so if i install debian 12 on my machine, can i just let it sit there for years or months??
so if i install debian 12 on my machine, can i just let it sit there for years or months??
like not doing anything, just a spare laptop in case i ever need one, what if i use it years after i installed debian on it?? i would have to update like 300 packages and would take a lot??
No, it's not allowed. The police are already on the way for thought crimes against updating.
You are not forced to update it.
even if you did, stable shouldn't break itself regardless of how far out-of-date it is, nor will it upgrade to the next release without a little bit of hoop jumping first.
sometimes you think you are old, and then you find out you are oldold and things are a little harder than you realized.
I had laptop running Ubuntu 16.04, which was running for 2273 days without reboots or anything. It was located in safe place so not even security updates were installed during that time. And it was still completely fine after all these days (little bit over 6 years). It was finally shut down when there was electricity break, and its battery failed, and I decided that it was time to retire it.
There of course were tons of updates available then, but no one forces you to install them. and in Debian system instead of Ubuntu, there will be lot less, their release policy is much stricter.
The thing is.... The upgrade path degrades. Once one is 3 or more major versions behind, upgrading becomes technically challenging. (I have done this a few times....) It is better to just reinstall.
That said, a Debian system that works won't just stop working. My Raspberry Pi 2 has no issues since the initial install.
Professionally, it is better to have a fast recovery path. PXE boot, Debian preseed, a config management system (Ansible, Puppet, etc) and local caches and you can be set in 10 minutes. (After years of setting all of that up.)
My record is 4 years without update. I had to upgrade every version instead of jumping directly to the latest because I read this is how it is done.
This worked for Debian flawlessly. Another Laptop with Arch Linux died after updating a 2 years old system.
Yeah, but it's a well known, well hidden fact, that Arch users are the beta testers of packages before real distros includes them...
We don't actually use Arch, it's a testing environment.
But we need those testers you know... So....
GO ARCH GO best distro evar!!
Hehe...
No, it won't force you to update to use it, you should if you're going on the internet, but otherwise it'll just work.
debian? No. BSD? Maybe.
I wouldn’t necessarily say that - Debian and FreeBSD releases have roughly the same support lifespan, meaning if installed on release day, you’d get a few (~5 years) years of support without major upgrades.
I’d say both systems have a high chance of success at upgrading to the immediate next version, so that becomes maybe 7 or 8 years when adding the years of support left on the now older immediate next version.
For a second immediate next upgrade, you might be right that a BSD has a better chance of surviving.
I wouldn’t know about Open SD, though, as they operate on point releases and I don’t know to what extent they prevent breaking changes.
In my experience, the updates are quick as long as you boot it once every few months. I have a work laptop that I rarely use unless I'm travelling (I work primarily on a desktop, but I will keep it charged and update it once every 2-3 months so it's ready for action.
It depends on several things. Debian 13 is only a few months away, so 12 will already be a version behind. However, 12 will still receive security updates until mid-2028, so if it's just a stopgap, it shouldn't be too much trouble to install those security updates - they're specifically designed and tested not to break anything.
If you upgrade to a newer version, it will definitely be more than 300 packages, but they also try to be careful (no guarantees, though) to make sure an update from the immediately previous version doesn't bork everything. Thus, updates should still be pretty easy for a few years afterwards.
I could be completely out of my element here, but I almost wonder if an immutable distro would be a better idea in this case. If I'm getting this right, updating the base image under the root overlay a few years later shouldn't mess up too much. I could be completely wrong, as I don't use immutable distros; this is just my impression of how they work.
If you let the laptop sit for years, the battery will be dead and there is a small chance that the SSD may be corrupted. They are only rated to retain data for a year without power.
Debian will have updates, but apart from the browser, it will typically only be security and bug fix updates.
The OS isn't really the deciding factor here.