Debian 10.0 "Buster" Now Available - Powered By Linux 4.19, GNOME + Wayland

[Vistaus]

Most people don't constantly upgrade hardware and can be fine with non-bleeding edge software.

That's not the only reason to need newer versions of software. Even on older hardware, if you need (to do) something that requires a newer version of something, you're out of luck with Debian Stable. So stop throwing the "hardware upgrade" argument already!

And aside of Debian-based distros every non-rolling release distro has way too short support (<18 months).

EVERY? Really? So Red Hat is lying to us when they say they support releases 10 years?

[increasechief]

Rolling distros remain important -- namely that they provide a user base for bug finding, as these are bugs you will never see when using Debian. So
I think scoffing about old packages is a bit misleading. More time should naturally equate to more patches especially for popular packages. I could raise numerous examples where not updating except for a critical fix has ultimately made the scientific work I do less headache prone.

I study CS and have a desktop on testing and my laptop is now on Buster and have never had the slightest usability issue, in fact my experience has been that I have fewer problems than the users of other distros.

[skeevy420]

snip

I don't know if you read my post the other day, but I used to run Debian and had to do 20 mile round trips to sync the repositories to a USB drive because the place I lived in didn't have internet available (still doesn't, but I don't live there anymore) so I 100% get where you're coming from. I used a laptop, apt-mirror, and a 2TB USB HDD.

Manjaro is a nice compromise to Arch wanting to download an update every other hour. There's the usual weekly/biweekly updates and security fixes when necessary. For my needs, that's perfect. I know that I'm really up-to-date with whatever project's stable release, I'm using something that's been more tested than Arch, and I have a helpful community when I shoot myself in the foot. There isn't much more that I could ask for other than, "bridgman & AMD, would y'all please consider Manjaro for AMDGPU-Pro?".

These days if I were in a limited or no internet position I'd use Manjaro over Debian because I consider it to be a better all-around desktop OS.

As far as noob level easy and supporting family -- My Mom used to run Manjaro (XFCE) and I never once had to fix a problem for her. All I did was spend an hour installing it and getting it set up in an very easy to use manner and it worked perfectly until that laptop went bad and she replaced it with an Android tablet (an Android tablet better suites her needs over AnyOS on a laptop). Two and a half years of use and updates, Linux noob with no concept of a terminal, and I never once had to fix anything for her.

She went from Vista to Manjaro because native Vista could played videos very choppy and they worked flawlessly on a Manjaro live disk (mainly Netflix, but it effected DVDs and everything else). I did every trick and program I knew of to try to get Vista to work for her, tested a Manjaro Live to see if it was an OS issue, and when she saw how much faster and responsive it was combined with videos actually working, that's what she wanted to use.

While anecdotal, not having to deal with family and their computer issues is a godsend. I know damn well that all of us Phoronix posters are family tech support so y'all 100% get that.

Pacman and PKGBUILDs are why I refuse to leave the Arch Family. So simple, yet, powerful.

[gojul]

This release is much much better than Stretch was on KDE. The latter was rather unstable and unreliable.

Damn, Windows 95 is dead.

Yes, also Windows 10.

[moilami]

I see a lot of negative comments about Debian but I think it's the only sane distro when you want a stable, supported experience where new stuff won't randomly break your computer.
Ubuntu-based distros used to be the best for that kind of need but since Canonical dropped the ball, the trust is gone.

No, it is not the only one and openSUSE Leap 15.1 is among those which are even better.

[jojo7887]

Being a Debian Stable user myself I can say it's not a bad release and far from useless, it is however limited in certain aspects such as Vulkan development and the Mesa driver stack. From a gamer's point of view the Stable release is only really usable if you're using an Nvidia GPU and that's the extent of it.

I never had any issues with my setup and it always works the way I want it.

[pmorph]

I like debian a lot. Mostly because I only need to mess around configuring the system once, and then it's basically done until the next release upgrade.

[plantroon]

Some people apparently do not understand the word "stable". This thread was hard to read due to the misbelief presented. Debian developers are perfectly competent and aware of what they are doing.

It is true that old does not mean stable. One reason why I switched my servers from Arch to Debian was this notion of stability. It means, that no breaking changes will be introduced throughout the lifetime of the software. Not that it was battle-tested and is now considered stable. But that also applies as a side effect. Only security and bug fixes are applied to the software, no feature updates (but you can opt-in to those too, plus there are backports which I actively use). You may not realise this, but this is quite a lot of work to do on the side of package maintainers. Also then there Debian security team - they release timely fixes to known CVEs. Luckily, I usually have my systems secured according to best practices and CVEs rarely affect me.

Now, Debian is not a great desktop OS. Being universal, it can be used as one. But Fedora gives you a much more polished experience. I use Debian everywhere, on my desktops, servers, laptops and one day, I hope, on my mobile phone too. The company where I work runs everything on Debian. It is a very reliable distro which I strongly recommend despite all of its shortcomings (which are often easy to solve).

[gurv]

I see a lot of negative comments about Debian but I think it's the only sane distro when you want a stable, supported experience where new stuff won't randomly break your computer.
Ubuntu-based distros used to be the best for that kind of need but since Canonical dropped the ball, the trust is gone.

I install Linux not only for me but for family and friends and I don't want to have to constantly fix things for them.
Most people don't constantly upgrade hardware and can be fine with non-bleeding edge software.
So a rolling-release distro brings nothing but troubles for them.
And aside of Debian-based distros every non-rolling release distro has way too short support (<18 months).

The only real problem with Debian as a user is the Mesa drivers.
Part of the reason why I went back to NVidia: much easier to update independently of the rest of the stack.

I'm also really surprised by people saying they had an horrible experience outside of Arch.
I've been using Mint for me and friend and family for many years and it's been smooth sailing.