While there’s a new version of the popular Ubuntu operating system every six months, the OS is based on Debian, a Linux-based operating system with a reputation for stability… and much slower updates.
It’s been more than two years since Debian 8 was released. And now Debian 9 is finally available.
The new operating system will be officially supported for 5 years.
The latest version of Debian is codenamed “Stretch,” making it the latest in a long line of codenames drawn from the Toy Story series of movies.
Debian 9 is available for download with a choice of desktop environments including Cinammon, GNOME, KDE, LXDE, Mate, and Xfce and you can opt for a small installer file or a full-featured installation image that comes with a larger set of pre-installed packages.
Among other things, Debian 9 ships with the Firefox web browser and Thunderbird email client (rather than Iceewasel and Icedove, which are basically rebranded versions of those apps that shipped with earlier versions of Debian), improved support for UEFI, and updated versions of key applications including GIMP, LibreOffice, and desktop environment software.
Debian 9 also uses the Linux 4.9 kernel and the operating system supports 10 different architectures including ARM, MIPS, and x86. But support for 32-bit PowerPC systems has been removed.
Debian 8 was a major update, so well-done that people skipped Ubuntu for it.
I wonder how Debian 9 compares?
It’s been ages since I used Linux, and back then I didn’t like Ubuntu and Fedora wasn’t that bad. I was team SUSE, and these guys paved the way for Linux on ARM (not counting Android). This was before the iPhone 4, back when there was a thing called the N900. I even bought a PS3 to tinker it with Puppy. Now it feels like most of the fun has wained, and those weekend devs are all having a go with AOSP instead.
Me, I’m using OSX, Windows 10, and Android like a layman.
I’m pretty sure my raspbian and ubuntu boxes are not spying on me. They perform really well too. I have free win10 on an old drive that I use when it comes time for taxes. Less OS is definitely more.
I’m pretty sure that my Windows 10 systems aren’t spying on me either. But then, I’m not paranoid.
(By the way, just to be clear, I don’t call anonymized system metrics, or cloud based processing in support of services I use (like Google Assistant) spying.)
Anonymized is such a great word as it gives comfort to many. Real names don’t matter at all when they sell a marketing profile of the user sitting in front of the PC. They just need to ensure that profile is accurate. With all the details they are collecting, I bet it is much better than Facebook’s profiles.
Whether they use your real name or user123, it is essentially spying as 90%+ of the system metrics are for marketing and 10% for the health of the operating system. Why would it be any other way, they are a business.
If there is a physical person outside my house documenting when I leave and in what vehicle, or if my OS is effectively doing the same for marketing purposes… It’s the same spying.
“While there’s a new version of the popular Ubuntu operating system every six months”
Ubuntu LTS releases are based on Debian testing and Ubuntu intermediate releases are based on Debian sid (still in development, not yet migrated to testing).
So Ubuntu releases are in fact based on “yet to be completed” Debian releases.
The problem with Debian is that it takes so long for a relases to be finalized from the frozen testing distribution that its contents are “obsolete” by the time that the release is made But then reliability and stiability does come with such a price.
I only use Debian on my VPS, but it’s been extremely stable over the years. Probably won’t upgrade though until Debian 8 nears the end of its official support in 2020, by which time 9 maybe just a stepping stone to 10.