4 ms·

yep, Debian is fine and close enough.

wkat4242 3y ago
Yeah it's not just canonical even. A lot of commercial vendors are constantly pushing their stuff. My windows box is constantly trying to push me to use edge and "the new outlook" and I had to jump through hoops to install it without a Microsoft account. My Mac keeps warning me I haven't signed up for Apple pay and am not logged in with an apple id. It keeps this passive-agressive red dot on the settings icon as a reminder to "finish setting up my Mac". I wish vendors would just let me use my computer how I want.
bayindirh 3y ago
Debian is more than fine. A Debian stable installation is "forgettable", and that's a good thing. Then, you can upgrade to new version in 5-10 minutes, and forget it again, except occasional reboots for new kernels.
- cassianoleal 3y ago
  And if you want more recent packages, Debian testing is very stable as well. I've been running a desktop/gaming Debian system with testing as a base, pulling some gaming-related packages from sid and a few (mostly Mesa and related packages) from experimental. I use apt Pinning for that. This system has been running that way for months without a hitch.
  - bayindirh 3y ago
    You're right. I'm using Debian testing as my desktop for more than 10 years now. I only reinstalled it once, because 32bit Kernel was unable to manage cache well with 16GB of RAM, and Debian had no way of migrating to 64bit cleanly. Other than that, I just moved the system between disks and systems over the years. Just be cautious about sid and experimental. They sometimes go bang in spectacular ways.
    - rand_flip_bit 3y ago
      I think part of this stability stems from the upstream repos being more stable themselves (cheaper and easier than ever to run CI, quality of tools, etc). It's not often that upstream packages break their stable releases, or heck even develop/master. It also seems like the firehose of upgrades that is Sid/Experimental has slowed down a bit. Even Sid is still on nodejs 18 and not 20 or 21. The same version as both Testing and Stable. I feel at home at home with Debian Testing, not as bleeding edge as Arch for sure, but I think that is more of a blessing than a curse. The Debian maintainers seem to know what they are doing and the distribution has a sense or maturity that some others lack. I just hope an update won't break GRUB on me :) Only downsides to running Debian Testing is that it doesn't get security updates with the same speed as Sid or Stable, and third parties don't exactly put together and distribute pre-built packages for Testing specifically. I understand why, but it makes me wonder if things will break due some ABI compatibility issue down the line. Maybe once Debian 13 is released I'll just stick to stable.
      - bayindirh 3y ago
        You're absolutely right, but that's one side of the coin. Debian also has matured its processes a lot, and they have a much bigger infrastructure now, so they patch tons of packages invisibly, and reproducibly build them, and I think some maintainers do their own suite of tests. Debian 12 release is relatively new. Also we're in fall now. Package upgrade speed will take up in the next 12 months, reaching its top speed in 8 months if they keep up the usual schedule. I already can run two upgrades in a day, and get ~400 package updates in a couple of weeks. So testing is rolling pretty solidly now. It's a bummer that security service for testing is discontinued now, but it's only natural. The project got too big, and the attacks are evolving faster than ever, so security people have so much time and staff to handle this. I didn't experience any ABI compatibility problems with closed source or external software with Debian testing. I'm running Pagico, InSync, StarUML, etc. which are Deb packages and all of them are built against Debian stable or Ubuntu. They work without any problems. Well, Pagico needs libjpeg, but that's another thing unrelated to ABI.
  - khimaros 3y ago
    be warned that testing has weaker security update guarantees than stable or even unstable. testing tends to receive these patched packages a few days or sometimes weeks later.
    - bayindirh 3y ago
      Yes, but unless you're open to network directly, it's not a big problem. Never use testing for servers, though.
      - khimaros 3y ago
        high risk network dependent software like web browses are also affected by this. it is not only a problem for servers.
        bayindirh 3y ago
        Firefox and Thunderbird is regularly updated at unstable branch, following upstream. It generally trails a day or two at most. You can pin it in apt to get it when it’s released.
sertbdfgbnfgsd 3y ago
I've moved from Ubuntu to Debian years ago, when they started pushing their shitty containers.
- PlutoIsAPlanet 3y ago
  There’s nothing wrong with containers, in fact they are a great distribution of software, but the execution is just bad.
  - sertbdfgbnfgsd 3y ago
    There's plenty wrong with containers.

Yeah it's not just canonical even. A lot of commercial vendors are constantly pushing their stuff. My windows box is constantly trying to push me to use edge and "the new outlook" and I had to jump through hoops to install it without a Microsoft account. My Mac keeps warning me I haven't signed up for Apple pay and am not logged in with an apple id. It keeps this passive-agressive red dot on the settings icon as a reminder to "finish setting up my Mac". I wish vendors would just let me use my computer how I want.

bayindirh 3y ago

Debian is more than fine. A Debian stable installation is "forgettable", and that's a good thing. Then, you can upgrade to new version in 5-10 minutes, and forget it again, except occasional reboots for new kernels.

cassianoleal 3y ago
And if you want more recent packages, Debian testing is very stable as well. I've been running a desktop/gaming Debian system with testing as a base, pulling some gaming-related packages from sid and a few (mostly Mesa and related packages) from experimental. I use apt Pinning for that. This system has been running that way for months without a hitch.
- bayindirh 3y ago
  You're right. I'm using Debian testing as my desktop for more than 10 years now. I only reinstalled it once, because 32bit Kernel was unable to manage cache well with 16GB of RAM, and Debian had no way of migrating to 64bit cleanly. Other than that, I just moved the system between disks and systems over the years. Just be cautious about sid and experimental. They sometimes go bang in spectacular ways.
  - rand_flip_bit 3y ago
    I think part of this stability stems from the upstream repos being more stable themselves (cheaper and easier than ever to run CI, quality of tools, etc). It's not often that upstream packages break their stable releases, or heck even develop/master. It also seems like the firehose of upgrades that is Sid/Experimental has slowed down a bit. Even Sid is still on nodejs 18 and not 20 or 21. The same version as both Testing and Stable. I feel at home at home with Debian Testing, not as bleeding edge as Arch for sure, but I think that is more of a blessing than a curse. The Debian maintainers seem to know what they are doing and the distribution has a sense or maturity that some others lack. I just hope an update won't break GRUB on me :) Only downsides to running Debian Testing is that it doesn't get security updates with the same speed as Sid or Stable, and third parties don't exactly put together and distribute pre-built packages for Testing specifically. I understand why, but it makes me wonder if things will break due some ABI compatibility issue down the line. Maybe once Debian 13 is released I'll just stick to stable.
    - bayindirh 3y ago
      You're absolutely right, but that's one side of the coin. Debian also has matured its processes a lot, and they have a much bigger infrastructure now, so they patch tons of packages invisibly, and reproducibly build them, and I think some maintainers do their own suite of tests. Debian 12 release is relatively new. Also we're in fall now. Package upgrade speed will take up in the next 12 months, reaching its top speed in 8 months if they keep up the usual schedule. I already can run two upgrades in a day, and get ~400 package updates in a couple of weeks. So testing is rolling pretty solidly now. It's a bummer that security service for testing is discontinued now, but it's only natural. The project got too big, and the attacks are evolving faster than ever, so security people have so much time and staff to handle this. I didn't experience any ABI compatibility problems with closed source or external software with Debian testing. I'm running Pagico, InSync, StarUML, etc. which are Deb packages and all of them are built against Debian stable or Ubuntu. They work without any problems. Well, Pagico needs libjpeg, but that's another thing unrelated to ABI.
- khimaros 3y ago
  be warned that testing has weaker security update guarantees than stable or even unstable. testing tends to receive these patched packages a few days or sometimes weeks later.
  - bayindirh 3y ago
    Yes, but unless you're open to network directly, it's not a big problem. Never use testing for servers, though.
    - khimaros 3y ago
      high risk network dependent software like web browses are also affected by this. it is not only a problem for servers.
      - bayindirh 3y ago
        Firefox and Thunderbird is regularly updated at unstable branch, following upstream. It generally trails a day or two at most. You can pin it in apt to get it when it’s released.

sertbdfgbnfgsd 3y ago

I've moved from Ubuntu to Debian years ago, when they started pushing their shitty containers.

PlutoIsAPlanet 3y ago
There’s nothing wrong with containers, in fact they are a great distribution of software, but the execution is just bad.
- sertbdfgbnfgsd 3y ago
  There's plenty wrong with containers.