I like it that Debian manages to run a pure-community distro and I like it that they keep the Free for community honest in terms of licensing. It really bugs me, though, that Debian dogmatically ships outdated software.
You say: "Backporting security fixes keeps them safe without compromising the reason they're running Debian in the first place."
It would be interesting to have actual research data about why people run Debian stable in the first place. Do they run it because they want a community distro? Do they run it because of Free Software ideals? Do they run it because their friends do? Do they run it because they mistakenly think that "stable" means "doesn't crash"? Or do they actually run it in order to have out-of-date software?
For each of the questions above there are probably people who say "yes", but it would be very interesting to know in what percentages of the user base.
Power management, mobile and firmware developer on Linux. Security developer at nvidia. Ex-biologist. Content here should not be interpreted as the opinion of my employer. Also on Mastodon and Bluesky.
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On the reason to run Debian in the first place
Date: 2016-04-07 12:22 pm (UTC)You say:
"Backporting security fixes keeps them safe without compromising the reason they're running Debian in the first place."
It would be interesting to have actual research data about why people run Debian stable in the first place. Do they run it because they want a community distro? Do they run it because of Free Software ideals? Do they run it because their friends do? Do they run it because they mistakenly think that "stable" means "doesn't crash"? Or do they actually run it in order to have out-of-date software?
For each of the questions above there are probably people who say "yes", but it would be very interesting to know in what percentages of the user base.
Does such research exist?
Henri Sivonen