this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2026
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Debian operating system

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Debian is a free operating system (OS) for your computer. An operating system is the set of basic programs and utilities that make your computer run. Debian provides more than a pure OS: it comes with over 59000 packages, precompiled software bundled up in a nice format for easy installation on your machine.

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People often mistake the word “stable” in different contexts and I wish to clear up the confusion. There are two main meanings in the world of GNU/Linux for the word above and these two meanings are vastly different: once booted the system does not crash, therefore it is stable once installed the system behaves exactly the same for the lifetime of this install, therefore it is stable In both examples above you can mix-in the word “reliable” in more than one way as well, but for me personally the word reliable means that I can rely on my computer to be ready to do my bidding when I am ready to use the system.

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[–] poinck@lemmy.world 2 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago)

The almost zero time invest for security updates on Debian is the main reason why I switched back to it from Gentoo. While Gentoo has stable package versions it is still rolling and I have to invest time with etc-update from time to time.

On the other hand, it was easier to get other package versions outside the repo into Gentoo without using flatpak; especially very old versions.

I like flatpak, too, but I only use it for less mature apps, I want to try and have a rapid relaese cycle I don't want to miss. Btw, on Gentoo I needed flatpak as well sometimes, especially for Qt applications; because I did not want to compile stuff I rarely use.

So yes, I find that Debian stable is very stable.

I will try out Fedora Silverblue on a seperate machine, anyway. But my main productive computer remains on Debian stable. [=

[–] fodor@lemmy.zip 1 points 20 hours ago

A friend of mine once remarked that a release structure significantly simpler than Debian's is simply missing something important for at least one important use group.

[–] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 day ago

Debian Stable is stable, which is stable in all stability regards.