Debian GNU/Linux Turns 27 Years Old

[AndyChow]

On the contrary I find Debian to be what Ubuntu was when it was at its roots : something lightweight and that just works. Ubuntu is no longer this, with many bugs (even though LTS releases are more polished) and has become as heavy as hell. Plus some political directions Canonical follows that I don't like. I switched to Debien when there was the Kubuntu melodrama, as I'm mainly a KDE guy.

I agree Ubuntu is not what it was. While Debian is lightweight and just works, the packages and kernel are always so old. If you are using Debian, are you using Sid? Debian Sid is probably awesome. But Debian stable, outside of production use, is really outdated. As of today, it's running the 4.19 kernel, rather ancient and tons of btrfs and zfs features just not there, and won't be there for several years.

[piorunz]

I agree Ubuntu is not what it was. While Debian is lightweight and just works, the packages and kernel are always so old. If you are using Debian, are you using Sid? Debian Sid is probably awesome. But Debian stable, outside of production use, is really outdated. As of today, it's running the 4.19 kernel, rather ancient and tons of btrfs and zfs features just not there, and won't be there for several years.

For Debian Stable, there is backports repo. New packages and kernels are there. I am using Debian Buster 10 with backports enabled and prioritized. I have 5.7 kernel and tons of other upgraded packages, new LibreOffice, systemd and so on.
There is no need to use sid if someone wants Debian stability and some fresher software.

[leech]

While I'm absolutely with you on all the other points, you're wrong on calling apt "still the best out there". Pacman is a significantly better at keeping your system stable. Apt can do the same only if you never, ever use sid.

1) Sid is called unstable
2) Debian's unstable is more stable that most other distros
3) Sid only really becomes unstable when testing transitions to stable, then there is an influx of new packages into unstable branch that can cause issues.

This is coming from someone who has been using Debian since about '97. You haven't lived until you've installed from floppy disk with zero hardware detection! :P

[leech]

For Debian Stable, there is backports repo. New packages and kernels are there. I am using Debian Buster 10 with backports enabled and prioritized. I have 5.7 kernel and tons of other upgraded packages, new LibreOffice, systemd and so on.
There is no need to use sid if someone wants Debian stability and some fresher software.

Want to hear something not awesome? I installed the 5.7 backport kernel on my NAS a while back. It'd lock up and not boot. So back to the standard kernel. Found out what the issue was though. Something to do with enabling VT on the motherboard triggered some weird incompatibility. So I've now sworn off Gigabyte hardware, switched out with an ASUS board and now it's fine (plus faster CPU).

Still don't know exactly why it caused that bug...

[piorunz]

Want to hear something not awesome? I installed the 5.7 backport kernel on my NAS a while back. It'd lock up and not boot. So back to the standard kernel. Found out what the issue was though. Something to do with enabling VT on the motherboard triggered some weird incompatibility. So I've now sworn off Gigabyte hardware, switched out with an ASUS board and now it's fine (plus faster CPU).

Still don't know exactly why it caused that bug...

I am sorry about that. There you see - freshness comes at a cost. You either have stable Debian (with no backports) or cutting edge Debian+bacports, or Ubuntu or Fedora, etc. with it's all potential bugs and instabilities, and so on.
Debian + backports works perfectly for me though, on three machines, two Ryzens and one old mobile Athlon. Never tried customising a NAS though. I'm writing this from backported Debian stable:

$ uname -a
Linux debian-ryzen 5.7.0-0.bpo.2-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 5.7.10-1~bpo10+1 (2020-07-30) x86_64 GNU/Linux

[lowflyer]

This is coming from someone who has been using Debian since about '97. You haven't lived until you've installed from floppy disk with zero hardware detection! :P

Hi brother! You're not exactly the only one remaining from that era. I did LFS around that time (before the first edition of the book). I came across debian shortly after that.

2) Debian's unstable is more stable that most other distros

That sentence was coined perhaps around 2003/2004 by the debian community. I too fell into that trap and got burned by it. I would argue that this is only the case if you consider just about all distros out there. If you have a closer look at "major distributions" you'd be surprised on how good they are compared to debian. I divorced myself from debian around 2005. Ubuntu was significantly more stable *at that time*. I found other "more stable" distributions in the meantime.
As you see this is mostly based on my experience from the past. I don't know how debian is right now. But their current stance on inclusivity doesn't make me come back.

3) Sid only really becomes unstable when testing transitions to stable, then there is an influx of new packages into unstable branch that can cause issues.

This is clearly not the case. I had a couple of "unbootable" sid-only machines in the past. It was particularly annoying because they were not my own machines but I had installed the OS...

[leech]

Hi brother! You're not exactly the only one remaining from that era. I did LFS around that time (before the first edition of the book). I came across debian shortly after that.


That sentence was coined perhaps around 2003/2004 by the debian community. I too fell into that trap and got burned by it. I would argue that this is only the case if you consider just about all distros out there. If you have a closer look at "major distributions" you'd be surprised on how good they are compared to debian. I divorced myself from debian around 2005. Ubuntu was significantly more stable *at that time*. I found other "more stable" distributions in the meantime.
As you see this is mostly based on my experience from the past. I don't know how debian is right now. But their current stance on inclusivity doesn't make me come back.


This is clearly not the case. I had a couple of "unbootable" sid-only machines in the past. It was particularly annoying because they were not my own machines but I had installed the OS...

I've never had unbootable sid machines. I have for Ubuntu, I have for Fedora, and I think I've even had Redhat eat itself. (Granted at this point the reason that one is, due to my 'fun' Optimus laptop, where if I take it out of discrete graphics mode, RH8 won't load). But yes, for me that sentence has been pretty much true. Outside really of the push to get testing to stable, Sid has been rather stable, especially in the last few years.

After all, Ubuntu is based on Sid.