I’m aware of Debian’s reputation for not having the most up-to-date software in its repository but have just noticed that Thunderbird is on its current version. Which makes me ask:

When does Debian update a package? And how does it decide when to?

I’m particularly interested in when it will make available the upcoming major release of GIMP to 3.0.

  • Ramin Honary@fe.disroot.org
    0·
    8 days ago

    @Churbleyimyam@lemm.ee @ARuy91305DGgrQiOZ6.linux@lemmy.ml I am guessing they have a short list of security-critical packages that they always keep up-to-date and at the latest versions, for things like SuDo and OpenSSL. Firefox, Chrome, and Thunderbird are so critical to end-user security, they probably have those on the list as well. But I am only guessing.

    Usually if you want more recent versions of an application, you can install a FlatPak via FlatHub.

    You can also install the Guix package manager on Debian, which has its own separate local repository that does not interfere with installed Debian packages. Guix usually has more recent packages, and it also makes it easy to install package dependencies and build the latest developer releases of applications from source code.

    • Churbleyimyam@lemm.eeOP
      0·
      6 days ago

      You can also install the Guix package manager on Debian.

      Guix is interesting. Do you know how it avoids clashing with Debian packages?

      • Ramin Honary@fe.disroot.org
        0·
        6 days ago

        Guix is interesting. Do you know how it avoids clashing with Debian packages?

        @Churbleyimyam@lemm.ee yes, it simply keeps all packages downloaded isolated in it’s own database in the /gnu/store directory. It does not rely at all on any of the operating system’s own packages except for /lib/ldlinux*.so. So if you install Gimp on debian via apt-get and then also install it with guix package, you will get two full copies of Gimp and all of it’s dependencies. It is sort of like FlatPak, except the dependencies are tracked much more carefully, and it can do more deduplication to save space.

        The Guix database itself is pretty interesting, it stores packages with their unique hash, so you can install as many different versions of any package as you want and it can still guarantee none of the versions will interfere with each other. You just select whatever version you want to use with the guix shell command.

        • Churbleyimyam@lemm.eeOP
          1·
          1 day ago

          That all sounds extremely cool. I like that it’s endorsed by the fsf as well. What’s the catch? Is it hard to set up or run?