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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?

akincisor ,

I have been using unstable on desktop for at least 15 years. Every time a new stable was released that would cause a month of just staying off updates till things stabilized. Recently it’s not even had that issue.

I’ve had to pin a package or two in that time, but unstable has been rock solid otherwise. I even run it on my server.

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These days I care a lot less that a package is outdated than I do it being unstable personally.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.

Vilian ,

when i see a debian user i see a future fedora user

lemmy_nightmare ,
@lemmy_nightmare@sh.itjust.works avatar

When I see a Fedora user, I see a future Arch user btw

AdrianTheFrog ,
@AdrianTheFrog@lemmy.world avatar

This is funny because on a laptop I had I did this exact same progression - I started on Debian, but it didn’t have the right kernel version for my audio drivers, so I switched to Fedora, but it was running slowly (probably because of gnome, it lets you choose so this was my fault) so I moved to arch (with xfce) because it has a reputation for being relatively lightweight. It worked better, but it took longer to get working with the unusual chromebook hardware.

nexussapphire ,

Man a laptop new enough to require a newer kernel but slow enough for gnome to be slow. That’s an annoying spot to be man.

AdrianTheFrog ,
@AdrianTheFrog@lemmy.world avatar

It wasn’t that new (2017), it just had weird hardware which iirc only recently got supported without proprietary drivers by the new audio system.

nexussapphire ,

That makes a lot more sense. I remember living with $200 laptops for a while and that’s kinda what I was thinking initially.

Vilian ,

idk i can do everything that arch can do, with distrobox and having a immutable distro on top

iopq ,

When I see an Arch user, I see a future NixOS user FWIW

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.

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.

MicrondeMMMMMMM ,
@MicrondeMMMMMMM@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

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

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.

iaMLoWiQ ,

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

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?

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? 🌈

avidamoeba ,
@avidamoeba@lemmy.ca avatar

Debian is as great as it’s ever been.

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.

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?

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