[Discussion] Debian on new hardware

[jfabernathy]

I've been playing with Debian 12 on a number of my PCs, more as an educational effort than anything else. It was not an issue on my 10+yr old hardware or my 4 year old laptop. Not even an issue on 2 yr old Intel or AMD systems.

But recently I caught a sale on an Intel based N100 NUC from GMKtec. It came with 8GB of DRAM, 256GB NVME m2.2280 SSD with Windows pre-installed for $129. I clicked buy immediately as I was looking for an improved performance box to replace my Rasberry Pi 4. This wasn't much more than a RPI 5.

I pulled the Win 11 SSD and put in a new 1TB and upgraded the DRAM to 16GB and started to play with distro performance to get a feel for how useful the N100 is.

What I learned is that my N100 which came with RealTek WiFi and BT is too new for Debian 12 or even ubuntu based distros based on kernels that are 6.1 or older.

This made me wonder about the general philosophy of Debian to supporting new hardware. The N100 (Alder Lake N) was introduced about a year ago with deep discount systems available for about 4-6 months.

Is it generally accepted that you don't use Debian stable on hardware that is newer than the original release date of current stable version, Debian 12 in this case?
No newer hardware specific upgrades during the life of the Stable version?

[steve_v]

Is it generally accepted that you don't use Debian stable on hardware that is newer than the original release date of current stable version, Debian 12 in this case?

If you want things to work "out of the box" with stable, you'll want to check that the target hardware is supported by the stable release kernel. Realtek network controllers in particular are notorious for new revisions needing new drivers every second month.
Most drivers are developed by volunteers with minimal (if any) manufacturer support, so hardware needs to be readily available for long enough to develop a working driver, get it accepted into the mainline kernel, and test that mainline release in debian.

No newer hardware specific upgrades during the life of the Stable version?

Newer kernels and firmware packages are provided in the stable-backports repository. If you need a kernel even newer than that, there's nothing stopping you from building your own or using some third-party kernel package (e.g. liquorix). The usual caveats and warnings apply WRT installing things outside the debian repositories of course.

[jfabernathy]

Sounds like I have some experiments to try. Thanks a lot

[jfabernathy]

I did play with the stable-backport and got my N100 WiFi and BT working. So now I know that backports are the solution I was looking for. Good to know.