Debian 11 "Bullseye" Cycle Prepares To Begin Long Journey

[Vistaus]

Want to run Debian with up to date packages? No problem, just run testing or unstable. They are basically like any other rolling distribution.

Or Experimental if you're a daredevil.

[Vistaus]

So you like repetitive flamewars and lots of noise on your signal? There is something wrong with you.

He was a huge moron and loved to start flamewars, which were awful, but I can't disagree with Dominela that the forum does feel a lot less active now.

[skeevy420]

Or Experimental if you're a d.....

umbass.

FTFM.

[Vistaus]

umbass.

FTFM.

Why? It's rolling and if you know what you're doing, then I don't see why you wouldn't use it.

[Brisse]

Or Experimental if you're a daredevil.

Just to be clear though, experimental isn't a complete distribution. It's just an extra repository where maintainers can upload the latest stuff without immediately pushing it into unstable. It's meant for users of unstable who wants to pull in the latest of only some specific package. Recently I've used it for getting the latest mesa while Debian has been frozen these last few months, and it's great to have such a simple way to do that. Just don't try going into your apt sources list and change unstable to experimental. That won't work because experimental isn't an entire distribution in itself the way unstable and stable is. The way you do it is you have both unstable and experimental in your sources list, and whenever you want to install an experimental package you append '-t experimental' to apt, otherwise experimental packages will be ignored.

Example if I want latest gnome-shell and mutter and already have added the repo to my sources

sudo apt -t experimental install gnome-shell mutter

That way, nothing but gnome-shell and mutter will be from experimental. Everything else in my distribution will still be from unstable.

[tildearrow]

You must be really crazy or something. Debian is super easy to install and package manager works very well and it's fast. I use Fedora as my primary OS and Debian as secondary. Both are like one million times better than Arch which is crap btw.

Please elaborate on why is Arch crap.

[Guest]

The stable releases cater to server users and others who like minimal package churn. If you feel it is "outdated", then you just don't understand that (and probably never will).

I can't justify wasting so much effort backporting bug fixes from newer versions of software. That effort could be spent somewhere else. Software isn't that big these days, and a server setup with all needed packages will probably require less than 1 GiB of downloads for the whole system, not the incremental upgrades.

Also, committing to your own fork of someone else's code and hoping your backport won't break anything is at least silly. You're better off going with the majority and using the newest stable release to not be left alone with your issues.

[Brisse]

You're better off going with the majority

Pretty sure Debian and it's various derivatives is the majority. 🤔

[skeevy420]

Why? It's rolling and if you know what you're doing, then I don't see why you wouldn't use it.

Maybe it's better now, but my experiences with trying out Experimental way back in '05 always resulted in something not working after a while. IMHO, it's dumb to use Experimental and Unstable when there are supported forks; Siduction and Ubuntu.

Please elaborate on why is Arch crap.

Sometimes packages and certain configurations aren't tested on a wide range of hardware before being released to the stable branch resulting in things like the systemd fiasco a few months back. In that regards it can feel like it's a perpetual beta OS.

Everything coming with as default as possible settings isn't necessarily a good thing and can add an extra level of maintenance one has to do which adds to that perpetual beta feeling. Arch Plasma and Manjaro Plasma is a fine example of that.

The installation process, while very well documented, isn't necessarily new user friendly. If one thinks it's hard or has a hard time doing it, they're probably going to think it's crap. Some just want to "Click, click, click, click, porn. It's that easy, man," and not have to deal with a learning curve.

It still has a bit of a bad reputation from its earlier dayswhen they didn't have everything sorted out (like no testing or core/community, etc).

The forums can be "a little" harsh.

I'm sure there are other things, but that's what comes to my mind as a previous Arch and current Manjaro user.

EDIT: After posting I'd like to point out my bias with Debian from my bad reputation from back in the day comment. Most people will reference a bad historical experience that'll likely cause a negative bias in regards to anything. Psychology's fun.

[Guest]

Pretty sure Debian and it's various derivatives is the majority. 🤔

This is about software versioning. Also, you're talking about an entire family of distros, where every one of them will have their own set of repositories. You're lumping a HUGE group of users based on a dubious common point. You'd be better off if you grouped by something like kernel releases.