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I'm also considering this, but I'm a little afraid of being stuck in the slow lane when it comes to software updates. I'm aware of Backports, but I'm led to bel

by troad 3y ago

I'm also considering this, but I'm a little afraid of being stuck in the slow lane when it comes to software updates. I'm aware of Backports, but I'm led to believe it has a somewhat limited selection. Perhaps this is a good opportunity to try a combination of Debian, for general system stability, and Nix, for specific tools where I need newer releases? Has anyone tried this combination before? If so, how did you find it?

Tuna-Fish 3y ago
If you want to run a desktop system, I'd recommend Pop! OS. Right now, they seem to be the distro that cares the most about desktop experience.
cardanome 3y ago
Why not use Linux Mint? It is Ubuntu-based but without the bad parts like snap. So you get to keep access to all the Ubuntu packages but also your sanity.
- leesalminen 3y ago
  I’ve been maintaining a machine deployed to my mother-in-law’s house for ~4 years with Mint. She went from needing tech support every time I was at her house to never overnight. I highly recommend Mint for this scenario.
aragilar 3y ago
Is this a desktop/laptop? You can always run unstable if you think stable is too old (I run unstable on my dev systems, and stable on servers/anything I want to setup and let run). FYI, if you use a Ubuntu LTS release, then unless you always run the latest LTS, the majority of the packages (being in universe) will actually be older than Debian stable (and will always be older then Debian unstable).
- pja 3y ago
  I’d suggest testing over unstable as very occasionally broken packages get pushed to unstable. Testing has a week or two delay, which usually catches such problems.
  - sillystuff 3y ago
    If you decide to run testing, be aware that while testing does get updates that address security issues after those updates work their way into testing from unstable, it does not explicitly get security updates. Pinning some security sensitive packages to stable or unstable might be worth considering. E.g., if running testing on a client, pin firefox and extensions to stable + stable-security (note, globbing works too): /etc/apt/preferences.d/firefox: Package: firefox-esr Pin: release a=stable Pin-Priority: 999 Package: firefox-esr Pin: release a=stable-security Pin-Priority: 999 Package: webext-ublock-origin-firefox Pin: release a=stable Pin-Priority: 999 Package: webext-ublock-origin-firefox Pin: release a=stable-security Pin-Priority: 999 The above priorities will not downgrade to stable from testing if the packages are already installed. To downgrade priority needs to be >= 1000. See 'man 5 apt_preferences'. If priority >= 1000, probably best to only do that temporarily, then adjust to lower to prevent setting a landmine for your future-self. If there are only a couple things you want to update to newer versions that are not in backports, you can just run stable, and pin those packages to versions in testing or unstable (but only if those packages pull in no / only a few dependencies not used by other packages). If you add e.g., testing/unstable sources to a stable system, add a catchall pin to force those packages to a low priority by default to prevent accidentally updating your entire system e.g., for sid: /etc/apt/preferences.d/sid: Package: * Pin: release a=unstable Pin-Priority: 10 Pinning without thinking can result in a broken system. But, I'm typing this on a box running testing (I guess stable, as of today) with packages pinned from Bullseye, Sid, and experimental and I've never had worse issues than an update being blocked due to dependency version conflict which was easily worked-around by pinning another package/removing or downgrading a pinned package; I run unattended-upgrades on all my boxes too. But, my hard rule is no scary deps e.g., a diff version of libc being pulled in, no deps shared with other packages that I would not want to have to pin to the same release (e.g., shared with any package with tons of deps itself), and no package that wants to pull in a lot of deps regardless of how benign they appear.
vorpalhex 3y ago
I run a mix of Debian and Arch/Manjaro. Debian is fine right up until you have to build something and find that the dep you need is too old so you have to build that from source, and that dep has a dep that's too old so you have to... basically build hell. Arch seems to not have these problems but is a hair buggier on occasion.
- malkia 3y ago
  backports?
blihp 3y ago
You can run a reasonably current Debian install by just switching to the testing repos after you install a stable release. This mostly works pretty well but occasionally[1] you'll have an issue. While you could get absolutely up to the minute software (from a Debian standpoint) using the sid (i.e. unstable) repos, I wouldn't recommend it as breakage is quite common there as they are working through various packing issues and that repo lives up to its name. [1] every couple of years in my experience... typically as they're getting closer to a new release and package breaking changes are needed/slip through.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
chungy 3y ago
Combining Debian with Nix or Guix is a fairly excellent way to go. Stable OS base, selective bleeding-edge apps (or hell, multiple runtime versions that would otherwise conflict). Win-win.
realitythreek 3y ago
What packages are you concerned about? Do you use flatpaks?

by troad 3y ago

Tuna-Fish 3y ago

If you want to run a desktop system, I'd recommend Pop! OS. Right now, they seem to be the distro that cares the most about desktop experience.

cardanome 3y ago

Why not use Linux Mint? It is Ubuntu-based but without the bad parts like snap. So you get to keep access to all the Ubuntu packages but also your sanity.

leesalminen 3y ago
I’ve been maintaining a machine deployed to my mother-in-law’s house for ~4 years with Mint. She went from needing tech support every time I was at her house to never overnight. I highly recommend Mint for this scenario.

aragilar 3y ago

Is this a desktop/laptop? You can always run unstable if you think stable is too old (I run unstable on my dev systems, and stable on servers/anything I want to setup and let run). FYI, if you use a Ubuntu LTS release, then unless you always run the latest LTS, the majority of the packages (being in universe) will actually be older than Debian stable (and will always be older then Debian unstable).

pja 3y ago
I’d suggest testing over unstable as very occasionally broken packages get pushed to unstable. Testing has a week or two delay, which usually catches such problems.
- sillystuff 3y ago
  If you decide to run testing, be aware that while testing does get updates that address security issues after those updates work their way into testing from unstable, it does not explicitly get security updates. Pinning some security sensitive packages to stable or unstable might be worth considering. E.g., if running testing on a client, pin firefox and extensions to stable + stable-security (note, globbing works too): /etc/apt/preferences.d/firefox: Package: firefox-esr Pin: release a=stable Pin-Priority: 999 Package: firefox-esr Pin: release a=stable-security Pin-Priority: 999 Package: webext-ublock-origin-firefox Pin: release a=stable Pin-Priority: 999 Package: webext-ublock-origin-firefox Pin: release a=stable-security Pin-Priority: 999 The above priorities will not downgrade to stable from testing if the packages are already installed. To downgrade priority needs to be >= 1000. See 'man 5 apt_preferences'. If priority >= 1000, probably best to only do that temporarily, then adjust to lower to prevent setting a landmine for your future-self. If there are only a couple things you want to update to newer versions that are not in backports, you can just run stable, and pin those packages to versions in testing or unstable (but only if those packages pull in no / only a few dependencies not used by other packages). If you add e.g., testing/unstable sources to a stable system, add a catchall pin to force those packages to a low priority by default to prevent accidentally updating your entire system e.g., for sid: /etc/apt/preferences.d/sid: Package: * Pin: release a=unstable Pin-Priority: 10 Pinning without thinking can result in a broken system. But, I'm typing this on a box running testing (I guess stable, as of today) with packages pinned from Bullseye, Sid, and experimental and I've never had worse issues than an update being blocked due to dependency version conflict which was easily worked-around by pinning another package/removing or downgrading a pinned package; I run unattended-upgrades on all my boxes too. But, my hard rule is no scary deps e.g., a diff version of libc being pulled in, no deps shared with other packages that I would not want to have to pin to the same release (e.g., shared with any package with tons of deps itself), and no package that wants to pull in a lot of deps regardless of how benign they appear.

vorpalhex 3y ago

I run a mix of Debian and Arch/Manjaro. Debian is fine right up until you have to build something and find that the dep you need is too old so you have to build that from source, and that dep has a dep that's too old so you have to... basically build hell. Arch seems to not have these problems but is a hair buggier on occasion.

malkia 3y ago
backports?

blihp 3y ago

You can run a reasonably current Debian install by just switching to the testing repos after you install a stable release. This mostly works pretty well but occasionally[1] you'll have an issue. While you could get absolutely up to the minute software (from a Debian standpoint) using the sid (i.e. unstable) repos, I wouldn't recommend it as breakage is quite common there as they are working through various packing issues and that repo lives up to its name. [1] every couple of years in my experience... typically as they're getting closer to a new release and package breaking changes are needed/slip through.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

chungy 3y ago

Combining Debian with Nix or Guix is a fairly excellent way to go. Stable OS base, selective bleeding-edge apps (or hell, multiple runtime versions that would otherwise conflict). Win-win.

realitythreek 3y ago

What packages are you concerned about? Do you use flatpaks?