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>Debian is good if you don't want up to date browsers, the only shock i had when i tried Debian after this snap fiasco, ironically that's among things snap is trying to solve (quick updates)

You mean Debian stable. But you have a choice, you can select testing or unstable, which gives you newer software.



Debian Testing has a problem: It doesn't get security updates directly like stable/backports or unstable, it waits for a package to be promoted from unstable which can make it sometimes less up to date then stable... e.g. you can be stuck on an old firefox-esr with known vulnerabilities for a good while, especially if firefox-esr itself had a major version update which it does every year.


Also why would i use "Testing" or "Unstable" for my daily drive OS? Can't they make an exception to update Firefox+Chromium on Stable? It's really strange thing about Debian


Debian Testing only has Firefox ESR, currently version 102. Unstable has Firefox 104, which was released in August and is 3 releases behind...



Not everyone needs bleeding edge.


Sooo... Debian is good if you don't want up to date browsers.


Debian stable users who did want latest Firefox could download the binaries from Mozilla. Just unpack and run from e.g. home directory or perhaps copy to /opt/

https://www.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/all/#product-desktop-r...


Just install Firefox via Nix or Guix or Flatpak. Not all ancillary package managers are as terrible as Snap.


Or just get the .deb binaries from Firefox, and install them with apt/dpkg.

There is no real need for "ancillary package managers", and all they do is complicate system maintenance.


Running an out-of-date browser is a security concern, is it not? Does Debian have a policy where they'll just backport the latest non-ESR from Unstable whenever a new 0-day is discovered? If they do and they're quick about it, I guess it's more a matter of personal preference.

Anyway, using Guix, Nix, or Flatpak is definitely a better idea than installing standalone debs for a different version of Debian than you're running, where it may be built against libraries that aren't part of your distro.

If you want to use the Debian package from Sid on Testing, better to rebuild it from source. openSUSE's public instance of the Open Build Service is a convenient way to manage keeping a repo for that up to date. But that definitely complicates system maintenance, too!


> Running an out-of-date browser is a security concern, is it not?

Only if you assume new bugs are better than old.


Which they are. Running software with bugs nobody knows about yet is safer than running software with bugs everyone has known about for a while.




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