply rooted in my first days of running Unices almost twenty years ago, and while I do my best to make sure that not all old habits die hard, it can be hard to convince people to let go of the good ones. (Of course, "good ones" is subjective, hence the flamewars. I guess 50% of my habits are good, I just don't know which 50%).

by alxlaz 7y ago

dmix 7y ago

While this is true it widens the gap between stable -> unstable. So your only choice is either have really old [1] or really new. This is why I prefer Archlinux’s package selection which is nicely in between new & stable. You get the latest packages but not the alpha/beta or broken RCs. (Not to start a distro flame war, but it’s a reality of using Debian unstable is that it’s going to break often.) [1] a while back the 2yr+ old Gnome 3 package in Debian was way uglier than a new redesign HiDPI/retina-friendly version around 3.10 I believe, but took 2 yrs to show up. Which was around the time Gnome was finally catching up to Apple in the basic attention to detail at the pixel level. Which makes Debian a non-starter for Linux desktop to me, but fine for lower security servers.

alxlaz 7y ago
> While this is true it widens the gap between stable -> unstable. So your only choice is either have really old [1] or really new. It does. It's not necessarily something that I consider a good approach in every way, I just understand it. I myself took it for a few years, during the Great Rush to Rewrite Everything between cca. 2012 and 2017. I used to run Gentoo (at home) and Arch (at work) up to that point but I temporarily moved over to Debian (which I hadn't used since 2007 or so) until the storm settled for a bit. Yeah, it does mean that things that are broken tend to remain broken for two years, but you also don't need a set of new workarounds for two years. I very un-fondly remember that back in 2013 or so when I said no more, my machine was perpetually broken in some way. (FWIW, I've been back on Arch on my main station for more than two years now, it's gonna be hard to start a flamewar with me by arguing about Arch's package selection :-) ). I guess it depends a lot on everyone's usage patterns, too, there's a lot of diversity in this space, more than many younger FOSS developers (and UX designers!) realize. Some of the nastier things I do to my station are deeply rooted in my first days of running Unices almost twenty years ago, and while I do my best to make sure that not all old habits die hard, it can be hard to convince people to let go of the good ones. (Of course, "good ones" is subjective, hence the flamewars. I guess 50% of my habits are good, I just don't know which 50%).