Last night, I installed the Debian GNU / Linux 11 “Bullseye” distribution. This is a trial version of the next big release of the distribution.
The development started a few months ago, and a few days ago was released his second alpha build Debian Bullseye Installer.
Along with the 2 alpha Installers, however, Live DVDs are released with the taste that interests you (if there is anyone who is interested, or is bored due to coronavirus).
- debian-live-testing-amd64-kde + nonfree.iso (With non-free firmware Live DVD)
- firmware-bullseye-DI-alpha2-amd64-DVD-1.iso (with non-free firmware full install ISO)
- debian-live-testing-amd64-kde.iso (Live DVD)
I did the installation from the first DVD, and it went fine. The installer as in all Live ISOs, is not the classic Debian installer, but the very simple and widespread Calamares installer.
My tests so far have found no errors. Of course I have mentioned too many times that the test versions of the Debian distribution are more stable than the constants of other distributions.
Each trial version starts as a copy of the previous version (in this case the current fixed buster version is used), and then begins to develop into a state called "testing".
This does not mean that your system will crash, because new packages are only allowed to move to this distribution after a certain period of time has passed and they have not been reported with critical bugs.
The only thing you need to be aware of in the trial versions is that the security team does not develop security updates for the "testing" distribution. But this is not so important, as a change in the sources.list file fixes the problem. Just change the test version URL
deb http://security.debian.org/ testing-security main
to the URL used by the fixed distribution (buster) (at Security URL you don't need to add the non-free contribs, one main is enough)
deb http://deb.debian.org/debian buster-updates main
If you are reading this post and are thinking of trying out Linux at some point, do not do it with the Debian distribution.
It may be one of the most stable out there (dozens of other distributions use it as a base), but that doesn't mean it's easy. Almost everything your computer needs to work properly will need to be passed manually (drivers graphics, Wi-Fi, printers, etc.).