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How "out of date" is Debian really? (programming.dev)

submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by JackbyDev@programming.dev to c/linux@programming.dev

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I hear that a lot but, how bad is it really? Does it affect you (if you use Debian)? Aren't there ways to install newer versions of most things that actually matter?

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[–] moonpiedumplings@programming.dev 18 points 1 month ago (1 children)

As a someone who has used both Arch, and Debian, neither has less or more bugs.

Debian has the same bugs, over the period of their stable release, and Arch has changing bugs (like a new set every update lol).

Yes, Arch is going to get a lot more features. But it comes at the cost of "instability". Which is not so much a lack of reliability but instead, how much the software changes. I remember a firefox bug that caused a crash when I attempt to drag bookmarks in my bookmarks bar around, which lasted for like a week — then it went away.

The idea behind projects like Debian, is that for an entity that needs stability, you can simply work around the bugs, since you always know what and where they are. (Well, the actual intent is that entities write patches and submit them to Debian to fix the bugs but no one does that).

Another thing: Debian Stable has more up to date packages than Ubuntu 20.04, and Ubuntu 22.04. This happens because Ubuntu "freezes" a Sid version, and those packages don't get major updates for a while. So often, the latest Debian stable has newer packages than the older Ubuntu releases.

[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 1 points 1 month ago

That helps put it into perspective. That's not nearly as out of date as people make it seem.