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Debian used to be so good. What happened!?

Firefox on Debian stable is so old that websites yell at you to upgrade to a newer browser. And last time I tried installing Debian testing (or was it debian unstable?), the installer shat itself trying to make the bootloader. After I got it to boot, apt refused to work because of a missing symlink to busybox. Why on earth do they even need busybox if the base install already comes with full gnu coreutils? I remember Debian as the distro that Just Wroks™, when did it all go so wrong? Is anyone else here having similar issues, or am I doing something wrong?

mlg ,
@mlg@lemmy.world avatar

Kali: I have no such weakness!

trips and falls on postgres upgrade

slacktoid ,
@slacktoid@lemmy.ml avatar

Sounds like you need to be using slackware.

LeFantome ,

As everybody else has said, Debian is working as intended. To respond to the actual post though, Debian is working exactly as it always has.

If you think Debian used to be good, you must really love it now. It is better than ever.

Unlike in the past, the primary drawback of Debian Stable ( old package versions ) has multiple viable solutions. Other have rightly pointed out things like the Mozilla APT package and Flatpaks. Great solutions.

My favourite solution is to install Arch via Distrobox. You can then get all the stability of Debian everywhere you need it and, anytime you need additional packages or newer packages, you can install them in the Arch distrobox. Firefox is a prime candidate. You are not going to get newer packages or a greater section than via he Arch repos / AUR ( queue Nix rebuttals ).

MehBlah ,

I can’t remember the last time I installed Debian and it failed. I last installed it a month ago. Gnome takes some tweaking for me. Mostly to get that stock Ubuntu feel. Nothing extension manager can’t do.

crispy_kilt ,

Just use the Mozilla .deb

iopq ,

What’s why we have NixOS. The unstable channel is more stable than most other distros and when it’s not, you just roll back

onlinepersona ,

Ctrl+F “NixOS”

Anytime stability is mentioned somebody has to chirp up with NixOS. It’s the law.

Anti Commercial-AI license

Atlas48 ,
@Atlas48@ttrpg.network avatar

“I use NixOS, btw”

Samsy ,

I manage over 40 Debian clients in production use. All are managed with ansible. It’s the easiest time in my sysadmin time ever.

My own systems are fedora and Debian unstable. Why? Because I test upcoming changes and features. And think how it would be if all 40 clients run on unstable or fedora, every day updates of 20-60 packages for nothing the user would care about.

Debian stable is my hero.

agelord ,

It got better, that’s what happened. You’re using Firefox ESR, it’s not unsafe.

Mozilla also provides a Deb repo for Debian and its derivatives: support.mozilla.org/…/install-firefox-linux#w_ins…

SpaceCadet ,
@SpaceCadet@feddit.nl avatar

Yeah and Flatpaks also exist.

Flatpaks are probably the best generic solution for using an LTS release like Debian Stable on a desktop system. You get the best of both worlds: up to date desktop packages and a stable base.

Petter1 ,

https://lemm.ee/pictrs/image/63cc62e0-dae4-4893-a461-72e076debc30.jpeg

checksout ,

I use NixOS Unstable btw

umbraroze ,

Debian’s Firefox is Firefox ESR, or Extended Support Release. It’s behind the bleeding edge, but gets security updates.

If you want the bleeding edge Firefox, you can add Mozilla’s own APT repository and install it. Doesn’t even conflict with Debian (firefox-esr vs firefox, it even uses a separate user profile by default). Instructions are on the Firefox download page somewhere.

Allero ,

Also, Flatpak

jbk ,

Bleeding edge? Isn’t that just called stable?

9488fcea02a9 ,

My bank used to complain that my browser was out of date. I wrote an email to customer service explaining to them that:

A) debian’s “out of date” browser actually includes all up to date security patches. B) simply reading the browser agent isnt really security. I had simply been spoofing my browser agent to get around their silly browser “security” policy

They removed the browser check 2 weeks later. Not sure if it was because of me

deathbird ,

The hero we need rn tbh

efstajas ,

simply reading the browser agent isnt really security

It’s not for their security, but for that of genuinely clueless people that are just running an actually outdated browser that might have known and exploitable security flaws.

LeFantome ,

It is not about security at all. They do not want to test or support old browsers. So, they set a minimum version and tell you that you need to upgrade to that.

If they only support one browser, it is going to be Chrome. Chrome has more zero-day vulnerabilities than any other project I can think of. It is not about security.

SpaceCowboy ,
@SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca avatar

Yeah if it were about security they’d check the version of HTTPS, SSL, TLS and all that stuff.

efstajas , (edited )

Doing that would tell you nothing about whether the browser might have un-patched, known vulnerabilities elsewhere.

efstajas , (edited )

How do you know this? Of course there are lots of reasons for why they’d want to enforce minimum browser versions. But security might very well be one of them. Especially if you’re a bank you probably feel bad about sending session tokens to a browser that potentially has known security vulnerabilities.

And sure, the user agent isn’t a sure way to tell whether a browser is outdated, but in 95% of cases it’s good enough, and people that know enough to understand the block shouldn’t apply to them can bypass it easily anyway.

avidamoeba ,
@avidamoeba@lemmy.ca avatar

Debian is as great as it’s ever been.

TCB13 ,
@TCB13@lemmy.world avatar

What if you just get your browser using their own repositories or flatpak? 🌈

RedDoozer ,

Debian stable and flatpaks, I don’t see all the fuss

nexussapphire ,

Why does the installer still explode sometimes when I use it on my computers. I use it on my mother’s computer or our movie server and it works fine.

Maybe it just eats shit when it sees a btrfs partition or something. Nothing against Debian but I tried to install Debian testing weekly and it just refused to install on my system 76 laptop. After flashing arch on my USB drive to wipe the disk I just said fuck it and installed arch on my laptop again. I haven’t had any issues with arch since I’ve installed it on my desktop five years ago. If arch blows up on my laptop I’ll try Debian again.

Siegfried ,

Ehm… im using debian stable, no website is telling me to update Firefox (I’m on deb 10, 11 and 12 in different PCs).

Deb 12, my home computer, is on unstable and running smoothly.

Debian isn’t “just works” but “it’s a freaking rock” + “open source hardcore philosophy”.

Maybe I got lucky?

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