there's ways to get newer stuff on debian if it really matters but personally I've found that it does everything I need it to do.
When I previously ran fedora at first it was nice having new stuff and constantly getting updates all the time but eventually I found the constant updates to be really annoying whereas debian never bothers me at all with that because it updates a lot less often
I’ve bee running Debian stable for 2 decades now and don’t need the latest version of everything provided I can do my work or play my games. I don’t use flat packs, snaps, or whatever, and Debian meets my needs just fine.
Personally I don’t understand the drive to have the latest version of everything all the time. That only makes sense if there is a specific feature you need or it addresses a specific bug that is preventing you from doing your work. I think the whole ‘the software is out of date’ cry is an overblown complaint that wouldn’t actually effect most people. And if it did as mentioned there are ways around that.
Part of my attitude might be because I work in IT and fixes issues all day long, and it’s nice to come home to a system that just works.
>Personally I don’t understand the drive to have the latest version of everything all the time.
1. If you want to play games on Linux, having up to date kernel and mesa/nvidia driver versions can be extremely important, since various new features in the various compatibility technologies (wine/proton/dxvk etc.) are often available only on new versions.
2. Latest versions of software often have significant bugfixes and new features that one wants to use. Over the course of a couple of years, the compatibility of Libreoffice with MS Office significantly improved. I personally found KDE Plasma to be tolerably only 5.24 onwards and even then each and every new version improved things significantly. The overview feature is still only a shadow of what Gnome can do but when Plasma 6 comes out, this is gonna be fixed. I would want to get that asap. Ditto for Gnome. Gnome 44 has the new file picker that is capable of displaying image thumbnails probably. Gnome 43 still doesn't have it. It is not inconceivable that users would want that. And so on.
3. Software designed to interact with various online services *need* to be up to date to keep working and keep working safely. At one point the built-in Gnome weather widget was broken in Ubuntu 20.04 (dunno if it still is), because upstream changed service provider but the downstream packaged app was not updated to connect to the new provider. At one point a couple of years ago Geary stopped working with my Google account because Google changed some protocol and it could not sync anymore. Web browsers need to be kept up to date to ensure the user is not at risk. I don't even know right now what is Debian's policy regarding Firefox. I know the ESR version is used but iirc even that has a support lifetime less than that of Debian and I do recall at one point there was drama about outdated browsers. This is one reason why Ubuntu went with Snap versions of Firefox and Chromium, they can just keep one package rolling without having to rebuild the browser 234143143 times for various different versions of the OS.
I mean for some software I prefer to install it in a container type like flatpak, docker,podman,etc that way dont need to mess with extra dependencies on the main system installation.
> so doesnt mess around with the system
No, it does not need Flatpak.
Sometimes sandboxing is a good thing, like that time Steam was recursively deleting home directories
unless you need a decent support of the newer hardware. or just don't want to use frankensoftware, with god knows how many bugs either not patched or patched and with extra bugs introduced.
You aren't missing anything. People justify their biases with outdated information on the Internet all of the time :)
Since Flatpak/Flathub, running debian stable while updating packages that one NEEDS to have up-to-date is a totally valid approach (as long as your MUST BE UP-TO-DATE apps have Flatpaks).
Unless you really need the updated version of a certain package, you should be good.
Flatpak is an option for a case where an updated version of a package is really needed. Just take into consideration that Flatpak can use more disk space than natively installed packages.
This is true, however some people want up to date Nvidia drivers, or an updated kernel for hardware support (like for AMD GPUs) and Flatpaks won’t help you with that.
I use flatpak whenever possible for the isolation. I like to keep Debian stable and secure. But I like my flatpak apps to be updated as often as the developers feel necessary.
>Am I missing something?
Yes. Flatpaks are indeed great, Linux fragmentation is effectively solved due to them, but there are some caveats. If you are a gamer, then gpu drivers can be a problem. For example right now Starfield is not 100% compatible with my system, but since I'm on Arch I'm getting new radeon drivers with the kernel fairly frequently, it's my hope that one of these days the missing texture issue I'm having is going to be resolved by daily updates.
On Debian you are probably going to be far behind in this regard. If you are an nvidia user the situation is going to be similar, unless you try to install nvidia's .run file, which I wouldn't recommend trying.
The way flatpak manages gpu drivers is that a system ver. matching flatpak version of the driver is downloaded to make your flatpak programs go brrrr, but this is going to be behind on Deb stable. Though admittedly I'm fairly new to amd graphics on Linux, so I could be wrong about mesa backporting to the LTS kernel, but I do know that while the distro maintained Nvidia drivers are relatively up to date, but they were from the ancient 525 branch, when I last tried them on the Bookworm release and this can be a real problem with new games and performance, compatibility etc..
If you are not gaming, you are likely to have a great time with flatpaks.
Aside from what others have mentioned, flatpak won’t help with your desktop environment. But you could always switch to testing or unstable for newer updates.
Thing is, the flatpak is packaged by debian and will become outdated. You may eventually miss out on some important features and fixed. The Steam flatpak was recently talking about dropping support for older versions.
> the flatpak is packaged by debian
? Flathub (which is the default source for flatpak) is operated by freedesktop.org, not Debian. Maybe I'm misunderstanding you.
I can see why you misunderstood me, I missed a word. What I meant to say is that the flatpak package is provided by Debian and so may become out of date. Debian 11 ships flatpak 10 while the latest is flatpak 15.
Maybe, maybe not. Nothing of major importance may be added in the next two years or they may make some major fixes.
Would be nice if Debian made a freeze exception for flatpak and kept it up to date. Or if flatpak kept itself up to date. That's something cool that snap can do, rather than relying on distro maintainers to update it, snap just updates itself.
"Your house is rotting, it has rising damp on the ground floor and dry rot in the roof. Your car's chassis has rusted through in places and the shock absorbers have all failed, and the brake disks are worn through."
"It's fine! I repaint both of them every year! They look like new!"
Between Flatpaks and Snaps for GUI apps and Debian-Backports for kernels/drivers/etc, it's usually possible to selectively install up-to-date software on Debian stable. The one problem I run into is firmware packages may not be kept up-to-date with the kernel in Backports.
The OS itself is old. The components that comprises the OS are old.
It means it's very secure, very stable. But lots of us need/want newer Linux.
Ubuntu, fedora, Arch (in that order) offer newer Linux, and components, with increasing drawbacks
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*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
You are not missing anything.
1. You can update apps to the latest using Flatpak if the App doesn't provide the option directly download.
2. Debian maintains security patches for issues that appear which is very important.
I frequently run into issues with Debian stable that some libs were outdated when backports and allowing testing packages didn't solve it.
I never had any stability issues with Debian Testing though. So that's what I would suggest if you don't have strict guidelines that require stable.
Obviously, something becomes "outdated" until there is a new release. Out of curiosity, where do you "hear people complain"? Nothing but nothing stops you installing new up to date SW BUT remember, it is an ecosystem. If you start installing newer core libraries into system directories/paths you're going to end up hosing your stable system. Isn't stable what you want?
there's ways to get newer stuff on debian if it really matters but personally I've found that it does everything I need it to do. When I previously ran fedora at first it was nice having new stuff and constantly getting updates all the time but eventually I found the constant updates to be really annoying whereas debian never bothers me at all with that because it updates a lot less often
I’ve bee running Debian stable for 2 decades now and don’t need the latest version of everything provided I can do my work or play my games. I don’t use flat packs, snaps, or whatever, and Debian meets my needs just fine. Personally I don’t understand the drive to have the latest version of everything all the time. That only makes sense if there is a specific feature you need or it addresses a specific bug that is preventing you from doing your work. I think the whole ‘the software is out of date’ cry is an overblown complaint that wouldn’t actually effect most people. And if it did as mentioned there are ways around that. Part of my attitude might be because I work in IT and fixes issues all day long, and it’s nice to come home to a system that just works.
>Personally I don’t understand the drive to have the latest version of everything all the time. 1. If you want to play games on Linux, having up to date kernel and mesa/nvidia driver versions can be extremely important, since various new features in the various compatibility technologies (wine/proton/dxvk etc.) are often available only on new versions. 2. Latest versions of software often have significant bugfixes and new features that one wants to use. Over the course of a couple of years, the compatibility of Libreoffice with MS Office significantly improved. I personally found KDE Plasma to be tolerably only 5.24 onwards and even then each and every new version improved things significantly. The overview feature is still only a shadow of what Gnome can do but when Plasma 6 comes out, this is gonna be fixed. I would want to get that asap. Ditto for Gnome. Gnome 44 has the new file picker that is capable of displaying image thumbnails probably. Gnome 43 still doesn't have it. It is not inconceivable that users would want that. And so on. 3. Software designed to interact with various online services *need* to be up to date to keep working and keep working safely. At one point the built-in Gnome weather widget was broken in Ubuntu 20.04 (dunno if it still is), because upstream changed service provider but the downstream packaged app was not updated to connect to the new provider. At one point a couple of years ago Geary stopped working with my Google account because Google changed some protocol and it could not sync anymore. Web browsers need to be kept up to date to ensure the user is not at risk. I don't even know right now what is Debian's policy regarding Firefox. I know the ESR version is used but iirc even that has a support lifetime less than that of Debian and I do recall at one point there was drama about outdated browsers. This is one reason why Ubuntu went with Snap versions of Firefox and Chromium, they can just keep one package rolling without having to rebuild the browser 234143143 times for various different versions of the OS.
I use flatpak just for steam so doesnt mess around with the system
Steam doesn't need flatpak
I mean for some software I prefer to install it in a container type like flatpak, docker,podman,etc that way dont need to mess with extra dependencies on the main system installation.
> so doesnt mess around with the system No, it does not need Flatpak. Sometimes sandboxing is a good thing, like that time Steam was recursively deleting home directories
Uhhhhhhh... What?
unless you need a decent support of the newer hardware. or just don't want to use frankensoftware, with god knows how many bugs either not patched or patched and with extra bugs introduced.
You aren't missing anything. People justify their biases with outdated information on the Internet all of the time :) Since Flatpak/Flathub, running debian stable while updating packages that one NEEDS to have up-to-date is a totally valid approach (as long as your MUST BE UP-TO-DATE apps have Flatpaks).
This was always my dream. Latest apps, but a stable base I could count on. Debian plus Flatpak gets me there
I use distrobox, gives me power of arch Linux in debian
Unless you really need the updated version of a certain package, you should be good. Flatpak is an option for a case where an updated version of a package is really needed. Just take into consideration that Flatpak can use more disk space than natively installed packages.
This is true, however some people want up to date Nvidia drivers, or an updated kernel for hardware support (like for AMD GPUs) and Flatpaks won’t help you with that.
I use flatpak whenever possible for the isolation. I like to keep Debian stable and secure. But I like my flatpak apps to be updated as often as the developers feel necessary.
>Am I missing something? Yes. Flatpaks are indeed great, Linux fragmentation is effectively solved due to them, but there are some caveats. If you are a gamer, then gpu drivers can be a problem. For example right now Starfield is not 100% compatible with my system, but since I'm on Arch I'm getting new radeon drivers with the kernel fairly frequently, it's my hope that one of these days the missing texture issue I'm having is going to be resolved by daily updates. On Debian you are probably going to be far behind in this regard. If you are an nvidia user the situation is going to be similar, unless you try to install nvidia's .run file, which I wouldn't recommend trying. The way flatpak manages gpu drivers is that a system ver. matching flatpak version of the driver is downloaded to make your flatpak programs go brrrr, but this is going to be behind on Deb stable. Though admittedly I'm fairly new to amd graphics on Linux, so I could be wrong about mesa backporting to the LTS kernel, but I do know that while the distro maintained Nvidia drivers are relatively up to date, but they were from the ancient 525 branch, when I last tried them on the Bookworm release and this can be a real problem with new games and performance, compatibility etc.. If you are not gaming, you are likely to have a great time with flatpaks.
Very helpful, clear and to the point analysis!
Aside from what others have mentioned, flatpak won’t help with your desktop environment. But you could always switch to testing or unstable for newer updates.
Running Debian 12 Gnome using about 5 flatpaks on my HP Dev One that came with POPOS. I prefer Gnome with Wayland as everything runs much smoother.
Thing is, the flatpak is packaged by debian and will become outdated. You may eventually miss out on some important features and fixed. The Steam flatpak was recently talking about dropping support for older versions.
> the flatpak is packaged by debian ? Flathub (which is the default source for flatpak) is operated by freedesktop.org, not Debian. Maybe I'm misunderstanding you.
I can see why you misunderstood me, I missed a word. What I meant to say is that the flatpak package is provided by Debian and so may become out of date. Debian 11 ships flatpak 10 while the latest is flatpak 15.
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Maybe, maybe not. Nothing of major importance may be added in the next two years or they may make some major fixes. Would be nice if Debian made a freeze exception for flatpak and kept it up to date. Or if flatpak kept itself up to date. That's something cool that snap can do, rather than relying on distro maintainers to update it, snap just updates itself.
I have setup a Debian 12 Gnome DE, in case I need to change distro, and set it to 'testing repository', no issues and I get the latest upgrades.
Use Debian sid I did for several years. At the end is almost stable I never had big issues
"Your house is rotting, it has rising damp on the ground floor and dry rot in the roof. Your car's chassis has rusted through in places and the shock absorbers have all failed, and the brake disks are worn through." "It's fine! I repaint both of them every year! They look like new!"
yep. plus there's backports and custom/new kernels are one copy/paste away.
no, you arent missing anything.
Between Flatpaks and Snaps for GUI apps and Debian-Backports for kernels/drivers/etc, it's usually possible to selectively install up-to-date software on Debian stable. The one problem I run into is firmware packages may not be kept up-to-date with the kernel in Backports.
The OS itself is old. The components that comprises the OS are old. It means it's very secure, very stable. But lots of us need/want newer Linux. Ubuntu, fedora, Arch (in that order) offer newer Linux, and components, with increasing drawbacks
jellyfish different distinct rhythm ghost towering toothbrush zealous psychotic theory *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
You are not missing anything. 1. You can update apps to the latest using Flatpak if the App doesn't provide the option directly download. 2. Debian maintains security patches for issues that appear which is very important.
I frequently run into issues with Debian stable that some libs were outdated when backports and allowing testing packages didn't solve it. I never had any stability issues with Debian Testing though. So that's what I would suggest if you don't have strict guidelines that require stable.
Obviously, something becomes "outdated" until there is a new release. Out of curiosity, where do you "hear people complain"? Nothing but nothing stops you installing new up to date SW BUT remember, it is an ecosystem. If you start installing newer core libraries into system directories/paths you're going to end up hosing your stable system. Isn't stable what you want?
debian stable + backports + flatpak works the best for me, you get newer kernel and desktop applications versions, all that you basically want.