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> That's already the reality for most of this century. Openjdk, go, rust, docker, npm/yarn, etc. all provide up to date Debian, Red Hat, etc. packages for what

> That's already the reality for most of this century. Openjdk, go, rust, docker, npm/yarn, etc. all provide up to date Debian, Red Hat, etc. packages for what they offer. There's zero advantage to sticking with the distribution specific versions of those packages which are typically out of date and come with distribution specific issues (including stability and security issues). The advantage is the very reason one would choose Debian to begin with — an inert, unchanging, documented system. A large part of this problem seems to be that users somehow install a system such as Debian whose raison d'être is inertia, only to then complain about the inertia, which makes one wonder why they chose this system to begin with. > Debian's claims to adding value in terms of security and stability to those vendor provided packages are IMHO dubious at best. At best they sort of ship security patches with significant delays by trying to keep up with their stable release channels. Worst case they botch the job, ship them years late, or introduce new bugs repackaging the software (I experienced all of that at some point). Evidently they add value in terms of stability, but methinks many a man misunderstands what “stable" means in Debian's parlance. It does not mean “does not crash”; it means “is inert, unchanging” which is important for enterprises that absolutely cannot risk that something stop working on an upgrade. > Shipping tested, fully integrated, self-contained binary images is the best way to ship software to production these days. You sidestep distribution specific packaging issues entirely that way and all of the subtle issues that happen when these distributions are updated. If you still want Debian package management, you can use it in docker form of course. Not for the use case that Debian, and RHEL attempt to serve at all — these are systems that for good reasons do not fix non-critical bugs but rather document their behavior and rule them features, for someone might have come to rely upon the faulty behavior, and fixing it would lead to breaking such reliance.

curt15 6y ago
>It does not mean “does not crash”; it means “is inert, unchanging” which is important for enterprises that absolutely cannot risk that something stop working on an upgrade. But would enterprises accept being forever stuck with any bugs that aren't security related? Even RHEL backports patches from newer kernels while maintaining kABI.
- Blikkentrekker 6y ago
  We're talking about entitites that run COBOL code from the 60s and are too afraid to update or replace it, for fear that something break. There's a reason why most enterprise-oriented systems take inertia quite seriously — it has been something their customers greatly desire who are losing considerable capital on even minor downtime.
jillesvangurp 6y ago
That's why most shops deploy docker containters: it's not convenient at all for them for Debian, Red Hat, etc. to repackage the software they deploy or be opinionated about what versions of stuff is supported. For such users, the OS is just a runtime and it just needs to get out of the way. Ten years ago, we were all doing puppet, chef and what not to customize our deployment infrastructure to run our software. That's not a common thing anymore for a lot of teams and I have not had to do stuff like that for quite some time. A lot of that work btw. involved working around packaging issues and distribution specific or distribution version specific issues. I remember looking at the puppet package for installing ntp once and being horrified at the hundred lines of code needed to run something like that because of all the differences between platforms. Also such simple things like going from one centos version to the next was a non trivial issue because of all the automation dependencies on stuff that changed in some way (I remember doing the v5 to v6 at some point). Dealing with madness like that is a PITA I don't miss at all. There's definitely some value in having something that is inert and unchanging for some companies that run software for longer times. Pretty much all the solutions I mentioned have LTS channels. E.g. If you want java 6 or 7 support, you can still get that. And practically speaking, when that support runs out I don't see how Debian would be in any way positioned to provide that in a meaningful way. The type of company caring about such things would likely not be running Debian but some version of Red Hat or something similarly conservative.

curt15 6y ago

>It does not mean “does not crash”; it means “is inert, unchanging” which is important for enterprises that absolutely cannot risk that something stop working on an upgrade. But would enterprises accept being forever stuck with any bugs that aren't security related? Even RHEL backports patches from newer kernels while maintaining kABI.

Blikkentrekker 6y ago
We're talking about entitites that run COBOL code from the 60s and are too afraid to update or replace it, for fear that something break. There's a reason why most enterprise-oriented systems take inertia quite seriously — it has been something their customers greatly desire who are losing considerable capital on even minor downtime.

jillesvangurp 6y ago

That's why most shops deploy docker containters: it's not convenient at all for them for Debian, Red Hat, etc. to repackage the software they deploy or be opinionated about what versions of stuff is supported. For such users, the OS is just a runtime and it just needs to get out of the way. Ten years ago, we were all doing puppet, chef and what not to customize our deployment infrastructure to run our software. That's not a common thing anymore for a lot of teams and I have not had to do stuff like that for quite some time. A lot of that work btw. involved working around packaging issues and distribution specific or distribution version specific issues. I remember looking at the puppet package for installing ntp once and being horrified at the hundred lines of code needed to run something like that because of all the differences between platforms. Also such simple things like going from one centos version to the next was a non trivial issue because of all the automation dependencies on stuff that changed in some way (I remember doing the v5 to v6 at some point). Dealing with madness like that is a PITA I don't miss at all. There's definitely some value in having something that is inert and unchanging for some companies that run software for longer times. Pretty much all the solutions I mentioned have LTS channels. E.g. If you want java 6 or 7 support, you can still get that. And practically speaking, when that support runs out I don't see how Debian would be in any way positioned to provide that in a meaningful way. The type of company caring about such things would likely not be running Debian but some version of Red Hat or something similarly conservative.