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Why Use Debian Stable on the Desktop?

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Re: Why Use Debian Stable on the Desktop?

#11

Post by morganvachon »

As a serial distro hopper, my only complaint about using Debian Stable over the years is hardware compatibility. As the author noted, Stable isn't for the latest and greatest hardware. This was especially true for me a couple of years back when trying to run Debian Jessie on a then-new Intel Braswell based system. The video driver as shipped was unable to render at any resolution above 1024x768, and there were severe artifacts especially with certain fonts. Switching to Ubuntu cleared up the issues (newer kernel and newer X11 driver).

That said, Debian Stable is an ideal desktop OS for older hardware. I have a Mac Mini from the first generation of Intel Macs, upgraded to a Core 2 Duo CPU, that runs BunsenLabs Linux (based on Jessie and a 3.x kernel) just fine. In fact, it's one of the few Linux distros that still supports that 11 year old machine, long after even Apple left it behind.

Re: Why Use Debian Stable on the Desktop?

#12

Post by willtim »

aceofspad4s wrote: post #7

Using Debian Stable on a desktop is probably the closer to hell that you could ever get. Imagine to never be able to get that one feature you need because it's only in a more recent version. The best option for a stable desktop is Gentoo, where you can run old software but then unmask recent stuff if you need it. As a recent example I'll say that MTP support in stable (libmtp) was flaky for my mobile phone. With Debi…

IMHO the best option currently for a stable OS with up-to-date desktop apps is NixOS. NixOS allows one to have a stable base OS then install packages in the user account from a different channel. Since it uses deterministic builds, the binary caches typically mean no building needs to happen locally. NixOS permits multiple versions of any application/library/dependency to be installed side-by-side, even libc. I run such a configuration and all my desktop packages are completely up-to-date, while my base OS and system components are tracking a stable release.

Re: Why Use Debian Stable on the Desktop?

#13

Post by majewsky »

billsix wrote: post #10

As a Debian user for 15 years, I like it, but as a developer looking to contribute packages, I am displeased. I can't figure out how to update Gambit Scheme to the newest version by making a package, setting up a local repo, etc. The documentation on the subject in debian is all over the place on many sites giving conflicting answers. Gentoo and Arch in my limited experience are much simpler to build packages for. Re…

I regularly build Arch packages. I once tried to build a Debian package, followed the tutorial, but gave up after nearly two hours. The amount of ceremony involved in Debian packaging is just absurd.

Re: Why Use Debian Stable on the Desktop?

#14

Post by nickik »

As an Arch Linux user for years this hurts me. I can't even imagine living with all that old crufty stuff and then when you actually upgrade something you have library issues and so on.

For those who are to afraid to run Arch, consider openSUSE Tumbleweed. It is as up to date (or more so) as Arch Linux but they do a lot of automated testing, plus they do a lot of automatic snapshots so you can go back if needed (that is if you are willing to run Btrfs).

Re: Why Use Debian Stable on the Desktop?

#15

Post by majewsky »

digi_owl wrote: post #6
ZenoArrow wrote: post #4

Or in other words, "I use Debian Stable on my home computer and here's how I've justified it to myself". If Debian Stable does everything you want out of an operating system, by all means use it, there's no reason not to, but some other people may want to make use of the newer features of Linux and its surrounding ecosystem that aren't available in Debian Stable yet. The idea that Debian Stable is a good choice for a…

The more i have had to deal with the Linux ecosystem, the less i want to do with the bleeding edge of it. Because you will find shit breaking, willfully, every other month or so, because some caffeine addled code monkey thought he could do a decade+ usage-tested lib better in a new language over the weekend.

As a contrary anecdote, Arch Linux has only gotten more stable for me over the past years. I'm running it in multiple servers and had only one incident where a downgrade was necessary (which is not particularly hard either).

Re: Why Use Debian Stable on the Desktop?

#16

Post by FreeHugs »

vog wrote: post #3

Site is down. Google Cache: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:nHJYRo... I'll never understand why serving static(!) sites is so hard. Are modern blog systems still that bad? HN traffic is far below 100 req/sec (perhaps below 10 req/sec), which should be an absolute no-brainer for any modern webserver. [1] Heck, given a good internet connection, one should be able to run 10 such blogs on a Raspberr…

    challenges start at 100000 req/sec
Only if you have a well configured cache in front of your cms. If you don't expect any significant traffic, it's perfectly reasonable to serve directly from your cms. And that might be super slow because optimizing a cms for perfomance does not make sense. That should be the job of a cache in front of the cms.

Re: Why Use Debian Stable on the Desktop?

#17

Post by majewsky »

vog wrote: post #3

Site is down. Google Cache: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:nHJYRo... I'll never understand why serving static(!) sites is so hard. Are modern blog systems still that bad? HN traffic is far below 100 req/sec (perhaps below 10 req/sec), which should be an absolute no-brainer for any modern webserver. [1] Heck, given a good internet connection, one should be able to run 10 such blogs on a Raspberr…

> I'll never understand why serving static(!) sites is so hard.

It's not hard. They're all adding stupid bloat for no good reason.

When my blog was on the frontpage, traffic peaked at 1 Mbit/s (that's megabits, not megabytes) and CPU load peaked at 5% of a single core (and only because that box runs a dozen services in parallel).

Everyone who's blog cannot withstand the HN crowd deserves to have their computer operator's license revoked.

Re: Why Use Debian Stable on the Desktop?

#18

Post by majewsky »

FreeHugs wrote: post #16
vog wrote: post #3

Site is down. Google Cache: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:nHJYRo... I'll never understand why serving static(!) sites is so hard. Are modern blog systems still that bad? HN traffic is far below 100 req/sec (perhaps below 10 req/sec), which should be an absolute no-brainer for any modern webserver. [1] Heck, given a good internet connection, one should be able to run 10 such blogs on a Raspberr…

challenges start at 100000 req/sec Only if you have a well configured cache in front of your cms. If you don't expect any significant traffic, it's perfectly reasonable to serve directly from your cms. And that might be super slow because optimizing a cms for perfomance does not make sense. That should be the job of a cache in front of the cms.

The best performance can be had by just dumping some .html files into a directory and pointing nginx/Apache/whatever at it.

Static site generators are a thing now.

Re: Why Use Debian Stable on the Desktop?

#19

Post by Dowwie »

I use Debian 9 with gnome. I don't know what I'm missing by not using one of these other distributions and don't care enough to seek out that information because I have thus far managed to do everything I need with Debian, and have used it for years.

Damn. Maybe I need to look around.

Re: Why Use Debian Stable on the Desktop?

#20

Post by qznc »

majewsky wrote: post #13
billsix wrote: post #10

As a Debian user for 15 years, I like it, but as a developer looking to contribute packages, I am displeased. I can't figure out how to update Gambit Scheme to the newest version by making a package, setting up a local repo, etc. The documentation on the subject in debian is all over the place on many sites giving conflicting answers. Gentoo and Arch in my limited experience are much simpler to build packages for. Re…

I regularly build Arch packages. I once tried to build a Debian package, followed the tutorial, but gave up after nearly two hours. The amount of ceremony involved in Debian packaging is just absurd.

The problem with Debian is that there is no One True Way to build packages. Instead everybody builds wrapper scripts calling other wrapper scripts and it builds up into a giant mess.

I'm guilty of this myself. The script I made is heavily inspired by Arch. The resulting script for Firefox is like this: https://github.com/qznc/simpledeb/blob/master/test/firefox.D...

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