I think Debian Testing would fit you very well
It is like a rock, honestly.
==========
I demand stability.
My machines Must work 24/7 without intervention.
for this reason I do have Debian Stable installed and operational on all
machines (Mate desktop).
However, on the other hand I love Mate, and the continuing new
features... and we don't get them in Stable.
And I am impatient and want the Latest And Greatest shiny new things in
Mate!!!
My solution:
I keep a Debian Sid Mate (unstable) as default on on several machines,
and I update daily +/-
In my experience, IF there is something buggy in Sid, it gets patched
withing 12 hours, maybe as long as 24.
AND, I can just reboot to Stable and got to work without any issues.
My Wife is kinda a "Luddite that uses computers" so she has Debian Mate
Stable... and I update it for her on occasion (days, weeks sometimes)
and she is happy.
Happy Spouse = Happy Me.
Same for the office computers: the have Only Stable installed.
Mind that all of my hardware is several years old at a minimum, so
having the bleeding edge gizmos is a non issue (and Mate is always in a
Stable condition, that team is aces!)
On 2/25/20 7:55 AM, Sam wrote:
Hello,
I would like to hear opinions about the release cycle of the Stable Debian
releases for a Desktop user.
I love the Debian ideals and perks (its social contract, independence from big
companies...) and understand to a certain extent the fundamentals on why
keeping "old-ish" versions of packages with backports and the Shiny new stuff
syndrome, but I fail to see how Debian can make a useful desktop distribution
with the current release cycle.
For example: My main PC is an already two years old ryzen-based system and a
Vega graphics card from 2017, and the kernel used in Stable has regressions
which cause complete, unrecoverable system hangups on Vega cards which were
not alleviated until kernel 5.3 onwards (and they still keep happening, though
rarely!). This means that to ensure stability on a Debian installation I would
need a backported kernel, or use Debian Testing or Sid, which IMO collides
with the point of a Stable release.
I also see everyday many announcements about performance (GNOME) and usability
(KDE Plasma) improvements which are not exactly new features. This is
obviously happening on more recent releases, which Debian may not see (unless
these changes are also backported, which I would find extremely cumbersome?)
until approximately two years have passed since that.
All this makes me think that while Debian is a fantastic distribution, its
Desktop, common user-facing side of things would greatly benefit from
something like a separate yearly Stable release.
Thanks,
Sam
