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Understanding the two-year release cycle as a desktop user (and a Debian newcomer)

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Hello,

I would like to hear opinions about the release cycle of the Stable Debian 
releases for a Desktop user. 

I love the Debian ideals and perks (its social contract, independence from big 
companies...) and understand to a certain extent the fundamentals on why 
keeping "old-ish" versions of packages with backports and the Shiny new stuff 
syndrome, but I fail to see how Debian can make a useful desktop distribution 
with the current release cycle.

For example: My main PC is an already two years old ryzen-based system and a 
Vega graphics card from 2017, and the kernel used in Stable has regressions 
which cause complete, unrecoverable system hangups on Vega cards which were 
not alleviated until kernel 5.3 onwards (and they still keep happening, though 
rarely!). This means that to ensure stability on a Debian installation I would 
need a backported kernel, or use Debian Testing or Sid, which IMO collides 
with the point of a Stable release.

I also see everyday many announcements about performance (GNOME) and usability 
(KDE Plasma) improvements which are not exactly new features. This is 
obviously happening on more recent releases, which Debian may not see (unless 
these changes are also backported, which I would find extremely cumbersome?) 
until approximately two years have passed since that.

All this makes me think that while Debian is a fantastic distribution, its 
Desktop, common user-facing side of things would greatly benefit from 
something like a separate yearly Stable release.

Thanks,
Sam

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Thread

Understanding the two-year release cycle as a desktop user (and a Debian newcomer) Sam <debian@samueldgv.com> - 2020-02-25 17:20 +0100
  Re: Understanding the two-year release cycle as a desktop user (and  a Debian newcomer) Roberto C. Sánchez <roberto@debian.org> - 2020-02-25 17:30 +0100
  Re: Understanding the two-year release cycle as a desktop user (and  a Debian newcomer) Joe <joe@jretrading.com> - 2020-02-25 18:10 +0100
  Re: Understanding the two-year release cycle as a desktop user (and  a Debian newcomer) songbird <songbird@anthive.com> - 2020-02-25 19:40 +0100
  Re: Understanding the two-year release cycle as a desktop user (and a  Debian newcomer) Peter Ehlert <peter@sdi-baja.com> - 2020-02-25 20:10 +0100
    Re: Understanding the two-year release cycle as a desktop user (and  a Debian newcomer) songbird <songbird@anthive.com> - 2020-02-25 20:50 +0100
  Re: Understanding the two-year release cycle as a desktop user (and a  Debian newcomer) "Miguel A. Vallejo" <ea4eoz@gmail.com> - 2020-02-29 15:10 +0100
    Re: Understanding the two-year release cycle as a desktop user (and  a Debian newcomer) songbird <songbird@anthive.com> - 2020-02-29 16:40 +0100

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