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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?

suzune ,

Stable is for servers, unstable for desktop. It has worked for 20 years. I actually installed two further Debian workstations recently after trying and failing with Kubuntu. So … no, I don’t have this problem.

No idea why busybox is needed. Is this is your emergency boot environment like initramfs? Sometimes it’s nice that Linux boots up and offers an environment to fix stuff while some modules are broken.

jabjoe ,
@jabjoe@feddit.uk avatar

Busybox is used in the initramfs normally. It’s the shell used by any scripts in that early stage, as well as the fallback shell environment.

renzev OP ,

No idea why busybox is needed. Is this is your emergency boot environment like initramfs?

I cannot for the life of me find the particular fix I followed, but I swear it was a missing symlink to busybox. Not in initramfs, but in the full booted environment. That’s why I was so confused haha. I can’t find anything about it right now, so maybe I’m misremembering something…

ninth_plane ,

I’m considering moving to Debian Stable plus Flathub for graphical desktop packages like Firefox, it works well on the Steam Deck. SteamOS also provides Distrobox which helps in some cases.

renzev OP ,

Flatpak is awesome, I love it so much. It lets users pick a distro based on the unique features that distro provides, without having to worry about whether their favourite apps are packaged. Since you’re considering switching to debian+flatpak, here is a list of pitfalls I’ve run into in flatpak so far, maybe this can save you some troubleshooting:

  • You need to have a thing called an “xdg dekstop portal” installed. Otherwise filepickers will be broken. On Debian this should be a dependency of flatpak, so it should be installed by default tho.
  • If you’re manually restarting Xorg without using a display manager, make sure the xdg desktop portal process doesn’t get started twice. Otherwise it will be broken
  • As far as I understand, there’s no way to use xdg desktop portal to forward an entire directory through to a flatpak’d app, unless the app itself asks specifically for a directory. So stuff like opening a .html file that references a .css file in the same directory with a flatpak’d browser will be broken, unless you manually make an exception using Flatseal or flatpak override.
  • Make sure your root filesystem is mounted with “shared” propagation, otherwise umount commands won’t propagate into flatpak’s sandbox, and drives will get stuck in a weird state where they’re mounted in some namespaces, but not others. This should be the default in Debian tho.
  • If flatpak’d Firefox has ugly bitmap fonts, follow this workaround

Anyway, this is just my experience running Flatapk in Void, hopefully it works smoother for you on Debian.

avidamoeba ,
@avidamoeba@lemmy.ca avatar

Debian is as great as it’s ever been.

muhyb ,

Ever considered LMDE? Best of both worlds if you ask me.

4grams ,
@4grams@awful.systems avatar

Someone after my own heart… Debian for my servers, lmde for my laptop, the way it was meant to be.

rc__buggy , (edited )

Huh? Install testing or sid?

The Debian way is to install stable then change your sources.list to either testing or unstable.

I call shenanigans.

edit: what version was Stable using before 11Jun? 'cause it’s 115.12.0esr-1 right now.

possiblylinux127 ,

Thats not a good idea unless you do a proper upgrade (dist upgrade or similar)

It is easier to use the testing iso

rc__buggy ,

the wiki must be out of date then

Anonymo ,

You can try this:

siduction.org

Even has BTRFS setup with Snapper (or Timeshift maybe) and nala is an option.

www.theregister.com/2023/01/05/siduction_2022_1/ Overview.

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.

TCB13 ,
@TCB13@lemmy.world avatar

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

ultratiem ,
@ultratiem@lemmy.ca avatar

See that’s the thing, Debian was never good

westyvw ,

You misspelled Ubuntu.

ultratiem ,
@ultratiem@lemmy.ca avatar

Typical Debian user clinging onto their dementia.

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?

mariusafa ,

Debian testing is complelty okay. If you want to have the most up to date security use apt to grab sid security updates. wiki.debian.org/DebianTesting

lemmyvore ,

I mean they can still be broken, especially if you mix Sid into it.

debil ,

The fix comes to sid first. (Not counting experimental.) The right way to do it is to run mixed testing/unstable with apt-pinning so that nothing gets pulled from unstable unless spcifically requested.

That said, stable with Firefox from Mozilla’s site and Neovim built from sources and gpack’d into deb package runs perfectly fine with much less hassle.

iaMLoWiQ ,

Debian is a server OS. Running it on desktop is like having frying oil for dinner.

MicrondeMMMMMMM ,
@MicrondeMMMMMMM@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

I don’t have issues yet on stable 12.5 but I plan to switch to nixos eventually.

jabjoe ,
@jabjoe@feddit.uk avatar

I’ve been on Debian Testing for my own desktops for about 15 years now. Sometimes as a Frankendebian mixing in SID/unstable. Sometimes mainly unstable, but mostly just Testing.

It rarely breaks, but when it does, it’s a learning opportunity. Stable for servers and other people’s desktops. Maybe with backports. Flatpacks if this no other option.

You don’t get 100% solid and 100% new. Ever. With anything.

corsicanguppy ,

A someone who worked in OS security, I beg you dont use flatpaks.

jabjoe ,
@jabjoe@feddit.uk avatar

As I said, “if this no other option”. And to be honest, that was once, for a few weeks before the new KiCad hit Debian repos. And only because hardware team wouldn’t wait to switch, so to open stuff, I needed it too.

lightnegative ,

As someone who works, flatpak’s solve a bunch of problems, freeing me up to continue working.

Security issues are just a class of issue; no more or less important than other issues

flop_leash_973 ,

These days I care a lot less that a package is outdated than I do it being unstable personally. If security concerns are getting patched and it is still doing what I want it to do, I couldn’t care less about UI elements getting moved around just to make some PM happy.

CrypticCoffee ,

Or there is OpenSuse Tumbleweed which is up to date, and stable…

pastermil ,

Tried the Tumbleweed. It’s anything but stable.

CrypticCoffee ,

As someone who has used it for a few years. Incorrect. I had one upgrade issue (from KDE 5 to 6). Other than that. Smooth. For the Plasma upgrade, just change to default them before upgrade and upgrade from command line, not terminal window.

prunerye ,

Stable, in this context, just means “point release”. If you meant “doesn’t break”, that describes most rolling release distros.

…unless you’ve used KDE in the last month. Holy cow, just let me alt-tab into a fullscreen window without throwing a fit.

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