I’m ditching Ubuntu for Debian. But I’m wondering if I shouldn’t use Debian Testing instead of Stable to get more updated software.
Tuxedo OS is going to rebase their distro on Debian Testing, and I’ve heard that it’s actually pretty stable for a non-stable distro, which is why I’m considering it. But, I want your hear about your experience. What kind of trouble do you frequently run into? Any traps I should look out for?
I really want something that’s going to be no-fuss, solid as a rock and that’s simply going to get out of my way. I don’t have time to troubleshoot my PC after a whole ass day of troubleshooting some company’s software shit.
Before you tell me to switch to whatever other distro, I’m not interested. I want to use Debian. I’m used to it’s packaging system and how it’s set up and I know it’s a super stable distro. And I fully support the people behind it and their social contract.
Please don’t use Debian Testing. It doesn’t receive security updates in a timely manner. I previously made a post about it:
PSA: You should know that Debian Testing does not receive security updates in a timely manner, and is not intended for production use.
Unlike Debian Unstable or Debian Stable, there is no fast track for vulnerability fixes needed into Debian testing. In my post above, I note that Debian stable and unstable received a fix for a very severe vulnerability. However, Debian testing was left to dry for almost a week, for a known critical vulnerability.
If you want more updated applications, you can use tools like flatpak, distrobox, appimage, or nix to layer newer applications onto a system of any Linux distro.
If you want newer base packages and underlying utilities, like a newer desktop environment, you can get stable distros that provide this, like Fedora, or Opensuse Leap.
Unfortunately it is still in Beta, but Opensuse Slowroll is OpenSuse’s solution, a rolling release that delays package updates to test and iron out bugs before pushing updated versions out. It’s somewhat of an in between a rolling release and a stable distro, and a very promising model.
You can also just directly use a rolling release distro. Debian Unstable isn’t as bad as it sounds. Unstable doesn’t mean unreliable or prone to breakages. Unstable just means that the bugs deal with will constantly be changing, instead of dealing with the same bugs all the time.
But please don’t use Debian Testing. It’s in the name, it’s only for testing purposes.
Oh man ok. Thank you so much for this.
I guess I’ll stick with stable. Even if that means missing out on latest KDE Plasma features. I can wait a couple of years.
I ran debian testing for a while and I agree with this advice. I hadn’t bothered to read that the debian website itself said testing isn’t meant to be used like I was using it lol.
I think Debian stable is awesome and it’s what I’m running atm, but for people who want or need newer packages I agree it’d be better to go with a rolling release or at least with a distribution that has a quicker release cycle (like Fedora).
I get the advice that you can use flatpak if you want more up to date applications but what if I want an up to date version of gnome? :/ as an UI UX nerd honestly I care more about getting to use the best version of the desktop interface I’m using.
I wish there was a good totally independent distro for my needs. Debian gives an old version of your DE and doesnt ship vanilla packages, arch is very roll-your-own and more likely to experience breakage than fits me, void has honestly been the closest. I’m just not really fit for trying to set up and maintain a minimal distro, and honestly with gnome building more and more sysd dependencies I dunno if they’ll keep building work-arounds so gnome is usable. Sadly I’m very tied to gnome, in spite of the project being managed… Differently from how I would like to see it managed 🥲
To add to this, there is always the debian backports repository, which receives major updates for things such as office, BTRFS progs and other common software.
“Unstable” is one of the terms in the IT, that has multiple meanings. Those who don’t know, might confuse the term “unstable” with “broken”, when it actually means “Changing” (at a high level spoken). Its not about the bugs changing, but more about compatibility and changes that drastically could alter a system. Regardless of the model, security issues and often bugs are still being patched. For a “stable” distribution, this would be all it does.
Kind of what Manjaro does with the Arch base. Could be called slowroll too, as it is a rolling release with packages holding back and releasing them at once after some time. The idea is to test them before release, but I’m not sure if the Manjaro team does or did a great job at this in the past (years ago when I used it). The big problem with Manjaro was if you used the AUR, which always expected the current and newest packages without holding back. I guess OpenSUSE does not have such a problem, right?