this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2025
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Linux
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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Debian is known to be stable as in "staying the same", you won't get any big version updates on the programs in the debian repository, just backported security updates. That ensures that you don't end up with dependency mismatches where different programs want the same library but different versioning.
It also means that as Trixie ages the version you get from the repo will be further and further behind as you will still be running 2025 versions with backported security updates until you upgrade to Debian 14.
By installing random .tarballs and .debs outside the default repository the main advantage of Debian Stable is nulled.
I would actually recommend going all in on flatpaks, appimages and dockers if your goal is to keep the main system stable and lean. You might also wanna look at distrobox for running programs that aren't officially available for your distro.
Another thing too look at is atomic distros, such as Fedora Kinoite https://fedoraproject.org/atomic-desktops/kinoite/
Yeah, I only use Debian to host Docker images. My main desktop is Pop OS, but I've been pondering switching to Fedora or something similar.
Fedora KDE is my main workstation distro and it's been treating me fine.
I chose between that and opensuse Tumbleweed and ended up trying Fedora for the simple reason of having a larger user base than opensuse.
I'm still curious to try out opensuse tumbleweed but fedora has just kept going and I've felt no need to fix or switch.
I agree with the popular view that Debian Stable + KDE Plasma + Flatpaks (or Appimage, Docker) strikes a balance between system reliability and freshness in selected applications when that counts. I may be missing updates for KDE Plasma but v6 is quite mature so I don't mind. I know storage is cheap but I am instinctively uneasy with containerisation as it's done by Flatpaks etc because of the duplication you get with all-in. But if that's the price of reliability, so be it. It's just that sometimes there is only a PPA or a .deb, which is why I asked.
EDIT: I just tried distrobox for the first time. It is amazing how efficient it is. I ran Firefox on Arch and I couldn't tell the difference in resources. Amazing really.