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Comment by SomeoneFromCA | Hacker News Reader

I dunno, still do not get the value of LTS Ubuntu, when Debian is almost exactly same in terms of user experience.

Because it's not the same. Just look at the docker package for Debian for example. It's like 3 years out of date and has an unsupported version of docker compose.

I use the docker.io and docker-compose packages in the stock Debian repository, and they seem to work perfectly fine? (Notably better than the Docker snap package that I tried to use, for that matter.)

That's okay, but it's still 4 years old. And it uses docker compose v1, which isn't supported by upstream and receives no security updates since 2021.

Docker has gotten a lot better imo since version 20.xx. buildx and buildkit are really nice now, and there's very little downside to having an up to date version (no important breaking changes, and improved rootless mode). Afaik the issue is related to some go packaging troubles or something.

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1040417

Fwiw, I have never had any issues with docker on Ubuntu. Even on azureml, where VMs are by default provisioned only with Ubuntu+docker, it just really works.

> And it uses docker compose v1, which isn't supported by upstream and receives no security updates since 2021.

Is there any actual security concern here? As far as I can tell, docker compose v1 has no outstanding CVEs, and has, in fact, never had any CVEs or needed/received any security updates.

Plus the Debian version has received some patches as recently as 2023: https://metadata.ftp-master.debian.org/changelogs//main/d/do...

I don't disagree and I usually don't like the security argument for tools like docker compose, that's why I highlighted the features and improvements to docker more than security itself :) .

It's just nice to have actual upstream bug fixes to an actually recent version instead of random backports and patches especially for a tool like docker. It's also nice to have the much improved tools of docker 20+.

Plus, you literally get everything that's nice from Debian too. It's like Debian but with a different package "profile". Debian is perfect for some use cases but Ubuntu is great for others.

FWIW docker.io in Debian is currently at 20.10.24.

This is a bit of a digression though, I don't actually have a problem with Ubuntu overall, I just found Debian to be better for my particular Docker-hosting needs.

I use docker from the docker PPA:

https://docs.docker.com/engine/install/debian/#install-using...

For me, its seems it's both newer packages and easier to add third party apt repos for even newer packages. Also, I like running newer kernels with HWE.

No not really. Nowadays debian has pretty fresh packages. At least Debian 12 had most of it packages newer than 22.04.

It has the same base but definitely not the same support nor immediately neither in the long term

What do you use Linux for?

Predictable release cycle is already worth it for server use and also for those who need commercial support.

And zfs is too good to miss and Ubuntu has supported it for very easy use for quite a while.

And it feels comfortable to use a distro who has corporate customers as they may lose substantial money if they're not careful.

Debian release cycle is almost exactly 2 years, much like Ubuntu with some deviation. You can install Debian, on ZFS if you want.

Now speaking of corporate customers, well that is not a great argument, as even more users use Red Hat, which is IMO an inferior distro.

What is good about Debian, however there is a very little chance of it disappearing one day, or dramatically switching to snap-only or some other nonsense deviation. In a way, it is even safer for corporate use than Ubuntu. This is why it is used in Google (the used to run Ubuntu before on their workstations).

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