Debian 10 "Buster" Should Be Out Around Mid-2019, Debian 12 Is "Bookworm"

[PackRat]

But they also don't necessarily target stable distros. Corebird, for example, requires GTK 3.20 or higher and Ubuntu 16.04, despite being the current LTS, doesn't have 3.20 (it has 3.18). And the next version of Corebird (current git master, but due for release later this year) requires GTK 4. Sure, GTK 4 hasn't been released yet but it will be released later this year and so will the next big version of Corebird, so 18.04 LTS, Debian Stable and Red Hat aren't targeted.

https://en.opensuse.org/Portal:42.3?pk_campaign=counter

"Leap 42.3 continues to use KDE’s Long-Term-Support release 5.8 as the default desktop selection while also offering GNOME 3.20, the same as used by SUSE Linux Enterprise"
Canonical missed the boat...

[Vistaus]

Third party developers do not target rolling development distro's and this is why Nvidia and Amd don't make drivers for Arch.

But they also don't necessarily target stable distros. Corebird, for example, requires GTK 3.20 or higher and Ubuntu 16.04, despite being the current LTS, doesn't have 3.20 (it has 3.18). And the next version of Corebird (current git master, but due for release later this year) requires GTK 4. Sure, GTK 4 hasn't been released yet but it will be released later this year and so will the next big version of Corebird, so 18.04 LTS, Debian Stable and Red Hat aren't targeted.

[schmidtbag]

(But storage is going to be the limiting factor : SD card are rarely a stellar enough quality to be used as main desktop storage, your best bet is probably something-sata-over-USB, see my own example above).

Just a side note - if you get a UHS-1 class SD card, the performance is roughly as good as a typical 7200RPM mechanical HDD. Better seek times but sometimes slightly worse read/write speeds, so it evens out pretty well. I'm not sure if the Pi3 supports UHS-1 speeds, though.

[DrYak]

2. An old pc which I use without monitor for server tasks. Mostly for sharing my printer (which doesn't have network support on its own), remote torrents download and broadcasting media to my smart tv via minidlna, sharing files and a few other tasks. I have connected to it more than 5 IDE hard drives, so there are no cheap alternatives for this setup. Surely, in the future, with a small budget I could replace this with a big sata hard drive and a rhaspberry pi, but it still works fine so it's not quite worth it yet, in my opinion.

Been there, done that.
- I'm using an old re-purposed Raspberry Pi 1 (B+, v1.2) because I really don't need more bandwidth for the file sharing part.
(You could pickup one of the newer Raspberry Pi 3+ with faster network for 35$)
- Using a second hand Samsung 830 128 GB mSATA drive I managed to get for less than 40EUR
(there are plenty of people upgrading old laptops on second hand markets like ebay. You can land a decently sized mSATA for cheap. You can use a checksumed filesystem like BTRFS if you're afraid about old-age flash wear and want to be able to detect it)
- Using X850 USB3-to-mSATA adapter, you find them cheap on ebay ( 20 EUR) , they even come with spacers and a USB-bridge-PCB to screw them directly onto your favourite single-board computer (and an extra 5v cable to tap into the 5v GPIO pin if your mSATA is power hungry) (and odroid have an updater for the JMicron's chip firmware to enable TRIM that runs directly on the ARM SBC).

For less than 100EUR one can get :
- something that will only use a tiny fraction of the power that your current server uses.
- a fun project to experiment with over the week-end.

Otherwise for a little bit more (125 USD) you could try to see when the next batch of Helios 4 is out - NAS oriented SBC with 4 SATA ports and high speed network. And still very low power.

3. My mothers desktop pc which has intel pentium D cpu. It is still quite capable of browsing internet and libreoffice tasks and I think it's still doing a better job than a rhaspberry pi.

I second schmitdbag : current Raspberry Pi 3+ would outperform this for a fraction of the power budget.
(But storage is going to be the limiting factor : SD card are rarely a stellar enough quality to be used as main desktop storage, your best bet is probably something-sata-over-USB, see my own example above).

[PackRat]

Doesn't work that way for any operating system? So Arch, Solus, etc. always do a proper stable release? I've never seen any release with those distributions labeled like that because 99% of the time their releases are just updated snapshots (i.e. less updates to install after a clean install) or a few minor tweaks (i.e. a different boot flag).

I was referring to Windows , Macos and GNU/Linux as operating systems that have production releases . I said Tumbleweed (that is rolling) is just a is a snapshot. Third party developers do not target rolling development distro's and this is why Nvidia and Amd don't make drivers for Arch.

[Vistaus]

Rolling is development model until release. Like tumbleweed never releases it's just a snapshot. I know what you mean, but technically it does not work that way for any operating system.

Doesn't work that way for any operating system? So Arch, Solus, etc. always do a proper stable release? I've never seen any release with those distributions labeled like that because 99% of the time their releases are just updated snapshots (i.e. less updates to install after a clean install) or a few minor tweaks (i.e. a different boot flag).

[schmidtbag]

1. Laptop with 32bit intel core duo cpu (one generation before 64bit core2 duo) which isn't that bad and it handles many tasks really well (I am actually trying to sell this one for about 50 euros).

I think you're going to have a hard time selling that. I have a hard time giving away functional Core2 Duo systems.

2. An old pc which I use without monitor for server tasks. Mostly for sharing my printer (which doesn't have network support on its own), remote torrents download and broadcasting media to my smart tv via minidlna, sharing files and a few other tasks. I have connected to it more than 5 IDE hard drives, so there are no cheap alternatives for this setup. Surely, in the future, with a small budget I could replace this with a big sata hard drive and a rhaspberry pi, but it still works fine so it's not quite worth it yet, in my opinion.

Just because something works fine, that doesn't necessarily mean it isn't worth replacing (and yes, the contrary is just as true). That being said, I think it's great you're making use of old hardware, but the 5+ HDDs alone would use more power than an entirely new system. I don't know how much electricity costs in your area, but I really think it'd be a worthy investment to replace that hardware with something more energy (and space) efficient. A Raspberry Pi 3, a single SATA drive that meets/exceeds the capacity of all your current drives, and a SATA to USB converter would surely cost less than $100 USD. Such a system should operate below 20W under full load. You could fit it all in a shoebox and leave it passively cooled.

3. My mothers desktop pc which has intel pentium D cpu. It is still quite capable of browsing internet and libreoffice tasks and I think it's still doing a better job than a rhaspberry pi.

Actually a RPi 3 would definitely perform better than the Pentium D, by a significant margin (1st gen RPi definitely wouldn't). However, I do believe you that the PD is sufficient for her needs.

4. Finally, a not so old netbook (I believe one of the last 32bit netbooks) in which my father currently has windows 7 and I'm trying to convince him to install some linux on it (Debian is the last remaining 32bit distro with good quality in my opinion).

Assuming that netbook uses an Atom, I'd say that's worth keeping. If it has a Celeron... I'd rather have the Pentium D.

[ThanosApostolou]

Why exactly are you still running 32 bit hardware? Even if you're on a tight budget, a cheap modern ARM system would likely outperform whatever it is you're using. It'd easily pay for itself once you account for the reduction in your electric bill.

Well, I still have those machines:

1. Laptop with 32bit intel core duo cpu (one generation before 64bit core2 duo) which isn't that bad and it handles many tasks really well (I am actually trying to sell this one for about 50 euros).

2. An old pc which I use without monitor for server tasks. Mostly for sharing my printer (which doesn't have network support on its own), remote torrents download and broadcasting media to my smart tv via minidlna, sharing files and a few other tasks. I have connected to it more than 5 IDE hard drives, so there are no cheap alternatives for this setup. Surely, in the future, with a small budget I could replace this with a big sata hard drive and a rhaspberry pi, but it still works fine so it's not quite worth it yet, in my opinion.

3. My mothers desktop pc which has intel pentium D cpu. It is still quite capable of browsing internet and libreoffice tasks and I think it's still doing a better job than a rhaspberry pi.

4. Finally, a not so old netbook (I believe one of the last 32bit netbooks) in which my father currently has windows 7 and I'm trying to convince him to install some linux on it (Debian is the last remaining 32bit distro with good quality in my opinion).

[schmidtbag]

I for one don't have much of a problem with the naming scheme of Debian. Despite being toys, most of the names aren't that childish or eye-catching. It actually took me a couple years to realize they were Toy Story characters, once I saw a lineup of all the version names (most of the names that were dead giveaways were in versions before I really started using Linux). I also think using Sid for unstable is pretty funny and clever.

Who cares, "stable", lts etc distributions are a waste of human resources. Old and buggy software is for stupidos. Rolling release operating systems are modern computing. Use Debian testing/sid/experimental Xfce distribution and packages.https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/

Kind of the point of using Debian is for the stable repos. Unfortunately, their definition of stable=old, and their unstable is very much unstable. If I'm going to use a modern-rolling release, Debian is toward the bottom of my list of viable options. I've had way too many broken systems due to sid updates. Meanwhile, I've lost count of how many years I've ran my Arch systems, despite them often supplying newer software than Debian sid. Only once have I had an update that caused a major breakage, but it wasn't that difficult to fix.
For the record, Debian has rolling-release stable and testing repos, which I use at work and my home server. Testing is usually a pretty good medium between very old and unstable.

Probably Debian 10 will be the final operating system I will install on my old 32bit machines. I currently use Ubuntu 16.04 but I wont' upgrade them to 18.04 since there's not enough testing in ubuntu 32bit archives since the official flavor has dropped support. Also, many 3rd party software is not available for Ubuntu latest versions 32bit (e.g. megasync), but I hope they will support Debian 32bit for a little bit more.

Why exactly are you still running 32 bit hardware? Even if you're on a tight budget, a cheap modern ARM system would likely outperform whatever it is you're using. It'd easily pay for itself once you account for the reduction in your electric bill.

[ThanosApostolou]

Probably Debian 10 will be the final operating system I will install on my old 32bit machines. I currently use Ubuntu 16.04 but I wont' upgrade them to 18.04 since there's not enough testing in ubuntu 32bit archives since the official flavor has dropped support. Also, many 3rd party software is not available for Ubuntu latest versions 32bit (e.g. megasync), but I hope they will support Debian 32bit for a little bit more.