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Comment by phosphophyllite | Hacker News Reader

Can you just not upgrade on your own machine. Why other should suffer? Changes in life are inevitable.

Let me remind you that binary distros emerged for convenience and speed – you dont need to compile bunch of stuff when internet and computing power was limited, e.g. new version of gimp (or mpv) with feature you really waited and wanted.

I have never (never!) encountered security problems, and sudden config changes in most updates (lates major versions of KDE are exceptions) and this is not a problem at all on my desktop machine.

Problem is when can't intsall new version wihout learning new often sophisticate upgrade procedures or even compiling/building (let me remind you it's 2019 today).

Debian is not universal, it's a server distro with desktop packages appeared in repos by as a result of some mistake.

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> Can you just not upgrade on your own machine.

How can I know which packages and which versions will be incompatible upgrades beforehand? How can I rely on distribution maintainers to know and warn me against incompatibilities with any kind of customization or 3rd party integration I've had outside of the distribution. Why should I spend time before and after every upgrade to assess something won't/isn't broken.

> Why other should suffer?

They shouldn't. Dozens of other distributions with different release policies are available and well supported.

> I have never (never!) encountered security problems, and sudden config changes in most updates (lates major versions of KDE are exceptions) and this is not a problem at all on my desktop machine.

You can't say that as the very first example you've given in your above post, Firefox, has been notorious with the breakages for the better part of the last decade; with every single new release either breaking extensions, removing features that users have relied on, introducing anti-features that required disabling or any combination of these.

> Debian is not universal, it's a server distro with desktop packages appeared in repos by as a result of some mistake.

You must hurry tell that to Debian developers so they can stop wasting their time packaging thousands of desktop programs, then.

> I have never (never!) encountered security problems, and sudden config changes in most updates (lates major versions of KDE are exceptions) and this is not a problem at all on my desktop machine.

I guess you also never encountered a red-bellied black snake. That doesn't mean it's not a problem for the 25,000,000 people who share an island with it.

Good for you, but don't presume your use cases and requirements are the only valid ones.

> Why other should suffer?

I'm sorry, but what is stopping you or other people from using distros with faster release cycle or rolling release?

If anything, there are so many rolling release distros nowadays, that Debian Stable is a breath of fresh air in the sea of release first, fix later mentality (especially when it comes to desktop environment).

But I digress, in the end just choose the distro that suits your needs and requirements and be happy.

It's impossible when you just need pick up one distro and get new desktop software as it releases, and it also being supported by commercial vendors.

Amazing example of why linux desktop goes wrong direction is so many distros. When you have many answers – you don't have answer.

Ubuntu studio for artists, Kubuntu for those who like KDE, Debian for thos who don't like updates (._.), gentoo, etc etc.

Why on windows and mac user can compile, and update anything? Just install photoshop (or newer version of gimp that available for majority of users on windows earlier than on linux before snap/appimage) and you get "distro" for artists.

And even snaps/appimages go wrong direction and overthink problem with security and sandboxing — when majority of users just need one runtime to deal with, like in SteamClient.

No one wants download or plug special repo/package for debian or fedora — this is amazing resource waisting! (insane even)

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