I hear that a lot but, how bad is it really? Does it affect you (if you use Debian)? Aren’t there ways to install newer versions of most things that actually matter?

  • Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz
    3·
    5 days ago

    If you’re a software developer or an enthusiast, you’ll notice it immediately. You’ve been reading and hearing about the new release of the BestThingEver 3.14, and you’re totally hyped up about it. You rush to install BTE to experience how awesome it is only to find out that the Debian repos still have a BTE 2.0.5 and none of the cool new features everyone has been talking about for the last 6 months.

    Oh, that didn’t sound familiar? If you can’t tell the difference between two versions of a particular application, Debian will be perfectly fine for you.

  • schizo@forum.uncomfortable.businessEnglish
    3·
    5 days ago

    For a server? I want it out of date, so long as “out of date” means “older versions with backported security patches”.

    I’m boring and don’t care about the new whizzy crap, because if it’s working now and it’s secure, I’m not touching it. There is no feature you can offer me that will make me want to update a stable working server, so don’t screw with what version of software I’m running.

    For desktop use? Give me KDE Plasma 6.2 right now, not three years from now. I need that new shit in my veins, so hurry the hell up.

    So I mostly use Debian stable on anything server-y, and Fedora on anything desktop-y.

    And, I posted this just a few days ago, but I don’t like, at all, going outside of distro repos on Debian for packages.

    You end up with dependency chain issues in dpkg/apt, because dpkg is super hyper prone to them anyways, and have installs you can’t easily just update or upgrade because it can’t figure out what in the hell you’ve done to it.

    So I just uh, don’t use 3rd party repos for updated versions of things unless it’s utterly critical to do so and/or accept that at some point I’m doing a clean install for a migration because shit will be so broken you can’t pull it to the current stable version because of the 3rd party software.

  • moonpiedumplings@programming.devEnglish
    1·
    5 days ago

    As a someone who has used both Arch, and Debian, neither has less or more bugs.

    Debian has the same bugs, over the period of their stable release, and Arch has changing bugs (like a new set every update lol).

    Yes, Arch is going to get a lot more features. But it comes at the cost of “instability”. Which is not so much a lack of reliability but instead, how much the software changes. I remember a firefox bug that caused a crash when I attempt to drag bookmarks in my bookmarks bar around, which lasted for like a week — then it went away.

    The idea behind projects like Debian, is that for an entity that needs stability, you can simply work around the bugs, since you always know what and where they are. (Well, the actual intent is that entities write patches and submit them to Debian to fix the bugs but no one does that).

    Another thing: Debian Stable has more up to date packages than Ubuntu 20.04, and Ubuntu 22.04. This happens because Ubuntu “freezes” a Sid version, and those packages don’t get major updates for a while. So often, the latest Debian stable has newer packages than the older Ubuntu releases.

  • philluminati@lemmy.ml
    1·
    5 days ago

    I’ve used Debian stable daily for 20 years.

    When I was young and passionate about Linux there were lots of things that were behind and noticible. Notably big things like KDE with obvious graphical features that I could see I was missing out on.

    After a few years I stop finding any excitement in upgrading at all. I became critical of pointless features and rewrites. KDE is worse if anything.

    In the last 5 years there has been stuff I’ve wanted that’s existed outside the project. Docker when it came out, Wireguard. I just ended up waiting.

    The only software I run outside the repositories atm is neovim and that’s because I want to use the latest Scala-metals IDE tool. That itself is becoming more stable though.

  • Possibly linux@lemmy.zipEnglish
    1·
    5 days ago

    Debian ships a new release every 2 years.

    You can use flatpak to get the latest apps. If you need the latest CLI software use containers. The entire point of Debian is to have a solid base system to build off of.

  • fuzzy_feeling@programming.dev
    1·
    5 days ago

    the more software you install, that is not in the standard repo, the more unstable it will become…

    i use a rolling release distro on my desktop, void btw.
    on servers i use debian, because i want the software as reliable as possible. i don’t care if the packages are older as long as no update breaks the system…

  • bad_news@lemmy.billiam.net
    0·
    4 days ago

    I’ve had hard drives be too new for the Debian kernel. Granted it was a VERY fancy hard drive, but… Ever since that I’ve been leaning Fedora, but Fedora 40 is awful, so I’m considering trying Debian as my preferred distro again in the future.

    • Billegh@lemmy.world
      1·
      4 days ago

      I’ve found that arch is often an easier time than fedora if you want “up-to-date” Linux. Fedora has its heart in the right place, but its pathological adherence to open source makes it sometimes a very difficult time for certain classes of new things.

      But as I have opinions as to my lawn and your location relative to it, Debian is more often fine for my needs. It’s my daily driver on pretty much everything at work and at home, with the exception of a few arch and fedora systems in my home lab.

        • JackbyDev@programming.devOPEnglish
          11·
          2 days ago

          It’s really a vibe. I see people complaining about it all the time about Debian, so I’d expect those people to answer based on their own definition of new/old and talk about problems (or lack of) it’s brought them.

          • rah@feddit.ukEnglish
            11·
            2 days ago

            So then your original question isn’t ‘How “out of date” is Debian really?’ but ‘If you complain that Debian is “out of date”, what do you mean?’

            • JackbyDev@programming.devOPEnglish
              11·
              2 days ago

              I mean, isn’t that how communication works? “Has the heat outside affected you?” It doesn’t matter what I consider hot and they consider hot, I’m asking if the heat affects them. “If the heat outside is hot enough that it has bothered you, has it affected you negatively?” It’s a mouthful.

              • rah@feddit.ukEnglish
                11·
                2 days ago

                No. Heat affects everyone. Regarding Debian, what exactly do you think has affected everyone?

                • JackbyDev@programming.devOPEnglish
                  11·
                  2 days ago

                  I don’t think I can make this clearer for you. Pretty much everyone else seems to have understood the question. You’re going to need to figure this one out on your own. Good luck!

          • BatmanAoD@programming.dev
            2·
            2 days ago

            Yep, learned it recently from a list of things that are, surprisingly, named after real people. Deb and Ian eventually got married but are now divorced.

  • TheGrandNagus@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    5 days ago

    Yes, there are ways to install newer versions in a way that shouldn’t cause any issues (as opposed to adding a bunch of unstable repos): Flatpak.

    IMO Flatpak has made Debian a lot more usable. You get the stability of the Debian base system but can have newer apps if you want to, without unnecessarily complicating matters with PPA repositories.