So a new major version of Debian has been released, and now I see a lot of complaints about various issues stemming from an upgrade. I do not remember this many after an LTS Ubuntu version. I don’t want to rush to conclusions like “Ubuntu has money for better quality assurance”. I can easily come up with explanations for why these statistics can be skewed, like “Ubuntu-loving plebeians do not come to complain to elite Lemmy users about their puny problems”. I’m curious what you think?
If I had to guess on why people get issues during updates I’d say it’s because they add a million third-party repos that point to the specific version of Debian they were running and now that they’ve upgraded they’ve got tons of outdated packages from those repos fudging up their system.
What do you think, is this release on par with previous ones regarding the amount of complaints?
I used/tried Ubuntu a few times -just because some solutions announce it as their supported platform- but I got tired of how they push snaps, and so I stay on Debian. Last week I went to deb13 on various machines and so far had no other task then fixing deprecated python functions in my own scripts, which isn’t abnormal. The one ‘issue’ I had was a PHP version mismatch in an apache2 config. So I’m (still) happy with Debian! And like @eugenia@lemmy.ml wrote, every 2 years (give or take) a fresh install is how I like to do it.
Congrats on the mostly smooth sailing!
What do you think of the experiences other people are having?
No experience with debian 13 yet, but I once upgraded a server from 7 to 12 without a single issue which was quite amazing.
Same, I have servers I’ve continuously upgraded from Debian 6 to 12 over the years, without reinstallation. Has gone without issue.
Do you think servers have it easy compared to personal computers? No pesky audio/video cards, bluetooth, etc…
Maybe. Now that I think about it, I have an Intel NUC running as a TV computer that has gone the same route, from Debian 6 to 12 without reinstallation. Still actively using it but thinking of retiring it only because the hardware is a bit weak in this small NUC from 2013.
Wait, like in one step from 7 to 12? That would be amazing indeed!
No, one version at a time. Took only an hour or so.
This is pretty impressive anyway
I’ve been doing debian upgrades without significant issues. With debian 13 I find I’m getting some deprecation messages from python and I have had to make some small code patches to fix them. I see that as more of a python issue than a debian issue.
Sure, this is fair!
Regarding this release, do you see more posts about it, compared with others?
Among the people I know in real life, some post (non-tech stuff) to Reddit, some write reviews on Yelp, and some have called customer support hotlines for tech products. But none have ever posted online to ask for tech help, at least not to my awareness. Neither did I back when I used Windows, and not for a couple years even after switching to Linux.
I suspect most Ubuntu users are among that common crowd. They might look up an issue on the internet, but expect to ask for help from a dedicated support center. Or can’t be bothered to sign up for an account and post to the places that can answer their questions, which are usually very “techy” and possibly even intimidating to beginners.
As for my setup, the upgrade from Debian 12 to 13 went very smoothly. I had to fix a few obscure config files, but nobody else really touches them, and it didn’t stop it from booting. Replaced a deprecated package with its Flatpak equivalent as well. Only unsolved issue is the xfce4-panel consuming all of one core on occasion for no apparent reason.
Thank you for answering the actual question! This is a new angle I haven’t considered before.
I’ve happily upgraded to Debian 13 with no issues (other than having to fix some of my python projects to deal with python 3.13)
Happy to hear that!
But what is your opinion about the amount of complaints you see recently?
I haven’t heard any. What have you heard?
Just the first page of linux@lemmy.ml shows me three Debian 13 related posts beside mine
I use Debian-Testing, so I never go from a major release to another, and it’s very stable that way. But yes, a big upgrade is never smooth with Debian, even if Debian itself is very stable (when installed from scratch). I think the solution is a clean install every 2 years. Or use Debian-Testing, so things don’t blow up from a small release to another. Even Linux Mint is not very stable from a major release to another (meaning, from one LTS to another). But Ubuntu is more stable between interim releases, but also not very stable between LTS releases.
So either you go with a “stable-ish” rolling release like Debian-Testing (which in my opinion is the most stable rolling release distro), or you re-install every 2 years.
Not my experience. I’m managing 6 different clients and around 200 servers with debian 11-13. Update problems are most of the times caused by incompatible packages / repos. Other then that and a few times some changes in configuration files with new options I hardly ever have problems.
I don’t think you have to reinstall your system every two years, you just need to be careful to not create a frankendebian by adding repos villy vanilly and you are good to go.
I didn’t have problem updating debian stable to a next version. I got problems when I jumped 2 stables at once. Which was to be expected.
Thank you, these are enlightening observations!
From what you see online, is this release on par with the previous ones?
yeah it’s a good one
Yeah! It’s got Plasma 6! And labwc!
I had absolutely no problems updating Debian to 13 from 11 to 12 to 13 one after the other. I also had no problems upgrading between Debian versions when I ran it as my main driver from the Potato release up until Ubuntu came out. Conversely, when I used Ubuntu from its original Warty release to around 2012 or so I had issues on literally every single version upgrade. Most relatively minor, but more than a couple requiring full reinstalls.
I would bet money that the vast majority of those having problems upgrading Debian are on “FrankenDebian” systems. Not all, but I am confident the majority are.
“Ubuntu has money for better quality assurance”
That’s utter BS, money does not equal quality.
I just borked an Ubuntu Noble installation by runningapt upgradeon it. Yeah it’s ZFS-based, why didn’t Canonical ensure the upgrade would be smooth?Of course it was tongue-in-cheek, I hope you didn’t take the “elite Lemmy users” seriously ;)
While personal stories could be enlightening, I’m more curious about the statistics
… plebeians do not come to complain to elite Lemmy users about their puny problems …
how does one identify elite lemmy users?
It was an exaggerated version of “the registered users of Lemmy are
all the elitesmart enough to avoid Ubuntu”
2/3 of my computers were completely fine after upgrading. Unfortunately, the one that was fucked was the one I game on.
Oh, that’s bad luck… Sorry to hear that!
Ive had Ubuntu shit itself 6 different times after upgrade. People still use ubuntu??
I had smooth sailing with Ubuntu for many years, but I don’t judge other people’s choices
I would bet that any upgrade bug that happens in Debian is just as likely, if not more, to happen in Ubuntu. The most frequent issue which happened to me was not enough space on the boot partition for the new kernel which somehow never got figured out in a seamless manner.
You also wont get posts when people’s upgrades go well. So even if 99.99% upgrade fine, the .01% are going to go and complain since they dont have the experience to fix things themselves.
It’s always hit or miss depending on the system. I upgraded one machine to Proxmox 9 and a VM and my VPS to Debian 13, the only one that gave me some trouble was my VM and that’s because I had an older package installed that was being a pain to remove because of dependency issues.
One of the biggest reasons I won’t use Ubuntu on anything I care about is because I had numerous upgrade issues with it.
I hope that you have found something that works better for you.
What do you think about my observation though?
I have! Upgrading from Fedora 41 to 42 worked well on the 3 machines I use it on.
I think most people who use Ubuntu, in general, aren’t posting about their experience with it online. So, yes, I’d say I agree with your observation.
It’s fine, I’m don’t know why you’re trying to generate shade with this post and comments.
What other hoops should I have jumped through to avoid being perceived as “generate shade”? I thought I did my best.