| Chapter 3. Choosing a Debian distribution | ||
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| Chapter 3. Choosing a Debian distribution | ||
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Table of Contents
There are many different Debian distributions. Choosing the proper Debian distribution is an important decision. This section covers some information useful for users that want to make the choice best suited for their system and also answers possible questions that might be arising during the process. It does not deal with "why you should choose Debian" but rather "which distribution of Debian".
For more information on the available distributions read Section 6.1, “How many Debian distributions are there?”.
The answer is a bit complicated. It really depends on what you intend to do. One solution would be to ask a friend who runs Debian. But that does not mean that you cannot make an independent decision. In fact, you should be able to decide once you complete reading this chapter.
If security or stability are at all important for you: install stable. period. This is the most preferred way.
If you are a new user installing to a desktop machine, start with stable. Some of the software is quite old, but it's the least buggy environment to work in. You can easily switch to the more modern unstable (or testing) once you are a little more confident.
If you are a desktop user with a lot of experience in the operating system and do not mind facing the odd bug now and then, or even full system breakage, use unstable. It has all the latest and greatest software, and bugs are usually fixed swiftly.
If you are running a server, especially one that has strong stability requirements or is exposed to the Internet, install stable. This is by far the strongest and safest choice.
The following questions (hopefully) provide more detail on these choices. After reading this whole FAQ, if you still could not make a decision, stick with the stable distribution.
Try to search the web using a search engine and see if someone else is able to get it working in stable. Most of the hardware should work fine with stable. But if you have some state-of-the-art, cutting edge hardware, it might not work with stable. If this is the case, you might want to install/upgrade to either testing or unstable.
For laptops, https://www.linux-on-laptops.com/ is a very good website to see if someone else is able to get it to work under Linux. The website is not specific to Debian, but is nevertheless a tremendous resource. I am not aware of any such website for desktops.
Another option would be to ask in the debian-user mailing list by sending an email to [email protected]. Messages can be posted to the list even without subscribing. The archives can be read through https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/. Information regarding subscribing to the list can be found at the location of archives. You are strongly encouraged to post your questions on the mailing-list rather than on irc. The mailing-list messages are archived, so the solution to your problem can help others with the same issue.
Yes. Unstable has the most recent (latest) versions. But the packages in unstable are not well tested and might have bugs.
On the other hand, stable contains old versions of packages. But this package is well tested and is less likely to have any bugs.
The packages in testing fall between these two extremes.
Well, you might be correct. The age of the packages at stable depends on when the last release was made. Since there is typically over 1 year between releases you might find that stable contains old versions of packages. However, they have been tested in and out. One can confidently say that the packages do not have any known severe bugs, security holes etc., in them. The packages in stable integrate seamlessly with other stable packages. These characteristics are very important for production servers which have to work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
On the other hand, packages in testing or unstable can have hidden bugs, security holes etc. Moreover, some packages in testing and unstable might not be working as intended. Usually people working on a single desktop prefer having the latest and most modern set of packages. Unstable is the solution for this group of people.
As you can see, stability and novelty are two opposing ends of the spectrum. If stability is required: install stable distribution. If you want to work with the latest packages, then install unstable.
Yes, but it is a one way process. You can go from stable --> testing --> unstable. But the reverse direction is not "possible". So better be sure if you are planning to install/upgrade to unstable.
Actually, if you are an expert and if you are willing to spend some time and if you are real careful and if you know what you are doing, then it might be possible to go from unstable to testing and then to stable. The installer scripts are not designed to do that. So in the process, your configuration files might be lost and...
No. This is a rather subjective issue. There is no perfect answer as it depends on your software needs, your willingness to deal with possible breakage, and your experience in system administration. Here are some tips:
Stable is rock solid. It does not break and has full security support. But it not might have support for the latest hardware.
Testing has more up-to-date software than Stable, and it breaks less often than Unstable. But when it breaks, it might take a long time for things to get rectified. Sometimes this could be days and it could be months at times. It also does not have permanent security support.
Unstable has the latest software and changes a lot. Consequently, it can break at any point. However, fixes get rectified in many occasions in a couple of days and it always has the latest releases of software packaged for Debian.
When deciding between testing and unstable bear in mind that there might be
times when tracking testing would be beneficial as opposed to unstable. One of
this document's authors experienced such situation due to the gcc transition
from gcc3 to gcc4. He was trying to install the labplot package on a machine tracking unstable and
it could not be installed in unstable as some of its dependencies have
undergone gcc4 transition and some have not. But the package in testing was
installable on a testing machine as the gcc4 transitioned packages had not
"trickled down" to testing.
Sometimes, a package might not be installable through package management tools. Sometimes, a package might not be available at all, maybe it was (temporarily) removed due to bugs or unmet dependencies. Sometimes, a package installs but does not behave in the proper way.
When these things happen, the distribution is said to be broken (at least for this package).
The bug fixes and improvements introduced in the unstable distribution trickle down to testing after a certain number of days. Let's say this threshold is 5 days. The packages in unstable go into testing only when there are no RC-bugs reported against them. If there is a RC-bug filed against a package in unstable, it will not go into testing after the 5 days.
The idea is that, if the package has any problems, it would be discovered by people using unstable and will be fixed before it enters testing. This keeps testing in a usable state for most of the time. Overall a brilliant concept, if you ask me. But things aren't always that simple. Consider the following situation:
Imagine you are interested in package XYZ.
Let's assume that on June 10, the version in testing is XYZ-3.6 and in unstable it is XYZ-3.7.
After 5 days, XYZ-3.7 from unstable migrates into testing.
So on June 15, both testing and unstable have XYZ-3.7 in their repositories.
Let's say, the user of testing distribution sees that a new XYZ package is available and updates the XYZ-3.6 to XYZ-3.7.
Now on June 25, someone using testing or unstable discovers an RC bug in XYZ-3.7 and files it in the BTS.
The maintainer of XYZ fixes this bug and uploads it to unstable say on June 30. Here it is assumed that it takes 5 days for the maintainer to fix the bug and upload the new version. The number 5 should not be taken literally. It could be less or more, depending upon the severity of the RC-bug at hand.
This new version in unstable, XYZ-3.8 is scheduled to enter testing on July 5th.
But on July 3rd some other person discovers another RC-bug in XYZ-3.8.
Let's say the maintainer of XYZ fixes this new RC-bug and uploads new version of XYZ after 5 days.
So on July 8th, testing has XYZ-3.7 while unstable has XYZ-3.9.
This new version XYZ-3.9 is now rescheduled to enter testing on July 13th.
Now since you are running testing, and since XYZ-3.7 is buggy, you could probably use XYZ only after July 13th. That is you essentially ended up with a broken XYZ for about one month.
The situation can get much more complicated, if say, XYZ depends on 4 other packages. This could in turn lead to an unusable testing distribution for months. While the scenario above is imaginary, similar things can occur in real life, though they are rare.
One of the main reasons why many people choose Debian over other Linux distributions is that it requires very little administration. People want a system that just works. In general one can say that stable requires very little maintenance, while testing and unstable require constant maintenance from the administrator. If you are running stable, all you need to worry about is keeping track of security updates. If you are running either testing or unstable it is a good idea to be aware of the new bugs discovered in the installed packages, new bugfixes/features introduced etc.
This question will not help you in choosing a Debian distribution. But sooner or later you will face this question.
The stable distribution is currently bookworm; The next stable distribution will be called trixie. Let's consider the particular case of what happens when trixie is released as the new stable version.
oldstable = bullseye; stable = bookworm; testing = trixie; unstable = sid
Unstable is always referred to as sid irrespective of whether a release is made or not.
Packages constantly migrate from sid to testing (i.e. trixie). But packages in stable (i.e. bookworm) remain the same except for security updates.
After some time testing becomes frozen. But it will still be called testing. At this point no new packages from unstable can migrate to testing unless they include release-critical (RC) bug fixes.
When testing is frozen, all the new bugfixes introduced have to be manually checked by the members of the release team. This is done to ensure that there won't be any unknown severe problems in the frozen testing.
RC bugs in 'frozen testing' are reduced to either zero or, if greater than zero, the bugs are either marked as ignored for the release or are deferred for a point release.
The 'frozen testing' with no rc-bugs will be released as the new stable version. In our example, this new stable release will be called trixie.
At this stage oldstable = bookworm, stable = trixie. The contents of stable and 'frozen testing' are same at this point.
A new testing is based on the old testing.
Packages start coming down from sid to testing and the Debian community will be working towards making the next stable release.
In most situations it is very easy to figure this out. Take a look at the
/etc/apt/sources.list file. There will be an entry
similar to this:
deb http://deb.debian.org/debian/ unstable main contrib
The third field ('unstable' in the above example) indicates the Debian distribution the system is currently tracking.
You can also use lsb_release (available in the lsb-release package). If you run this program in
an unstable system you will get:
$ lsb_release -a LSB Version: core-2.0-noarch:core-3.0-noarch:core-3.1-noarch:core-2.0-ia32:core-3.0-ia32:core-3.1-ia32 Distributor ID: Debian Description: Debian GNU/Linux unstable (sid) Release: unstable Codename: sid
However, this is not always that easy. Some systems might have
sources.list files with multiple entries corresponding to
different distributions. This could happen if the administrator is tracking
different packages from different Debian distributions. This is frequently
referred to as apt-pinning. These systems might run a mixture of
distributions.
First of all, please bear in mind that the stable version is the one recommended for servers as well as for desktop computers, not only you will get security updates if you are running stable but also there are less changes which could potentially break the system or your setup.
If you are currently running stable, then in the
/etc/apt/sources.list file the third field will be either
'bookworm' or 'stable'. If you want to change to a different version, you
need to change this to the distribution you want to run. If you want to run
testing, then change the third field of
/etc/apt/sources.list to 'testing'. If you want to run
unstable, then change the third field to 'unstable'.
Currently testing is called trixie. So, if you change the third field of
/etc/apt/sources.list to 'trixie', then also you will be
running testing. But even when trixie becomes stable, you will still be
tracking trixie.
Unstable is always called Sid. So if you change the third field of
/etc/apt/sources.list to 'sid', then you will be tracking
unstable.
Currently Debian offers does not offer security updates for testing nor for
unstable. The Debian Security
Team focus their work on stable and old-stable. Nevertheless, just
like any other type of fixes, security fixes in unstable are directly made to
the main archive and trickle down to testing in due course. So if you are
running unstable make sure that you remove the lines relating to security
updates in /etc/apt/sources.list. If you are interested in
knowing what known security bugs exist in these versions of the distributions,
you will this information in the list
of vulnerable source packages in testing, and unstable.
If there is a release notes document available for the distribution you are upgrading to (even though it has not yet been released) it would be wise to review it, as it might provide information on how you should upgrade to it. You will always find the Release Notes for testing available at the Debian website but depending on how close the testing version is to release the document might not cover all the potential changes or pitfalls.
Nevertheless, once you make the above changes, you can run
aptitude update and then install the packages that you want. Notice that
installing a package from a different distribution might automatically upgrade
half of your system. If you install individual packages you will end up with a
system running mixed distributions.
It might be best in some situations to just fully upgrade to the new distribution running apt full-upgrade, aptitude safe-upgrade or aptitude full-upgrade. Read apt's and aptitude's manual pages for more information.
The Debian reference manual provides more insight on running testing and unstable in its section Life with eternal upgrades.
It depends on the entries in the /etc/apt/sources.list
file. If you are currently tracking testing, these entries are similar to
either:
deb http://deb.debian.org/debian/ testing main
or
deb http://deb.debian.org/debian/ trixie main
If the third field in /etc/apt/sources.list is 'testing'
then you will be tracking testing even after a release is made. So after
trixie is released, you will be running a new Debian distribution which will
have a different codename. Changes might not be apparent at first but will be
evident as soon as new packages from unstable go over to the testing
distribution.
But if the third field contains 'trixie' then you will be tracking stable (since trixie will then be the new stable distribution).
These distributions are not Debian; they are Debian-based. Though there are many similarities and commonalities between them, there are also crucial differences.
Over the years, many distributions have been developed over time reusing and/or rebuilding Debian packages and also adding custom packages on their own. Most of the distributions have been created for specific audiences or purposes. According to Distrowatch, Debian has spawned more than 420 derivatives and more than 120 of them are active at the time of writing.
All these distributions have their own merits and are suited to some specific set of users. For more information, read Debian derivatives available at the Debian website. You can find a complete list of Debian derivatives, including those that are no longer under active development at the Debian derivate Census in the Wiki.
These distributions are Debian-based, but they are not Debian. You will be
still able to use apt package tools by pointing the
/etc/apt/sources.list file to these distributions'
repositories. In some cases some distributions might even have additional
package managers that are used instead of apt.
In most situations if you stick with one distribution you should use that and not mix packages from other distributions. Many common breakages arise due to people running a distribution and trying to install Debian packages from other distributions. The fact that they use the same formatting and name (.deb), does not make them immediately compatible.
For example, Knoppix is a Linux distribution designed to be booted as a live CD whereas Debian is designed to be installed on the hard-disk. Knoppix is great if you want to know whether a particular piece of hardware works, or if you want to experience how a GNU/Linux system 'feels' etc., Knoppix is good for demonstration purposes while Debian is designed to run 24/7. Moreover the number of packages available and the number of architectures supported by Debian are far more than that of Knoppix.
If you want Debian, it is best to install Debian from the get-go. Although it is possible to install Debian through other distributions, such as Knoppix, the procedure calls for expertise. If you are reading this FAQ, I would assume that you are new to both Debian and Knoppix. In that case, save yourself a lot of trouble later and install Debian right from the beginning.
You are advised not to use the Debian forums (either mailing lists or IRC) for help on Debian derivatives as people there may base their suggestions on the assumption that you are running a Debian system. These "fixes" might not be suited to what you are running, and might even make your problem worse.
Use the forums of the specific distribution you are using first. If you do not get help or the help you get does not fix your problem you might want to try asking in Debian forums, but keep the advice of the previous paragraph in mind.
Consider the change from a Debian-based distribution to Debian just like a change from one operating system to another one. You should make a backup of all your data and reinstall the operating system from scratch. You should not attempt to "upgrade" to Debian using the package management tools as you might end up with an unusable system.
If all your user data (i.e. your /home) is under a
separate partition migrating to Debian is actually quite simple, you just have
to tell the installation system to mount (but not reformat) that partition when
reinstalling. Making backups of your data, as well as your previous system's
configuration (i.e. /etc/ and, maybe,
/var/) is still encouraged.
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| Chapter 2. Getting and installing Debian GNU/Linux |  | Chapter 4. Compatibility issues |