It was confirmed Sublinks a little while ago:

https://beehaw.org/comment/3686715

Kernels shouldn’t be a problem if you have the backports repo enabled (you can enable it during install, otherwise add it to your sources.list).

You do first have to specify that you want the kernel from backports (or set up APT pinning preferences), but after that, it’ll keep that specific package updated whenever you run sudo apt upgrade and there’s a newer version.

If you installed the generic Linux image on installation (usually the default, I believe), the quick way to upgrade is basically just:

sudo apt install -t bookworm-backports linux-image-amd64

It should be noted that backports is not Sid or Testing, it’s stuff built specifically for current Stable that people might need newer versions of for various reasons (e.g. hardware, limited feature updates that don’t affect the base system, some development libraries, etc.), so it’s quite small in the amount of unique packages it has. Like, you can get newer LibreOffice packages, but you’re not going to get Plasma 6 or whatever.

Right now, the kernel is on 6.7 in backports, while Stable is on 6.1 and Sid is on 6.8. So you’ll get them a tiny bit later, but that’s in terms of days/weeks, rather than, you know, the usual two-ish years (not counting security updates).

Side note: if you want all this enabled by default, Spiral Linux is just straight up Debian Stable with a bunch of firmware packages preinstalled for easier installation on a variety of hardware and the kernel is updated via backports by default, so you could give that a shot as well.

It’s not like “a distro based on Debian”, it is Debian, but set up with conveniences for modern desktop users and also sets up btrfs + apt snapshotting by default, similar to OpenSUSE Tumbleweed’s process.

Ah, I responded to one of your comments in your other thread, but it’s more relevant here.

Debian has several live ISOs with the Calamares installer that most other distros use, so it’s as easy to install as any of those.

No need to use the more complicated setup. Boot up the live CD/USB and install like anything else.

If anything, the default install is filled with too many applications (at least the KDE one). Got all the office software, media players, a browser, and anything else that might be relevant. Even comes with a bunch of accessibility stuff like a screen reader preinstalled (but not configured).

Also, you can install Timeshift immediately and use it. Don’t know why that’s an issue. Yeah, it’s not preinstalled, but it’s super simple to install and run the first snapshot and have it do its thing in the background. (Actually, this goes for Fedora as well as several other distros which you’ve put in your recommendations, so it’s not unique to Debian or Ubuntu.)

Honestly, even as someone who uses Timeshift and Debian, I’ve needed to use it waaaaaaay less than I ever did on Kubuntu. I don’t know how someone who isn’t tinkering is going to break the system enough to need Timeshift, really.

I’m not even sure if someone unfamiliar with Linux and not interested in the inner workings will even really understand the purpose or how to use Timeshift either. There are Windows users who have no idea about System Restore or how to use it, which is the closest equivalent.

Also, it’s around two years between releases. Same as Ubuntu LTS, which Mint is based on (and Mint also has a Debian edition based on Debian Stable which they may move to at some point, if the burden of “fixing” Ubuntu becomes too much).

Its biggest problem for beginners is the upgrade process. Instead of just notifying you about a new release and offering to upgrade your whole system, it’s usually on you to follow the release cycle and change the relevant lines in your sources.list, which isn’t particularly user friendly.

So, I don’t know if you’re aware, but Debian has live CDs/USBs with the same Calamares installer that so many other distros use. Pick any of the eight different DE ISOs and the installation process is identical to that of… pretty much everything.

It’s all preconfigured (to the point where some might say there’s a bit of bloat) and there’s no need to go messing around with the more complicated stuff (although I’m not certain if it requires enabling the non-free repo separately or offers it on installation; that would be the only major issue).

My only problem with that installation method is that the default partition setup sticks with the traditional “half your RAM size” swap space, which I think is annoying. But if someone doesn’t know or care about what swap is, there’s no real problem with it.

This link should work.

I didn’t realize that reddit formats the link completely differently when you “share” from its shitty app.

My bad, and sorry about that. Should work now.

You’re better off buying a cheap USB optical drive, re-ripping those CDs, and transcoding the files to something like Opus, which offers comparable quality to 320kbps MP3 files at lower bitrates (which also means smaller file sizes).

Or you can just “download” the FLAC versions, transcode those, and delete them after.

Also, kind of funny how this was posted just after someone complained about the same thing in the audio engineering subreddit.

deleted by creator

After my bios splash, it shows „welcome to grub“ and then switches to the debian start menu for 3 seconds or so, then shows some terminal stuff and then starts kde splash and then login.

Yeah, the reason for this is that sometimes Debian doesn’t enable Plymouth splash screens by default, so you just see the text stuff. It actually annoys me a bit.

Not on my computer at the moment, so I can’t remember the exact packages you might need, but if I recall, they should be plymouth-themes and kde-config-plymouth (so that you can choose the splash screen theme in your system settings). You can also find other themes online, but I forgot the name of that website where all the stuff is. Pling? I think it’s that.

Anyway, once you have the themes installed, you need to sudo edit /etc/default/grub and append "quiet splash" (with the quotes) to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT= (“quiet” might already be there).

You can also change the value of GRUB_TIMEOUT= in that file to whatever your preference might be for the duration of grub’s boot menu, but there might be other things you need to adjust in order to hide it completely and still be able to access it if necessary.

After that, run sudo update-grub so that it’s using the new config and choose whichever theme you want in the system settings.

Alternatively, grub-customizer is a GUI app that you can install to do all of the above (which will also update grub when you save your changes). Just don’t touch anything that’s not relevant. Stick to just the duration of the grub boot menu and add the splash parameter. Ignore boot priority, etc.

It should feel less “slow” to start up once all that’s sorted.

It’s also for Debian Stable/Testing users who only have ESR in their repos.

You can set up APT pinning and pull it from Sid, but I prefer not to fuck with official repos other than Backports. Even then, only if I really need to.

Yeah, Kubuntu’s fine. It has some of the Snap stuff, but the “minimal install” greatly strips down unnecessary bullshit to the point where I even find vanilla Debian Plasma to be more bloated in comparison.

I used Kubuntu for most of my time on Linux before switching to Debian. Still fully recommend it as a basically “plug and play” distro with a quick installer that works OOTB.

There’s also a KDE-specific backports PPA which gets you new Plasma and Qt stuff fairly quickly, but that works best on regular releases rather than LTS releases. (The only issue is that, because it uses Launchpad, the Plasma updates can be super fucking slow to download, regardless of your network speed).

Then again, if someone’s going to be using LTS versions only, there’s not really that much of a difference between it and Debian Stable in terms of DE updates.

It’s a bit hidden in the FAQ, but here you go.

Probably inevitable considering Jeremy Soller is the lead dev on Redox while also currently contributing to COSMIC.

To be honest, I’m surprised COSMIC isn’t the default, but it’s likely due to display server stuff that isn’t part of Redox (Wayland, etc.).

You can get a Cinnamon image via U-Blue.

U-Blue in general is a nice collection of images because not only are there various unofficial options, but a lot of things like RPMFusion, etc. are preconfigured in their versions of the main editions (SilverBlue, Kinoite, Sericea, Onyx).

Or you can just rebase regular SilverBlue (or one of the three other official variants) to one of those images if you’re running it already. Can roll back if you don’t like it.

I doubt there’ll be an official edition until Cinnamon has full Wayland support since Fedora is going all in on that now.

In the meantime, the community has it covered.

As someone who uses it somewhat regularly… It’s terrible. Apparently the next update is supposed to fix some of the UX issues people have had for years. But they said that last time as well.

I just use Krita now for most stuff. The only thing GIMP does better (or did, I haven’t checked recently) is textboxes. Adding text to images on Krita was a nightmare a few years ago, but maybe they’ve fixed it.

Seconding this.

Krita’s made so much progress over the years. One of the best FOSS image tools. It might be intended for painting and artists, but it’s just as good at regular image editing.

Second rule, subsection B: Arch, btw.

I actually agree with you entirely. I was just trying to play a bit of Devil’s advocate with admittedly some exaggeration on my part. I would much prefer keeping our cookies free of their sticky fingers and we can all still do our best to minimize their influence.

They have their reasons for funding and contribution, but it’s often than only in their interest to do it, rather than being “good to the community”. Their Linux kernel contributions, for example, often end up predominantly being for things that affect Android.

I do my best to minimize the amount of Google stuff I do/use as well. It’s just that I often find the Firefox-Google talking point to be missing the bigger picture and it’s not as simple as "Google gives money to Mozilla, therefore Firefox = inherently bad for taking their money ".

The irony of all of this is that I was typing my previous comments on Brave on Android due to my constant browser hopping. Mull is my default, but sometimes I just go with Brave or Vivaldi for random shit (Firefox mobile is really bad for live streaming video compared to most Chromium browsers, in my experience, but it might just be my set up or something).

Ooh, I didn’t know that. Thanks for sharing!

That’s actually quite the sum, but I guess considering Safari’s reach, it makes sense.

I just think that if you consider that, they are more dependent on Google than Brave is.

I think we’re defining “dependent” in two different ways here. There’s financial reliance (which applies to far more than Firefox when it comes to major FOSS projects) and software reliance. I don’t particularly think either is better or worse, but there are significant differences in the result of either.

Financial contribution in exchange for defaulting to a specific search engine is very different from using a Google-led project as the base foundation of your software.

Unless Brave actually hard forks Blink/Chromium, they’re literally depending on Google’s work for the entire base of their flagship software.

They can choose not to implement certain features, but without Google, their browser as it currently is wouldn’t exist. Theoretically (this is highly unlikely, but just as an experiment) if Google were to somehow move to a closed source model for future versions or ditch all work on Blink, Brave would very likely die.

If they wanted to keep it alive, they’d have to fork the last open source version of Chromium, maintain it alongside everything else, and still push out something secure that adheres to web standards. None of which is easy and requires a lot of work.

Financially, yeah. Firefox has more reliance on Google than Brave. So do GNOME, KDE, and the Linux Foundation.

When it comes to their software, Brave is far more reliant on Google than Firefox could ever be.

The only major browser not reliant on Google at all is Safari. (Edit: ignore this; Google pays Apple a shit ton to be default on Safari as well.)

Despite my dislike of web monopoly, I don’t particularly care what browser people use, provided they’re being honest about it.

I don’t like Google. I don’t trust them. But it would be incredibly shortsighted to dismiss their contributions (financial or otherwise) to open source. Whether people like it or not, without them, we wouldn’t have a lot of shit we take for granted.

If people want to “get away from using Google stuff”, they might as well just ditch tech altogether. Google’s fingers are in just about every big FOSS cookie jar, whether financially or via software contribution.

Think about it this way. Brave needs Google. Google doesn’t need Brave. At all. Mozilla needs funding from Google. Google doesn’t need funding from Mozilla. Google requires very little of either of them, but they both rely on it for different reasons. One approach isn’t worse than the other, but the effects are very, very different.

At least they are financially independent from Google, which you can’t say about Firefox.

I absolutely love it when people bring this up.

It’s always funny, mostly because Google is, let’s see… A member of the GNOME Advisory Board, a financial supporter of the GNOME Foundation (scroll to the bottom to see their supporters), a supporting member of the KDE e.V., a Gold member of the Linux Foundation, and a major contributor to the Linux Kernel (you’ll see some other companies you absolutely hate in that list as well).

Almost nothing in the major open source space is untouched by Google. But sure, Firefox in particular is evil because “Google money”.

If you don’t want to use something with financial support from Google, feel free to run FreeBSD and browse the web with, I don’t know, Lynx or something. Or Apple devices with Safari only. That’s a pretty good option, actually, provided you like proprietary software and a super locked down system (except WebKit which is open source and I honestly believe more browsers should be based on it). Lol, edit: Google pays more to Apple than Mozilla to be default on Safari, so nevermind that.