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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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what linux OS should I install on a backup notebook if my main one is debian? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I'm your regular end user. I use my computers to edit text, audio and video, watch movies, listen to music, post and bank on the internet...

my main computer uses now debian 12.5 after abandoning xubuntu.

For my backup notebook I have several candidates:

Simply install debian 12.5 again, the easiest choice.
Install linux mint, so I get ubuntu but without them throwing their subscription services down my throat. I'm unsure about other advantages, as ubuntu is debian based, maybe the more frequent program updates? Kernels are also updated more often than with debian as far as I know. Do you know of other advantages?
Go for FreeBSD: this might require a learning curve, because this is an OS I've never used. Are commands that different from debian?

other more niche linux OSs seem too much a hassle and I guess won't be as supported as the main ones.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (3 children)

From your experience is it really unstable ( annoyingly buggy ), or do they just call it that and it stable really ?

Sid exclusively gets security updates through its package maintainers. The Debian Security Team only maintains security updates for the current "stable" release.

Is this a good thing ?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago

The main “instability” I’ve found with testing or sid is just that because new packages are added quickly, sometimes you’ll have dependency clashes.

Pretty much every time the package manager will take care of keeping things sane and not upgrading a package that will cause any incompatibility.

The main issue is if at some point you decide to install something that has conflicting dependencies with something you already have installed. Those are usually solvable with a little aptitude-fu as long as there are versions available to sort things out neatly.

A better first step to newer packages is probably stable with backports though.

https://backports.debian.org/

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

It is very usable, provided you pay attention to major upcoming changes. To give you a very recent example, during May they switched the time libraries to use 64 bits, and like others said, it was dependency hell until the tide of all the packages being recompiled passed. In those cases, unless you know EXACTLY what to do, it's better to wait for updates to come in, let apt sort out what could be updated and what had to wait, and just make sure it doesn't propose you to delete things. After 2 weeks it was all business as usual. Side note: aptitude (my package manager of choice) was unusable, while apt threaded on and pulled me out of the tangle.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I used unstable for years (don't anymore). It broke itself in minor and major ways every couple of months. Maybe it wouldn't boot or X wouldn't start, or the package dependencies were broken and I couldn't install certain packages for a couple of days. Stuff like that.

You will have manually to fix these things from time to time, or do a workaround (like manually downgrading certain packages), or wait a week so stuff gets sorted. Most of the time it works fine though. I imagine the experience is somewhat similar to running arch.

You do not get security fixes, but it's not a massive problem usually, since you'll get the newest version of most software after a couple of days (occasionally longer) after it is released.

Anyway do not recommend unless you want to be a beta tester. I did report bugs sometimes, but almost always by the time I encountered an issue, it was already reported and a fix was already in the works.