Quoting Jeremiah C. Foster (2019-03-21 16:55:52)
I think that a Debian stable 'base' with flatpak on top and/or backported apps will serve us well.
I think the flatpak part of such plan can be ready for our users no sooner than 6-12 months if we start invest seriously in developing maintenance for it now!
Already parts GNOME 3.32 has come into the 'Experimental' which means that it will hopefully make its way into Testing later.
Making its way into testing is relevant only when tracking Debian testing.
If tracking Debian stable instead, what is relevant is packages that has not only entered Debian testing but also has been backported to Debian stable.
Core GNOME parts have not been backported to stable - at least not in the semi-official https://backports.debian.org/ repository, as indicated by e.g. https://packages.debian.org/gnome-session (compare with e.g. https://packages.debian.org/openvpn noticing backport-* entries).
Have parts of the GNOME 3.32 desktop already in experimental shows that there is interest in Debian in having the latest GNOME.
GNOME 3.32 in experimental does not in itself tell if Debian has a _general_ interest in having latest GNOME or that is just a one-off effort.
A better indicator is looking at the flow into testing of sample GNOME parts, e.g https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/gnome-session/news/ - and then compare those dates to GNOME release dates to get the timeliness of releases entering Debian testing.
In addition, things like Geary are already flatpak'd. I'm running a 3.32 version of Geary here on PureOS Green.
Question with flatpak is not if possible to execute installed programs. but how we handle QA aspects we then no longer get from Debian - licensing and security fixes and more, for all parts also all linked in libraries and included media files etc., and when we have matured our handling to a level we dare declare stable towards our users.
What is not yet stable in Debian testing is the system as a whole. Packages should be in usable form already when uploaded to unstable!
If we choose to use Debian stable for some parts and flatpak and/or backports and/or home-maintained packages for some parts, then depending on how well we _MAINTAIN_ that whole construct we may end up fooling ourselves into having an expensive to maintain burden which is (different but) no better than Debian testing.
- Jonas