> I recommend to use "testing" (currently Bullseye) on an individual Laptop/Desktop Computer, and leave "stable" for server or cooperate end user installations. Usually "testing" is very stable concerning reliability for the every day interactive work and during the frequent upgrades (which you should frequently apply).
>
> "stable" is so stable, that it already when published is not being perfectly up to date anymore with the newest software versions available. But for sure the provided software releases are so long time tested that no mayor bugs are expected to hit you under usual circumstances.
> Where you cannot risk the work load to maybe having to react on complaining users, or your running system simply does not need much modernization because it is doing its job and then better don't touch it unless a security update would need to be applied, then "stable" is excellent.
>
> If a user is willing to step by step face the changes of a system following current software releases, then "testing" is offering this to you. The all over experience of the users with "testing is, that it rarely breaks. Actually I never experienced this. It simply runs. It is not long time tested as "stable" because everything is always in the "testing" period for the next "stable", but "testing" does not mean "unstable". The comfort of having modern software releases available instead of feeling parked for years on unchanged apps is often worth the risk to maybe run into a bug found in a new release. In my experiences, these bugs then are usually not mission critical and users can most often afford to wait that the bug gets solved by a soon delivered next release of the software, which you can expect to soon also arrive in the "testing" distribution of Debian.
>
> So, Debian "stable" is for mission critical apps and services, therefore not offering short time only tested, newest software. Debian "testing" brings the comfort of much more up-to-date software to the screen and is commonly stable enough for the continuous, interactive desktop usage.
>
>
>
> > Apparently, only the newer versions of KDE Plasma have the performance
> > boost.
>
> I cannot confirm this. KDE Plasma is high performant and low on memory usage for years already. This was different in the far past. Consider that the internet does not forget and still shows you complains from the past although they might not apply to the current situation anymore. Also, enthusiast of other graphical desktop environments sometimes still publish such obsolete information, maybe because they years ago became full satisfied with their desktop of choice and since then did not notice the changes around anymore and are now no more well informed?
> Having had the urgent need for a more modern but also low footprint desktop to subtitute Window Maker, I years ago did not consider KDE as my candidate, because of information from highly ranked links in the web search engines. I ended up testing Xfce, Openbox and LXDE. And I tested LXQt, which was still in experimental state that time - and found that the window manager in use by LXQt could be exchanged for various available candidates. Noticing that kwin performed excellent in LXQt I wondered why KDE was reported to be sluggish and heavy on resources, if its component kwin was performing so excellently in LXQt. I gave KDE Plasma a try and found to have been blinded by obsolete reports still popping up high ranked in the web search engines. KDE Plasma was that time already a very nice choice for old machines, and nowadays it continuous to do so. KDE Plasma resource requirements compete very well with other "small footprint" desktop environments. In the end you might ask why I then decided for KDE over LXQt with kwin. Well it is because I much like the administration of keyboard shortcuts in KDE Plasma, and I much like Kate and Konsole, and also Dolphin and Krunner are very competitive, and baloo is quite helpful once the initial indexing is achieved. All this comes with KDE Plasma kind of out of the box - and perfectly competitive where only small hardware resources are available.
>
> Best wishes, Marco.
>
Very impressive that you can even compare KDE Plasma to LXQt.
I don't think there is a Debian DVD iso I can use to install Debian Bullseye.
I think I'll have to install Buster and then switch to Bullseye.
Is there a better option?
Thank you and thanks everyone for all your help.