Noob Question Thread: Ask Any Questions About Linux!
I thought I'll make this thread for all of you out there who have questions but are afraid to ask them. This is your chance!
I'll try my best to answer any questions here, but I hope others in the community will contribute too!
You are viewing a single comment
Noob question?
You do seem confused though... Debian is both a distribution and a packaging system... the Debian Stable distribution takes a very conservative approach to updating packages, while Debian Sid (unstable) is more up-to-date while being more likely to break. While individual packages may be more stable when fully-updated, other packages that depend on them generally lag and "break" as they need updating to be able to adapt to underlying changes.
But the whole reason debian-based distros exist is because some people think they can strike a better balance between newness and stability. But it turns out that there is no optimal balance that satifies everyone.
Mint is a fine distro... but if you don't like it, that is fine for you too. The only objection I have to your objection is that you seem to be throwing the baby out with the bathwater... the debian packaging system is very robust and is not intrinsically unlikely to be updated.
Should I've made a new post instead?
Yes, Debian is a popular distro depending on Debian packages. My concern is about the update policy of the distro
Debian is pure stability, not the balance between stability and newness. If you mean debian-BASED in particular, trying to introduce more newness with custom repos, I don't think that is a good strategy to get balance. The custom additional repos quickly become too outdated as well. Also, the custom repos can't account for the outdatedness of every single Debian package.
Yes, I don't understand/approve the philosophy around the update policy of Debian. It doesn't make sense to me for desktop usage. The technology of the package system however is great and apt is very fast