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My magicbook came with deepin linux installed, but unfortunately they're based off debian stable, which meant that most of the packages were severely outdated a

My magicbook came with deepin linux installed, but unfortunately they're based off debian stable, which meant that most of the packages were severely outdated and unusable for me as a dev environment. The deepin desktop environment itself was pretty, but janky. The settings thing (on the right side of the screen) is difficult and unintuitive to navigate, and scrolling was still buggy when I used it in December (it will randomly skip sections or just get stuck when you scroll). The other apps felt similarly unpolished, like they'd put all their energy into the look rather than the boring stability side of things. In a few years it might be a nice DE, but it has a long way to go. I've tried all of the major desktops over the past year in anticipation of 20.04, but I think I'll be moving to KDE once it comes out. It seems to have the most seamless integration of them all, and still allows me to control things. I just hope the performance is good.

nsomaru 7y ago
Debian stable (buster currently) is my daily driver. I'm quite happy that I have stable targets of packages to develop against. I'm curious about the type of work you do that Debian packages are "outdated" and do not enable you to continue your work. I've used many different distros but I keep coming back to rock-solid Debian.
- hiq 7y ago
  I guess front-end development is the obvious one. The Node.js version on Debian Buster is 10.15.2~dfsg-2, while you have 12.16.2 on the official NodeJS website. To be fair, OP mentioned that the official packages were often useless, not the distribution as a whole (you can often install custom packages / binaries, although it's not nice).
  - RMPR 7y ago
    Back in time, it was node 5 while the stable version was 8.
  - adar 7y ago
    AFAIK many (most?) Node devs completely ignore the version that comes with their OS and use something like nvm to manage their Node version(s) anyway.
- RMPR 7y ago
  I've faced many issues with Debian a few years ago regarding the old packages, one of them was building stubby from source which required getdns 1.1.2 at least, no luck the one in the repository didn't satisfy the version requirement, I tried to build getdns from source but faced an issue with the too old GCC version, I had to "frankeindebian" with gcc and g++ from debian unstable repository. I then decided to switch to Fedora. Don't get me wrong, stability is good, especially when you have to deal with Nvidia. Fun fact: I tried to install CUDA on Fedora 31 Workstation but faced an issue with a too recent version of GCC, it really depends on the use cases.
  - iforgotpassword 7y ago
    I've felt like the gap became smaller, either stuff isn't changing so fast anymore, or I just got lucky and only dealt with things that had good backwards compatibility. Either way I'm usually always switching to testing about half a year before it becomes stable. It usually already is pretty stable at that point, and if I do encounter an issue I like to report it to give a little bit back, to help make the next stable release a little more stable from the start. :-)

nsomaru 7y ago

Debian stable (buster currently) is my daily driver. I'm quite happy that I have stable targets of packages to develop against. I'm curious about the type of work you do that Debian packages are "outdated" and do not enable you to continue your work. I've used many different distros but I keep coming back to rock-solid Debian.

hiq 7y ago
I guess front-end development is the obvious one. The Node.js version on Debian Buster is 10.15.2~dfsg-2, while you have 12.16.2 on the official NodeJS website. To be fair, OP mentioned that the official packages were often useless, not the distribution as a whole (you can often install custom packages / binaries, although it's not nice).
- RMPR 7y ago
  Back in time, it was node 5 while the stable version was 8.
- adar 7y ago
  AFAIK many (most?) Node devs completely ignore the version that comes with their OS and use something like nvm to manage their Node version(s) anyway.
RMPR 7y ago
I've faced many issues with Debian a few years ago regarding the old packages, one of them was building stubby from source which required getdns 1.1.2 at least, no luck the one in the repository didn't satisfy the version requirement, I tried to build getdns from source but faced an issue with the too old GCC version, I had to "frankeindebian" with gcc and g++ from debian unstable repository. I then decided to switch to Fedora. Don't get me wrong, stability is good, especially when you have to deal with Nvidia. Fun fact: I tried to install CUDA on Fedora 31 Workstation but faced an issue with a too recent version of GCC, it really depends on the use cases.
- iforgotpassword 7y ago
  I've felt like the gap became smaller, either stuff isn't changing so fast anymore, or I just got lucky and only dealt with things that had good backwards compatibility. Either way I'm usually always switching to testing about half a year before it becomes stable. It usually already is pretty stable at that point, and if I do encounter an issue I like to report it to give a little bit back, to help make the next stable release a little more stable from the start. :-)