Didn't Valve select Debian for SteamOS? So Valve would simply swap Ubuntu with Debian as most recommended target. Quite natural to expect that.

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Quoting: slaapliedjeThey are doing this only to try to promote their own Snap package management, because no one really wants to use it, and more and more projects are moving to flatpak, or just releasing AppImages (I know Cura does this, I do wish the maintainer of the debian package would update it...)

Granted, it's my understanding that snap is friendlier to commercial packages, vs flatpak is more for running newer / sandboxed open source software. I personally stay away from snap, because it seems about as clean as random android app stores.

I think Flatpak overall has wider backing, and is viewed is a lightweight sandboxing solution. When it comes to such bundling, I usually see Flatpak discussed, almost never Snap. And I doubt their Snap push will help prevent massive migration of gamers from Ubuntu. Canonical really didn't handle this well.

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Quoting: slaapliedjeJust note that testing gets a bit unstable right after a release, and switch to stable at that point so the couple months of all the new crap coming from experimental and unstable don't break your system.

Coming from someone who has used it since the late 90s :)

Debian tried to address this issue. Remember this proposal? https://lwn.net/Articles/550032/ [External Link]

It got better, but Debian testing can be sometimes rough and needs some understanding how to handle breakage if it happens. But that's in general not uncommon for any rolling distro, and rolling distro users learn how to deal with it and how to roll back breaking changes if they slip through.

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Quoting: slapinDon't panic.

Be calm, pick a better distro ;) Seriously, their proposed solutions are far from optimal.

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Quoting: GuestFlatpak a 32-bit library runtime and redirect traditional apps to it? What do other distros do for 32-bit lib support for games, just build their own packages? Using something like flatpak instead so 32-bit libraries wouldn't be locked into any particular distro would be great if you could make it easy for apps to utilize it (symlinks to the flatpak libs provided by a native package or by the flatpak w/ expanded permissions perhaps?).

Distros commonly use multiarch approach: https://wiki.debian.org/Multiarch/HOWTO [External Link]

Less flexible and more limited idea of the same sort is called multilib. For such distros, there is no reason to use flaptak for 32-bit packages. So unless everyone will start dropping x86_32 multiarch, it should fine.

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apt-listbugs is a must have, sure :)

I usually update it like this:

upgrade_options='-o dpkg::progress-fancy=1 -o apt::color=1'
sudo apt-get $upgrade_options dist-upgrade
sudo apt-get $upgrade_options autoremove --purge

apt-listbugs would show if anything serious is coming.

And you can always revert it, using Debian snapshots: https://snapshot.debian.org [External Link]

For KDE/Plasma updates, I also recommend checking Debian's KDE mailing list periodically:
https://lists.debian.org/debian-kde/ [External Link]

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Quoting: MohandevirValve could up their game and offer a Steamos-Desktop Edition. It's already Debian based and includes a Gnome DE... Both hands on the steering wheel.

Or they can just open source their UI and add it to Debian proper ;)

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Yeah, I suppose for developers it's less work to target LTS which are updated less frequently. But LTS distros are really not as good for desktop use case. Their main target audience are servers. That's why many gamers use rolling or more frequently than LTS release distros. For the most part, games work OK with them.

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Quoting: VodkaChickenGreat, I guess it's time to finally bail out of Ubuntu. May the distro hopping begin again.

Is there a Debian (stable) repo for more recent kernels and nvidia drivers or would I have to install that sort of stuff manually? Maybe it's finally time to give in to the Arch menace.

Debian stable provides an option to use backports repo, which has newer packages of some components. But I really recommend you to use Debian testing which is rolling (except for freeze periods). It's way better for desktop use case.

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Quoting: sprocketNot really. Debian Stable and Ubuntu LTS have had roughly the same release cadence of 2 years. In fact Debian 10 is only a few weeks away.

LTS may be, but not regular Ubuntu which is more commonly used among desktop users. Ubuntu LTS is really more of a server distro, same as Debian stable.

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