Debian 10.1 Released With First Batch Of Fixes To Buster

[jojo7887]

Why does anybody need an old-style distros like Debian when there are really good rolling distros like Arch Linux?

For me personally, I prefer Debian stable because I can run a fully offline repo and I have better control over the system, Adding to that I have 9 PC's at home where 4 of them have no internet access most of the time at all and I tend to run tests on them.

As for software, I don't necessarily need everything on bleeding edge, things like Wine and the Kernel though, I compile those from source regularly and other minor software.

[pmorph]

\o
Once I have everything set up the way I want, "new stuff" coming in would likely be just a distraction. It's of course a different situation if you want to be the first to try out all new trends and developments in linux world, I don't have much interest in that.

[debiangamer]

\o
Once I have everything set up the way I want, "new stuff" coming in would likely be just a distraction. .

This way you lost support for your hardware and software and bisecting a problem comes harder. Nobody has the resources to test code with every possible hardware/software combination.

[pmorph]

This way you lost support for your hardware and software and bisecting a problem comes harder. Nobody has the resources to test code with every possible hardware/software combination.

Right, but release cycle of debian stable is still quick enough to avoid that becoming a real problem.

[debiangamer]

Right, but release cycle of debian stable is still quick enough to avoid that becoming a real problem.

For example, the Xfce desktop is old and buggy in Debian stable and that is a big problem. Xfce 4.12 spams errors to the .xsession-errors file and wears your solid state drive.

[Guest]

Why does anybody need an old-style distros like Debian when there are really good rolling distros like Arch Linux?

It's all about needs, costs and risks involving higher costs.

Majority of users just need a working tool which provides needed functionality. Upgrading comes with time cost, and risks of breakage. But, upgrading doesn't always provide any benefit. So, rolling release is an extra cost, which doesn't provide any benefit.

Exception is gaming, where having the latest GPU drivers usually helps a lot with performance. But, gamers aren't a majority.

[pmorph]

For example, the Xfce desktop is old and buggy in Debian stable and that is a big problem. Xfce 4.12 spams errors to the .xsession-errors file and wears your solid state drive.

That is very unfortunate, sounds like such Xfce version shouldn't have gone to stable. As for me, I just tweak things until everything works ok, and then keep it the same until the next release. Very stress-free way of doing things, so I can stress more with all the other things in life.

[skeevy420]

Why does anybody need an old-style distros like Debian when there are really good rolling distros like Arch Linux?

Because not everyone is capable of being a sys admin that can maintain a system from the ground up. As an Arch user, I'll say that Arch's biggest benefit is makepkg and the AUR as well as the Wiki. If Debian had the DURP, the Debian User Repository Program, and an accompanying tool set with documentation of a similar quality as the Arch Wiki, Arch would lose quite a bit of users. If any of the mainstream distributions did that, Arch would lose users.

We come to Arch because of the Wiki. We stay because of makepkg and the AUR.

What does that really say and mean?

We needs lotsa helps. Oooh, and I can has Shiny Things really ez.

I don't agree with these Debian Sid posts. In my experiences, it's just as likely as Arch to break upon update. Live on the edge and you might fall...that's just common sense there.

[Weasel]

For example, the Xfce desktop is old and buggy in Debian stable and that is a big problem. Xfce 4.12 spams errors to the .xsession-errors file and wears your solid state drive.

Or use your brain a bit and make that file immutable. Then it will get created on /tmp which is tmpfs, no wear at all.

[AsciiWolf]

I'm even surprised it made it in Buster eventually, just before the final freeze. The original plan was to drop it entirely exactly because it wasn't going to work on Wayland. Many Xorg aficionados didn't quite appreciate that though, so it was just kept as it was. I personally can't remind any such exception for any other software on Debian, but I do understand Synaptic has been around for so long, and users got so used to it, it wouldn't have been nice to kill it without any real replacement ready.

Yep, as you said: There is no real replacement for Synaptic. There are GNOME Software and KDE Discover, they are great for regular users, but lack most of the advanced features and do not display regular package names and packages with no AppData metadata.