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by CarelessExpert 1710 days ago
First and foremost, package recency.

If you run stable, which is released as snapshots ala Ubuntu, the packages are ancient.

If you run testing, which is a rolling distro ala Arch, they're a lot newer and pretty solid, but security updates lag.

If you run unstable, which is also rolling, things can (rarely) break.

Additionally, Ubuntu has decided to incorporate non-free software and drivers right into the base product, which gives a better out-of-the-box experience. In Debian this is all opt-in and requires a bit more effort.

Now, I run Debian testing on my laptop, and I'm a huge fan of the distribution, not the least because Debian is the bedrock on which at least a half a dozen other distros are built. But I can acknowledge that their more conservative approach to packaging does have its downsides.
1 comments
jgb1984 1709 days ago
Exactly, Debian has you covered depending on your needs. I run Debian Stable on servers and Debian Sid on my desktop and laptop. Had 2 or 3 non-booting Sid systems over the course of 20 years, none or which weren't solved in 10 minutes after asking for help on IRC.

I doubt Ubuntu offers newer packages than my Debian Sid installation.

As for drivers and firmware etc as I've mentioned below I've installed a new state of the art desktop in recent weeks and everything simply worked. From the wifi to Bluetooth to the Nvidia gpu. I wouldn't call enabling the non-free repo "work" since it's just a question to answer during the installation...

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CarelessExpert 1709 days ago
> Exactly, Debian has you covered depending on your needs. I run Debian Stable on servers and Debian Sid on my desktop and laptop. Had 2 or 3 non-booting Sid systems over the course of 20 years, none or which weren't solved in 10 minutes after asking for help on IRC.

Oh sure, has Debian testing or unstable resulted in a non-booting system for me in the 15-20 years I've been using it? No. But that's an incredibly low bar to set. Issues absolutely pop up that, while not that catastrophic, remain problematic.

Just recently (like, in the past 2-3 weeks) the move from pipewire 0.3.36 to 0.3.37/38 broke bluetooth audio for me, which is a dealbreaker as I use a headset every single day for work. No idea why, but I had to go pull the previous package versions from /var/cache/apt/archives (thank goodness I didn't run a purge!), manually install them with dpkg, then pin them in my apt policy until the issue is fixed.

Similarly, the wifi drivers that ship with the kernel have periodically broken and worked again across major kernel versions.

These sorts of intermittent surprise issues are far less likely to happen with a snapshot distro due to the stability of the package set and the additional testing those snapshots undergo before being released.

The problem is the Debian snapshot distro is stable which, again, has an ancient package set.

Ubuntu strikes an interesting middle ground, giving you up-to-date packages that are vetted and then the whole distro is snapshotted which minimizes the potential for surprise breakage.

Now, again, I use Debian testing. I'm fine dealing with the intermittent issues that pop up. I know the system well enough to diagnose issues, manually downgrade packages if needed, pull things from sid if I have to, or even build packages by hand when absolutely necessary.

But that certainly isn't for everyone.

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