Hacker News Reader

Comment by krzyk | Hacker News Reader

Debian Stable (same as Ubuntu LTS) doesn't have newer package versions, it might sound OK for Windows people, that are accustomed having release once every few years, but in case of mode hardcore Linux users it wouldn't be the best user experience.

Even just the git has many releases during Debian Stable/Ubuntu LTS, which enhance user experience, that holding back users is not the best idea. And in most cases security fixes land first in the newest versions and are backported, so it is most likely to have a fix in HEAD than in some random older release.

View on HN

> in case of mode hardcore Linux users it wouldn't be the best user experience.

The "best" user experience you're referring to is getting surprises like your OpenSSH 9 suddenly stopping to work with your key agent [1] out of the blue because they decided to change the protocol (no big deal right?) without any hint of this whatsoever during normal usage, and you just casually upgraded your packages because, well, when did Linux package upgrades ever hurt anybody?

(Just the latest incredibly frustrating surprise your fellow "Windows person" literally had to spend hours on tracking down. And that I actually remember. Most definitely not the only one.)

[1] https://www.openssh.com/agent-restrict.html

... or when an ill-advised and insufficiently tested change to the internals of glibc suddenly causes threaded applications to misbehave ... great that it was fixed quickly, but for the "regular users" who suddenly found a variety of applications malfunctioning (but they each typically only used one, and hence blamed the application they used), a strong argument against rolling releases.

Did Arch users have this problem? I think OPs point is that rolling distros like that keep all packages closer in line with where the upstream is and avoid these kinds of issues. And if there are versions that have problems you can easily choose from any historic version far more easily than on Debian. Now of course it doesn’t save you from having to troubleshoot your own issues which very much is a time sink.

Yes in fact I first saw this on Arch. This had nothing to do with the distro.

Debian has a backports repository, providing newer versions of software for the existing stable release. This "Debian Stable has old software" canard is way out of date.

Not only that, but there are so many ways to get newer versions of software on Debian Stable when required: backports, Nix, pkgsrc, Docker containers, Appimages, flatpak, snaps...

Debian Stable tends to hand pick the latest LTS version of packages everywhere applicable, so it's actually a good base to standardize on. Packages might be a bit older but they are reliable, predictable, and kept secure by a constant roll of security updates.

In other words, if it doesn't work on the latest Stable, you're probably moving too fast for a good part of the industry. Lots of customer and production stacks are not in the "move fast, release early, release often, and link the crap to the very latest bleeding edge dependency" bandwagon.

If the argument is to enable backports and let it update, what’s your use case for stable vs using testing?

The whole point of stable vs testing is that versions are fixed, reviewed security updates make it, it’s all tested and vetted.

On the other hand, testing and backports haven’t been tested as well and could have issues.

If we use stable and incorporate backports from testing, is it still stable?

If you are selective about the specific packages you are updated, you're closer to stable than you might think.

I'm a linux user for over 25 years. I want my development environment to match production and that almost never involves new software.

If you are in a .... contest, I use Linux for exactly 25 years, and I always use the newest software I can get my hands on, in some cases even beta (like with mesa or some intel drivers) - in the last 15 years it is Debian - combination of testing/unstable (some packages from unstable) and a lot of self compiled ones for those that don't exist in Debian at all or have old versions (even in unstable). Had one case the the update broke my system, it was fixed few days later (after a weekend) - I probably don't update that often (when I remember to do apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade) to get more frequent breakages or don't use that much of software.

If I knew about Arch earlier I would have switched, because it sounds like my kind of distro - but I have to much customizations and too much kids to have time for that right now.

I never quite get why people want they development environment be similar to production - you install IDE on production? Or you just code in vim/emacs/ed without any plugins (because production doesn't need it)?

Again, system vs. apps, though. My production servers don't have Slack, Spotify, GUIs, etc.

My production servers run docker containers. Where are Slack, Spotify, GUIs, etc ran? Of course in containers.

I've never seen Slack, Spotify, or a DE run in containers, so you must be going very much out of your way for that to be the case. And if you're going that far, why do you care about the distro in the first place?

> Even just the git has many releases during Debian Stable...

It just so happens the software you mentioned, git, is in stable backports, so it is updated frequently. Regardless, I've been on Debian stable since 2007, and running "bleeding edge" stuff is trivial, depending on your desired workflow. (For example, I just install Debian testing packages in a schroot.) I used to bounce from distribution to distribution in the old days (Red Hat, Mandrake, Slackware, Gentoo, etc.) but once I found Debian Stable I could concentrate on getting work done.

I thought distros were stable until I tried Debian stable... It's stable! I use it everywhere, even my dev machine. Might switch to testing though on the dev machine, 2-3 years of no user software updates is a long time. I know it's unreasonable to ask, but a yearly new stable would be the best of all worlds.

May I ask where you feel it the most?

For me it’s definitely been browsers and IDE’s, but I just install those to /opt.

A notoriously finicky piece of software is Akonadi. If you use KDEs otherwise impeccable PIM software (underappreciated if you ask me!) you are probably very familiar with Akonadis random hangs and crashes and corruption. Debian is the first distro where it has been working steadily for more than a few weeks. Steadier than KDEs own Neon and flatpaks.

I wonder what kind of issues one can get in distros that people prefer stable? What can break? For me it was once, years ago - X didn't start up, fixed in few days after update.

Most of breakages of Linux was my own doing (e.g. by mistake overwritting MBR).

I use testing+unstable (I didn't know that backports exists, thanks) + self compile some software that doesn't exist in either or is too old. I also always compile kernel, prefer it to have less modules and configured towards performance on desktop.

I use Debian stable for my workstation, but get everything I care about from somewhere else. Go, Node, Emacs, Postgres... all installed from some other package repo. (I actually like Homebrew a lot on Linux.)

So I might be two years out of date on ls, but it probably hasn't changed in the last 2 years anyway.

I work for a smaller company running most of our stuff on older Ubuntu LTS versions. While there are things we want to update faster than the distribution does, most of them are leaf packages near the stuff we’re directly working on and are easy enough to either package ourselves or find a more recent package for from a trust worthy source.

It’s really nice to have the rest of the distribution more or less set it and forget it.

For a general desktop OS though that does not sound like a huge problem at all - long term stable always is behind. Thats part of the selling point in a way.

> it might sound OK for Windows people

Windows users might be accustomed to having infrequent OS version releases, but they're used to their _apps_ being current.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com