> Debian has decades old versions of packages that they'll backport security fixes into till pretty much the end of time
I don't know what filthy corner of the internet you get this misinformation from, but it is completely wrong. Please stop.
I don't know what filthy corner of the internet you get this misinformation from, but it is completely wrong. Please stop.
It's really good that they do that, I respect the niche they work in, but Debian has the nasty knock-on effect of having a lot of guides made for it by third parties that recommend really outdated versions of debian which can be a nasty suprise for someone new to Linux.
(It also results in notable forks like Raspbian having a poor update cycle - I remember in particular that it took about 2 years to move from the regular EOL of wheezy to jessie.)
So your evidence that they don't update things is that they backport new fixes to an EOL version? Even if that made sense, 8 years is 0.8 decades; I think a lot of the pushback is that you said "decades old versions", which is to say "versions of packages that are at least 20 years old", which is wildly out of line with reality.