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Comment by krylon | Hacker News Reader

Debian is a boring system in the best sense of the word. I've only become a more prolific Debian user in the last ten years or so, but in that time frame, I've found Debian to Just Work(tm) and to reliably keep on working as long as the hardware isn't misbehaving. It's the type of thing we only tend to notice when it doesn't work that way, but it's an impressive achievement.

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For a category of software as "boring" as an OS is, I really agree that "just working" is the ultimate, almost sacred quality. I simply can't stand anymore the incessant ritual of software updates, and even the rhythm of something cutting edge like VS Code, on my Ubuntu LTS, is slightly too frequent for my taste.

That’s all well and good, but you need security updates too.

Yes, and Debian provides those, backporting where necessary.

I don't get the contradiction. Are you implying that security update don't 'just work' or that Debian doesn't push security update?

The kind of 'just works' that most refer to is that they turn their computer on and start working, rather than turning their computer on, being forced to login to a net account, being forced into a tutorial dialogue for a newly added feature, and then realizing that BigCo deprecated your file format support last forced update because they replaced it with TheNewWay.

I'm responding to this:

> I simply can't stand anymore the incessant ritual of software updates

No you don't, or at least I don't. I need secure software. Frequent security upgrades are a good indicator that vendor didn't do a good job at the start. Once in a while, ok, and debian supports a special channel for security upgrades for this very purpose.

I do agree that with perfect software, written by perfect developers, updates aren't needed. I mean, has anyone ever had to "update" the Mona Lisa? I hold my web browser to the same standard.

People have certainly tried.

https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/mona-lisa-smeared-cake...

I recently subscribed to debians security updates newsletter and I get about 2-3 emails per week about new exploits and security releases.

Not sure your comment applies here.

I recently bought a NUC (well, two, but only because they're cute) and I needed a boring OS to run my Harbormaster containers on, so I installed Debian.

It's been perfect in the few days I've had it, because I don't have to dodge Ubuntu's ads left and right, or worry about what the hell snaps are doing. Otherwise, it's basically the same as Ubuntu. I very much recommend it.

> ...because I don't have to dodge Ubuntu's ads left and right...

Is it Ubuntu that polluted with ads? Honest question as I haven't used it that much lately.

There's a bunch of stuff in the MOTD every time you log in, and then apt keeps telling you of all the nice security upgrades you could be enjoying if you were paying them, in a very "nice system you've got there, shame if anything happened to it" way.

Haha too bad for them I ignore any terminal text that:

- I didn't type myself

- isn't a prompt of some sort

- isn't an all caps warning before a prompt

I don't, so I use Debian now :P

Can't you just modify the MOTD?

I can, but the two OSes were equal, as far as I'm concerned, except one has ads, so I used the other.

I remember the days of dependency hell in the early 00’s. I was using Red Hat at the time, and flipping through Linux magazines at a newsstand regularly to keep up on developments. Although things improved gradually on both sides, Debian won the race to effectively solve dependency hell and I rushed to download 9(?) CD-ROM images over dial-up and burn them.

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