But for a regular desktop/workstation system I want more frequent software updates even if it comes at the cost of a little stability.
(Of course there's Debian unstable, but I'd rather go with a distro where the rolling release is the main product, and they maybe do a little more testing before making changes)
[1]: https://flathub.org/setup/Debian [2]: https://packages.debian.org/bookworm/distrobox
I'm a Debian user. I see this a lot. Often in contrast with Ubuntu.
Yet Debian's cycle is roughly on par with Ubuntu's LTS - every ~2 years.[0]
Perhaps they mean there are interim releases in Ubuntu? It's hard to say for sure, as the phrase 'outdated software' can mean different things (more than 6 months old, more than 2 years old, in need of a security patch for > 1 week, etc).
> But for a regular desktop/workstation system I want more frequent software updates even if it comes at the cost of a little stability.
This sounds like you want Debian Testing (currently Trixie).
Much more frequent software updates, with an extremely small risk of less 'stability'.
It used to be the case in 2010, but that is 13 years ago...
The nice thing is, though, all that information is freely available if you wanted to compare.
I can save you a little bit of time by noting that the criteria for a package being promoted from Debian Unstable into Debian Testing has been honed over the years, and is the reason why a lot of people settle on Debian Testing for their day to day machines:
The package has been in "unstable" at least for 2-10 days (depending on the urgency of the upload).
The package has been built for all the architectures which the present version in testing was built for.
Installing the package into testing will not make the distribution more uninstallable.
The package does not introduce new release critical bugs.
Please, don't recommend Debian Testing to unsuspecting people. The distro is aimed at people that know what they are getting, and has no guarantee it will keep working unless you know really well what you are doing.
Even Unstable is supposed to be more beginner friendly.
Was parent unsuspecting?
They said they wanted 'more frequent updates even at the cost of a little stability'.
They sound like they're very much in the suspecting camp.
The challenge with Debian Testing is some security exposures are longer than for either stable or unstable, hence the recommendation to keep unstable in your sources, ready to go, and maintain some awareness around CVEs / DSAs.
> Even Unstable is supposed to be more beginner friendly.
I can happily disabuse you of that notion.
Definitely, you should not recommend Debian Unstable to unsuspecting people.
I have occasionally run unstable on one of my machines over the years, but now pretty much avoid it.
When it breaks you either wait for a few days for it to be fixed, or you spend a lot of time trying to understand what's broken - usually with a machine that doesn't get you to a GUI.
I really don't know. You don't get Testing at the cost of "a little" instability. You get it at the cost of things eventually breaking in an update, and you having to sort it out on your own. It's a failure mode quite unique to it, and nobody mentioned anything about this. So yeah, I don't get any reason to believe either way. (Also, Unstable isn't supposed to have this one failure mode, but it's supposed to have partial failures way more often. That fits the mental model of "instability" for most people much better than Testing.)
But then, the alternative people are talking about is Ubuntu. Ubuntu breaks much more often than Debian Testing... Up to the point where people don't upgrade it carelessly, so they experience a more stable system. So again, I don't know. IMO, it was worth at least putting a warning there.