>> That thing of no software updates is very weird.
>> Windows 7 is many years old yet I can still use the latest version of
Firefox.
>
> Yes, but you can't run the latest Chrome on the Windows XP. And you can't
run it on Pentium 3 (because it doesn't support the latest SSE4).
> Modern software needs a modern OS and modern hardware.
>
> Microsoft has much more resources than Debian team, so they can provide
support much longer than Debian.
> This is because of money Microsoft gets for their products. But Debian is
free. Maintainers are volunteers. They simply do not have enough time to
spend it on backporting software to the ten years old distro..
>
> Sometimes software can't run on modern Windows, and Microsoft creates
shims for it (you can google for that term).
> So, they have hacks saying "if this app is called [some_app_name], change
API behaviour to support it".
>
> Linux kernel ABI is backward compatible ("We do not break the user land"
(c) Linus Torvalds): that means old software should run on the latest
kernel, but not vice versa.
> But software also depends on libraries, and libraries are not always
backward compatible.
>
> The Debian team guarantees that software installed with package manager
(apt and friends) should run fine.
> You can try to download the latest Firefox and run it on Debian 8, but
there are no guarantees for it to work.
>
> Debian has thing called LTS:
> https://wiki.debian.org/LTS
>
> People who really need long LTS use commercial distros like Redhat. But
IMHO it doesn't make any sense to use it unless you run a business that
depends on it.
> For desktop I recommend to use the "stable" version of Debian and upgrade
it every several years.
> (I now run bullseye which is the "testing" version, but it will become
stable in the next month or so: not a bleeding edge, but pretty modern and
stable at the same time)
>
>> Isn't there a way to update user programs without updating
>> the operating system itself.
>
>
> Classic UNIX and Linux approach is to install everything via package
managers and use the latest version available in package manager for the
certain OS version.
> There are modern ways to install software along with all its dependencies
much like Windows people do.
> Canonical (the company that runs Ubuntu) provides so-called "snaps".
> There is also "docker": a tool that downloads all dependencies and only
depends on your kernel.
> But again: the latest version of Firefox MAY need something that the
ancient kernel simply doesn't provide.
>
> The safest way to use Debian is to:
> * Run "stable" version on Debian
> * Upgrade it to the next "stable" once Debian team releases it
> * Install everything from the package manager.
>
> It could happen that you wouldn't be able to install the latest version
of software released last week, but on the other hand you will be sure that
this software was tested and it is stable and compatible with everything
else in your system and there are a lot of people who run the same version
of this software (along with all other libraries and the kernel) on their
production servers, so everything is rock-solid.Well, thanks for your sincerity. Now I understands things a bit better. I think I will be installing Debian 10 then. Thank you and thanks everyone else for your help.
