An important change appears to be the inclusion of non-free firmware by default in the official install image for the first time, as a result of this vote: https://www.debian.org/vote/2022/vote_003
Intriguing. I feel a little torn on this. One the one hand, I appreciate being able to install Debian from an official image onto a bothersome device. On the other, I can't help but feel we're losing something when even a purist distribution like Debian is forced to concede in the fight against proprietary blobs.
Edit: dropped the word 'kernel' from 'proprietary blobs', as rightly picked up by kind commenters below.
I was involved in the discussion, and I'm also torn on that issue, but at least you can disable installation of non-free firmware and install Debian without any non-free software.
On the other hand, firmware is a convoluted issue. It was always present, but became increasingly visible over the years. While I'm a strong Free Software supporter, firmware is one of the hardest parts to convert, because of the IP it entails and trade secrets it embodies.
While I don't like proprietary firmware, I'm not sure if the line is drawn at a useful place.
If you have firmware/software/whatever in a device, which is updateable (as opposed to mask-rom or hard logic), I'd much rather have it transparently managed by an OS I can control, than some EEPROM with often proprietary, inscrutable, I-ask-you-nicely-please-update-your-firmware update mechanism.
IMO, the difference is:
- with OS provided firmware (and preferably no writable storage), I can be sure my device is running the same SW as the rest of the world
- with dozens of EEPROMs in my device, I can never be sure what is running on it.
Firmware that is legally not redistributable is a non-trivial, though perhaps less bothersome issue. Firmware that requires manufaturer's signature is bothersome but I would still prefer it over inscrutable hidden firmware.
> On the other, I can't help but feel we're losing something when even a purist distribution like Debian is forced to concede in the fight against proprietary firmware blobs.
The software needs hardware to run, and the whole point of the software is to make the hardware useful. If you can't use the hardware, what's the point of the software?
In my book, freedom is a function of usefulness. No amount of redistributable source code has any value to me if I can't run it.
Enabling the use of hardware I already own is not a compromise, it's a solution. It's what operating systems exist for. Debian is fulfilling its primary function. I'm glad that this necessity was finally recognised.
I've never had a computer which would work with the official ideologically-pure installer. Always had to use the non-free one. I'm glad this vote turned out the way it did.
For devices which have firmware, does it matter whether the firmware is loaded by the OS rather than hardcoded inside the device? The former at least gives an opportunity to fix bugs.
And if I'm not mistaken, this isn't about kernel blobs (which run on the CPU as kernel code), only code that gets loaded on devices (including CPU microcode).
Firmware is not kernel blob. It's executed on separate device and has nothing to do with Linux. It's about open hardware, not open software. I don't think that it's worth to pursue this direction for Debian.
> when even a purist distribution like Debian is forced to concede in the fight against proprietary blobs.
As far as I'm aware, nothing has recently changed in this regard. It's more of a reflection on the mentality of young members, those who tend to treat software as if it's in a vacuum, separate from all the social and moral concerns of the meatspace.
One thing I really appreciate about Debian is that when a new stable release comes around, I can just upgrade and be reasonably sure nothing bad will happen.
It's not exciting, but a fair amount of the time, this is what people expect from their operating system. Support my hardware, give me the software I need, and stay out of my way otherwise. And that is what Debian does very well.
> One thing I really appreciate about Debian is that when a new stable release comes around, I can just upgrade and be reasonably sure nothing bad will happen.
That's good feedback and I've heard it from other people. Personally I've never been able to dist-upgrade Rapbian or Ubuntu without breaking the OS.
Never ceases to amaze me. There is all kinds of things wrong with Debian I am sure. But at the end of the day, what that community does is mindblowingly impressive.
Much gratitude from a Slink-and-a-half user, back in the day.
I see this old-package argument over and over again and I think it is inaccurate, considering that an estimated 95% of Ubuntu users use the LTS version, the below table demonstrates that Debian 12 (stable) packages are newer than those of of Ubuntu 22.04. Both Debian 12 and Ubuntu 22.04 are LTS versions with 5 years of support.
Ubuntu 22.04
Kernel 5.19 (new installs only, existing installs 5.15)
systemd 249
KDE Plasma 5.24
Gnome 42
Debian 12
Kernel 6.1
systemd 252
KDE Plasma 5.27
Gnome 43
Debian Stable and Ubuntu LTS tend to alternate with respect to who has newer packages, because Debian ships on odd years and Ubuntu LTS on even years.
For most purposes, though, I find that I increasingly don't care about 1 or 2 years of difference in the base OS. Most of the toolchain is stable and well established. There are only a small handful of things I want to pin to a specific version (like node.js or Python), but these can usually be installed side by side with default packages. If not, I can always install it in a container. :)
Whilst I'm no longer an Ubuntu user due to their snap debacle, I don't think this is all that fair, they released over a year apart and LTS is LTS for a reason :)
I have always used stable on my servers and testing on my laptop but I recently switched to stable on the laptop with kernel from backports (I have fairly recent hardware). I have never been happier :) (to be fair, staging was fairly stable too, but still broke small stuff occasionally, and I feel I'm too old to deal with this ^^)
I realised this myself recently. I have used Ubuntu LTS for a long time, I don't use the in-between releases. They have about the same release cadence as Debian (2ish years) so I'm usually not losing anything much by moving to Debian.
Ubuntu probably do the HWE kernel better than stable backports kernel, the HWE kernel has a release schedule.
There's been more community support for Ubuntu in the form of PPAs but Flatpak has mostly solved that problem for the things I care about.
As such, I've already switched all my laptops to Debian, and will switch my desktop and work computer when I can be bothered.
The amount of effort put into Debian is truly impressive. I have used it for decades and it has been remarkably stable. Use the stable release with unattended-upgrades and it's almost zero-maintenance.
Also, an estimated 96.3% of packages are built reproducibly for amd64.
A bit offtopic... are there any distros besides PoPOS that comes with the proprietary Nvidia drivers preinstalled? I tried to use (live image) Debian on an RTX 4070 PC and nothing worked just black screen after GRUB. PoPOS works out of the box but honestly I'd prefer something more simple as Debian.
A lot of times you can fix boot issues like this by adding "nomodeset" to the boot command line
I always had trouble booting proxmox the first time, because even though it is a server os with no graphics, the installer is graphical. I would get black screen at boot.
I would just interrupt hte boot use 'e' to edit the command line, add 'nomodeset' and it would boot.
I have been thinking of switching to Debian from Pop!_OS and have a Thinkpad X1 Extreme Gen 2 with Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 - if graphics drivers are an issue, then my wish is dead in water.
I'm also considering this, but I'm a little afraid of being stuck in the slow lane when it comes to software updates. I'm aware of Backports, but I'm led to believe it has a somewhat limited selection.
Perhaps this is a good opportunity to try a combination of Debian, for general system stability, and Nix, for specific tools where I need newer releases? Has anyone tried this combination before? If so, how did you find it?
I tried the same move but I couldn’t find any reason to permanently move to Debian. The biggest problem is that some of the package versions are quite old. Ubuntu is far better when it comes to software updates. The snap stuff is crap though.
I've was an inveterate distro hopper, but finally settled on Debian because of its stability. Its not the most user friendly but when you get it up and running "it just works". Debian really is fantastic achievement in software.
But it's /not/ released though. Their own news section mentions that cd images are still being built, which seems like something that should have happened already. There's nothing but 11.7 available for download.
The bookworm apt repository is in the final state, so Bookworm is released for those with existing Debian installations who can just do a search/replace of "bullseye" to "bookworm" in their apt.sources file, and run apt dist-upgrade.
It is amazing how this group of volunteers create the
foundation for many more commercial Linux ventures and
use by billion-dollar companies.
A lot of end users of different distros do not even know
that Debian is the foundation.
I will as go as far as to say Debian had solved a lot of
the hard issues and then other sprinkle it.
(Probably not a popular view)
Anyways thanks to all the Debian team members.
Your work ought to be better known.
Congrats! Been using it on a 2017 Thinkpad X270 with MATE. Everything works perfectly. Honestly might not be the "flashiest" distro but does the job perfectly well. And personally I always recommend it to people new to Linux.
Just upgraded my Debian WSL distro and the experience couldn't have been more anti-climatic – I had to double-check lsb_release to make sure I'd actually upgraded, it was that seamless.
> The new systemd-resolved package will not be installed automatically on upgrades as it has been split into a separate package. If using the systemd-resolved system service, please install the new package manually after the upgrade, and note that until it has been installed, DNS resolution may no longer work as the service will not be present on the system.
will installing over the internet work without DNS resolution?
[+] [-] troad|2 years ago|reply
An important change appears to be the inclusion of non-free firmware by default in the official install image for the first time, as a result of this vote: https://www.debian.org/vote/2022/vote_003
Intriguing. I feel a little torn on this. One the one hand, I appreciate being able to install Debian from an official image onto a bothersome device. On the other, I can't help but feel we're losing something when even a purist distribution like Debian is forced to concede in the fight against proprietary blobs.
Edit: dropped the word 'kernel' from 'proprietary blobs', as rightly picked up by kind commenters below.
[+] [-] bayindirh|2 years ago|reply
On the other hand, firmware is a convoluted issue. It was always present, but became increasingly visible over the years. While I'm a strong Free Software supporter, firmware is one of the hardest parts to convert, because of the IP it entails and trade secrets it embodies.
[+] [-] yrro|2 years ago|reply
The sad truth is that the Linux distributions recommended by the FSF have approximately zero users.
[+] [-] labawi|2 years ago|reply
If you have firmware/software/whatever in a device, which is updateable (as opposed to mask-rom or hard logic), I'd much rather have it transparently managed by an OS I can control, than some EEPROM with often proprietary, inscrutable, I-ask-you-nicely-please-update-your-firmware update mechanism.
IMO, the difference is:
- with OS provided firmware (and preferably no writable storage), I can be sure my device is running the same SW as the rest of the world
- with dozens of EEPROMs in my device, I can never be sure what is running on it.
Firmware that is legally not redistributable is a non-trivial, though perhaps less bothersome issue. Firmware that requires manufaturer's signature is bothersome but I would still prefer it over inscrutable hidden firmware.
[+] [-] rollcat|2 years ago|reply
The software needs hardware to run, and the whole point of the software is to make the hardware useful. If you can't use the hardware, what's the point of the software?
In my book, freedom is a function of usefulness. No amount of redistributable source code has any value to me if I can't run it.
Enabling the use of hardware I already own is not a compromise, it's a solution. It's what operating systems exist for. Debian is fulfilling its primary function. I'm glad that this necessity was finally recognised.
[+] [-] GrumpySloth|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] progval|2 years ago|reply
And if I'm not mistaken, this isn't about kernel blobs (which run on the CPU as kernel code), only code that gets loaded on devices (including CPU microcode).
[+] [-] vbezhenar|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hahhahanananana|2 years ago|reply
As far as I'm aware, nothing has recently changed in this regard. It's more of a reflection on the mentality of young members, those who tend to treat software as if it's in a vacuum, separate from all the social and moral concerns of the meatspace.
[+] [-] lockhouse|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] krylon|2 years ago|reply
It's not exciting, but a fair amount of the time, this is what people expect from their operating system. Support my hardware, give me the software I need, and stay out of my way otherwise. And that is what Debian does very well.
[+] [-] arcanemachiner|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mikae1|2 years ago|reply
That's good feedback and I've heard it from other people. Personally I've never been able to dist-upgrade Rapbian or Ubuntu without breaking the OS.
[+] [-] jacooper|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 28304283409234|2 years ago|reply
Much gratitude from a Slink-and-a-half user, back in the day.
[+] [-] whatwhaaaaat|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] denysonique|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kijin|2 years ago|reply
For most purposes, though, I find that I increasingly don't care about 1 or 2 years of difference in the base OS. Most of the toolchain is stable and well established. There are only a small handful of things I want to pin to a specific version (like node.js or Python), but these can usually be installed side by side with default packages. If not, I can always install it in a container. :)
[+] [-] _joel|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dima55|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] forty|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] suprjami|2 years ago|reply
Ubuntu probably do the HWE kernel better than stable backports kernel, the HWE kernel has a release schedule.
There's been more community support for Ubuntu in the form of PPAs but Flatpak has mostly solved that problem for the things I care about.
As such, I've already switched all my laptops to Debian, and will switch my desktop and work computer when I can be bothered.
[+] [-] guerby|2 years ago|reply
https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Roadmap#Proxmox_VE_8.0_beta1
[+] [-] oftenwrong|2 years ago|reply
Also, an estimated 96.3% of packages are built reproducibly for amd64.
https://tests.reproducible-builds.org/debian/bookworm/index_...
[+] [-] lairv|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] botanical|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] profwalkstr|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unpopularopp|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yrro|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] m463|2 years ago|reply
I always had trouble booting proxmox the first time, because even though it is a server os with no graphics, the installer is graphical. I would get black screen at boot.
I would just interrupt hte boot use 'e' to edit the command line, add 'nomodeset' and it would boot.
[+] [-] noisy_boy|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fb03|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] troad|2 years ago|reply
Perhaps this is a good opportunity to try a combination of Debian, for general system stability, and Nix, for specific tools where I need newer releases? Has anyone tried this combination before? If so, how did you find it?
[+] [-] secondcoming|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drumhead|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DrJohanson|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] hosteur|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] encom|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] OfSanguineFire|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ThinkBeat|2 years ago|reply
A lot of end users of different distros do not even know that Debian is the foundation. I will as go as far as to say Debian had solved a lot of the hard issues and then other sprinkle it. (Probably not a popular view)
Anyways thanks to all the Debian team members. Your work ought to be better known.
[+] [-] nntwozz|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] themoonisachees|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] haunter|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] swayvil|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ctippett|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jfhr|2 years ago|reply
will installing over the internet work without DNS resolution?
[+] [-] pas|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] janzer|2 years ago|reply