Debian operating system

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Debian is a free operating system (OS) for your computer. An operating system is the set of basic programs and utilities that make your computer run. Debian provides more than a pure OS: it comes with over 59000 packages, precompiled software bundled up in a nice format for easy installation on your machine.

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I’m curious to know how you all handle the limited package selection in the default Debian repositories. (lemmy.ml)

submitted 4 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I love the idea of trying Debian but every time I try to ditch Arch for it I end up just giving up after not being able to find all the packages I need in the repos.

How do you guys deal with that? I’m not even talking about them being out of date. I’m talking about them missing altogether.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 days ago

Please list packages you are lacking ? then file RFP and ITP issues

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 days ago

Like what? I find that if its not in apt repo's then there is normally a deb package available from the developer or it can be built from source. I know its not AUR but I find debian to be the best supported in most instances, with rpm based second. I dont use snap or flatpak really, but ive been able to install everything I would have wanted to.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Install flatpak and/or distrobox and you have everything you need.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

How does Distrobox work? Is it as simple a

$ distrobox install app $ app

And it runs fine ?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago

I've been using distrobox at work (on RHEL 8, Fedora 16 based) for a while, but the containerization tech (it uses podman) does seem to introduce some extra latency, which is especially painful when using CLI tools such as zoxide, eza and bat.

I'm in the process of switching to Nix, which should have native performance, the largest number of packages, and guaranteed reproducible, deterministic versions.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Usually, Flatpaks. My generally philosophy is that if it isn't in Debian, it probably won't last. I make exceptions when something is the best tool for the job, like Tom J Watson's Emote.

This isn't not rock solid, I admit - there are plenty of defunct projects that were once in Debian repos (neofetch is still in sid), and there are plenty of lasting projects outside Debian.)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

This isn’t not rock solid

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

Fixed that little goof up.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

For me it depends in whether the publisher has a .deb file available or not. If there's a downloadable deb file, I just install that through apt/dpkg.

I try not to use custom repos anymore because they rarely keep up with the named releases and can introduce library conflicts.

If I can only get a tarball of the precompiled binary then I'll unpack it in /opt and drop a soft link to the main binary in /usr/local/bin. This is how I handle Firefox and Thunderbird at least.

Otherwise, there's containers (Unif controller, for example) and flatpacks as a last resort.

I personally hate building and installing from source, but I'll do that if I absolutely have to.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

Is it proprietary software? If so, I find a free software alternative.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Add repos as needed (Docker, Hashicorp, helm, kubernetes, etc.), build from source for everything else.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 days ago

Isn’t adding repos considered creating a FrankenDebian?