I’m planning to put Debian-based operating system onto my Surface Laptop Gen 1, following the guide (linux-surface). Any good Debian-based Linux recommendations? For now I’m considering AntiX (lightweight debian) and normal Debian.
P.S. I’ve installed pure Debian, as everyone suggests. Thanks for advice!
Debian Testing. My daily driver since… a long time :)
You could try VanillaOS 2.0 Beta which is a Debian-based immutable distro, planned for final release later this year.
How lightweight do you really need to go? I have a Lenovo “barely worth calling a chromebook” with 4GB/64GB/2 core N4000. It’s fine with Gnome on Bookworm.
Linux Mint Debian Edition.
What about something novel, like installing actual Debian?
Will work fine indeed. Only I always have some issues getting the touchscreen working seamlessly. Is there a window manager on Debian who does it well?
I don’t have a touchscreen, so I have no lived experience, but this should get you started at least:
I’ve used both KDE Plasma and GNOME on my Laptop with a touch screen and both worked well. GNOME is better with touch screens in general but that’s just because of the gestures and GTK apps working better with touch screens (e.g. you can always scroll by swiping up or down, not sure if that’s the same in QT apps).
Debian
Can confirm. I use Debian on a laptop and it’s great.
Why don’t you give PopOS a try, it is quite user friendly Ubuntu/Debian based
Up! Depending on what you are looking for also VanillaOS could be an interesting option
Yes, this OS looks interesting and beginner friendly
Just go with Debian.
i tend to go with debian.
You can just go for Ubuntu, Mint or AntiX if you want good experience. Debian can be harder but it’s quite stable (unless you use KDE). Any other suggestions depend on your use cases. For example, you can only use Ubuntu based distros for some Android development tasks
If you want something Debian-but-not-Ubuntu-based, give LMDE a try.
Not Debian-based, but Debian. With KDE.
Some say that KDE on Debian is unstable. Is it real?
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I’ve had problems with KDE on Wayland on Debian 12, it fails when entering sleep mode with multiple monitors. Thankfully, KDE on X is just one package install away, and it works with no bugs.
Been using KDE since Debian 9. I’d say it’s stable enough.
There’s a difference between stability and reliability. Stable means that functionality is the same over a period of time, no major changes to how it works. Reliable means that it doesn’t crash all the time. If something crashes the same way for the same reason, it’s stable but not reliable. If something changes a lot but doesn’t crash, it’s reliable but not stable.
In practice what it comes down to is a choice if you want outdated but known bugs or new surprise bugs.
MX
Just use debian
Go with Linux Mint, but the Edge edition. This will have the best chances to support your hardware, because it uses a newer kernel.
