I sympathise with your Dad - everyone’s had updates go bad, and it’s easy to assume the “don’t fix what ain’t broke” mantra. But to do so is being willfully ignorant of basic computer security. And to be fair, Debian-stable is one of the least troublesome things to just let automatically update.

Debian and Ubuntu have the unattended-upgrades package which is designed to take a lot of the sting out of automatic updating. I’d recommend setting that up and you won’t have to touch it again.

There’s also the crontab way - “apt-get update && apt-get upgrade” at frequencies that suit you. (A check for reboot afterwards is a good idea).

I’m a debian-er at heart, as much as I’d praise it (and have, in other thread in this post), there’s one issue that might be relevant. Almost all of this has been with Debian 10 and 11, I think it’s been improved in 12, though, but I’m not sure.

See, I have sister to whom I gave laptop with Debian & Xfce. And created normal (non-admin, non-sudo) users for her as well as both of her kids. Now when they login, NetworkManager will refuse to let them use Wi-fi connection, and require them to choose a different (admin) account and type its password.

Unfortunately although I’ve been seeing this issue for years now, I never had an opportunity to test it properly, since it always seems to happen to non-admin users only. Also I’m not sure if NM can properly manage connections if a non-admin user creates it – will it let other non-admin define the same connection? And I spend 99% time on a desktop (mini-pc) with ETH connection, being sudoer, and no Xfce, so I never get to “enjoy” any of these.

(This is also particularly ironic because I always set up wireguard and tell them “if you have any problem, just call me, I can fix it remotely” – and then literally the only problem they ever have is the one I can NOT fix remotely. 😆 )

Also sometimes after login the system will bug them with “unlocking keychain” dialog which can’t be closed, but that could be just side effect of the NM issue and/or just Xfce thing.

I’ve been running Debian stable on my decade-old desktop for about 3 years, and on my ideapad that’s just as old for about 5. During that time I had an update break something only once, and it was the Nvidia driver what did it. A patch was released within a three days.

Debian epitomizes OS transparency for me. Sure, I can still customize the hell out of it and turn it into a frankenix machine, but if I don’t want to, I can be blissfully unaware of how my OS works, and focus only on important computing tasks (like mindlessly scrolling lemmy at 2 am).

Fedora Silverblue downloads new OS versions in the background and boots the newest version after a reboot. I use this for older family member who’s been traumatised by Windows updates. I have also turned off notificantions that show up after a new boot with a fresh version.

The same goes for Flatpaks. Just updates without make a fuzz.

Its nice to give old people some peace of mind regarding their computing needs!

Debian Stable - yes.

Debian Testing or Sid - 😈

Debian is the first choice if you look for stability and the last choice if you are looking for the latest versions of the software.

I think Debian with KDE would be better, at least for the current stable as KDE’s LTS release aligns better with Debian’s. I personally like the feel better, especially coming from Windows.

Speaking of which, Debian users, how safe are distribution upgrades?

I’ve been running Debian stable with unattended-upgrades on servers for years and have had no issues whatsoever.