Those who like the bleeding edge nature of Arch what's your opinion about Debian?

Lounge Other distro news
61

Debian 'Testing is similar to Arch as it is a rolling release. I use 'Testing along with Arch. Note: I find Debian 'Testing very stable.

62

It is a little different than a true rolling distro Arch because it rolls until it nears a freeze window than it slows and eventually stops for months. Then, once the release happens, it starts rolling again.

2 Likes
63

For me who is a Debian guy who is curious about Arch has a different view of Arch. Arch rolls too fast for me. Tested Arch a few times but always have problems with programs stopping working after a while. Then all the updates that come out all the time. You never get any peace and quiet with Arch :wink:

1 Like
64

Well I get updates all the time on Debian 'Testing as I do on Arch. 'Testing is not as bleeding edge as 'Unstable so maybe it is semi-rollingā€¦ but it is not stable and fixed. I never have to do a full distro install like from Debian 9 to 10 etcā€¦

65

Debian testing has been in a soft freeze since Feb 12 and hard freeze since Mar 12. If you look in the testing repos, most of the packages are months out of date because of this.

If you are getting heavy daily updates like you do in Arch during this period, you must have some other repos enabled beyond the debian repos.

For reference, here is what the debian testing repos look like right now according to repology:
image

To be clear, this isnā€™t really good or bad. I was just pointing out that a distro which enters these long freeze periods is a bit different than something like Arch that is always charging forward.

That is certainly true. Debian testing isnā€™t like a fixed release/static release/frozen pool type distro.

It was, probably, incorrect of me to say it isnā€™t rolling. I probably should have said it doesnā€™t roll forward the same way Arch does.

There are certainly many other rolling distros that roll forward at a slower pace or, like Debian, on an irregular pace.

1 Like
66

there are problems with Debian if you buy a new printer or new computer, they are not always supported,
if you are sure that your workstation is an old one, and you donā€™t need to handle new printers, scanners,
wifi adapters, ā€¦ then you have a certain pro in terms of stability.

Debian testing is a bit more bleeding edge still reasonably stable,
although not as bleeding edge as Manjaro or even Arch.

1 Like
67

Neptune no longer ships a newer version of Plasma-desktop. They stopped doing that almost 2 years ago now. And anymore the kernel is just the backports kernel, nothing special. I really loved Neptune OS for a while, but after they stopped being unique and became just a KDE Debian + backports kernel I see no point to itā€™s existence FOR ME anymore.

1 Like
68

sad to hear, missed those news, : - /

69

To my knowledge they never actually ANNOUNCED they werenā€™t going to, they justā€¦stopped doing it and removed that feature from their list on the ā€œaboutā€ page and such.

70

thanks, I just stripped those lines from my post ā€¦

71

I just tried this on a fresh install of xfce 4.16 and can reproduce neither issue, maybe itā€™s just some bitrot :thinking:

72

Are you saying that the left button click on the systray icon brings up the main window for any of these apps: Skype for Linux, Slack, Bluemail, Whatsapp for Linux? If you tell me this I will completely nuke the current install and start anew.

Regarding the window buttons on the panel, I suspect it has something to do with multi monitor setup and multiple panels (one for each screen).

73

For me, the reverse is true. I used Debian for a long time and started using Arch-based distributions a few years ago. First Manjaro, then Antergos, later EndeavourOS.

74

Ah no, I donā€™t use any of those applications outside of the browser; I thought you meant in general. I donā€™t think it has ever brought up the window on a left click for all applications; eg it works for me with Discord but not with Calibre.

75

It used to work in immemorial times (like I know it worked two years ago). At some point it stopped working and that was that, hence my idea to time travel with a non-rolling distro.

76

I like Debian but software is a bit too dated for my liking.

77
  1. Latest kde builds
  2. Nvidia drivers on debian buster with kde was bad (sleep issues, graphics reload, etc)
  3. The AUR
78

I love Debian (parrot) as my host and Arch (EOS) with Vbox. Both daily in use.

Stability and endless possibilities. :robot:

79

alongside EOS on my 2. computer I set up Debian with the testing repository links in /etc/apt/sources.list, as running Debian like a permanent rolling distribution ā€¦ :slightly_smiling_face:

1 Like
80

& I thought I was safe from this form of procrastination on my work PC :pensive: