@scottalanmiller said in Debian 11 & php8:

Debian 12 "Bookworm" is, in theory, under a month away and is going to PHP 8.2. So that is very good. But the long release cycles are always going to be a challenge that there isn't really a reason for.

Not a challenge at all but the reason to run "stable" is for stability. Meaning an update will never break your system and you get bug fixes and security updates. You won't get new features but you won't get new bugs that breaks your system either or changed functionality.

If you don't want or need that stability and favor new shiny things then you just install debian "testing". It's a rolling release.

Debian is not just one distro. Many companies run "testing" on workstations and "stable" on production servers.

There is a third option and that is Debian "unstable". Then you get new packages as soon as they are available. This is for the enthusiasts and debian developers primarily and not recommended for the general user that just wants something that works.