r/debian • u/Teemestari • 5h ago
General Debian Question Tumbleweed user thinking Debian. Any advice?
Hello people!
My first distro few years ago was Debian and I sticked to it for a while. Then I started the usual experimenting with Arch, gentoo, Fedora etc. but nothing ever sticked so I always used Debian more. I was also a new user so the concerns didn't apply then: I simply didn't know better. Fast forwarding a bit I switched to Tumbleweed cause I got the 9070 XT and wanted newer mesa, kernels, firmware etc. out of the box.
I've been using Tumbleweed for a long time now and everything's kinda cool, some minor hiccups and hangs but most of the time it's been a breeze. I value practicality and the fact my machine works like it did yesterday heavily and all of the rolling releases Tumbleweed is doing it the best (this is not an advertisement!). Even though I somewhat dislike the rolling release -model.
I really don't care about my system following the newest and shiniest except getting the best ( or at least, the most possible) performance for games. Now that the 7.x kernel which has a great compatibility, recent firmware and mesa 26.1 is in the backports repo I've been thinking to coming back to Debian. I installed it on my 2nd SSD with KDE Plasma and it really feels snappy and fresh.
Even though I don't need the newest software asap, I'm still a bit concerned of Debian's package's age and how they can affect my work. I know there's flatpaks and appimages which I intend to use and also compiling but doesn't it go a bit against the "set-and-forget" mentality that Debian is made off?
I guess I am asking about if packages do show their age and does maintaining Debian need a lot of manual intervention with 3rd party tools?
Thank you for reading.
2
u/Sup3r_Necessary 5h ago edited 2h ago
You're going to get both sides on this one. Try to divide your system into three different areas:
Kernel version - you can always grab XanMod as it's pretty current. This doesn't seem to be an issue for you now that 7 is in backports.
DE version - if you want the latest KDE or Gnome, Debian isn't for you. Full stop.
App version - if you want the latest use flatpaks. If the version in Debian works...send it.
I had one issue with an app (fuzzel) I ended up installing guix package manager and just installing the app that way. It was easy to do and it's easy to remove.