> If you want packages that are actually recent you have to sit on Sid There are other options. For example, you can sit on stable and get specific packages fr

> If you want packages that are actually recent you have to sit on Sid There are other options. For example, you can sit on stable and get specific packages from unstable, so long as they don't have dependency conflicts with the rest of your system. It requires a little more thought than just running with the defaults, but the docs are pretty clear and detailed (man apt_preferences), and it's mostly a one-time operation. I do this with docker, the kernel, and a maybe a couple other things. > And if you have a Debian machine that’s a couple years old and you want to upgrade it to the latest Debian version? Good luck. I guess I'm among the others here who have had good luck, then. The first counterexample that comes to mind is a NAS appliance that is now around ten years old. I replaced its stock OS with debian stable (Squeeze, maybe?) and ran it that way until a year or so past the next stable release, then upgraded. It went fine. I did the same thing repeatedly over the years, until finally decommissioning it last month. It now runs Buster, so that's at least four major version upgrades done past their expiration dates. None of them gave me any trouble. The only thing wrong with it is that my needs have outgrown the hardware.