The Problems Debian Is Facing In 2020

[Alexmitter]

Debian Stable isn't intended for that use case. However, you can easily run Debian Testing. It's basically like Arch, but with six times the packages.

I was very impressed by Debian Sid/Testing, as this is what Mobian currently ships, packages are always up to date, while being very stable. The maintainers to brilliant work even for those not actually meant for use versions.

[killyou]

Debian biggest problems in my opinion are:
- they are terrible at attracting regular people. Everyone just chooses Ubuntu or even Fedora.
- lack of proper segmentation of the product. Make it easier to choose and download which version you need i.e. desktop OS, server OS etc. When you go to Ubuntu or Fedora website you immediately get the understanding what OS versions are there and which one you need to get. Noone should have to do the due diligence to find out about stable, testing, experimental to find out which is suitable.
- website is outdated. Refresh is very much needed with a big desktop OS download hitting your face
- outdated packages

They need to take a look on what Ubuntu and Fedora is doing, otherwise they will remain just a base for other systems.

[enrico.tagliavini]

Debian Stable isn't intended for that use case. However, you can easily run Debian Testing. It's basically like Arch, but with six times the packages.

Debian testing is not for everybody and it breaks at times (been there done that). The average Joe doesn't want something like that. They would much prefer a stable distro, which works on modern computer.

Not sure what you mean with "Debian Stable isn't intended for that use case.". It's supposed to run on computers, if it runs only on very out of date hardware due to missing modern drivers... I guess that's a complain I have about it and it's the very one which makes me exclude Debian for anything I do with Linux, no matter what.

Just as an example: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, which is old, very old by now, has more up to date drivers than Debian stable. It boots on modern computers because Red Hat backports the drivers to the older kernel RHEL runs. This requires a lot of man power of course. An alternative approach would be do like Fedora does: just run upstream kernel, staying one release behind to allow it to stabilize. I guess this is not for everybody, but works fairly well at the end of the day.

[Slartifartblast]

BLM ?

Mr Carter, do me a favour and stop virtue signalling from your moral grandstand.

I really fail to see how this is going help with distribution stability ?

[kpedersen]

"Debian isn't pretty enough".

How pretty can a black terminal with white text get?

Some people need to realise that for many use-cases, Debian is simply a tool (and a fairly good one). Not some fantastic consumer experience. We really don't want their "tackiness" imposed upon us. For example we need to see the boot-up messages, we need to access the grub loader, we need to install it via rs232 (without an X11 UI). We also run it on some machines which don't even have a GPU.

I don't think an OS can cater well to both types of user. I think Debian needs to either tell them "No!" or tell us "No!" so we know where it is heading and find something more consistent further down the line.

[david-nk]

"Debian isn't pretty enough".

How pretty can a black terminal with white text get?

This refers to the Debian desktop only. A different default system font would already go a long way. It's as if they intentionally chose the worst looking font/font size combination they could find, at least when I last installed Debian on a desktop computer, which was a few years ago.

The BLM thing was just an example for the slow processes that Debian sometimes faces.

It hardly matters, because it's not a valid example for a slow process. They couldn't have been "too slow" to put out a statement, because they never had any business putting out a statement in the first place. An open source software project like Debian has nothing to do with weird and convoluted American internal politics.

[NateHubbard]

BLM ?

Mr Carter, do me a favour and stop virtue signalling from your moral grandstand.

I really fail to see how this is going help with distribution stability ?

At this point, it's a given that any sort of organization has to make a statement that they support Black Lives Matter, without anyone actually caring about whether or not anyone else lives or dies.

[cen1]

Debian should just continue what they do best, provide a stable, server-focused distro.

[abcde]

Timely updated documentation would make much bigger impact than any statement regarding BLM which is completely unrelated to Debian project.

[neuralgya]

I've been using Debian sid (unstable) in my desktops for years. Yes, sometimes some things get broken, but that's not usual. For me it's a small price for having a up-to-date distro. And having some skills with apt usually solves the issue.

Debian with KDE it's not ugly at all. GNOME is ugly.

But the main reason for me is having a universal OS for all.

- Desktop -> Debian sid+Liquorix Kernel+Deb multimedia packages.
- Server : Debian stables
- Rapberry Pi: Raspbian
- Old servers with IA64 architecture, Debian old old stable.

Added to this:

- You can repackage debs easily download the sources. (can change compilations flags and repackage)
- It's quite easy to make custom backports (Download sources from sid and repackage for buster)