3 ms·

> What is "work" in this context? I'm primarily interested in 1. having all hardware work out of the box, 2. working suspend to disk/RAM, 3. not having to edi

> What is "work" in this context? I'm primarily interested in 1. having all hardware work out of the box, 2. working suspend to disk/RAM, 3. not having to edit `Xorg.conf`, 4. relatively painless upgrades. Ubuntu gives me all of that and has served me well for 15 years. But their transition to snap forces me to look for something else.

chaosite 3y ago
1 & 2 really depend on what hardware you have. But if you get 1 & 2 today from Ubuntu, I'm willing to bet that you'll get exactly that from Debian as well. 3 hasn't been a thing for a few years now. `Xorg.conf` technically still exists, but the normal display configuration flow doesn't touch it. 4 is better in Debian than it is in Ubuntu, in my opinion. Updates are really painless and well done. But notice that the cycle is different: Ubuntu gives you 6 months release cycles and an LTS every 2 years. Debian gives you a "when it's ready" release cycle with a expected time of 3-4 years, and two rolling releases. That is, "stable" is like a LTS release. If you're running a desktop system, you should probably use "testing", despite the name.
- hiq 3y ago
  > If you're running a desktop system, you should probably use "testing", despite the name. I'm not sure I agree, maybe a better compromise is: * run stable by default * if at one point there are too many packages that you find outdated and which have a suitable version in testing, upgrade to testing, pinning the distribution name, so that you're back to (the new) stable once it's promoted Testing changes a lot right after a release, so I find it better to avoid it during that phase if I don't strictly need it. There are also more upgrades in testing and unstable than in stable, and the less upgrades, the less I need to reboot (or at least close my user session) which is a plus.
  - chaosite 3y ago
    > Testing changes a lot right after a release You're right. But, to be honest: my solution to that is to run unstable.

chaosite 3y ago

1 & 2 really depend on what hardware you have. But if you get 1 & 2 today from Ubuntu, I'm willing to bet that you'll get exactly that from Debian as well. 3 hasn't been a thing for a few years now. `Xorg.conf` technically still exists, but the normal display configuration flow doesn't touch it. 4 is better in Debian than it is in Ubuntu, in my opinion. Updates are really painless and well done. But notice that the cycle is different: Ubuntu gives you 6 months release cycles and an LTS every 2 years. Debian gives you a "when it's ready" release cycle with a expected time of 3-4 years, and two rolling releases. That is, "stable" is like a LTS release. If you're running a desktop system, you should probably use "testing", despite the name.

hiq 3y ago
> If you're running a desktop system, you should probably use "testing", despite the name. I'm not sure I agree, maybe a better compromise is: * run stable by default * if at one point there are too many packages that you find outdated and which have a suitable version in testing, upgrade to testing, pinning the distribution name, so that you're back to (the new) stable once it's promoted Testing changes a lot right after a release, so I find it better to avoid it during that phase if I don't strictly need it. There are also more upgrades in testing and unstable than in stable, and the less upgrades, the less I need to reboot (or at least close my user session) which is a plus.
- chaosite 3y ago
  > Testing changes a lot right after a release You're right. But, to be honest: my solution to that is to run unstable.