I distro hopped for a bit before finally settling in Debian (because Debian was always mentioned as a distro good for servers, or stable machines that are ok with outdated software)
And while I get that Debian does have software that isn’t as up to date, I’ve never felt that the software was that outdated. Before landing on Debian, I always ran into small hiccups that caused me issues as a new Linux user - but when I finally switched over to Debian, everything just worked! Especially now with Debian 13.
So my question is: why does Debian always get dismissed as inferior for everyday drivers, and instead mint, Ubuntu, or even Zorin get recommended? Is there something I am missing, or does it really just come down to people not wanting software that isn’t “cutting edge” release?
How bad is the situation with security updates in sid? This page shows a grim picture: https://www.debian.org/releases/sid/
It’s not monitored for security patches as it gets all the latest stuff anyways pretty quickly, security patches (and new vulnerabilities) included. It’s just not meant to be hardened nor rock solid as it’s excactly what it claims to be: development branch of the whole project. That doesn’t mean it’s insecure by default, it just works differently from stable releases where security patches are provided for years after official release.