6mo ago

Debian used to be so good. What happened!?

Firefox on Debian stable is so old that websites yell at you to upgrade to a newer browser. And last time I tried installing Debian testing (or was it debian unstable?), the installer shat itself trying to make the bootloader. After I got it to boot, apt refused to work because of a missing symlink to busybox. Why on earth do they even need busybox if the base install already comes with full gnu coreutils? I remember Debian as the distro that Just Wroks(TM), when did it all go so wrong? Is anyone else here having similar issues, or am I doing something wrong?

93 comments

You are literally describing the idea of Debian. Yes, stable is old, but that is the whole purpose. You get (mostly) security updates only for a few years. No big updates, no surprises. Great for stuff like company PCs, servers, and other systems you want to just work™ with minimal admin work.
And testing is, well, for testing. Ironing out bugs and preparing the next stable. Although what you describes sounds more like unstable, the one where they explicitly say that they will break stuff to try out other stuff.
So, everything works as intended and advertised here. If you want a different approach to stability, I guess you will have to use a different distro, sorry.
I guess when you last tried it, it was at a time when a new stable came out, so testing was more or less equal to stable.
About the firefox: It ships Firefox ESR these days, meaning you get an older, less often updated tested firefox (with security updates, of course). Again, this is the whole point. Less updates, less admin work, more time to find and fix bugs. Remember the whole Quantum add-on mess, for example?
As others have said, you can install other versions of firefox (like the "normal" one) via flatpak, snap... nowadays. The same goes for other software, where you would need the newest and shiniest version sooner. I'm using debian on my work/uni laptop and a bunch of servers, and it works pretty well for me.
- This is why Debian is my server of choice, and my work desktop of choice.
  OP, There are some flavors of Debian out there that are more rapid release, like LMDE, Siduction, Sparky, even Kali (though I wouldn't recommend Kali as a primary desktop personally). Some based on Sid, some based on Testing.
- The last paragraph is vital. Grab a flatpak of any software you need to be more up to date. Flatpaks running on Debian are amazing. Current software running on a stable base.
- Mozilla even has a repository for installing the latest version through apt if you don't want to use flatpack or snap, it's pretty painless. Link

OP when they try Debian and it's exactly what it advertises itself as:

My bank used to complain that my browser was out of date. I wrote an email to customer service explaining to them that:
A) debian's "out of date" browser actually includes all up to date security patches. B) simply reading the browser agent isnt really security. I had simply been spoofing my browser agent to get around their silly browser "security" policy
They removed the browser check 2 weeks later. Not sure if it was because of me
- simply reading the browser agent isnt really security
  It's not for their security, but for that of genuinely clueless people that are just running an actually outdated browser that might have known and exploitable security flaws.
  
  It is not about security at all. They do not want to test or support old browsers. So, they set a minimum version and tell you that you need to upgrade to that.
  If they only support one browser, it is going to be Chrome. Chrome has more zero-day vulnerabilities than any other project I can think of. It is not about security.
- The hero we need rn tbh

Debian is working as intended. You are wanting to use Ubuntu or Mint if you want more up to date packages.
- If the user really wants a new browser, Flatpak is always an option.
  
  They also have a .deb you can manually update as well.
- They can just use Flatpak as it will be the newest outside of Arch. Alternatively they could run Distrobox with something like Fedora.
  
  I stopped using flatpak when I found out both I had to update outside of the package manager. Also using flatpak gave me some issues with my sound card, so I just run the .deb. To each their own though, which is why I love Linux.

Ehm... im using debian stable, no website is telling me to update Firefox (I'm on deb 10, 11 and 12 in different PCs).
Deb 12, my home computer, is on unstable and running smoothly.
Debian isn't "just works" but "it's a freaking rock" + "open source hardcore philosophy".
Maybe I got lucky?

For me, the outdated packages in stable have actually gotten better over time, as DEs get closer to a place where I don't need any major updates to enjoy using them, Flatpaks become more readily available, and on a subjective level, I get less and less invested in current Linux news. Before Debian became my "forever distro", I'd hopped to it a few times, and often found myself wishing for a newer piece of software that wasn't in backports or flathub, or simply being bored with how stable it is, but that's been happening less and less. And I feel like Debian 12 in particular left me with software that I wouldn't mind being stuck with for two years.
I've gotten warnings to upgrade my browser with Debian's Firefox ESR, but they never affected a website's usability in a way that a newer version would fix, and they do provide security updates and new ESR series when they come out; even if you must have the newest Firefox, you can use the Flatpak.
Additionally, I'm currently on testing in order to get better support for my GPU, and each time I've tried to use it, it's worked for me for a longer time than the last as I get better at resolving or avoiding broken packages. If you do experience issues like the one you described, and can replicate them, and no one else has already reported them, you should report them to Debian's bug tracker. The whole point of Testing is to find and squash all the critical bugs before the next stable releases.
- You must not be using an Nvidia GPU on Wayland because KDE is pushing updates for this use case
  
  I'm using an AMD Ryzen iGPU on Wayland. I switched to Testing because the support already existed, but the kernel and mesa versions in stable were buggy for my particular GPU and I didn't want to make a FrankenDebian.

Debian Stable ± Flatpak gets best of both worlds

I use debian headless as a server never had any issues but then again pretty much any linux system is gonna be a decent server since everything is containerised now.

- I use NixOS Unstable btw

These days I care a lot less that a package is outdated than I do it being unstable personally. If security concerns are getting patched and it is still doing what I want it to do, I couldn't care less about UI elements getting moved around just to make some PM happy.

Stable is for servers, unstable for desktop. It has worked for 20 years. I actually installed two further Debian workstations recently after trying and failing with Kubuntu. So .... no, I don't have this problem.
No idea why busybox is needed. Is this is your emergency boot environment like initramfs? Sometimes it's nice that Linux boots up and offers an environment to fix stuff while some modules are broken.
- Busybox is used in the initramfs normally. It's the shell used by any scripts in that early stage, as well as the fallback shell environment.
- No idea why busybox is needed. Is this is your emergency boot environment like initramfs?
  I cannot for the life of me find the particular fix I followed, but I swear it was a missing symlink to busybox. Not in initramfs, but in the full booted environment. That's why I was so confused haha. I can't find anything about it right now, so maybe I'm misremembering something...

It got better, that's what happened. You're using Firefox ESR, it's not unsafe.
Mozilla also provides a Deb repo for Debian and its derivatives: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/install-firefox-linux#w_install-firefox-deb-package-for-debian-based-distributions
- Yeah and Flatpaks also exist.
  Flatpaks are probably the best generic solution for using an LTS release like Debian Stable on a desktop system. You get the best of both worlds: up to date desktop packages and a stable base.

You can install Firefox from Mozilla's own repository. It is a luxury to have in Debian a Mozilla repository to install Firefox.

As everybody else has said, Debian is working as intended. To respond to the actual post though, Debian is working exactly as it always has.
If you think Debian used to be good, you must really love it now. It is better than ever.
Unlike in the past, the primary drawback of Debian Stable ( old package versions ) has multiple viable solutions. Other have rightly pointed out things like the Mozilla APT package and Flatpaks. Great solutions.
My favourite solution is to install Arch via Distrobox. You can then get all the stability of Debian everywhere you need it and, anytime you need additional packages or newer packages, you can install them in the Arch distrobox. Firefox is a prime candidate. You are not going to get newer packages or a greater section than via he Arch repos / AUR ( queue Nix rebuttals ).

Debian's Firefox is Firefox ESR, or Extended Support Release. It's behind the bleeding edge, but gets security updates.
If you want the bleeding edge Firefox, you can add Mozilla's own APT repository and install it. Doesn't even conflict with Debian (firefox-esr vs firefox, it even uses a separate user profile by default). Instructions are on the Firefox download page somewhere.
- Bleeding edge? Isn't that just called stable?
- Also, Flatpak

Never had issues due to 'outdated' packages myself, but then again, I wasn't into the latest & greatest.
I mean, you're always free to choose something else instead of removed.

Debian is as great as it's ever been.

TL;DR
You want Debian stable with either back ports or containers. On desktop flatpak is your friend. Also do not add extra repos.
Honestly there is little reason to not use flatpak for web browsers. If you want packages from Fedora or other distros you can use Distrobox with podman as the back end.

Arch is where the cool kids put in the work these days. Their philosophy of downstream packages untouched results in fewer problems and easier maintenance. Why would anyone be a package maintainer for Debian? It's a thankless task, and hard
- the work amount of backporting fixes which ARE already fixed in newer versions is also insane
  thats one of the reason why Arch Linux sticks to stable upstream versions, backporting is just not feasable on smaller teams
  
  I have been an Arch user for years now and anytime I touch a debian based distro it is such a headache: weird patched packages that don't compile anything past or present, insta dependency hell with PPAs, package names of 200 characters because apt doesn't have a good way to represent metadata... It made me a strong believer that trying to fight the bit rot and stick to the old stuff is counterproductive: a consistent head based development with a good community fixing bugs super quickly results in less hours of work fighting the paleolithic era dependencies, safer (as security fixes are faster to get in, packages are foreign to hackers and constantly changing etc), easier to find documentation as you don't need to dig into history to find which option existed or not, recent stuff is also easier to support for the developers of the various packages as it is fresh in their minds. Another point is to look at it from a tech debt lens: either you fix your stuff to work with current deps now or you just accumulate tech debt for the next engineer to fix in a way larger and combining a mountain of breakages in the future that of course IT and SREs will never want to do until the 15y old software is a disaster of security issues...

I manage over 40 Debian clients in production use. All are managed with ansible. It's the easiest time in my sysadmin time ever.
My own systems are fedora and Debian unstable. Why? Because I test upcoming changes and features. And think how it would be if all 40 clients run on unstable or fedora, every day updates of 20-60 packages for nothing the user would care about.
Debian stable is my hero.

Debian stable and flatpaks, I don't see all the fuss
- Why does the installer still explode sometimes when I use it on my computers. I use it on my mother's computer or our movie server and it works fine.
  Maybe it just eats shit when it sees a btrfs partition or something. Nothing against Debian but I tried to install Debian testing weekly and it just refused to install on my system 76 laptop. After flashing arch on my USB drive to wipe the disk I just said fuck it and installed arch on my laptop again. I haven't had any issues with arch since I've installed it on my desktop five years ago. If arch blows up on my laptop I'll try Debian again.

Huh? Install testing or sid?
The Debian way is to install stable then change your sources.list to either testing or unstable.
I call shenanigans.
edit: what version was Stable using before 11Jun? 'cause it's 115.12.0esr-1 right now.
- Thats not a good idea unless you do a proper upgrade (dist upgrade or similar)
  It is easier to use the testing iso
  
  the wiki must be out of date then
- You can try this:
  https://siduction.org/
  Even has BTRFS setup with Snapper (or Timeshift maybe) and nala is an option.
  https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/05/siduction_2022_1/ Overview.

I have been using unstable on desktop for at least 15 years. Every time a new stable was released that would cause a month of just staying off updates till things stabilized. Recently it's not even had that issue.
I've had to pin a package or two in that time, but unstable has been rock solid otherwise. I even run it on my server.

Debian was always like this.

Kali: I have no such weakness!
trips and falls on postgres upgrade

Ever considered LMDE? Best of both worlds if you ask me.
- Someone after my own heart.. Debian for my servers, lmde for my laptop, the way it was meant to be.

What's why we have NixOS. The unstable channel is more stable than most other distros and when it's not, you just roll back
- "I use NixOS, btw"
- Ctrl+F "NixOS"
  Anytime stability is mentioned somebody has to chirp up with NixOS. It's the law.
  Anti Commercial-AI license

Debian testing is complelty okay. If you want to have the most up to date security use apt to grab sid security updates. https://wiki.debian.org/DebianTesting
- I mean they can still be broken, especially if you mix Sid into it.
  
  The fix comes to sid first. (Not counting experimental.) The right way to do it is to run mixed testing/unstable with apt-pinning so that nothing gets pulled from unstable unless spcifically requested.
  That said, stable with Firefox from Mozilla's site and Neovim built from sources and gpack'd into deb package runs perfectly fine with much less hassle.

I've been on Debian Testing for my own desktops for about 15 years now. Sometimes as a Frankendebian mixing in SID/unstable. Sometimes mainly unstable, but mostly just Testing.
It rarely breaks, but when it does, it's a learning opportunity. Stable for servers and other people's desktops. Maybe with backports. Flatpacks if this no other option.
You don't get 100% solid and 100% new. Ever. With anything.
- A someone who worked in OS security, I beg you dont use flatpaks.
  
  As someone who works, flatpak's solve a bunch of problems, freeing me up to continue working.
  Security issues are just a class of issue; no more or less important than other issues
  
  As I said, "if this no other option". And to be honest, that was once, for a few weeks before the new KiCad hit Debian repos. And only because hardware team wouldn't wait to switch, so to open stuff, I needed it too.

What if you just get your browser using their own repositories or flatpak? 🌈

I'm considering moving to Debian Stable plus Flathub for graphical desktop packages like Firefox, it works well on the Steam Deck. SteamOS also provides Distrobox which helps in some cases.
- Flatpak is awesome, I love it so much. It lets users pick a distro based on the unique features that distro provides, without having to worry about whether their favourite apps are packaged. Since you're considering switching to debian+flatpak, here is a list of pitfalls I've run into in flatpak so far, maybe this can save you some troubleshooting:
  You need to have a thing called an "xdg dekstop portal" installed. Otherwise filepickers will be broken. On Debian this should be a dependency of flatpak, so it should be installed by default tho.
  If you're manually restarting Xorg without using a display manager, make sure the xdg desktop portal process doesn't get started twice. Otherwise it will be broken
  As far as I understand, there's no way to use xdg desktop portal to forward an entire directory through to a flatpak'd app, unless the app itself asks specifically for a directory. So stuff like opening a .html file that references a .css file in the same directory with a flatpak'd browser will be broken, unless you manually make an exception using Flatseal or flatpak override.
  Make sure your root filesystem is mounted with "shared" propagation, otherwise umount commands won't propagate into flatpak's sandbox, and drives will get stuck in a weird state where they're mounted in some namespaces, but not others. This should be the default in Debian tho.
  If flatpak'd Firefox has ugly bitmap fonts, follow this workaround
  Anyway, this is just my experience running Flatapk in Void, hopefully it works smoother for you on Debian.

Or there is OpenSuse Tumbleweed which is up to date, and stable...
- Stable, in this context, just means "point release". If you meant "doesn't break", that describes most rolling release distros.
  ...unless you've used KDE in the last month. Holy cow, just let me alt-tab into a fullscreen window without throwing a fit.
- Tried the Tumbleweed. It's anything but stable.
  
  As someone who has used it for a few years. Incorrect. I had one upgrade issue (from KDE 5 to 6). Other than that. Smooth. For the Plasma upgrade, just change to default them before upgrade and upgrade from command line, not terminal window.

Sounds like you need to be using slackware.

I don't have issues yet on stable 12.5 but I plan to switch to nixos eventually.

when i see a debian user i see a future fedora user
- When I see a Fedora user, I see a future Arch user btw
  
  When I see an Arch user, I see a future NixOS user FWIW
  
  idk i can do everything that arch can do, with distrobox and having a immutable distro on top
  
  This is funny because on a laptop I had I did this exact same progression - I started on Debian, but it didn’t have the right kernel version for my audio drivers, so I switched to Fedora, but it was running slowly (probably because of gnome, it lets you choose so this was my fault) so I moved to arch (with xfce) because it has a reputation for being relatively lightweight. It worked better, but it took longer to get working with the unusual chromebook hardware.

Just use the Mozilla .deb

I can't remember the last time I installed Debian and it failed. I last installed it a month ago. Gnome takes some tweaking for me. Mostly to get that stock Ubuntu feel. Nothing extension manager can't do.

Debian is a server OS. Running it on desktop is like having frying oil for dinner.

See that’s the thing, Debian was never good
- You misspelled Ubuntu.
  
  Typical Debian user clinging onto their dementia.

93 comments