this post was submitted on 08 Dec 2023
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I’m using Debian testing + a few packages from experimental (Mesa) and xanmod or liquorix kernel.
It’s been a great experience. Stable as expected, performant as anything else.
You probably have your reason to run Debian testing but I read somewhere that testing is somehow a bad idea as desktop environment !
If somehing is stuck and being updated in sid, and bugs are still happening, you could be stuck for month without the correct update in testing.
Sorry if it's not clear, but I read it somewhere in the official debian documentation.
My desktop has been Debian testing since Jessie. I was inconvenienced a total of 2 times where something broke and made an app unuseable. My KDE menu was fixed within a day and my torrenting app took longer to fix, but I was able to apply a one line fix in the meantime with help from our awesome community.
I know it's named "testing", but I'd bet it would be very stable for most people's use cases and trade off is absolutely worth it if people would give it a try.
Do you consider testing a better choice than sid for desktop/gaming environment?
I'm really not sure which one I should use. I only have experience with bare bone debian stable as server, I'm trying to find the best choice when switching from windaube to debian :)
Thanks for your insights and personal experiences !
Sorry for the late reply. Yes, I think it's better for desktop. Stable is truly targetted for servers and desktop users will only be mildy inconvenienced once in a blue moon.
Thanks :))))
To answer that, you must understand how testing works. Packages first are updated in Sid (unstable), then they go to Testing. At a certain point of the release cycle, Testing stops being updated to become the new Stable version. So basically Testing is not constantly updated. Also, security patches don't follow this route: instead, they arrive in Sid first (thanks to the maintainers themselves) and then they get into Stable first (by the Debian team) because Stable has the priority. Only after that, they arrive in Testing.
Also see this paragraph from the Debian Wiki regarding security:
Also:
My advice to everyone who wants Debian to be more current is to just run Sid (unstable). It's always going to be more secure and up-to date than Testing. Also, it works like a rolling-release distro, i.e. the updates are incremental and constant
EDIT: whatever you do, read and follow this guide. apt-listbugs and apt-listchanges especially will save your ass constantly
Thank you for your nice write up and your link ! I think I will follow your guts and personal experiences ! Thank your for pre-saving my ass !! <3
Glad to be able to help! Have fun :)