I was (in jest) calling you the evangelist because you had made a post telling me to read Stallman. However, I think it is equally fair for you to call me a Stallman evangelist. If you want to call me a FSF/stallman evangelist, I am not bothered.
Tagline? It made me chuckle at least.
The problem with Debian for a lot of people is that it’s too slow to update and the packages are old.
Debian is not slow to update. It intentionally uses a 2 year software freeze model to prevent new software features from introducing bugs or exploits. Software security updates are still pushed regularly. I think there is some sort of exception for Firefox. There is also an optional backports repository.
Linux Mint uses the same update model. Linux Mint has the same 2 year freeze release model as Debian. There’s 2 versions of Linux Mint: Ubuntu LTS edition which is a 2 year release model and Debian Edition which is a 2-year release model. You can’t say that Mint is better than Debian while criticizing Debian for a thing that Mint also does.
Linux Mint doesn’t even manage a full software repository, it only has a partial repository which contains the Linux Mint (Cinnamon DE). If you install the Ubuntu LTS version of Linux mint, it sets your software repositories to Ubuntu LTS repositories and adds an additional Mint repository which only has the latest Cinnamon DE. If you install the Linux Mint Debian version, it does the same thing but with the Debian repositories.
Also Debian just release Debian 13, so all of the software in the repository is pretty fresh right now. Debian 13 was released in August 2025 and the software freeze is based on April 2025
If you want to have a rolling release distro, then you would have to use something that is ArchLinux based. Rolling release distros are prone to more bugs and exploits. For example, the xz-utils ssh backdoor mainly affected ArchLinux, which the exploit never made it past the testing versions of Debian and Fedora.
Tagline? It made me chuckle at least.
The problem with Debian for a lot of people is that it’s too slow to update and the packages are old.
Debian is not slow to update. It intentionally uses a 2 year software freeze model to prevent new software features from introducing bugs or exploits. Software security updates are still pushed regularly. I think there is some sort of exception for Firefox. There is also an optional backports repository.
Linux Mint uses the same update model. Linux Mint has the same 2 year freeze release model as Debian. There’s 2 versions of Linux Mint: Ubuntu LTS edition which is a 2 year release model and Debian Edition which is a 2-year release model. You can’t say that Mint is better than Debian while criticizing Debian for a thing that Mint also does.
Linux Mint doesn’t even manage a full software repository, it only has a partial repository which contains the Linux Mint (Cinnamon DE). If you install the Ubuntu LTS version of Linux mint, it sets your software repositories to Ubuntu LTS repositories and adds an additional Mint repository which only has the latest Cinnamon DE. If you install the Linux Mint Debian version, it does the same thing but with the Debian repositories.
Also Debian just release Debian 13, so all of the software in the repository is pretty fresh right now. Debian 13 was released in August 2025 and the software freeze is based on April 2025
If you want to have a rolling release distro, then you would have to use something that is ArchLinux based. Rolling release distros are prone to more bugs and exploits. For example, the xz-utils ssh backdoor mainly affected ArchLinux, which the exploit never made it past the testing versions of Debian and Fedora.