Good morning /g/, Im just re-installed Debain 7 (from my 2010 SSD shitting on me) after a few years, and i was reminded that:
>Stability
>Freedoms (if i wanted to)
>No botnet (to my knowledge)
What I'd like to know is what are the CONS of Debian. Can /g/ tell me some (that aren't political or silly).
And what Distribution do you favor?
Juan bumpo
Debian a best.
>what are the CONS of Debian
Their package policy is inflexible.
I can't recall the exact package, but one was removed from Jessie (but available in both stretch and wheezy) because a bug was found two days before freeze.
It was fixed shortly after the release of Jessie, but as it was past their 'due date' they still won't package it. It is still currently unavailable (unless you compile from source, package it yourself or install a shady binary). Had the bug been discovered slightly later or earlier, the package would have been available in Jessie.
If they had flexibility, they would have added it into 8.1.0 because the correction was made so close to release.
Apart from that it's pretty based.
Either outdated packages or an unstable hack job of package management
Shitold packages
>>54165413
>what are the CONS of Debian
apt
>>54165583
>>54165588
>muh old packages
That's actually a pro. Enjoy beta-testing them for me anyway ;)
>>54165615
>beta-testing stable software
>>54165615
enjoy your unpatched pile of crap
>>54165413
1. Since they patches packages a lot to comply to the Debian Free Software Guidelines, you have to understand both the debian specifics and the documentation of software you want to learn; this isn't much of a problem for simple tools such as moreutils, but it can be a pain when you want learn something like cfengine or openldap.
2. They correct serious bugs, but highly annoying yet benign bugs can stay until the end of life of an iteration of the distro because some bugs are corrected in later versions, which would require an update.
2.1 corollary: even if upstream provides an LTS, it won't be used because it wasn't in before the freeze and won't even be in debian updates, although the upstream LTS will be better maintained that debian's version.
3. sometimes uselessly fragmented packages, like havin XXXX and XXXX-doc even when XXXX-doc is a few kBs.
Those are annoyances that can become a pain when you have several packages from different places and need to put a lot of stuff in /usr/local/, such as python/ruby/go up-to-date packages. This isn't too bad when upstream provides good packages from debian, but when you have many things you compiled yourself (though checkinstall helps) or installed with language-specific package managers, it becomes a bit messy. I should try slackware some day.
>>54165679
NB: This only applies if you only look for stable distros. Of course with sid those problems, apart from 3, go away.
>>54165655
>he thinks unstream "stable" means stable
I see you're new to Linux and free software. Welcome!
>>54165664
>unpatched
Another new Linux user! Let me educate you: Debian stable backports all the security patches ;)
>>54165594
dont ever talk to me, or my wifes son ever again.
I switched to Debian stable from Arch because I was tired of Ganoo Linux unpredictability. Suddenly an update broke suspending, making me lose part of my work. Debian stable is not perfect but I'm least I'm sure that if suspend works today it's going to work tomorrow because packages don't change besides security updates.
It's not perfect but it just werks. If I need something new, like the absolutely last version of Python, and I can't find it on the backports repo, I compile it and install under /usr/local.
>>54165413
>ancient
>very little software compared to arch or debian
>incapable of solving cross-arch dependencies
>insanely bad cross-arch support
>only stable in the sense that it doesn't change, NOT in the sense that every package isn't broken beyond belief
>Autism instead of freedom
>mediocre license filtering
>packages are removed from the repos if they do not comply with SJW requirements
>>54166359
arch or gentoo*
But can you dual boot in a way which lets you choose what you want to boot into? if so then count me in for debian
>>54166359
All of these are false. Whoa, lad.
>>54166441
I can smell the buttblast from all the way over here. You better apply some buttcream before it's too late.
>>54166420
Yes anon, it's called dual booting
>>54166359
Yeah I fell for the "Debian stable" meme also. Their bug list on stable is quite impressive. Stable does not mean a bug free experience
>>54166497
so when you turn on it gives you the option immedietly, without having to go into bios?
Is there any Distro that lets me try Linux without having to fiddle around? What's the "windows" of Linux?
Just to try it out without investing too much time
>>54166843
Ubuntu
>>54166843
Fedora
>>54166843
Mint
>>54165413
Shitty font rendering in Ice Weasel when using a dark theme. Mousepad has shitty font rendering when using a dark theme... etc.
Other than that, none.
>>54166843
Gentoo. Faggot.
>>54166798
Their are a number of boot-loaders that you can use.
GRUB is the a bit old, but works very well in most cases and is default with Debian if they haven't change it, but you have to install and set it up. Backup stuff and plan your partition out as this does interact with the partition table and in the formatting.
It can be set to start directly, delay start with menu selection or just wait at menu till you do something but you have to change a few lines in the config file.
But if I could figure it put then you shouldn't have a problem. So it can do what you want, but it won't do it with nice graphics, it is just simple text based, but it works.
>>54165413
>falling for the Debian meme
>>54165413
I use antergos, I like it because it's the first linux os I've invested time with so it's my favorite
>>54165413
>Stability
>loonix
Never have I ever installed a linux distro on a
computer and have it run properly for more than a
month. Single most unstable palette of software
that I have ever encountered.
Don't know whether it's a kernel thing or I just
happenned to run into shit distros, but none of
them lasted more than a month without some
sudden and unexplained malfunction going off
somewhere.
>>54167527
I know it's a b8 but
LITERALLY install gentoo. Most stable distro available by far. Either software compiles and works or it doesn't compile and is stable, or it doesn't compile at all, simple as that.
>>54167527
That's why Debian stable is superior. Other distros get constantly updated and you end up getting new bugs every X week/month, because your average free software developer doesn't understand what testing means. Debian stable doesn't change until the next major version except for security updates.
My body is ready
Just last year /g/ was memeing gentoo, now we're memeing debian. How long before we meme Fedora?
>>54168014
There was a time, I think around Fedora 20 or 21, when Fedora was heavily memed. I remember, I'm an oldfag.
>>54168007
Use this one: http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/cd-including-firmware/
if your wifi doesn't work
>>54165547
That said debian still has WAY more packages than everyone else. Just look at Arch and Fedora, then look at the debian. It's two whole different worlds. 20,000 packages!
>>54168070
Except 1- your stats on arch don't include aur. every single package imaginable exists in aur, not so much with debian.
2- debian aggressively splits packages (e.g. -dev -source -doc -some-extra-feature) whereas other distros are significantly more conservative with this.
Debian has a lot more packages than fedora, but arch has by far the most packages of any distro. Gentoo comes second (every package split is instead a use flag, so multiply its package count by 10 to get a debian-scaled figure).
However, it's true that fedora has fuckall packages.
I used Debian (or its derivatives) for years. Recently I had to try Fedora because I wanted to experiment with some new packages (specifically, virt-manager and qemu).
dnf wants to fully update each time I wanted to install new packages. That was annoying, because updating was very slow and installing updates was even slower.
Fedora also takes a much longer time to boot on my SSD desktop than Debian. I spent a lot of time looking at the bar filling up with shades of blue.
Then I thought I had virt-manager running properly with a GPU passthrough, but then KDE started to crash all the time and it took virt-manager with it.
How do Fedora people live with this? It was so frustrating to use. I'd like to stick to Debian. The only cutting edge stuff I need are qemu and virt-manager, but I can't get the unstable versions of those without apt-get wanting to upgrade every other thing as well.
>>54168191
Anything redhat (and especially poettering) is involved in is borderline unusable. They're basically oracle lite.
>>54168191
>The only cutting edge stuff I need are qemu and virt-manager, but I can't get the unstable versions of those without apt-get wanting to upgrade every other thing as well.
Can't you just chroot and run them from there?
>>54168614
That would imply installing a second OS in a chroot. Might as well go bedrock at this point, it will be more convenient and productive.
>>54168191
Don't use Fedora with KDE.
>>54169554
>Don't use Fedora
10/10 advice right there.
>>54168182
>aur
You mean the unofficial repo needed because third-parties like Google for Chrome or Skype use the superior .deb to provide their software so Arch users depend on someone converting the .deb?
>>54168191
Literally this. I once installed fedora, the first time I just ran yum update, it got stuck halfway through because some moron dev pushed a faulty version of libreoffice to the official repos, then I quickly proceeded to put it into the trash
>>54165413
Debian 8.4 Jessie
>>54170797
Sorry, wrong image.
>>54165413
>systemd
