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Are there any Debian Unstable users here? What's your use ca

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Deb-fan
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Re: Are there any Debian Unstable users here? What's your us

#1 Post by Deb-fan »

Did for years. Been using stable for the last few. Regardless of which branch have always taken to installing Debian with the minimal net install iso. Then would change sources to unstable and just dist-upgrade the os from there. Am sure there are unstable images, other approaches though like mine. Never had issues with Sid. Have always used windows managers VS complex desktops like KDE. Bottom line it'll be no more troublesome than in Arch, likely less so. Think Arch has a tendency to fight users VS Debian which tends to bend over backwards trying to help them.

Have tried Arch several times and always ended over writing a perfectly working install and booting Debian. Even though yeah think Arch is great gnu/nix once you jump through the hoops of getting it setup but still much prefer Debian. If not already up to speed with command-line package management in Debian learn it. Not sure why anyone would want to do it any other way. Can always put an incremental backup/restore plan in place. That's just good practice no matter what anyway. I use rsync takes all of 15min to backup or restore the entire os but my laptop at the moment is ancient too.

Install the aptlist-bugs package too. It'll warn you about packages with known bugs in terminal before upgrading them, give you a y/n option whether to proceed. Many fellow unstable users would have to put this or that package on hold until a fix came around, then take it off and do the upgrade. Shouldn't take long in unstable and don't recall a time I even had to bother doing that. Really never had any compelling reason to track unstable, other than the experience and all the cool kids were doing it of course. You do though and yeah my experience was a pleasant one.
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Re: Are there any Debian Unstable users here? What's your us

#2 Post by Head_on_a_Stick »

jyamkhan wrote:my intention is running unstable, but since I've never tried it or compared it with Arch/Tumbleweed (of which I have some experience), I wonder if it's too much of a headache or breakage? Are there any Unstable users around, for daily average desktop usage?
I've used Arch Linux for about five years and I've tried sid on and off a few times but not for extended periods because I found that it broke too often for my liking.

Arch also breaks occasionally but not as often as sid, it is designed as a rolling release whereas sid is designed solely for testing purposes and no attempt is made to synchronise the package versions, unlike in Arch.

I would strongly advise running Debian stable if reliability is at all a concern, it is superb in that respect and many of the packages can be updated from backports (or stolen from MX Linux, which has more backports).

Another advantage of Debian stable is that the package versions are stable (hence the name) so there's no need to keep track of updates in respect of configuration files and suchlike: once you have everything set up how you like then it stays that way and doesn't need re-jigging constantly, which is an irritation (for me) with rolling-release distributions.

Debian 10 (buster) will be released in a few months and will have the current version of Plasma so that would be my choice (but not with Plasma, ugh).

Never share $HOME between different distributions, that's just asking for trouble, IMO.
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Re: Are there any Debian Unstable users here? What's your us

#3 Post by milomak »

i've probably been running sid for at least 10 years with little hassle

in fact there was a time when i was running debian, arch and gentoo. eventually settled on sid.
Desktop: A320M-A PRO MAX, AMD Ryzen 5 3600, GALAX GeForce RTX™ 2060 Super EX (1-Click OC) - Sid, Win10, Arch Linux, Gentoo, Solus
Laptop: hp 250 G8 i3 11th Gen - Sid
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piper
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Re: Are there any Debian Unstable users here? What's your us

#4 Post by piper »

I've been running debian sid (and servers) for just about 20 years (most of us at siduction has) without problems (kde).

I run both debian sid and siduction (based on debian sid), siduction is my main operating system.

Gotta love sid :mrgreen:

Code: Select all

System:    Host: x1 Kernel: 5.0.0-rc5-siduction-amd64 x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 8.2.0 Desktop: KDE Plasma 5.14.5 
 tk: Qt 5.11.3 wm: kwin_x11 dm: SDDM Distro: siduction 18.3.0 Paint It Black - kde - (201901291115) base: Debian GNU/Linux buster/sid 
Graphics:  Device-1: NVIDIA GM204 [GeForce GTX 970] vendor: eVga.com. driver: nvidia v: 418.30 bus ID: 01:00.0 chip ID: 10de:13c2 
Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.3 driver: nvidia unloaded: fbdev,modesetting,vesa alternate: nouveau,nv compositor: kwin_x11 resolution: 1920x1080~60Hz 
OpenGL: renderer: GeForce GTX 970/PCIe/SSE2 v: 4.6.0 NVIDIA 418.30 directrender:Yes

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Re: Are there any Debian Unstable users here? What's your us

#5 Post by Dale »

I've used unstable for several years. The 'unstable' part only means that the packages have not been proven so much in the wild, but it does NOT mean that the packages haven't gone through Debian's quality-assurance procedures and they HAVE been verified working in the testing branches. I've genuinely never had a problem with it, and if you want an up-to-date laptop/desktop machine I would recommend this branch over the stable one. On the other hand, if you are running an internet server, best be safe and use stable.

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Re: Are there any Debian Unstable users here? What's your us

#6 Post by Deb-fan »

Was going to recommend trying one of the Sid based for awhile too and Siduction would be top of list I'd recommend. Have respect for the maturity and skill of it and the people associated with the distro. Though only ran Siduction very briefly. Once I'd figured out how easy it was to use pure Debian and just track sid, there was no reason for me not to. Do think unstable is kind of an over statement, using sid was no less stable in my experience than running the stable branch. Just the way Debian does it, a testament to the skill, talent and dedication of the amazing folks involved in Debian. No doubt why 100's of the existing distros base off Debian.

So really would just find a decent minimal Debian net install how-to, get the base, change sources to the unstable repo's, dist-upgrade, then finish installing/building the Os from there (ie: install Kde and whatever else you want.) Can always do some experiments in VM/Kvm for a bit too. Test the waters, once satisfied sid fits your needs, proceed from there.
Last edited by Deb-fan on 2019-02-18 16:39, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Are there any Debian Unstable users here? What's your us

#7 Post by Deb-fan »

^Thanks yeah I'm aware there are other(could be better, actually the way you advise, sounds like it is) but like my method. If only force of habit. Will use the method you show, if get bitten by the sid bug again. Would also say to the OP, his method is better too. Though think there's much to be said for learning the minimal Debian net install route in general. Debian your way, with only whatever you want. Again just goes to show how amazing Debian is(the people behind it are.)

Btw: Noticed that the OP was removed (spam?) so now seems I'm taking to myself. Errrr, oh well am good with that, as I do talk to myself often anyway. Don't go online to do it. Just let the record show. :p
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Re: Are there any Debian Unstable users here? What's your us

#8 Post by Head_on_a_Stick »

The grml ISO image ships with grml-debootstrap(8) and that will install a sid system directly. It even has a lovely curses interface if it is launched without any options.

@Deb-fan, the spambots suckered you too, eh? :mrgreen:
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Re: Are there any Debian Unstable users here? What's your us

#9 Post by Deb-fan »

^Thanks for the add HOAS. :)

That was spam? Yowza man, looks like they got me! Worse I'm stuck using a smartphone, so all that was typed out on an android keyboard! It's painful, peck, peck... peck, backspace (thanks autocorrect),... Peck. You evil spamming bastids! DIE!!!
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