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this post was submitted on 05 Dec 2023
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They've not been supporting the same release for that entire time, though. Debian requires you to upgrade to keep getting security patches, the same way Microsoft requires you to upgrade to keep getting security patches.
Yeah, but there is almost never a need for keeping an older version of linux, unlike for Windows 10 since win11 has ridiculous system requirements
I don't have numbers for how frequently it happens, but the need to use old releases happens on both OSes. If you're using an architecture that Debian has since dropped support for, you have to stick on the old release. (They stopped supporting one of the MIPS variants recently.)
Debian also sometimes drops packages because they won't build on the newer release and there's no maintainer for the package. Now you need to stay on the old release (or port it to the new libraries yourself) if you wanna keep using it.
Debian releases are more similar to Service Packs on Windows.
Windows releases are entirely different products.
There are changes to the defaults, sometimes, but they're just that: changes to the defaults. If you're upgrading your existing install, they won't affect you.
For example: Debian switched to Gnome as its default DE a couple years ago. It used to be XFCE. However, if you already had a system with XFCE, if wouldn't go and replace it for you.
On Windows side, meanwhile, when Microsoft decide to change up the DE, you get the changes, whether you like it or not. Remember Windows 8? It's not like those who upgraded from Windows 7 got to keep their Aero theme and Start Menu.
I disagree that it's more similar to service packs. Debian has dropped entire architectures at some releases, and they frequently break binary (and sometimes source) compatibility, far more frequently than service packs do. Hardware compatibility breakage is pretty common between releases too.
It's probably true that Microsoft changes more between releases, but if you installed Debian on your 32-bit big endian MIPS hardware, you needed to switch to a different OS or buy new hardware when they drop support for Buster.
I suppose it's true for very old or more exotic hardware.
Since last year we can't even run Linux on i486 CPUs, and it's not even some relatively exotic architecture!