# Debian Sid Hacker Approved page: https://hackerapproved.com/p/debian-sid/ 7 people recommended Debian Sid in Hacker News comments, 1 had mixed feelings and 6 criticized it, November 2025 to October 2026. It was recommended in 4 of 12 months, in 6 threads. It does not meet the Hacker Approved badge rule. **Verdict:** Debian's rolling unstable branch, favored for fast upstream updates and access to Debian packages, and used on desktops for years. Caveat: things can break, and fixing them takes Linux knowledge. Summary written by Claude from 14 comments. ## Why people recommend it - Fast rolling upstream updates (2 comments in the sample): "I like the structured rolling updates of sid and having access to the debian ecosystem too much to switch to something else at this point." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47650750)) "Or Debian Sid, which gets upstream updates almost instantly but requires more Linux knowledge in case something gets broken." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46464846)) - Seen as stable despite its name (2 comments in the sample): "NixOS unstable, openSUSE Tumbleweed, and Debian Sid are all more stable than Arch." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48161778)) "It was never unstable except maybe in a very relative sense." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45963530)) - Long-term daily desktop use (2 comments in the sample): "I've been running Debian unstable on my desktops for something like 20 years." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48114125)) "I run sid (debian's unstable branch) on all my systems, it's great!" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46967704)) ## What people warn about - Frequent bugs and issues for daily use (2 comments in the sample): "which has caused a lot of issues for me early on" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47851234)) "they're simply too buggy for daily use" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45934948)) ## Other Linux distributions people recommend - [Debian](https://hackerapproved.com/p/debian/): 454 recommend, 64 mixed, 165 criticize - [Ubuntu](https://hackerapproved.com/p/ubuntu/): 408 recommend, 98 mixed, 444 criticize - [Fedora Linux](https://hackerapproved.com/p/fedora/): 359 recommend, 50 mixed, 109 criticize - [NixOS](https://hackerapproved.com/p/nixos/): 351 recommend, 79 mixed, 95 criticize ## The badge A product earns the Hacker Approved badge when at least 10 people recommend it, recommenders outnumber critics at least 2 to 1 (mixed feelings count toward neither side), it was recommended in at least 4 of the 12 months and in at least 5 different threads, and no single thread supplies more than half of the people who recommend it. Health and money products are never badged. ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "Debian Sid", https://hackerapproved.com/p/debian-sid/ (7 recommend, 1 mixed, 6 criticize; Hacker News comments, November 2025 to October 2026). Counts updated 2 Nov 2026, with data through October 31, 2026.