We already have container images for use with bootc of many non-Fedora distros (including Debian). This is (part of) the groundwork I alluded to earlier. So it’s definitely possible. But I agree with you: it will only happen after the people in charge are interested in solving this.

And even if I’m being (very) optimistic, I can only see an officially supported bootc-variant of Debian come into fruition if it’s necessarily better than the alternative; kinda like how systemd replaced the default init on most distros. And, even then, I only expect it to live alongside traditional Debian. As I’m simply unsure whether all of its kinks will eventually be ironed out. Only time will tell…

Fedora Atomic and its derivatives (like Bazzite and its uBlue-siblings). I wouldn’t be surprised if the same applies to NixOS and other (paradigm-wise/philosophically-)related projects.

But that’s the thing, I (and together with me many others) have already been doing this for a couple of years now. Granted, this is on another distro*. But I honestly don’t know why it wouldn’t be possible on Debian; perhaps (some of) the groundwork has already been put into place 😉.

The possibility of unattended major upgrades would without a doubt be an upgrade over this mess. Even if it becomes possible, it doesn’t have to be enabled by default anyways. So, if you don’t like it, then you should be able to only make use of UnattendedUpgrades for minor upgrades; if at all*.

Besides, I don’t think the crowds that use Fedora or Ubuntu Interim are necessarily opposed to it. Especially not if it’s just seamless. Like, what would be even there to oppose if it doesn’t introduce any troubles?

?

You can easily disable or uninstall unattended upgrades, and I would definitely have noticed if Debian’s unattended upgrades automatically did major release upgrades on its own …

To be clear, the automatic major release updates in the background does not happen on Debian. I was describing the experience on my daily driver; which happens to be another distro. That’s why I wish to see the day in which Debian does receive this. I’m aware of UnattendedUpgrades doing minor upgrades only; so no major upgrades*.

IMO that’s not an issue at all, both Debian and Ubuntu are very good about providing security updates for their oldstable releases. Maybe your desktop environment or text editor isn’t going to receive updates anymore, but I have a really hard time imagining a relevant scenario where that makes a difference for security.

I absolutely love the effort put in by Debian’s Security Team. But as they only provide it for three years after release, I don’t feel confident to continue using it, even if I value the work of the group of volunteers that make Debian LTS possible. Note that “too paranoid” were keywords in my previous message.

I did maybe half of these steps and it still went without issue.

That’s cool and all. But, to give some context as to where I’m coming from: for the last 2-3 years or so, I receive automatic major release updates in the background. Sometimes, it takes me up to a week before I even notice it. I wish to see the day that Debian is released from its UnattendedUpgrades shackles and can ascend into pure bliss.

I’m a big fan of skipping over one major release when upgrading

I’m too paranoid on security to consider that 😅. But I’m glad it works out for you.

Upvoted for Topgrade. It’s honestly so good on any system that employs more than one ‘updatable microcosm’,

That’s definitely off-putting. Though, I do feel Debian can learn a thing or two for making major release updates more seamless. Perhaps it’s the doing of the law of equivalent exchange; after two^[1] years of bliss (read: easy updates), we just have to accept a brief moment of intense suffering (read: way more involved update).

I suppose COSMIC technically never migrated/transitioned from X11 to Wayland, because it’s been Wayland-only from inception.

AFAIK Cinnamon is on track to be the first smaller DE with full wayland support.

I think Budgie just beat them to it. To be clear, Budgie 10.10 is literally Wayland-only.

Are you on systemd or sysVinit? If you’re on the latter, could you tell if you’ve even noticed any difference so far? Thanks in advance!

Great write-up! Thank you for the effort!

Though, if I may: Regarding GNOME, you said:

Not particularly customisable

I would rather rephrase this to “Does not expose many knobs for customization by default.”. Because -frankly- between dconf, extensions and CSS; the possibilities are actually quite expansive. So much so, even, that a KDE dev said regarding GNOME: “sometimes it (read: GNOME) can be customized better than KDE”. (They say this literally in the first 10 seconds or so.)

Another striking example of the breadth of GNOME’s customization would be how Niri was heavily inspired by GNOME’s PaperWM extension. (Source) So, GNOME’s customizability has allowed the creation of a new workflow that eventually served as a direct inspiration for one of the most exciting WMs we’ve got.