You are getting too worked up about this, not to mention cherry-picking.

Debian Trixie, to my knowledge, comes with Linux kernel 6.12 LTS. Many people with more modern hardware want the most modern Linux kernel -- currently 6.18 -- to support their devices. There are also countless stabilization patches (I heard some of my acquaintances praising their Linux kernel upgrades as finally giving them access to all features of various Bluetooth periphery but did not ask for details).

Having a modern kernel is important. With Debian though, it's a friction.

Can it still be done? Sure, or at least I hope so as I want to repurpose my gaming machine as a remote worker / station and the only viable choice inside WSL2 is Debian. I do hope I can somehow make Debian install a 6.18 kernel.

Furthermore, you putting the word "need" in quotes implies non-determinism or even capriciousness -- those two cannot be further from the truth.

Arch and Fedora can't come to WSL2 soon enough.

...and none of that is even touching on the issue of much older versions of all software in there. I want the latest Neovim, for example. For objective developer experience reasons.

Debian stable is for purists or server admins. Not for users.

> I do hope I can somehow make Debian install a 6.18 kernel.

There’s the backports repository.

https://backports.debian.org/

Or just understand that Debian stable can be moved to Debian testing (or even Debian unstable if even 2 weeks is too long) trivially. The best decision that Debian has ever made is not to distribute or advocate for testing as a rolling distribution, because if you're too ignorant to change your repo to testing, you're really too ignorant to be using testing.

Admitting that getting 6.18 on Debian is some sort of insurmountable mountain is not something I would do in public while trying to show off my expertise. I'm not running it, because I don't need a kernel that's been out for 5 minutes and offers me nothing that can't wait a month or two. I'm running what's current on testing, which is 6.17.13. It's about a minute of work to switch to testing. I run stable on all my servers, and testing on my laptops, it is a triviality. But to all you bleeding edge software people, it's somehow rocket surgery.

> Many people with more modern hardware want the most modern Linux kernel

To run the latest version of Progress Quest. Need biggest number available.

> Arch and Fedora can't come to WSL2 soon enough.

So, it's really still Windows, then. I assume you've moved from spending years ranting about how Linux people were purist server admins and Windows was for users and just worked, and now you've chosen the same posture after being pushed out of Windows.

> Debian stable is for purists or server admins. Not for users.

You're not a typical user. Most users want a functional computer, not the largest numbers they can find.