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Debian 12 “Bookworm”

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Re: Debian 12 “Bookworm”

#111

Post by nvy »

Kwpolska wrote: post #96
yrro wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Debian was never a purist distribution. If it was then there wouldn't have been a non-free section in the archive in the first place. The sad truth is that the Linux distributions recommended by the FSF have approximately zero users.

Is it sad? Actually working Linux on real hardware is far more important than purity IMO.

>Actually working Linux on real hardware is far more important than purity IMO.

I agree, but I also think this depends heavily on who you ask. Stallman for example would rather have poorer functionality than compromise his personal (extremist) ethical principles.

There are a lot of folks who use laptops without wifi because the blobs are non free, so they're using ancient ThinkPads plugged into Ethernet.

Much depends on your personal computing needs.

Re: Debian 12 “Bookworm”

#112

Post by blihp »

bayindirh wrote: post #37
troad wrote: post #5

Congratulations to the Debian team! An important change appears to be the inclusion of non-free firmware by default in the official install image for the first time, as a result of this vote: https://www.debian.org/vote/2022/vote_003 Intriguing. I feel a little torn on this. One the one hand, I appreciate being able to install Debian from an official image onto a bothersome device. On the other, I can't help but feel…

I was involved in the discussion, and I'm also torn on that issue, but at least you can disable installation of non-free firmware and install Debian without any non-free software. On the other hand, firmware is a convoluted issue. It was always present, but became increasingly visible over the years. While I'm a strong Free Software supporter, firmware is one of the hardest parts to convert, because of the IP it enta…

While I'm glad to see proprietary firmware both included and segregated in its own repo, I'm wondering why RISC-V wasn't added as a supported architecture in Debian 12? It seems like that supporting at least an open ISA would move closer to the possibility of what Debian wants to see happen... so why isn't it as a distro helping to make it happen?

Re: Debian 12 “Bookworm”

#113

Post by [deleted] »

secondcoming wrote: post #94
fb03 wrote: post #18

Testing this out in a VM. I want to move away from Ubuntu (honestly, from SNAPs)

I tried the same move but I couldn’t find any reason to permanently move to Debian. The biggest problem is that some of the package versions are quite old. Ubuntu is far better when it comes to software updates. The snap stuff is crap though.

[deleted]

Re: Debian 12 “Bookworm”

#114

Post by jacooper »

krylon wrote: post #44

One thing I really appreciate about Debian is that when a new stable release comes around, I can just upgrade and be reasonably sure nothing bad will happen. It's not exciting, but a fair amount of the time, this is what people expect from their operating system. Support my hardware, give me the software I need, and stay out of my way otherwise. And that is what Debian does very well.

Its baffling that RHEL-based distros still don't support in place upgrades.

Re: Debian 12 “Bookworm”

#115

Post by denysonique »

I see this old-package argument over and over again and I think it is inaccurate, considering that an estimated 95% of Ubuntu users use the LTS version, the below table demonstrates that Debian 12 (stable) packages are newer than those of of Ubuntu 22.04. Both Debian 12 and Ubuntu 22.04 are LTS versions with 5 years of support.

    Ubuntu 22.04
        Kernel 5.19 (new installs only, existing installs 5.15)
        systemd 249
        KDE Plasma 5.24
        Gnome 42


    Debian 12
        Kernel 6.1
        systemd 252
        KDE Plasma 5.27
        Gnome 43

Re: Debian 12 “Bookworm”

#116

Post by jacooper »

Spooky23 wrote: post #104
botanical wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me Ubuntu has been the most stable distro. I probably won't move, since I want an up-to-date system that stays out of my way

Lol. Enjoy relearning the hot new way to configure DNS every release.

Through gnome network settings, the same way it has always been(I think GP meant Desktop).

Re: Debian 12 “Bookworm”

#117

Post by denysonique »

secondcoming wrote: post #94
fb03 wrote: post #18

Testing this out in a VM. I want to move away from Ubuntu (honestly, from SNAPs)

I tried the same move but I couldn’t find any reason to permanently move to Debian. The biggest problem is that some of the package versions are quite old. Ubuntu is far better when it comes to software updates. The snap stuff is crap though.

I see this old-package argument over and over again and I think it is inaccurate, considering that an estimated 95% of Ubuntu users use the LTS version, the below table demonstrates that Debian 12 (stable) packages are newer than those of of Ubuntu 22.04. Both Debian 12 and Ubuntu 22.04 are LTS versions with 5 years of support.

    Ubuntu 22.04
        Kernel 5.19 (new installs only, existing installs 5.15)
        systemd 249
        KDE Plasma 5.24
        Gnome 42


    Debian 12
        Kernel 6.1
        systemd 252
        KDE Plasma 5.27
        Gnome 43

Re: Debian 12 “Bookworm”

#118

Post by [deleted] »

blihp wrote: post #112
bayindirh wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was involved in the discussion, and I'm also torn on that issue, but at least you can disable installation of non-free firmware and install Debian without any non-free software. On the other hand, firmware is a convoluted issue. It was always present, but became increasingly visible over the years. While I'm a strong Free Software supporter, firmware is one of the hardest parts to convert, because of the IP it enta…

While I'm glad to see proprietary firmware both included and segregated in its own repo, I'm wondering why RISC-V wasn't added as a supported architecture in Debian 12? It seems like that supporting at least an open ISA would move closer to the possibility of what Debian wants to see happen... so why isn't it as a distro helping to make it happen?

[deleted]

Re: Debian 12 “Bookworm”

#119

Post by pessimizer »

Kwpolska wrote: post #98
secondcoming wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried the same move but I couldn’t find any reason to permanently move to Debian. The biggest problem is that some of the package versions are quite old. Ubuntu is far better when it comes to software updates. The snap stuff is crap though.

Were you trying out Sid, or stable/testing? Stable tends to contain ancient software, but sid should be recent enough.

I suspect that a lot of people who are saying that Debian is behind don't understand Debian.

for them: Whatever you download is going to be "Debian Stable." Debian Stable is as fresh and up-to-date as it's ever going to be at this moment, but it will not change significantly in the future, because its goal is stability. You throw it on something you want to run for years and not crash.

If you don't mind your system crashing every once an a while because you like new stuff, you use "Debian Testing." There is no place to download this directly from Debian, although some third-parties (like Canonical with Ubuntu) distribute customized versions of it. The way you get a non-customized version is by installing Debian Stable, changing sources.list to point at Testing (which you can do as "testing" or by its nickname), then dist-upgrading. Debian Testing is being tested to be the next Stable.

"Debian Unstable" afaict is where individual pieces of software are being tested to go into Testing. Nobody should be running it unless they are contributing to Debian, although there are apt-get masters who know exactly what they're doing who will pull bleeding edge packages from unstable individually.

About the nicknames: Stable, Testing, and Unstable aren't releases, they're an indication of the current status of a release. Each release has its own goofy name. "Bookworm" has just moved from Testing to Stable. "Bullseye," which until just now was Stable, has now become "Oldstable."

Also important is the "[yourrelease]-backports" repo, which Stable users can add to take newer packages from Testing that are 99% certain not to mess with the stability of Stable. Stable + backports is a compromise between Stable and Testing for people who want new stuff that doesn't break things.

I'm sure most people know all of that, but 1) when it comes to things like this people are often afraid to ask because they're afraid they'll look stupid, and 2) the Debian website is very utilitarian and not marketing oriented, so there's no clear entry point for people who don't already know what they're looking for.

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