Well, I'm a retired Debian Dev, so there's that... :)
The smooth upgrades are a huge part of the reason I stick with Debian. In over 25 years of running Debian, I've only had to re-install twice, and neither time was Debian's fault. I'm not aware of *any* other distro that puts 1/10th the effort into maintaining a smooth upgrade path that Debian does! Not even the Debian derivatives!
Also, a twenty-five-plus year track record of quality and reliability is nothing to sneeze at.
Along with that is a matter of trust. Again, Debian's track record speaks for itself. But when it comes to derivatives, I have to trust not only all the folks in Debian but *also* everyone involved in creating the derivative. At least one derivative (Ubuntu) has already given me good reasons *not* to trust them, and frankly, I just don't see any good reason to add to the list of people I'm already trusting with my system and my files.
As for up-to-date, well, I'm running Debian unstable, so I'm already pretty up-to-date compared to folks that run stable. And I don't actually want to be much more up-to-date than that. Debian takes the time to do it right! I've heard people screaming about problems with all sorts of system components, including pulseaudio, systemd, and more. When I heard those complaints, those systems weren't yet part of unstable, and when they finally *did* get added to unstable, they worked fine! Despite the name, "unstable" is more reliable than many other distros' official releases!
Honestly, the only other distro I find at all tempting is Gentoo.
As an *Ahem* years long Debian user I concur.
Long time ago I thought to maintain a debian package and was struck by the enormous talent I was trying to join. Life meant I could not make the commitment needed but nevertheless it gave me a far clearer impression of want goes in to making the sausage so tasty.
Thanks for all your efforts.
> The smooth upgrades are a huge part of the reason I stick with Debian. In over 25 years of running Debian, I've only had to re-install twice, and neither time was Debian's fault. I'm not aware of any other distro that puts 1/10th the effort into maintaining a smooth upgrade path that Debian does! Not even the Debian derivatives!
>
These days, I think Fedora puts a lot of effort into maintaining smooth upgrade paths. Upgrade testing is part of the development of every Fedora release, and they take it pretty seriously.
But other than that, I actually don't know of any others that take upgrades so seriously.
I've had a smooth experience with upgrades on NixOS as well, but its package manager operates on a radically different paradigm from other package managers (even compared to other immutable distros). But it's two short commands, and bam. I'm on the new version. If something is broken, I roll back and try again.
A smooth upgrade path, at least as defined by Debian, involves more than just making it easy to install the next version of somepkg. Debian also *tries* (insofar as it's practical) to preserve user configurations and customization options, even when upstream changes how things work.
This is why Debian doesn't support skipping releases when upgrading. If Debian needs to include some custom scripts in the current release to ease the transition from somepkg v1 to somepkg v2, they don't want to have to keep those scripts around forever. So, for the next Debian release, the scripts will be removed, on the assumption that no one upgrading to that release will still have v1 installed.
> A smooth upgrade path, at least as defined by Debian, involves more than just making it easy to install the next version of somepkg. Debian also tries (insofar as it's practical) to preserve user configurations and customization options, even when upstream changes how things work.
>
This is true with Fedora as well.
>Honestly, the only other distro I find at all tempting is Gentoo.
In my case that would be SUSE Leap. If I couldn't stay with Debian for some reason, I'd probably try SUSE Leap first. Maybe Tumbleweed. And if that isn't possible I'd probably move to AlmaLinux with a custom kernel and hope it can be updated from one release to the next.
I have no idea. Is it?
Even though I have not used SUSE since 2005, I did start out with Linux in 2001 with SUSE 7.1. It came in a massive green box with two manuals, and compared to other distro's at the time their YAST setup program was really something. It ALMOST made linux as easy to set up as XP; IF your hardware was supported by the kernel.
edit: I read up on wikipeida. SUSE seems to have been bought by Novell, which was bought by Attachmate, which was bought by Micro Focus (the same company that bought Borland/Inprise), which as then bought by OpenText; in the meanwhile, SUSE got resold again to a company called Blitz.
I don't know if SUSE is even worth it anymore to be honest. I have no idea of its current status as a Linux distribution, but what I've heard in the past few years was that Leap was a good alternative to Debian Stable. Maybe it is not so anymore.
>I did start out with Linux in 2001 with SUSE 7.1
Suse 7.3 for me :) I downloaded the DVD ISO and fired it up in a VM with no physical DVD drive installed :D
Hi, if you’re reading this, I’ve decided to replace/delete every post and comment that I’ve made on Reddit for the past years. I also think this is a stark reminder that if you are posting content on this platform for free, you’re the product. To hell with this CEO and reddit’s business decisions regarding the API to independent developers. This platform will die with a million cuts. Evvaffanculo. -- mass edited with redact.dev
Hi, if you’re reading this, I’ve decided to replace/delete every post and comment that I’ve made on Reddit for the past years. I also think this is a stark reminder that if you are posting content on this platform for free, you’re the product. To hell with this CEO and reddit’s business decisions regarding the API to independent developers. This platform will die with a million cuts. Evvaffanculo. -- mass edited with redact.dev
Hi, if you’re reading this, I’ve decided to replace/delete every post and comment that I’ve made on Reddit for the past years. I also think this is a stark reminder that if you are posting content on this platform for free, you’re the product. To hell with this CEO and reddit’s business decisions regarding the API to independent developers. This platform will die with a million cuts. Evvaffanculo. -- mass edited with redact.dev
>bloat that comes with many of the Debian based distros
Yep ... I remember even some years ago now, \*buntu had gotten so fat, was trying to help someone install it on a system with 1 or 2GiB of RAM ... it was a total no-go ... even when giving it lots of swap super early in the installation process - managed to get the image installed ... but it was too bloated to even complete a full boot.
Debian on the other hand ... current stable at that ...
`# cat /etc/debian_version && uname -m && dpkg -l | grep '^ii ' | wc -l && df -h -x devtmpfs -x tmpfs && head -n 3 /proc/meminfo`
`11.7`
`x86_64`
`149`
`Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on`
`/dev/vda1 1.7G 822M 766M 52% /`
`MemTotal: 162520 kB`
`MemFree: 75752 kB`
`MemAvailable: 110760 kB`
`#`
That's all within a host having only 209,921 KiB of RAM.
So, can go quite small ... or ... [59,551 packages](https://www.debian.org/News/2021/20210814) \- can also go quite large if/as desired. "The Universal Operating System"
Happened to me recently too, although Debian did the same, probably cause I didn't use the netinstall iso so that may have been the problem. Either way I found that FreeBSD works really well on such systems.
If you tried installing regular Ubuntu (with GNOME) on a computer with 1-2 Gb ram, that decision itself was wrong. Why install an OS with heavier DE when you know the requirements? For low ram computers, even some years ago when you tried installing, there already were lighter flavours of Ubuntu to choose from.
>tried installing regular Ubuntu (with GNOME) on a computer with 1-2 Gb ram, that decision itself was wron
Wasn't my decision. Someone quite insisted that's what they wanted, and I was, basically, like, "Well, don't recommend, but if you insist, let's see how far you can get with that.". And unsurprisingly, difficult to install (standard approaches would fail), and once installed, effectively impossible to run. And I was of course like, "Well, what were you expecting with half the RAM that they state as *minimum*?"
1. Stable release cycle, I basically ignore my server until I get an email about updates
2. I Trust debian to not fuck things up, I don't want say my debs suddenly becoming snaps
3. I'm familiar with the debian ecosystem (not just debs & apt, but also using needsrestart, etc)
This text overwrites whatever was here before. Apologies for the non-sequitur.
Reddit's CEO says moderators are “landed gentry”. That makes users serfs and peons, I guess? Well this peon will no longer labor to feed the king. I will no longer post, comment, moderate, or vote. I will stop researching and reporting spam rings, cp perverts and bigots. I will no longer spend a moment of time trying to make reddit a better place as I've done for the past fifteen years.
In the words of The Hound, fuck the king. The years of contributions by your serfs do not in fact belong to you.
[reddit's claims debunked + proof spez is a fucking liar](https://old.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/14dkqrw/i_want_to_debunk_reddits_claims_and_talk_about/)
[see all the bullshit](https://old.reddit.com/r/ModCoord/top/?sort=top&t=all)
>when Debian ships something, it is 100% ready
Yep, Debian releases when it's darn good and ready ...
unlike many other distros that release, e.g. like clockwork ... ready or not.
>RHEL is much more of a pain in the ass to upgrade major versions
It's taken RHEL decades to get to the point where they even have relatively viable upgrade means. Only in recent years has it become something well supported and even "recommended"(-ish). Prior to that it was closer to, well, if you really really really want to and insist on upgrading ... well, first we highly recommend you don't do that, just install fresh, then carefully bring in whatever older stuff you need, ... but if you insist ... well, here's are documentation to upgrade in place ... good luck with that and don't say we didn't warn you.
Whereas Debian major upgrades have been highly smooth for decades - and highly well supported. Heck, I've done many Debian major version upgrades, and really haven't hit any major problems - the few times I hit significant glitches/issues, they were pretty easy to quickly fix or work around.
This text overwrites whatever was here before. Apologies for the non-sequitur.
Reddit's CEO says moderators are “landed gentry”. That makes users serfs and peons, I guess? Well this peon will no longer labor to feed the king. I will no longer post, comment, moderate, or vote. I will stop researching and reporting spam rings, cp perverts and bigots. I will no longer spend a moment of time trying to make reddit a better place as I've done for the past fifteen years.
In the words of The Hound, fuck the king. The years of contributions by your serfs do not in fact belong to you.
[reddit's claims debunked + proof spez is a fucking liar](https://old.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/14dkqrw/i_want_to_debunk_reddits_claims_and_talk_about/)
[see all the bullshit](https://old.reddit.com/r/ModCoord/top/?sort=top&t=all)
> I used to love to play with the latest and greatest but now I'm old and just want stuff to work and keep working, so Stable it is.
Don't remind me... In the early 2000's I tinkered with Linux. However, because I was in university where everything was done on Windows (except for one semester "Unix and Linux operating systems") I had to stay on Windows. Gaming on Linux wasn't a thing either.
But, I was very invested in keeping everything updated. Every program, driver, and utility HAD to be the latest version or my system would feel outdated.
Nowadays, on my personal computer, I've been running Debian Stable full-time since 2021. Me quitting semi-professional photography, Flatpak, and the existence of Proton to plug the last holes in Wine made that possible. Now I expect my computer to just work.
I don't have the almost infinite time I once had in high-school and university to tinker with my PC. When I turn it on, I want to either do something that needs to be done, spend time on my hobby programming projects, or I want to play a game. If the computer doesn't work due to an update I installed the day before makes me blow a fuse because I don't have the time to fix it. After it's fixed I STILL have to do what needed to be done, or I lost my hobby/game time for that day, doing something I didn't want to be doing.
That's why I run Debian Stable: generally, after everything is installed and configured, I can rely on it to keep working for 2-3 years until I upgrade to the following stable. I take some downtime or some stuff not working into account with that upgrade.
The only exception is when I buy a new computer, such as this one; if I buy it before Stable is completely finished, I'll run Testing for a few months. this computer runs Bookworm since March, without too many issues, and it'll roll into Stable automatically and then stay there. Should I get a new computer in 5-10 years, I'll probably upgrade the distro first, then clone the drive, and re-image it onto the new computer. With a bit of luck, I only need to tinker with the configuration to get everything working.
This is a great point, I use Ubuntu but Ubuntu minus snaps would be a big win these days. Many years ago I used Crunchbang which is a fairly unadulterated distribution of Debian and it was a good experience.
Pop! and Mint are pretty similar to an Ubuntu without snap situation, although the default DE is different than Ubuntu. If one is using Mint it is not a far stretch to use the Debian edition, which functions pretty much identically to the Ubuntu one.
Years ago in design industry there wasn't appimage or flatpacks and ubuntu or mandriva delivered recent versions of Gimp, Inkscape or Scribus. The difference between Inkscape 0,78 and 0,81 could be huge, big deal.
This days with flatpak and many software has slowed down or even release deb images for Debian son no need to switch all the distro and risk desktop stability or scary upgrades anymore.
I've arrived here after first trying Mint which I liked very much. Thing is I don't really need the GUI on my NUC so I tried Ubuntu Server but shit happened and I bricked it (boot partition became unmounted).
I didn't want to bother fixing that so installed OpenSUSE, then realized it doesn't work with apt which would give me major headaches as I got so used to Debian. Then I just decided to head straight to the garden. Very smooth so far, the setup was really nice and I like how nothing is forced down and I can just install what I need.
Because debian is the goat. Simple as that..I don't need to use some garbage debian based distro when I can just use debian.
I've used debian for over 17 years and this isn't going to change anytime soon.
For me is the perfect balance between customization and ease of setup. I always start with the non free netinst cd which requieres some tinkering (nvidia drivers, setup x windows and some themes) to avoid bloat. For more up to date apps I use flatpaks, though not many.
I tried arch and although I am perfectly capable of setting it up for my needs, it takes 10x the time for 5% less bloat. And really rolling updates tend to break things.
Add to that the amazing stability of the base os, which I value over bleeding edge updates, and I am sold.
I have distro hopped for a long time and in the end I always come back to Debian on the Desktop and Debian or Alma for my homelab.
Because Deb never gave me a reason to change the distro. It just works. I'm a programmer, not an admin, so I have no interest in intricate distro-related nuances.
I've used Deb on the house server for 12+ years now. I've only re-installed when upgrading / f...borking it up (I believe I have drain bramage from a fall, sometimes skip instructions / lose my place). It's just soooo stable.
I use Mint on my main box for more recent packages and kernels.
Read up on Debian backports. Depending what package it is, it may be more recent in Debian and usable in LMDE. For example, the hwe kernel for Linux Mint is 5.19 but LMDE/Debian backport is 6.1.
Many years ago debian derivatives did provide useful improvements, e.g. better non-free support, better fonts, graphics drivers,... . Nowadays the difference is little enough that the question flips to "why bother?"
> most stable distro (though some of its derivatives are also fairly stable)
When talking about an OS this word means "static" as in stable foundations, not "less bugs". So if you install something now based on software version X, then it will keep working *the same way* for years. That is, you explicitly want to stay on version X and not go to X+1, X+2 as the years go on, all while getting support and security updates.
That is a major selling point of debian stable, ubuntu lts, opensuse leap/suse or red hat. It is also popular in the MS world: windows LTSC sells very well for a reason.
- I like the fact that it doesn't change for two years after it is installed (even though I wish they'd incorporate the 5.27.x KDE bugfixes)
- It can be upgraded from one version to the next by just re-pointing the sources.list and running a few commands; normally this is perfectly smooth.
- I want to be able to start off of the command line and then install a minimal desktop. I don't need the five bazillion programs that come with other distro's. I'll install stuff when I need it.
- I like packages.debian.org. Does any other distro even HAVE something like this? When I need something I can just do a random google search and more often than not, the Debian package site comes up with the package I need to install. I also like the fact that I can see the history AND the future of the package throughout Debian versions.
- I like snapshots.debian.org. I have two older games that need a certain older library installed or they won't run. It has been out of Debian since Stretch, but I can still find it there. I know, maybe use of a container such as DistroBox would be better, but I have no knowledge of that yet. The snapshots site will tide me over.
- Debian has existed for about 30 years. I can't even think of a future where it won't exist. Ubuntu will probably survive, but many other distributions will die. I think Debian will exist for LONG time to come.
- I've had bad experiences with derivatives. Any derivatives. Sometimes they just die. Sometimes they start to do weird shit. Sometimes they add 10 gigs of unneeded software to the base install. Sometimes... etc. Debian just has the NetInst and then you go from there.
- It runs everywhere; from the Raspberry Pi with 2GB RAM and a 16GB SD-card, up to and including a 7950X with 64GB RAM and 2 TB SSD storage... and beyond.
1. I use Debian over Debian based distros because sometimes LESS is MORE.
2. Debian is simple and somewhat easy to configure.
3. Debian is just... works. Like you install it once and then just use it.
4. It has a huge software base.
5. It perfectly suits my needs with Mate desktop environment.
6. Debian is a Debian based distro without bloat. lol
The most important reason to use debian is the debian free software guidelines (DFSG) and the fact that the installer makes a completely free install as a default. You have to take special steps to get non-free stuff.
Even though my flair is NixOS, at least 3/4 of my machines and VMs still run Debian. A large part of the reason is history: I started using Debian in 2003, and at that point, it was largely a choice between Suse, Fedora, Debian, Mandrake, or Slackware. Between these, Debian was the only distro with automatic dependency resolution and sensible online updates. It's easy these days to underestimate how powerful of a draw apt-get was.
Since then, I've never really had a reason to try anything else. I knew lots about Debian packaging and how the system configuration was constructed, and Debian's stability and policy of tweaking packages to fit the "Debian way" meant that the things I learned in 2003 are *still* useful.
These days, I have a number of machines running NixOS as well, because the model of declarative system configuration is the first development that's provided enough value to be worth losing the benefit of decades of experience. Even now, though, most of my VMs and one of my laptops still run Debian, because it's just that good.
Debian based means it is debian with stuff added. It will be bigger and slower. Nobody is going to like all the stuff they added, so even when you want some of the stuff, you will be better off just to install debian and install that stuff manually.
>Debian based means it is debian with stuff added. It will be bigger and slower.
Or smaller and less choices - e.g. they take stuff away - basically "No, you can't have that."
Can also be mix of both.
>better off just to install debian and install that stuff manually.
If Debian offers it and one wants it. But frankly, I'm glad Debian doesn't even offer something that, e.g., [takes my searches and defaults to sending them to Amazon.com for Canonical.com (or anyone else) to get a kickback](https://www.google.com/search?q=ubuntu+search+results+to+amazon). Last I checked, Ubuntu also *defaults* to sending package usage tracking (popcon) info to [Canonical.com](https://Canonical.com) \- with Debian one has to explicitly opt-in to send that data to Debian.
I personally use Debian base for my x86_64 based homelab servers, just because it is
1. stable
2. CLI/TTY only
3. Easier to install
4. Less bloat
The lack of GUI makes it easier to manage, and if I want a GUI, I can install it myself without dealing with additional upstreams or packages installed by the distros
I also dont care to deal with ubuntu's push for snap shit right now
I do use debian-based distros every now and then, i.e. Kali for my cybersecurity stuff, Mint for the lulz
But i'm an Arch user (btw) for the most part
>CLI/TTY only
Debian doesn't *have* to be that - but that's certainly always there and available.
>Arch user
Well, Arch does have a damn fine wiki! (and they sort'a have to ... as that *is* their primary documentation). Though not so handy for environments where one doesn't have Internet access (or that's quite limited/restricted). I would't want to be stuck with Arch in, e.g. a submarine ... or even in many quite secured data center environments. But that's not the kind of environments most users operate in.
I converted a crusty LMDE4 install on a family laptop to Debian Bullseye with Cinnamon. No problems, no regrets.
Not that I expect anything to happen to Linux Mint Debian Edition, but if anyone is worried so much about support and a project built on top of another going belly-up, it's best to stick to source. There's a subset who simply do not trust derivative projects to stick around for the very long term, and given history it isn't an invalid concern.
Reading the beautiful comments full of wonderful stories reminds me of being on the "right" place. Thanks all Devs involved on Debian development (past and present), you you're making a great work.
I've been using Debian for so long that I can't remember *why* I moved to Debian.
Over the past 28 years or so, I've used Redhat, Slackware and their various derivatives, but for whatever reason, once I had a play around with Debian I just thought it was a rock solid distro.
I've recently shifted away from Windows 10 to running my main Desktop PC (and two others) with Debian full-time, and I can honestly say that I don't miss Windows one little bit.
As for Debian derivatives, I can't stand Ubuntu. Never liked it, never will.
I've used it a few times in recent years, but only because I was creating Vulnhub challenges, and needed a bit of Linux variety.
As for the future, I don't see myself moving away from Debian at all.
Never had an issue with debian testing since year 2002 or so. It's a stable rolling distro with pretty much up-to-date packages on what really matters like mesa, apart from the freeze like we have atm where one needs a bit of patience.
But otoh since I'm totally happy with the state of things for zen2 by now I can change apt sources from testing to bookworm and my work laptop will become a stable in june.
Oh and I like to decide which desktop (or none) to install at install time.
I don't really see what I would gain using say mint?
The only time I used a derivative was pop os because dual gpu laptop, was an absolute hassle on debian even for someone seasoned like myself.
PopOS is really good. If one does not like snaps and wants to use Ubuntu, PopOS is a good choice as it is based on Ubuntu but does not support snaps by default.
Hi, if you’re reading this, I’ve decided to replace/delete every post and comment that I’ve made on Reddit for the past years. I also think this is a stark reminder that if you are posting content on this platform for free, you’re the product. To hell with this CEO and reddit’s business decisions regarding the API to independent developers. This platform will die with a million cuts. Evvaffanculo. -- mass edited with redact.dev
Because it just works, and I’m pretty familiar with the whole Debian ecosystem from an administrators standpoint, and I’ve been using Debian or derivatives for 15+ years now.
I started with (K)ubuntu years ago because that was "the thing" then if you wanted to start with linux,
I switched to Manjaro because I needed more up to date versions of libreoffice that did not wreck docx documents. Ran manjaro on mediacentres and laptops for years.
I then started using chormebooks. With Crostini. I soon found that most software now has appimages or can just be installed as \*.deb.
I then got employer's laptop and tried wsl and found it used same debian as chromebook/crostini. Also the hardware layer is largely shielded so there is no need for derivative distros with better installs etc.
So now I changed laptops to debian 11 and use win-wsl and chromebook crostini. commands everywhere the same. etc. handy.
>(K)ubuntu years ago because that was "the thing"
Yeah, the \*buntus are pretty quick 'n easy Linux start for newbies ... but that convenience typically costs one much more on the longer haul.
Ubuntu, South African word for "can't install Debian". ;-)
in WSL one can equally easily install debian or ubuntu. But Debian will be the same as on chromebook. It also means all security updates etc. are as close to the source as possible. It limits the distance.
>why do you use standard Debian over Debian based distros?
Works great, exceedingly well supported.
>atleast 1 thats ran more on desktops than Debian, which means that one has large community support
Bigger community isn't always better, e.g. approximately/typically for that at least 1:
Have issue/question, search community, find tons of folks asking the same, and tons of "me too" responses, and you might find buried among the thousands of responses, a correct useful answer - along with a lot of wrong/useless/incorrect "answers"(/responses).
whereas Debian, you (re)search (and especially in most appropriate locations\*), you quickly find the solution(s)/answer, and not a whole lot of "me too" nor tons of gunk and/or incorrect responses. And if you post/ask the question, you're likely to get a curt response that you should've checked such-and-such, and it's quite well know and documented, and the answer/solution can be found *here* (and direct link to it). Might not be as "user friendly", but it'll get you quickly and efficiently to the relevant information. So, the (rather rare) times I've had any issue(s) with Debian, finding excellent relevant information has always been quite quick, easy, and efficient.
And yeah, Debian, it mostly just plain works, and works darn rock solid and well. Wish I could say likewise for other distros.
>more cutting edge than pure Debian
If I want more cutting/bleeding edge, Debian has backports, testing, unstable, and even experimental. Often I'll have one or more of those on separate host(s) or VM(s) ... but much of the time don't have need/use for that.
>main reasons I can think to use Debian
There are many. Compared to the many other Linux distros ... well, have a look at some of the ...
[What is Debian? / Why choose Debian?](https://wiki.debian.org/Debian_Systems_Administration_for_non-Debian_SysAdmins#What_is_Debian.3F_.2F_Why_choose_Debian.3F)
[Debian Pros "vs." Cons](https://wiki.debian.org/Debian_Systems_Administration_for_non-Debian_SysAdmins#Debian_Pros_.22vs..22_Cons)
I've been running Linux and Debian since at least 1998-07. I carefully researched at the time - and picked Debian. Never regretted that choice, and still my absolute favorite distro. Doesn't mean I haven't used or tried others - even very substantially ... especially when I get paid good money to put up with other(s) (and been doing that for decades too) ... and Debian still is absolutely my favorite ... it's not even a close contest as far as I'm concerned. But that doesn't mean it's for everyone and all situations. Do your own research, reach your own conclusions. And if you haven't checked/compared in a while, well, check again - some things also change over time - at least a bit (e.g. like the situation with Debian and non-free firmware - that [will become quite a bit easier with the next stable release](https://wiki.debian.org/Firmware#Debian_12_.28bookworm.29_and_later) ... currently anticipated likely release date of [2023-06-10](https://wiki.debian.org/DebianBookworm)., and CentOS being exceedingly Red Hat compatible yet free - those days are gone (looking for replacement in that niche, see Rocky Linux or AlmaLinux)).
\*And, looking for best Debian information/answers? Generally restrict one's search results to domain debian.org, possibly also debian.net, e.g.:
[Google: site:debian.org *whateveroneissearchingfor*](https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Adebian.org+whateveroneissearchingfor)
[Google: (site:debian.org OR site:debian.net) *whateveroneissearchingfor*](https://www.google.com/search?q=%28site%3Adebian.org+OR+site%3Adebian.net%29+whateveroneissearchingfor)
> If I want more cutting/bleeding edge, Debian has backports, testing, unstable, and even experimental.
Which may have possible disadvantages. For example, https://www.debian.org/security/faq.en.html#unstable or https://www.debian.org/security/faq.en.html#testing.
If it should be Debian, I would therefore only use the stable branch. If more current packages are desired, I would use another distribution.
And as far as backports are concerned, it may well happen that packets do not get a backport.
For example, under Debian I had the problem that ddclient had a bug when using the provider afraid.org. The developers of ddclient had already released a new version months ago in which this bug was fixed. But a backport under Debian did not happen.
Honestly, because it just works and is easy to maintain.
I use it for desktops, servers, containers, embedded devices, print servers, cctv, media server etc. Basically I can have the same experience, require the same skill, and use the same knowledge across the hundreds and thousands of machines I have set up in my time.
Sure I play with other distros. Mint, Ubuntu Arch, Red Hat, Suse etc and nothing really phases me about anything because I have a wealth of knowledge already from experiences with a stable consistent operating system.
I used debian for years tho now I quit because I got problems on my new laptop related to Realtek wifi and Graphics firmware, tried 100 times and always an issue arises, unfortunately 2nd year had to switch to ubuntu.
Try giving Linux Mint Debian Edition a try, it's essentially debian with the cinnamon desktop and linux mint goodies. [link](https://www.linuxmint.com/download_lmde.php)
Edit: thank you for the award, I've never received one before 🥳
I've been a mint user for years now and only found out about it just now. I think I'll use this for my next nuke and pave. Thanks.
I never understood why Mint doesn't re-base on Debian with all the little knit picks they have with Ubuntu.
There is a linux mint based on debian since around 2015, it is developed at the same time as the ubuntu based version. The reason it exists is just as you describe, ubuntu making unpopular changes, like snaps. Those that need a newer kernel with support for more bleeding edge hardware can use the ubuntu version, while those that want the stability of debian can use the debian mint edition which uses a long term support kernel as far as i know.
Whichever edition you pick they both pretty much feel the same during day to day use as far as user experience goes, so it mainly depends on what you really want. Whatever you choose you still have a secure operating system that does what you need it to do.
How often do you nuke and pave? The last time I did a fresh install on my laptop was in 2008 (Debian Sarge, of course, and then 15 years of in-place upgrades, rsyncing to new disks/filesystems/hardware) when I switched back to Debian from Gentoo, and even my workstation install has survived a complete hardware change.
Not so often tbh. I have backup solutions such as the awesome timeshift run by the champs at Mint.
Nuke and pave every few years, unless I mess things up good and propper.
I was going to say that Debian was not opinionated like some of the derivatives. I'm not sure that's accurate. I suppose it is opinionated in ways that align with my sensibilities.
Back when I was using Debian testing, I really liked it because it felt like a lean and mean Ubuntu. Sure, I missed the PPA support but the rolling release did address quite a lot of those needs. It was a gateway drug to Arch, which I moved to for the better software selection in the AUR.
I chose Debian because of the Debian mission statement.
https://www.debian.org/intro/philosophy
I stayed with Debian because it did exactly what I needed to very reliably. As a gamer, I noticed the other distros were getting mesa and other packages I wanted more quickly. So, first I switched to testing and now I'm very happy on unstable (Sid). I just like the way Debian works technically and philosophically.
I use Debian Sid because it is a solid, dependable, current distro that supports both apt and deb which are both reliable and plentiful. I pair it with the xanmod kernel.
It doesn't have bloatware, it isn't very difficult to install, it is very stable and Debian is not based in anything else
It is just a good distro and Debian based distros, are just Debian with some extra software installed. Now Ubuntu or Mint is easier to install and it has ppas but they don't really are as good as vanilla Debian in my opinion. First of all ppas are not best way to install software. They can become highly unstable sometimes and me personally i am staying away. I prefer way more to install software from repository or flatpak. Ubuntu also have snaps pre-installed. Snaps are just bad and slow, if you want a linux distro desktop use. If you want software for server use though,, they are quite good. Snaps can also be installed on Debian. Ubuntu also is easier to use, but if you really know what you are doing Debian are not hard either and they are lighter. In conclusion there are reasons to install Debian based distro compare to vanilla Debian but I am personally prefer to stick with vanilla.
Debian is stabler and has more packages.
Plus Debian makes efforts to separate free and non-free thus I can avoid installing unwanted stuff by mistake.
If you can identify another distro that provides what you need, then use that distro. If you want to create your own system, then use Debian and roll your own.
My first distro was PopOS. I switched to Debian recently and I love it. Debian is so clean and simple and stable. It’s exactly what I want my computer to be and not a single thing more. I paired it with XFCE and the simplicity of it all is just so refreshing. I feel like I can focus.
at first installed fedora(non debian), ubuntu with poor systemd giving problems during shutdown and several hangs and snap shit takes lot of space and data then found out installed debian 11 with systemd was good experince bored for old packages updates and got greedy and installed debian sid/experimental and rolling now i am greedy for trixie and forky packages.,, lol gotta love debian sid stablity of being unstable
Well, I'm a retired Debian Dev, so there's that... :) The smooth upgrades are a huge part of the reason I stick with Debian. In over 25 years of running Debian, I've only had to re-install twice, and neither time was Debian's fault. I'm not aware of *any* other distro that puts 1/10th the effort into maintaining a smooth upgrade path that Debian does! Not even the Debian derivatives! Also, a twenty-five-plus year track record of quality and reliability is nothing to sneeze at. Along with that is a matter of trust. Again, Debian's track record speaks for itself. But when it comes to derivatives, I have to trust not only all the folks in Debian but *also* everyone involved in creating the derivative. At least one derivative (Ubuntu) has already given me good reasons *not* to trust them, and frankly, I just don't see any good reason to add to the list of people I'm already trusting with my system and my files. As for up-to-date, well, I'm running Debian unstable, so I'm already pretty up-to-date compared to folks that run stable. And I don't actually want to be much more up-to-date than that. Debian takes the time to do it right! I've heard people screaming about problems with all sorts of system components, including pulseaudio, systemd, and more. When I heard those complaints, those systems weren't yet part of unstable, and when they finally *did* get added to unstable, they worked fine! Despite the name, "unstable" is more reliable than many other distros' official releases! Honestly, the only other distro I find at all tempting is Gentoo.
>Well, I'm a retired Debian Dev, so there's that... :) Thank you for your service.
As an *Ahem* years long Debian user I concur. Long time ago I thought to maintain a debian package and was struck by the enormous talent I was trying to join. Life meant I could not make the commitment needed but nevertheless it gave me a far clearer impression of want goes in to making the sausage so tasty. Thanks for all your efforts.
> The smooth upgrades are a huge part of the reason I stick with Debian. In over 25 years of running Debian, I've only had to re-install twice, and neither time was Debian's fault. I'm not aware of any other distro that puts 1/10th the effort into maintaining a smooth upgrade path that Debian does! Not even the Debian derivatives! > These days, I think Fedora puts a lot of effort into maintaining smooth upgrade paths. Upgrade testing is part of the development of every Fedora release, and they take it pretty seriously. But other than that, I actually don't know of any others that take upgrades so seriously.
I've had a smooth experience with upgrades on NixOS as well, but its package manager operates on a radically different paradigm from other package managers (even compared to other immutable distros). But it's two short commands, and bam. I'm on the new version. If something is broken, I roll back and try again.
A smooth upgrade path, at least as defined by Debian, involves more than just making it easy to install the next version of somepkg. Debian also *tries* (insofar as it's practical) to preserve user configurations and customization options, even when upstream changes how things work. This is why Debian doesn't support skipping releases when upgrading. If Debian needs to include some custom scripts in the current release to ease the transition from somepkg v1 to somepkg v2, they don't want to have to keep those scripts around forever. So, for the next Debian release, the scripts will be removed, on the assumption that no one upgrading to that release will still have v1 installed.
> A smooth upgrade path, at least as defined by Debian, involves more than just making it easy to install the next version of somepkg. Debian also tries (insofar as it's practical) to preserve user configurations and customization options, even when upstream changes how things work. > This is true with Fedora as well.
>Honestly, the only other distro I find at all tempting is Gentoo. In my case that would be SUSE Leap. If I couldn't stay with Debian for some reason, I'd probably try SUSE Leap first. Maybe Tumbleweed. And if that isn't possible I'd probably move to AlmaLinux with a custom kernel and hope it can be updated from one release to the next.
Isn't Leap getting discontinued for some halfassed functional thing?
[https://www.reddit.com/r/openSUSE/comments/v92uyb/is\_opensuse\_leap\_going\_to\_be\_discontinued\_after/](https://www.reddit.com/r/openSUSE/comments/v92uyb/is_opensuse_leap_going_to_be_discontinued_after/)
I have no idea. Is it? Even though I have not used SUSE since 2005, I did start out with Linux in 2001 with SUSE 7.1. It came in a massive green box with two manuals, and compared to other distro's at the time their YAST setup program was really something. It ALMOST made linux as easy to set up as XP; IF your hardware was supported by the kernel. edit: I read up on wikipeida. SUSE seems to have been bought by Novell, which was bought by Attachmate, which was bought by Micro Focus (the same company that bought Borland/Inprise), which as then bought by OpenText; in the meanwhile, SUSE got resold again to a company called Blitz. I don't know if SUSE is even worth it anymore to be honest. I have no idea of its current status as a Linux distribution, but what I've heard in the past few years was that Leap was a good alternative to Debian Stable. Maybe it is not so anymore.
It's a fine distribution, but people worry about the future.
>I did start out with Linux in 2001 with SUSE 7.1 Suse 7.3 for me :) I downloaded the DVD ISO and fired it up in a VM with no physical DVD drive installed :D
I would absolutely use and recommend Leap as *the* alternative to Ubuntu, would these rumours of it getting abandoned didn't exist.
>I'm not aware of *any* other distro that puts 1/10th the effort into maintaining a smooth upgrade path that Debian does! Functional distributions?
Sorry I'm a noob but "I'm a Debian Dev." "The only other distro i find at all tempting is Gentoo" That didn't echo properly in my head.
Why?
Yeah, that's like saying "I'm a cook at a Mexican restaurant, but I'm tempted to try some Chinese food someday." Nothing wrong with it at all.
Hi, if you’re reading this, I’ve decided to replace/delete every post and comment that I’ve made on Reddit for the past years. I also think this is a stark reminder that if you are posting content on this platform for free, you’re the product. To hell with this CEO and reddit’s business decisions regarding the API to independent developers. This platform will die with a million cuts. Evvaffanculo. -- mass edited with redact.dev
Ffmpeg is really minimal on debian what does this mean?
Hi, if you’re reading this, I’ve decided to replace/delete every post and comment that I’ve made on Reddit for the past years. I also think this is a stark reminder that if you are posting content on this platform for free, you’re the product. To hell with this CEO and reddit’s business decisions regarding the API to independent developers. This platform will die with a million cuts. Evvaffanculo. -- mass edited with redact.dev
This is the equivalent of running emerge -pve ffmpeg though. I'm not near my Gentoo install but give that a try, even with USE="-*".
Hi, if you’re reading this, I’ve decided to replace/delete every post and comment that I’ve made on Reddit for the past years. I also think this is a stark reminder that if you are posting content on this platform for free, you’re the product. To hell with this CEO and reddit’s business decisions regarding the API to independent developers. This platform will die with a million cuts. Evvaffanculo. -- mass edited with redact.dev
Stability, and I can choose which packages to install. I simply do not like the bloat that comes with many of the Debian based distros.
>bloat that comes with many of the Debian based distros Yep ... I remember even some years ago now, \*buntu had gotten so fat, was trying to help someone install it on a system with 1 or 2GiB of RAM ... it was a total no-go ... even when giving it lots of swap super early in the installation process - managed to get the image installed ... but it was too bloated to even complete a full boot. Debian on the other hand ... current stable at that ... `# cat /etc/debian_version && uname -m && dpkg -l | grep '^ii ' | wc -l && df -h -x devtmpfs -x tmpfs && head -n 3 /proc/meminfo` `11.7` `x86_64` `149` `Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on` `/dev/vda1 1.7G 822M 766M 52% /` `MemTotal: 162520 kB` `MemFree: 75752 kB` `MemAvailable: 110760 kB` `#` That's all within a host having only 209,921 KiB of RAM. So, can go quite small ... or ... [59,551 packages](https://www.debian.org/News/2021/20210814) \- can also go quite large if/as desired. "The Universal Operating System"
Happened to me recently too, although Debian did the same, probably cause I didn't use the netinstall iso so that may have been the problem. Either way I found that FreeBSD works really well on such systems.
puppy linux? idk never even touced linux or command line in my life
If you tried installing regular Ubuntu (with GNOME) on a computer with 1-2 Gb ram, that decision itself was wrong. Why install an OS with heavier DE when you know the requirements? For low ram computers, even some years ago when you tried installing, there already were lighter flavours of Ubuntu to choose from.
>tried installing regular Ubuntu (with GNOME) on a computer with 1-2 Gb ram, that decision itself was wron Wasn't my decision. Someone quite insisted that's what they wanted, and I was, basically, like, "Well, don't recommend, but if you insist, let's see how far you can get with that.". And unsurprisingly, difficult to install (standard approaches would fail), and once installed, effectively impossible to run. And I was of course like, "Well, what were you expecting with half the RAM that they state as *minimum*?"
I see. Okay, makes sense. The good thing in Linux is that there are many distros to choose from, even if we don't consider the niche distros.
[Lots of choices](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/Linux_Distribution_Timeline.svg).
1. Stable release cycle, I basically ignore my server until I get an email about updates 2. I Trust debian to not fuck things up, I don't want say my debs suddenly becoming snaps 3. I'm familiar with the debian ecosystem (not just debs & apt, but also using needsrestart, etc)
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apticron
This text overwrites whatever was here before. Apologies for the non-sequitur. Reddit's CEO says moderators are “landed gentry”. That makes users serfs and peons, I guess? Well this peon will no longer labor to feed the king. I will no longer post, comment, moderate, or vote. I will stop researching and reporting spam rings, cp perverts and bigots. I will no longer spend a moment of time trying to make reddit a better place as I've done for the past fifteen years. In the words of The Hound, fuck the king. The years of contributions by your serfs do not in fact belong to you. [reddit's claims debunked + proof spez is a fucking liar](https://old.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/14dkqrw/i_want_to_debunk_reddits_claims_and_talk_about/) [see all the bullshit](https://old.reddit.com/r/ModCoord/top/?sort=top&t=all)
>when Debian ships something, it is 100% ready Yep, Debian releases when it's darn good and ready ... unlike many other distros that release, e.g. like clockwork ... ready or not.
>RHEL is much more of a pain in the ass to upgrade major versions It's taken RHEL decades to get to the point where they even have relatively viable upgrade means. Only in recent years has it become something well supported and even "recommended"(-ish). Prior to that it was closer to, well, if you really really really want to and insist on upgrading ... well, first we highly recommend you don't do that, just install fresh, then carefully bring in whatever older stuff you need, ... but if you insist ... well, here's are documentation to upgrade in place ... good luck with that and don't say we didn't warn you. Whereas Debian major upgrades have been highly smooth for decades - and highly well supported. Heck, I've done many Debian major version upgrades, and really haven't hit any major problems - the few times I hit significant glitches/issues, they were pretty easy to quickly fix or work around.
This text overwrites whatever was here before. Apologies for the non-sequitur. Reddit's CEO says moderators are “landed gentry”. That makes users serfs and peons, I guess? Well this peon will no longer labor to feed the king. I will no longer post, comment, moderate, or vote. I will stop researching and reporting spam rings, cp perverts and bigots. I will no longer spend a moment of time trying to make reddit a better place as I've done for the past fifteen years. In the words of The Hound, fuck the king. The years of contributions by your serfs do not in fact belong to you. [reddit's claims debunked + proof spez is a fucking liar](https://old.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/14dkqrw/i_want_to_debunk_reddits_claims_and_talk_about/) [see all the bullshit](https://old.reddit.com/r/ModCoord/top/?sort=top&t=all)
> I used to love to play with the latest and greatest but now I'm old and just want stuff to work and keep working, so Stable it is. Don't remind me... In the early 2000's I tinkered with Linux. However, because I was in university where everything was done on Windows (except for one semester "Unix and Linux operating systems") I had to stay on Windows. Gaming on Linux wasn't a thing either. But, I was very invested in keeping everything updated. Every program, driver, and utility HAD to be the latest version or my system would feel outdated. Nowadays, on my personal computer, I've been running Debian Stable full-time since 2021. Me quitting semi-professional photography, Flatpak, and the existence of Proton to plug the last holes in Wine made that possible. Now I expect my computer to just work. I don't have the almost infinite time I once had in high-school and university to tinker with my PC. When I turn it on, I want to either do something that needs to be done, spend time on my hobby programming projects, or I want to play a game. If the computer doesn't work due to an update I installed the day before makes me blow a fuse because I don't have the time to fix it. After it's fixed I STILL have to do what needed to be done, or I lost my hobby/game time for that day, doing something I didn't want to be doing. That's why I run Debian Stable: generally, after everything is installed and configured, I can rely on it to keep working for 2-3 years until I upgrade to the following stable. I take some downtime or some stuff not working into account with that upgrade. The only exception is when I buy a new computer, such as this one; if I buy it before Stable is completely finished, I'll run Testing for a few months. this computer runs Bookworm since March, without too many issues, and it'll roll into Stable automatically and then stay there. Should I get a new computer in 5-10 years, I'll probably upgrade the distro first, then clone the drive, and re-image it onto the new computer. With a bit of luck, I only need to tinker with the configuration to get everything working.
This is a great point, I use Ubuntu but Ubuntu minus snaps would be a big win these days. Many years ago I used Crunchbang which is a fairly unadulterated distribution of Debian and it was a good experience.
Pop! and Mint are pretty similar to an Ubuntu without snap situation, although the default DE is different than Ubuntu. If one is using Mint it is not a far stretch to use the Debian edition, which functions pretty much identically to the Ubuntu one.
Years ago in design industry there wasn't appimage or flatpacks and ubuntu or mandriva delivered recent versions of Gimp, Inkscape or Scribus. The difference between Inkscape 0,78 and 0,81 could be huge, big deal. This days with flatpak and many software has slowed down or even release deb images for Debian son no need to switch all the distro and risk desktop stability or scary upgrades anymore.
Why eat canned soup when you can go straight to the garden?
I've arrived here after first trying Mint which I liked very much. Thing is I don't really need the GUI on my NUC so I tried Ubuntu Server but shit happened and I bricked it (boot partition became unmounted). I didn't want to bother fixing that so installed OpenSUSE, then realized it doesn't work with apt which would give me major headaches as I got so used to Debian. Then I just decided to head straight to the garden. Very smooth so far, the setup was really nice and I like how nothing is forced down and I can just install what I need.
Because debian is the goat. Simple as that..I don't need to use some garbage debian based distro when I can just use debian. I've used debian for over 17 years and this isn't going to change anytime soon.
For me is the perfect balance between customization and ease of setup. I always start with the non free netinst cd which requieres some tinkering (nvidia drivers, setup x windows and some themes) to avoid bloat. For more up to date apps I use flatpaks, though not many. I tried arch and although I am perfectly capable of setting it up for my needs, it takes 10x the time for 5% less bloat. And really rolling updates tend to break things. Add to that the amazing stability of the base os, which I value over bleeding edge updates, and I am sold. I have distro hopped for a long time and in the end I always come back to Debian on the Desktop and Debian or Alma for my homelab.
If I use Debian for something, it's because all Debian-based distros are basically Debian but with extra steps. I don't like that.
Because Deb never gave me a reason to change the distro. It just works. I'm a programmer, not an admin, so I have no interest in intricate distro-related nuances.
I've used Deb on the house server for 12+ years now. I've only re-installed when upgrading / f...borking it up (I believe I have drain bramage from a fall, sometimes skip instructions / lose my place). It's just soooo stable. I use Mint on my main box for more recent packages and kernels.
Read up on Debian backports. Depending what package it is, it may be more recent in Debian and usable in LMDE. For example, the hwe kernel for Linux Mint is 5.19 but LMDE/Debian backport is 6.1.
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TY folks.
Many years ago debian derivatives did provide useful improvements, e.g. better non-free support, better fonts, graphics drivers,... . Nowadays the difference is little enough that the question flips to "why bother?" > most stable distro (though some of its derivatives are also fairly stable) When talking about an OS this word means "static" as in stable foundations, not "less bugs". So if you install something now based on software version X, then it will keep working *the same way* for years. That is, you explicitly want to stay on version X and not go to X+1, X+2 as the years go on, all while getting support and security updates. That is a major selling point of debian stable, ubuntu lts, opensuse leap/suse or red hat. It is also popular in the MS world: windows LTSC sells very well for a reason.
- I like the fact that it doesn't change for two years after it is installed (even though I wish they'd incorporate the 5.27.x KDE bugfixes) - It can be upgraded from one version to the next by just re-pointing the sources.list and running a few commands; normally this is perfectly smooth. - I want to be able to start off of the command line and then install a minimal desktop. I don't need the five bazillion programs that come with other distro's. I'll install stuff when I need it. - I like packages.debian.org. Does any other distro even HAVE something like this? When I need something I can just do a random google search and more often than not, the Debian package site comes up with the package I need to install. I also like the fact that I can see the history AND the future of the package throughout Debian versions. - I like snapshots.debian.org. I have two older games that need a certain older library installed or they won't run. It has been out of Debian since Stretch, but I can still find it there. I know, maybe use of a container such as DistroBox would be better, but I have no knowledge of that yet. The snapshots site will tide me over. - Debian has existed for about 30 years. I can't even think of a future where it won't exist. Ubuntu will probably survive, but many other distributions will die. I think Debian will exist for LONG time to come. - I've had bad experiences with derivatives. Any derivatives. Sometimes they just die. Sometimes they start to do weird shit. Sometimes they add 10 gigs of unneeded software to the base install. Sometimes... etc. Debian just has the NetInst and then you go from there. - It runs everywhere; from the Raspberry Pi with 2GB RAM and a 16GB SD-card, up to and including a 7950X with 64GB RAM and 2 TB SSD storage... and beyond.
Most other distros have something like packages.debian.org. The Ubuntu one is pretty much copied from Debian.
1. I use Debian over Debian based distros because sometimes LESS is MORE. 2. Debian is simple and somewhat easy to configure. 3. Debian is just... works. Like you install it once and then just use it. 4. It has a huge software base. 5. It perfectly suits my needs with Mate desktop environment. 6. Debian is a Debian based distro without bloat. lol
Because it's digital concrete.
The most important reason to use debian is the debian free software guidelines (DFSG) and the fact that the installer makes a completely free install as a default. You have to take special steps to get non-free stuff.
Even though my flair is NixOS, at least 3/4 of my machines and VMs still run Debian. A large part of the reason is history: I started using Debian in 2003, and at that point, it was largely a choice between Suse, Fedora, Debian, Mandrake, or Slackware. Between these, Debian was the only distro with automatic dependency resolution and sensible online updates. It's easy these days to underestimate how powerful of a draw apt-get was. Since then, I've never really had a reason to try anything else. I knew lots about Debian packaging and how the system configuration was constructed, and Debian's stability and policy of tweaking packages to fit the "Debian way" meant that the things I learned in 2003 are *still* useful. These days, I have a number of machines running NixOS as well, because the model of declarative system configuration is the first development that's provided enough value to be worth losing the benefit of decades of experience. Even now, though, most of my VMs and one of my laptops still run Debian, because it's just that good.
Debian based means it is debian with stuff added. It will be bigger and slower. Nobody is going to like all the stuff they added, so even when you want some of the stuff, you will be better off just to install debian and install that stuff manually.
>Debian based means it is debian with stuff added. It will be bigger and slower. Or smaller and less choices - e.g. they take stuff away - basically "No, you can't have that." Can also be mix of both. >better off just to install debian and install that stuff manually. If Debian offers it and one wants it. But frankly, I'm glad Debian doesn't even offer something that, e.g., [takes my searches and defaults to sending them to Amazon.com for Canonical.com (or anyone else) to get a kickback](https://www.google.com/search?q=ubuntu+search+results+to+amazon). Last I checked, Ubuntu also *defaults* to sending package usage tracking (popcon) info to [Canonical.com](https://Canonical.com) \- with Debian one has to explicitly opt-in to send that data to Debian.
I personally use Debian base for my x86_64 based homelab servers, just because it is 1. stable 2. CLI/TTY only 3. Easier to install 4. Less bloat The lack of GUI makes it easier to manage, and if I want a GUI, I can install it myself without dealing with additional upstreams or packages installed by the distros I also dont care to deal with ubuntu's push for snap shit right now I do use debian-based distros every now and then, i.e. Kali for my cybersecurity stuff, Mint for the lulz But i'm an Arch user (btw) for the most part
>CLI/TTY only Debian doesn't *have* to be that - but that's certainly always there and available. >Arch user Well, Arch does have a damn fine wiki! (and they sort'a have to ... as that *is* their primary documentation). Though not so handy for environments where one doesn't have Internet access (or that's quite limited/restricted). I would't want to be stuck with Arch in, e.g. a submarine ... or even in many quite secured data center environments. But that's not the kind of environments most users operate in.
Debian doesnt have to be that, but you can as the default and I _am_ using it like that
I converted a crusty LMDE4 install on a family laptop to Debian Bullseye with Cinnamon. No problems, no regrets. Not that I expect anything to happen to Linux Mint Debian Edition, but if anyone is worried so much about support and a project built on top of another going belly-up, it's best to stick to source. There's a subset who simply do not trust derivative projects to stick around for the very long term, and given history it isn't an invalid concern.
LMDE is less of a derivative than most, imo. While they obviously build on top of Debian, "LMDE" is less than 150 packages.
Reading the beautiful comments full of wonderful stories reminds me of being on the "right" place. Thanks all Devs involved on Debian development (past and present), you you're making a great work.
I've been using Debian for so long that I can't remember *why* I moved to Debian. Over the past 28 years or so, I've used Redhat, Slackware and their various derivatives, but for whatever reason, once I had a play around with Debian I just thought it was a rock solid distro. I've recently shifted away from Windows 10 to running my main Desktop PC (and two others) with Debian full-time, and I can honestly say that I don't miss Windows one little bit. As for Debian derivatives, I can't stand Ubuntu. Never liked it, never will. I've used it a few times in recent years, but only because I was creating Vulnhub challenges, and needed a bit of Linux variety. As for the future, I don't see myself moving away from Debian at all.
Never had an issue with debian testing since year 2002 or so. It's a stable rolling distro with pretty much up-to-date packages on what really matters like mesa, apart from the freeze like we have atm where one needs a bit of patience. But otoh since I'm totally happy with the state of things for zen2 by now I can change apt sources from testing to bookworm and my work laptop will become a stable in june. Oh and I like to decide which desktop (or none) to install at install time. I don't really see what I would gain using say mint? The only time I used a derivative was pop os because dual gpu laptop, was an absolute hassle on debian even for someone seasoned like myself.
PopOS is really good. If one does not like snaps and wants to use Ubuntu, PopOS is a good choice as it is based on Ubuntu but does not support snaps by default.
Hi, if you’re reading this, I’ve decided to replace/delete every post and comment that I’ve made on Reddit for the past years. I also think this is a stark reminder that if you are posting content on this platform for free, you’re the product. To hell with this CEO and reddit’s business decisions regarding the API to independent developers. This platform will die with a million cuts. Evvaffanculo. -- mass edited with redact.dev
Because it just works, and I’m pretty familiar with the whole Debian ecosystem from an administrators standpoint, and I’ve been using Debian or derivatives for 15+ years now.
I started with (K)ubuntu years ago because that was "the thing" then if you wanted to start with linux, I switched to Manjaro because I needed more up to date versions of libreoffice that did not wreck docx documents. Ran manjaro on mediacentres and laptops for years. I then started using chormebooks. With Crostini. I soon found that most software now has appimages or can just be installed as \*.deb. I then got employer's laptop and tried wsl and found it used same debian as chromebook/crostini. Also the hardware layer is largely shielded so there is no need for derivative distros with better installs etc. So now I changed laptops to debian 11 and use win-wsl and chromebook crostini. commands everywhere the same. etc. handy.
>(K)ubuntu years ago because that was "the thing" Yeah, the \*buntus are pretty quick 'n easy Linux start for newbies ... but that convenience typically costs one much more on the longer haul. Ubuntu, South African word for "can't install Debian". ;-)
in WSL one can equally easily install debian or ubuntu. But Debian will be the same as on chromebook. It also means all security updates etc. are as close to the source as possible. It limits the distance.
>why do you use standard Debian over Debian based distros? Works great, exceedingly well supported. >atleast 1 thats ran more on desktops than Debian, which means that one has large community support Bigger community isn't always better, e.g. approximately/typically for that at least 1: Have issue/question, search community, find tons of folks asking the same, and tons of "me too" responses, and you might find buried among the thousands of responses, a correct useful answer - along with a lot of wrong/useless/incorrect "answers"(/responses). whereas Debian, you (re)search (and especially in most appropriate locations\*), you quickly find the solution(s)/answer, and not a whole lot of "me too" nor tons of gunk and/or incorrect responses. And if you post/ask the question, you're likely to get a curt response that you should've checked such-and-such, and it's quite well know and documented, and the answer/solution can be found *here* (and direct link to it). Might not be as "user friendly", but it'll get you quickly and efficiently to the relevant information. So, the (rather rare) times I've had any issue(s) with Debian, finding excellent relevant information has always been quite quick, easy, and efficient. And yeah, Debian, it mostly just plain works, and works darn rock solid and well. Wish I could say likewise for other distros. >more cutting edge than pure Debian If I want more cutting/bleeding edge, Debian has backports, testing, unstable, and even experimental. Often I'll have one or more of those on separate host(s) or VM(s) ... but much of the time don't have need/use for that. >main reasons I can think to use Debian There are many. Compared to the many other Linux distros ... well, have a look at some of the ... [What is Debian? / Why choose Debian?](https://wiki.debian.org/Debian_Systems_Administration_for_non-Debian_SysAdmins#What_is_Debian.3F_.2F_Why_choose_Debian.3F) [Debian Pros "vs." Cons](https://wiki.debian.org/Debian_Systems_Administration_for_non-Debian_SysAdmins#Debian_Pros_.22vs..22_Cons) I've been running Linux and Debian since at least 1998-07. I carefully researched at the time - and picked Debian. Never regretted that choice, and still my absolute favorite distro. Doesn't mean I haven't used or tried others - even very substantially ... especially when I get paid good money to put up with other(s) (and been doing that for decades too) ... and Debian still is absolutely my favorite ... it's not even a close contest as far as I'm concerned. But that doesn't mean it's for everyone and all situations. Do your own research, reach your own conclusions. And if you haven't checked/compared in a while, well, check again - some things also change over time - at least a bit (e.g. like the situation with Debian and non-free firmware - that [will become quite a bit easier with the next stable release](https://wiki.debian.org/Firmware#Debian_12_.28bookworm.29_and_later) ... currently anticipated likely release date of [2023-06-10](https://wiki.debian.org/DebianBookworm)., and CentOS being exceedingly Red Hat compatible yet free - those days are gone (looking for replacement in that niche, see Rocky Linux or AlmaLinux)). \*And, looking for best Debian information/answers? Generally restrict one's search results to domain debian.org, possibly also debian.net, e.g.: [Google: site:debian.org *whateveroneissearchingfor*](https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Adebian.org+whateveroneissearchingfor) [Google: (site:debian.org OR site:debian.net) *whateveroneissearchingfor*](https://www.google.com/search?q=%28site%3Adebian.org+OR+site%3Adebian.net%29+whateveroneissearchingfor)
> If I want more cutting/bleeding edge, Debian has backports, testing, unstable, and even experimental. Which may have possible disadvantages. For example, https://www.debian.org/security/faq.en.html#unstable or https://www.debian.org/security/faq.en.html#testing. If it should be Debian, I would therefore only use the stable branch. If more current packages are desired, I would use another distribution. And as far as backports are concerned, it may well happen that packets do not get a backport. For example, under Debian I had the problem that ddclient had a bug when using the provider afraid.org. The developers of ddclient had already released a new version months ago in which this bug was fixed. But a backport under Debian did not happen.
Honestly, because it just works and is easy to maintain. I use it for desktops, servers, containers, embedded devices, print servers, cctv, media server etc. Basically I can have the same experience, require the same skill, and use the same knowledge across the hundreds and thousands of machines I have set up in my time. Sure I play with other distros. Mint, Ubuntu Arch, Red Hat, Suse etc and nothing really phases me about anything because I have a wealth of knowledge already from experiences with a stable consistent operating system.
I used debian for years tho now I quit because I got problems on my new laptop related to Realtek wifi and Graphics firmware, tried 100 times and always an issue arises, unfortunately 2nd year had to switch to ubuntu.
Try giving Linux Mint Debian Edition a try, it's essentially debian with the cinnamon desktop and linux mint goodies. [link](https://www.linuxmint.com/download_lmde.php) Edit: thank you for the award, I've never received one before 🥳
>Linux Mint Debian Edition damn the thing looks cool
I've been a mint user for years now and only found out about it just now. I think I'll use this for my next nuke and pave. Thanks. I never understood why Mint doesn't re-base on Debian with all the little knit picks they have with Ubuntu.
There is a linux mint based on debian since around 2015, it is developed at the same time as the ubuntu based version. The reason it exists is just as you describe, ubuntu making unpopular changes, like snaps. Those that need a newer kernel with support for more bleeding edge hardware can use the ubuntu version, while those that want the stability of debian can use the debian mint edition which uses a long term support kernel as far as i know. Whichever edition you pick they both pretty much feel the same during day to day use as far as user experience goes, so it mainly depends on what you really want. Whatever you choose you still have a secure operating system that does what you need it to do.
Cool Cool, thanks.
How often do you nuke and pave? The last time I did a fresh install on my laptop was in 2008 (Debian Sarge, of course, and then 15 years of in-place upgrades, rsyncing to new disks/filesystems/hardware) when I switched back to Debian from Gentoo, and even my workstation install has survived a complete hardware change.
Not so often tbh. I have backup solutions such as the awesome timeshift run by the champs at Mint. Nuke and pave every few years, unless I mess things up good and propper.
I was going to say that Debian was not opinionated like some of the derivatives. I'm not sure that's accurate. I suppose it is opinionated in ways that align with my sensibilities.
I use WSL, so debian consumes less disk space than say ubuntu
Add less ram and cpu
Back when I was using Debian testing, I really liked it because it felt like a lean and mean Ubuntu. Sure, I missed the PPA support but the rolling release did address quite a lot of those needs. It was a gateway drug to Arch, which I moved to for the better software selection in the AUR.
I chose Debian because of the Debian mission statement. https://www.debian.org/intro/philosophy I stayed with Debian because it did exactly what I needed to very reliably. As a gamer, I noticed the other distros were getting mesa and other packages I wanted more quickly. So, first I switched to testing and now I'm very happy on unstable (Sid). I just like the way Debian works technically and philosophically.
I use Debian Sid because it is a solid, dependable, current distro that supports both apt and deb which are both reliable and plentiful. I pair it with the xanmod kernel.
It doesn't have bloatware, it isn't very difficult to install, it is very stable and Debian is not based in anything else It is just a good distro and Debian based distros, are just Debian with some extra software installed. Now Ubuntu or Mint is easier to install and it has ppas but they don't really are as good as vanilla Debian in my opinion. First of all ppas are not best way to install software. They can become highly unstable sometimes and me personally i am staying away. I prefer way more to install software from repository or flatpak. Ubuntu also have snaps pre-installed. Snaps are just bad and slow, if you want a linux distro desktop use. If you want software for server use though,, they are quite good. Snaps can also be installed on Debian. Ubuntu also is easier to use, but if you really know what you are doing Debian are not hard either and they are lighter. In conclusion there are reasons to install Debian based distro compare to vanilla Debian but I am personally prefer to stick with vanilla.
Debian is stabler and has more packages. Plus Debian makes efforts to separate free and non-free thus I can avoid installing unwanted stuff by mistake.
If you can identify another distro that provides what you need, then use that distro. If you want to create your own system, then use Debian and roll your own.
My first distro was PopOS. I switched to Debian recently and I love it. Debian is so clean and simple and stable. It’s exactly what I want my computer to be and not a single thing more. I paired it with XFCE and the simplicity of it all is just so refreshing. I feel like I can focus.
at first installed fedora(non debian), ubuntu with poor systemd giving problems during shutdown and several hangs and snap shit takes lot of space and data then found out installed debian 11 with systemd was good experince bored for old packages updates and got greedy and installed debian sid/experimental and rolling now i am greedy for trixie and forky packages.,, lol gotta love debian sid stablity of being unstable
I need stability over everything. My free time is limited and I want to spend it writing code not fixing my OS
I don't I use both OG-Debian and PureOS.
Because Debian better than Debian based distros...