Debian 11 (Bullseye) Release

[raymac46]

Bullseye is scheduled to become the Stable release on August 14. I've been using it for a few months without incident and I intend to track it into Stable and then wait a couple of months before going back into Testing.

Edited August 1, 2021 by raymac46

[saturnian]

I did a Bullseye installation back in February. Since then, I've upgraded a few systems from Buster to Bullseye. I don't recall seeing any significant issues at all.

 

I don't really "track" Testing; I'll jump in after things have frozen. In this case, I think I waited until the "soft freeze" to get started with it. I'm thinking that next time around I might wait a lot longer and try not to be in a hurry to see what's coming next. Lol, I may have said something similar last time!

 

I do like having the upgrades or fresh installations done and out of the way, but I'm not sure that jumping to Testing well before it goes to Stable is doing much else for me, at this point. I still have one Buster installation and it's looking great.

[sunrat]

I'm sticking with Bullseye now.. Don't even have a siduction install any more.

For years I did use siduction as it was noticeably ahead of Stable with features particularly in KDE Plasma. Now the differences between Plasma 5.20 and even 5.22 which is not even in unstable yet are more incremental than profound. I do try siduction or KDE Neon in KVM/QEMU occasionally to check them out.

Oh yeah, siduction has a new release, I should make a thread.

[saturnian]

9 hours ago, sunrat said:

I'm sticking with Bullseye now.. Don't even have a siduction install any more.

 

Wait, you aren't running MX Linux anymore?

 

I think MX and BunsenLabs and Linux Mint are all excellent, although currently I don't have either of those three installed. But I have all 3 on flash drives, and I boot up with one or the other every now and then. I'll download the Bullseye-based MX Linux and BunsenLabs releases when they come out (haven't yet seen anything in the works for the next BunsenLabs release).

Edited August 2, 2021 by saturnian

[raymac46]

I like to roll with Debian Testing the majority of the time. It's not on a system that I care about that much if something breaks.

That said, I have had a major bork-up when Testing switched over to Stable. I prefer to just go with the current Testing as it rolls into Stable, and then switch back after the dust settles. I went quite a long time with Buster before switching to Bullseye.

Testing can be a weird place to be when its current version is switching over to Stable. I always name my sources.list repos by the version not the branch - ie bullseye not tesing.

Much as I like MX-Linux, I just don't have a machine right now that I want to run it on. I prefer to have an on-the-rails Arch install on my old laptops.

[sunrat]

2 hours ago, saturnian said:

Wait, you aren't running MX Linux anymore?

 

I haven't run MX for a couple of years. The devs do a good job with it but I got sick of Xfce not being as good as KDE Plasma so went back to siduction for a while. Main issue was I dislike Thunar and couldn't get Dolphin to work properly in MX. Several MX devs actually run Dolphin in Xfce!

siduction's KDE Plasma is great but the buzz of getting upgrades every day has worn off. And the forum seems to be increasingly predominantly German posts so translating became tiresome as well. MX-KDE was released in the meantime but I had already settled back with siduction.

However I have been running straight Bullseye KDE for 6 months now which currently has the same Plasma version as siduction and it has been most satisfactory. I also set it up nicely for audio production so no AV Linux any more either. It's now AVL-MXE, based on MX and I still follow its development and even lend Glen the developer a hand occasionally.

Linux here is 100% Debian now, 1 vanilla Buster install, 2 Bullseye installs plus a 3rd for potentially destructive tests, all in various stages of heavy config tweaking.

[saturnian]

Running Debian, Arch, and Kubuntu here (Kubuntu 20.04 LTS, with Plasma 5.18.5). I'm considering replacing that Kubuntu installation with Debian, not sure. Kubuntu's minimal installation option has worked out nicely but I kinda like a Debian netinstall better. I seem to have an emotional attachment to Kubuntu, going back to Kubuntu 5.10. I've had good luck with the LTS releases after that, too. Never really perfect out-of-the-box, but I always seem to hammer it into shape and then it's good for a few years.

 

I'm another one who doesn't like Thunar, but I don't use a DE's native file manager all that much, anyway -- I use Double Commander most of the time. I'm too often using different DEs/WMs so it's good to have a few apps to lean on that are not tied in with any particular DE.

 

I don't know if I'd install it, but I'd be interested in some kind of netinstall or minimal installation for MX where the user can choose to install whatever DE/WM from the Debian repos instead of getting a "spin" where they've set up the desktop already. I always end up changing everything anyway, might as well start off without all those "customizations" that somebody else likes. But maybe there would be no point; just install Debian!

[sunrat]

1 hour ago, saturnian said:

Running Debian, Arch, and Kubuntu here (Kubuntu 20.04 LTS, with Plasma 5.18.5)...

I'm another one who doesn't like Thunar, but I don't use a DE's native file manager all that much, anyway -- I use Double Commander most of the time...

 

I never liked anything *buntu. And distro hopping days are over. I do use Double Commander just for its multi rename tool.

 

Quote

 I always end up changing everything anyway, might as well start off without all those "customizations" that somebody else likes. But maybe there would be no point; just install Debian!

 

After so many years of playing with distros, now I just want to use them. Well, mostly, the tweaking bug ain't gonna totally die yet! "just install Debian!"

[abarbarian]

17 hours ago, sunrat said:

I never liked anything *buntu. And distro hopping days are over.

 

Same here.

 

17 hours ago, sunrat said:

After so many years of playing with distros, now I just want to use them.

 

 

Same here.

 

17 hours ago, sunrat said:

Well, mostly, the tweaking bug ain't gonna totally die yet! "just install

 

Arch of course

 

I use Arch as me daily driver. MX-19 on me backup Tough Book. An occasionally play with a os that gets me interest.

 

Ha d a look at Siduction and it looks to be very nice with a good feel to the community with decent information. Shame it is mainly in German otherwise i might have given it a try.

[sunrat]

1 hour ago, abarbarian said:

Had a look at Siduction and it looks to be very nice with a good feel to the community with decent information. Shame it is mainly in German otherwise i might have given it a try.

 

siduction images run live on USB or CD before installing so easy to just have a stickybeak. Runs well live in KVM/QEMU too which is how I checked it out.

Only the forum is German-based, distro runs 100% English if it is chosen for language. You will get a reply in English on the forum if you post in English although I rarely had issues so rarely had to ask for help.

[Bookmem]

On 8/1/2021 at 8:17 AM, raymac46 said:

Bullseye is scheduled to become the Stable release on August 14. I've been using it for a few months without incident and I intend to track it into Stable and then wait a couple of months before going back into Testing.

I just installed Buster in a Vbox session with the intent of upgrading it to Bullseye when it's released.  What, in your opinion are its advantages over Mint LDME?  

[V.T. Eric Layton]

6 hours ago, abarbarian said:

23 hours ago, sunrat said:

...distro hopping days are over.

 

Same here.

 

23 hours ago, sunrat said:

After so many years of playing with distros, now I just want to use them.

 

 

Same here.

 

Yeah... I'll go along with the above, too.

 

I come in this room in the mornings; I turn the power strips on to energize the work area; I push the little on/off button on the tower and...

 

...it boots, starts the OS, brings up my desktop, etc. If all works, then it's a good day.

[raymac46]

2 hours ago, Bookmem said:

I just installed Buster in a Vbox session with the intent of upgrading it to Bullseye when it's released.  What, in your opinion are its advantages over Mint LDME?  

I have never run LMDE so I really can't comment. However given the choice between a Debian derivative and the real thing, I'll take Debian. LMDE is sort of a "Plan B" for Linux Mint if they want to jettison Ubuntu so I don't know if they put the same effort into development as they do with their flagship release. Also I really don't want to run Cinnamon with Debian.

[Bookmem]

1 hour ago, raymac46 said:

I have never run LMDE so I really can't comment. However given the choice between a Debian derivative and the real thing, I'll take Debian. LMDE is sort of a "Plan B" for Linux Mint if they want to jettison Ubuntu so I don't know if they put the same effort into development as they do with their flagship release. Also I really don't want to run Cinnamon with Debian.

I run Cinnamon with Mint 20.2 with no problems.  Is there a reason you don't run it with Debian, or just a personal preference?  I'm not liking Buster in Vbox, but that may be just because I haven't got it setup properly.  Had to jump through a lot of hoops just to get the additions to install.  Installed Chrome, but it won't load.  Can't sudo, have to login as root to use apt.

[Bookmem]

16 minutes ago, Bookmem said:

I run Cinnamon with Mint 20.2 with no problems.  Is there a reason you don't run it with Debian, or just a personal preference?  I'm not liking Buster in Vbox, but that may be just because I haven't got it setup properly.  Had to jump through a lot of hoops just to get the additions to install.  Installed Chrome, but it won't load.  Can't sudo, have to login as root to use apt.

edit: Got Chrome to run.  Apparently it won't run while loged in as root.

 

[raymac46]

I suppose it is more personal preference than anything else. I use LM 20.2 all the time (posting from it now.) Again I feel that the best desktop for Linux Mint is Cinnamon because it is the customized default one and the Linux Mint developers put in the time to make it work seamlessly. Probably it'll work great with LMDE, too.

I am not such a big fan of Cinnamon that I would want to run it in say Arch or Debian. With Arch I am using LXQt and in Debian I use GNOME. So where I choose my desktop or customize it I prefer the "core" distros. That's just me, and I would not recommend what I do as being any better than another course of action.

I have mentioned many times that I use Mint because I have family members that are Windows users. They are not all that familiar with Linux and those people have no difficulty adjusting to Linux Mint.

I've never tried running Chrome as root so can't comment on that. I have not installed any Debian distro in VBox for a while but as I recall you need to build the Guest Additions and use DKMS to get everything working.

[raymac46]

https://linuxize.com/post/how-to-add-user-to-sudoers-in-debian/

[Bookmem]

47 minutes ago, raymac46 said:

https://linuxize.com/post/how-to-add-user-to-sudoers-in-debian/

That worked.  Thanks.  I figured it wouldn't be difficult to solve.  And I'd already worked my way through adding Vbox additions.  But I've been spoiled by Mint doing it for me.  I know that using Debian or Arch instead of one of the distro based on them, is much more efficient. but with all of the resources available on my desktops, convenience outweighs efficiency for me.

Edited August 3, 2021 by Bookmem

[raymac46]

22 hours ago, V.T. Eric Layton said:

 

Yeah... I'll go along with the above, too.

 

I come in this room in the mornings; I turn the power strips on to energize the work area; I push the little on/off button on the tower and...

 

...it boots, starts the OS, brings up my desktop, etc. If all works, then it's a good day.

I've never gotten down to just one distro since I had more than one old machine to play with. Right now I have 3 on the go:

1. Linux Mint as a set it and forget it O/S on my user friendly desktop and my old junker that plays music in the workroom.
2. Arch as a stable, lightweight and fun distro on a couple of old laptops.
3. Debian on a vintage Thinkpad which my wife takes with her when visiting family. She's gotten used to GNOME with a few shell extensions and I don't want to rock the boat. Besides, I like Debian.