I thought I’ll make this thread for all of you out there who have questions but are afraid to ask them. This is your chance!

I’ll try my best to answer any questions here, but I hope others in the community will contribute too!

  • @jaybone
    2•8 months ago

    Question about moving from Ubuntu to Debian - Package updates and security updates…

    On Ubuntu, I seem to get notifications almost every week about new package updates. (Through the apt UI)

    On Debian, I don’t see this.

    I can run apt update and apt upgrade

    On Ubuntu, I see this pull a bunch of package data from various package repo URLs.

    On Debian, I only see this pulling package data from two or three repo URLs at debian.org

    Mainly I am concerned about security updates and bug fixes. Do I need to manually add other repo sources to the apt config files? Or does debian update those repos regularly?

    • lemmyvoreEnglish
      1•8 months ago

      Debian favors stability over anything else so the packages are thoroughly tested before release and then only upgraded for security issues, until the next release 2 years later when everything gets an update.

      Ubuntu favors releasing more recent package versions constantly throughout the period between major releases.

      You can install packages on Debian from the backports repo if you occasionally need an package to be a more recent version.

      Another option is to install apps from Flatpak. The apps in Flatpak have their own separate dependency system and can be used on any distro.

      If neither of these works for you and you find yourself constantly wishing packages were newer you may want to consider a different distro.

      Some people switch their Debian from stable to testing to get similar updates to Ubuntu. You can try that but please understand you may experience the occasional issues.

      Be wary of adding external repos (that don’t point to debian. org) because they can mess with the package dependencies and prevent you from upgrading to the next version when it comes out. (This also applies to Ubuntu.)

    • @[email protected]English
      1•7 months ago

      I wonder, if you are asking two different questions:

      1. Why don’t you receive notifications about updated packages?
      2. Two: Security and bugfixes

      For 1. it depends which desktop environment you use, Gnome/KDE have this update notifications out of the box, for other DEs (Xfce, LXDE, etc.) you might need to enable this with the installation of synaptic or similar.

      For 2. Debian stable does not ship bugfixes but Debian stable ships security fixes. I highly recommend to subscribe to Debians Security mailing list, especially for security fixes concerning browsers and other stuff.

      Edit: I have enabled automatic updates and I still receive regular notifications via Gnome Software, at least once per week.

    • lemmyreaderEnglish
      1•7 months ago

      Are you using Ubuntu Long Term Release or not ?

      • I’m subscribed to Ubuntu and Debian announcements via email, and I see much more often Linux kernel updates for Ubuntu than for Debian. It makes me wonder whether the Debian kernel is slimmed down, and that Ubuntu is focused on Enterprises with their kernel.
    • @[email protected]
      0•8 months ago

      They’re updated regularly. Take a look at your etc/apt/sources on both. Debian has everything coming from their servers, Ubuntu has a bunch more.

      If you’re going Ubuntu -> Debian be prepared to switch to testing or enable some packages from testing or even use an alternate install method for some software (yt-dlp).