Thoughts about using Debian

chrispoole · 2009-03-13 16:32:33

I moved to Arch from Ubuntu as I wanted to learn more, and have more control (Ubuntu is a bit of a black box to me).

As much as I love Arch with its rolling release, great community, pacman and ABS, I have decided that I rather sacrifice the latest and greatest software for more stability (i.e., just security updates perhaps), and ease in upgrading (instead of having the possibility of pacman -Syu breaking several things).

I use a laptop (EEE 1000H currently, perhaps a Thinkpad soon).

Do you think that switching to Debian would help cut down on the maintainence and have things "Just Work", with stability and/or security updates, but without the black-boxness of Ubuntu (i.e., a nice mix of Ubuntu and Arch)?

Thanks.

yingwuzhao · 2009-03-13 16:37:14

I have been pacman -Syu daily, since I start using Arch a couple of months ago.
I have never broken anything.;)

initbox · 2009-03-13 16:43:54

I've been running Arch for like 6 months with uptimes ranging up to 60 days and I've had zero breakage or stability issues...

But, if indeed you feel like you want something more "stable", Debian really isn't that cool. Sure, it's stable, but configuring codecs and flash might give you problems (I'm still unsure of how I managed to install them back in the day...)

You could do a minimal install of Ubuntu and install something lighter than full-blown Gnome. I think a major problem with Debian and Ubuntu is that they like to install boatloads of "dependencies" for every package, when Arch seems to install way less.

Also, considering you have a netbook, I think you should go for something as light as possible. On my NC10 I only have Arch with Ratpoison and light applications, and I think I can boot in like 12 seconds. I have the same setup on my quad core desktop as well, so I guess it isn't limited to slower machines, I like to keep stuff as light as possible

chrispoole · 2009-03-13 17:13:39

I'm currently happy using GNOME to be honest, perhaps with XMonad when I'm in the mood.

And yes, to be fair, pacman -Syu hasn't broken anything for me either.

Sometimes I wish things would just work a little easier, without me having to mess about with settings so much.

Basically I'm after Ubuntu, but with things more clearly configured. It strook me that Debian may be what I'm after, as long as things are fairly easy to install.

Inxsible · 2009-03-13 17:59:12

I have used Debian before, and it does offer a better experience than Ubuntu, IMO. You get to play around a bit and its quite stable as well, unless you are using the testing branch. It also seemed a lot lot faster than Ubuntu.

My old machine, which wouldn't even run Xbuntu, had Debian running with Gnome. Of course now, it runs only Arch

chrispoole · 2009-03-13 19:39:26

Apart from security updates, will Debian offer me more ease of use (general upkeep I mean) than Arch?

Inxsible · 2009-03-13 20:28:46

chrispoole wrote:

Apart from security updates, will Debian offer me more ease of use (general upkeep I mean) than Arch?

That is totally subjective. I find a much more ease of use with Arch.

I only install something that I want and that too after reading up on the issues that the said upgrade might have. I never go blindly updating packages just because they are available. The same would go with Debian. I have found myself having issues on upgrading packages in Debian as well. Given that they have very few updates to begin with. But unless you know what you are doing, you can mess up no matter what OS you are using.

chrispoole · 2009-03-13 20:54:47

Yes this is true I agree. Perhaps I'll just stick with Arch after all!

It just seems that I won't get the security updates if I don't upgrade packages, and I don't have the time to manually check packages that require updates to see if any holes or bugs have been fixed, or whether it's just added new features (and new bugs).

Inxsible · 2009-03-13 21:19:21

chrispoole wrote:

Yes this is true I agree. Perhaps I'll just stick with Arch after all!
It just seems that I won't get the security updates if I don't upgrade packages, and I don't have the time to manually check packages that require updates to see if any holes or bugs have been fixed, or whether it's just added new features (and new bugs).

If you keep using Arch, you can check the forums and the home page to see if there are known issues with the latest updates. There are users out there who just update and then come back with issues in threads and such. Make use of those kinds of people

some Archers also have set up RSS feeds to check for known issues with updates and do their updates accordingly.

stryder · 2009-03-16 03:14:59

Depends on what you want. For the latest and greatest, yet lean and stable, archlinux is the way to go. For "old faithful" switch-on-and-use stability, I think you should try debian lenny, the latest stable debian. It's programs are recent enough to keep you satisfied. As you said, once installed and configured properly, there are only security updates. Packages don't change. Archlinux is a rolling release - it will keep on changing. Which means you have to pay attention to it. What I would do though is keep my current system, install debian lenny on another partition, keep data on a common partition and play around with both systems.

fukawi2 · 2009-03-16 04:46:08

Inxsible wrote:

chrispoole wrote:
Apart from security updates, will Debian offer me more ease of use (general upkeep I mean) than Arch?
That is totally subjective. I find a much more ease of use with Arch.

Agree that it's subjective, but since you're taking votes, I find Arch easier to maintain too.

Last edited by fukawi2 (2009-03-16 04:46:17)

Ranguvar · 2009-03-16 15:16:59

I think the real thing that comes into play with Debian vs Arch when focusing on maintainability is the release models. Debian (unless you use testing, to some extent, and even less if you use unstable or Sidux, but I don't know the stability of the latter two) often has extremely out-of-date packages - they release new stable versions every two years or so, with little besides security updates and other backports in-between. Arch is more more up-to-date, and patches a lot less (very good), but could be less stable....

I like Arch. YMMV.

chrispoole · 2009-03-17 13:35:12

Thanks for the input guys.

I think I'm going to stay with Arch.

Llama · 2009-03-17 14:02:35

You needn't necessarily use Debian Stable, if you must have a piece or two of up-to-date software. Neither do you need to risk Debian Unstable. There's a fairly standard way of using Testing+Unstable(+Experimental) .

You will have a rolling release system, just like Arch, only more conservative. It's quite reliable, they say .

It also depends on how long you've been using Arch, IMHO: stick to the devil you know . Unless you're going mostly into servers, or think that Debian knowledge may be generally useful, Arch is OK.

Last edited by Llama (2009-03-17 14:11:29)

Arch Linux

#1 2009-03-13 16:32:33

Thoughts about using Debian

#2 2009-03-13 16:37:14

Re: Thoughts about using Debian

#3 2009-03-13 16:43:54

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#4 2009-03-13 17:13:39

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#5 2009-03-13 17:59:12

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#7 2009-03-13 20:28:46

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