Debian 12.0 "Bookworm" Looks Like It Will Release Around Mid-2023

[ping-wu]

I hope Wayland will then be the default...

???

Wayland is default

[lucrus]

I doubt people who actually suggest running Debian Testing or Sid have actually ran either of them for multiple years at a time. They might work well after the install and for a few months after, but they're not designed to be an everyday, stable, rolling release distribution nor do the have the longevity or stability of an actual rolling release distribution; especially as a desktop.

You can safely stop doubting. I've been using Testing and Sid for everyday paid work since 2005 and never had to reinstall it from scratch. My current Sid is actually that old Sarge+testing updated over and over. I started using Testing+Sid instead of the current stable+Testing starting from Jessie (year 2015).
Yes, it happened sometimes a few updates were not that smooth, but never had major problems. Maybe that's because I never update via apt command line, but I've always been using aptitude and its wonderful conflicts solver (along with custom apt-preferences). Also I usually land my testing on stable (+Sid) when it's released and I wait a few months before moving to testing+sid again.

[sdack]

... Maybe it is just me but Pipewire, ...

No, it is not only you. Pipewire and its support for PulseAudio continues to be a problem, and for several months now. I would rather have left it in experimental or unstable and not pushed it onto testing just yet. Every couple days is there a new update for pipewire, wireplumber, or a related package. And when you think it is about to settle down does it fail completely and cannot find a single audio device. This is clearly still unstable and experimental.

[skeevy420]

You can safely stop doubting. I've been using Testing and Sid for everyday paid work since 2005 and never had to reinstall it from scratch. My current Sid is actually that old Sarge+testing updated over and over. I started using Testing+Sid instead of the current stable+Testing starting from Jessie (year 2015).
Yes, it happened sometimes a few updates were not that smooth, but never had major problems. Maybe that's because I never update via apt command line, but I've always been using aptitude and its wonderful conflicts solver (along with custom apt-preferences). Also I usually land my testing on stable (+Sid) when it's released and I wait a few months before moving to testing+sid again.

Apt with updates every week or two. Between 2005 to 2008 I had to drive a power inverter, a laptop, and a 2TB USB HDD on a 10 mile round trip to get internet access to update my local Debian repositories (apt-mirror). It was a godsend when the dentist 1.5 miles away got broadband & WiFi and didn't password protect it.

No internet updating like that always felt like a gamble. If it went wrong my only source of help was logs and man pages. No internet to be able to look up my problem and figure it out that way.

If you're curious: I tried updating my mirrors over AT&T Edge one night and got a surprise bill for over $900. Thank God they didn't make my pay that.

[mppix]

This already exists. It's called Debian unstable aka Debian Sid.

Unfortunately not. Testing only gets updates once they don't break Sid for 2 weeks... This filters out a lot of the issues in Sid...
It would be truly awesome if they could change testing to "rolling" that then snapshots into releases..

[mppix]

No, it is not only you. Pipewire and its support for PulseAudio continues to be a problem, and for several months now. I would rather have left it in experimental or unstable and not pushed it onto testing just yet. Every couple days is there a new update for pipewire, wireplumber, or a related package. And when you think it is about to settle down does it fail completely and cannot find a single audio device. This is clearly still unstable and experimental.

This happened to me, too when I moved from pulseaudio to pipewire. I more or less solved it clearing out all of the (pipewire, pulseaudio, wireplumber, etc) user config in the hidden home folders.

What I cannot fully solve is resetting the audio sampling rate of the usb interface

[mppix]

Same here. After my initial distro hopping I settled on Debian. That worked well for a while, years, until I started getting into Wine, Linux gaming, and trying to replay Morrowind and actually finish it (Narrator: He hasn't finished it). In hopes to get newer software faster I tried out their testing and Sid repos and ended up having some issue causing me to reinstall every few months. This was back around 2003-2008. Even distributions like Siduction that tried to wrangle Debian Sid eventually went Unstable true to the Sid name.

Sid=unstable. This repo gets updates from upstream or experiment as soon as they are tagged to be ready.
Testing only gets these packages only if they don't break Sid for two weeks (or there is a particular issue like an urgent security patch).

IMHO, only Ubuntu has wrangled in Sid. The problem with Ubuntu, first tried it around 2005 or 2006, is that they add all these helpers...scripts, pre-configurations, etc...that remove the user from the system and knowing what's going on. Basically, you made Debian yours while with Ubuntu you make theirs work for you. That was right before Ubuntu went full NIH Syndrome which has it's own set of complaints I'm not going to go into.

15 years later, I'd pick Linux Mint, not LMDE, but just standard Mint, if I wanted a stable Debian Sid OS. Ubuntu wrangles Sid and adds Ubuntu bullshit. Linux Mint removes most of that bullshit and adds a small bit of their own. Ergo -- Linux Mint is a stabilized Debian Sid with a spiffy Cinnamon desktop.

I don't know many people that choose between Sid and Ubuntu or LM.
Also, there is no stable Sid OS. Even Ubuntu releases LTS versions exactly because of that.

I doubt people who actually suggest running Debian Testing or Sid have actually ran either of them for multiple years at a time. They might work well after the install and for a few months after, but they're not designed to be an everyday, stable, rolling release distribution nor do the have the longevity or stability of an actual rolling release distribution; especially as a desktop.

I beg you pardon? I certainly did. Also, fyi, I have had more issues upgrading Fedora or Ubuntu than upgrading Debian (testing or stable).

Debian testing rarely breaks if ever (I recall like one critical but over the past 4years and that was resolved in less than 24h). The issue with testing is not stability. The issue is that it does not update during freeze..
Debian Sid requires a bit more tact. You don't want this if you run commands like "apt update && apt upgrade -y".
You also want something like apt-listbugs installed. However, you can run a very up-to-date and stable Sid system as long as you run your upgrades _after_ you had your morning coffee

[sb56637]

Sid=unstable. This repo gets updates from upstream or experiment as soon as they are tagged to be ready.
Testing only gets these packages only if they don't break Sid for two weeks (or there is a particular issue like an urgent security patch).
However, you can run a very up-to-date and stable Sid system as long as you run your upgrades _after_ you had your morning coffee

Thanks for describing this. So, I was under the impression that Sid also freezes during the next Stable final development stage. Looks like I was incorrect, so it does keep getting updates? Or is it technically unfrozen but just the developers don't push new packages to it for a few months as they concentrate on getting the next stable release out the door?

[mppix]

Thanks for describing this. So, I was under the impression that Sid also freezes during the next Stable final development stage. Looks like I was incorrect, so it does keep getting updates? Or is it technically unfrozen but just the developers don't push new packages to it for a few months as they concentrate on getting the next stable release out the door?

yes, it is my impression as well that they don't push as many updates into sid to not break it ...

[nanonyme]

With any bit of luck also Linux 6.1 with new FUSE goodies.