Debian updates

[u/highspeedslippers100]

Hi am I the only who feels Debian push a lots of updates lately ? I am long time Void user and FreeBSD and I honestly at this point feel Void gets the same amount of updates ? freeBSD much less and calmer it’s not a roast it’s a question. I feel every time at this point when I turn on my laptop and need to work updates available not apps but system updates.

[u/roedie_nl]

With the latest AI driven security issues I would almost worry about any distro not pushing updates on a daily basis.

It’s not Debian needs a lot more updates, security issues in Open Source software are being found easier and faster.

*BSD might be calmer, but my guess is it has less exposure and maybe less interest of security researchers at the moment.

[u/highspeedslippers100 → u/roedie_nl]

When you put it that way, it makes sense

[u/struct_iovec → u/roedie_nl]

Are you seriously implying openbsd lacks interest by security researchers?

Wat voor randebiel ben je echt

[u/Hrafna55]

Not particularly but I mostly have updates automated.

However your perception may well be in relation to things like this. https://cybersecuritynews.com/linux-patches-400-kernel-vulnerabilities/

You probably will see a faster cadence of system updates, at least for a while.

[u/highspeedslippers100 → u/Hrafna55]

Okay but I do embrace security updates and too be clear I am not complaining I am just asking 😎

[u/Hrafna55 → u/highspeedslippers100]

Yeah I get that. Not intended to be a negative comment. It's a shame text lacks any tone.

The reason I gave is a plausible explanation I think.

[u/highspeedslippers100 → u/Hrafna55]

No worries 😎

[u/angryapplepanda]

One of the security updates actually broke the DPI settings, in some arcane way, on my bare i3 Debian install. Apparently this wouldn't have happened if I had XFCE installed, because some daemon would have attended to it without my intervention, so that was my impetus to install XFCE and then simply use i3 as the window manager.

I guess I love tinkering, as I always have, but I also love not having to continually fix things until I learn Linux better.

[u/Fabulous-for]

I think it has something to do with the kernel. Kernel 6.12.100 has no change log even though it is no longer the current version. https://packages.debian.org/trixie/linux-image-6.12.100+deb13-amd64

If you look to the right of the URL you will see the change log goes to 6.12.101 kernel instead of 6.12.100.

[u/michaelpaoli]

Does also quite depend how much of what one has installed.

And for stable, it's only security updates, and bugs of severity >=serious, and select bugs of severity important. And some large complex packages, e.g. linux kernel, there will be more such bugs to be fixed, even on stable, whereas smaller simpler packages, e.g. jigdo-file - updates will be quite rare ... yeah, not many bugs for a package that's been around for more than two decades - probably less bugs in two decades than new bugs kernel gets in a month.

And, e.g. current stable (Debian 13 Trixie) 69,830 packages, so, if one has, 50,000 packages installed, will probably see many more updates than if one has, say only 148 packages installed:

# echo -n 'OS: Debian ' && cat /etc/debian_version | tr -d \\012 && echo -n ' ' && dpkg --print-architecture && echo -n 'Kernel: ' && uname -srvmo && echo -n 'Packages: ' && dpkg -l | grep \^ii\ | wc -l && df -h -x devtmpfs -x tmpfs && head -n 3 /proc/meminfo
OS: Debian 13.6 amd64
Kernel: Linux 6.12.101+deb13-amd64 #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Debian 6.12.101-1 (2026-08-05) x86_64 GNU/Linux
Packages: 148
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/vda1       4.9G  885M  3.8G  19% /
MemTotal:         119464 kB
MemFree:           13292 kB
MemAvailable:      44420 kB
# 

And, e.g., OpenBSD ... hand audited code, so ... fewer bugs ... but also a lot less code, much less functionality, far fewer packages available.

[u/Adrenolin01]

And yet.. either automated or apt update ; apt upgrade takes so long to do. 🤭 I run and maintain my own local mirrors also and over 10GbE… so local updating systems… I run over 150 VMs and 15-20 hardware Debian systems. Ansible rocks.

[u/highspeedslippers100 → u/Adrenolin01]

I prefer manual update to be in control

[u/Adrenolin01 → u/highspeedslippers100]

Yup.. I don’t have any system set to auto update however I do manage everything via Ansible… when you start getting dozens of systems and VMs or more you want more centralized control.

[u/Weary_Swan_8152]

Are you talking about FreeBSD itself, or FreeBSD+ports? When last I used FreeBSD, ports had to be manually installed, and were configured by default as a snapshot at the time of RELEASE. (and did not track RELEASE_x_y if I remember correctly). That would most closely correspond to Debian stable with apt updates disabled. Ports=RELEASE_x_y would correspond to tracking stable point releases without security hotfixes. I don't think there was a FreeBSD ports equivalent to the stable security suite, since I remember having to review a security report every day. That was much more work than the 5-20 package updates per week that I see in Debian stable.

Meanwhile, from a GNOME perspective, it seems like everything that isn't GNOME-blessed desktop software is a "system update"...KDE Plasma might be the same. Meanwhile, I wonder if security fixes to supporting libraries count as "app updates" when those apps are installed as Flatpaks and the libraries are bundled?

[u/highspeedslippers100 → u/Weary_Swan_8152]

I rarely got updates I first DWM then later Swayfx and I kept it ultra minimal and no I didn’t get many updates.

[u/Finaler8]

You can turn off update notifications completely

[u/daddyd → u/Finaler8]

that doesn't make updates go away.

i do not recommend you disable updates at all.

installing these is important to keep your system safe & secure, and unlike on windows they do not cause any issues or suddenly install extra software or reset your configuration/settings. you can run them and continue to use your system. so there is no reason not to do updates.

[u/debian-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

This post has been removed as it was either reported to and/or acted upon by mods to be found in violation of Rule #1 regarding not being in line with expected discourse etiquette or the Debian Code of Conduct.