I distro hopped for a bit before finally settling in Debian (because Debian was always mentioned as a distro good for servers, or stable machines that are ok with outdated software)
And while I get that Debian does have software that isn’t as up to date, I’ve never felt that the software was that outdated. Before landing on Debian, I always ran into small hiccups that caused me issues as a new Linux user - but when I finally switched over to Debian, everything just worked! Especially now with Debian 13.
So my question is: why does Debian always get dismissed as inferior for everyday drivers, and instead mint, Ubuntu, or even Zorin get recommended? Is there something I am missing, or does it really just come down to people not wanting software that isn’t “cutting edge” release?
Debian used to have quite old software before version 6.0 or so. Ever since then it’s been quite a good daily driver for workstations too.
debian is meant to be stable and ancient, it’s for servers
Debian unstable has entered the chat
Once I installed Debian on an old eMMC weak netbook for a friend after trying about 6 other distros that all had some problem or another, including Mint and Xubunto. Debian worked flawlessly
Debian takes work, especially if you have tricky, proprietary hardware that requires firmware support. It comes with that magical “free software only” mentality that makes it harder to adopt and hence why Ubuntu and Mint exist. It’s a great minimalist distro
I haven’t read through the other responses in the thread, but I don’t think it’s the slightly old software that’s the problem. I think it has more to do with using older kernels, meaning that the latest hardware won’t always be supported (on the stable branch at least - there’s always testing and unstable too of course which may have better hardware support).
That may have changed with recent releases though - I haven’t used Debian for several years now. But if your hardware is supported then it’s a pretty solid choice.
Some other people sometimes mention that Debian isn’t as beginner friendly as Ubuntu or Mint, but my experiences have been similar to yours - I found Debian to more user-friendly than Ubuntu for example. Assuming that the hardware works of course - if it doesn’t then it obviously is a worse choice.
I’ve been running debian sid on desktop for 4 years, I think. Yes, I don’t care if it breaks. I wanted to try debian and didn’t want to use old packages at that point. These days I don’t really need the latest things. I recently switched to testing - I only needed to replace a few words in a few files in /etc. I didn’t even need wiki or anything for that, because testing is almost like sid. If this doesn’t break on me majorly, I might not switch and just replace “testing” with “forky”. I’m really satisfied with debian.
Others already explained basically everything. I’d like to elaborate and offer a few examples to support them.
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On potential users:
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The people who look for distros to try are seen as newbies by linux users, and therefore are recommended newbie-friendly distros. Also, debian is conservative: it rarely offers shiny new things, so its desktop use isn’t high. There isn’t much to be excited about, so there are no hype cycles. The current “shiny new thing” in debian was the recent change in apt’s interface (now it formats its output into tables, for example), compare that to “atomic” distros. People often still use apt-get (it is in the guides for some reason) instead of apt so even this news in nothing to them.
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Furthermore, software development often happens with the latest libraries around. It’s often a great help that Arch ships the latest software. Debian doesn’t have that. While languages these days have their own package managers, having the latest devtools, editors, etc. to try out is harder to do on debian. Therefore, IT students and software engineers have better time on faster-moving distros. Debian is more for the sysops/sysadmin people ( you can leave it there on auto-update and not care for 2 or more years ). The above further restricts its appeal and userbase.
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Even further, Debian might be bigger than it seems, as others have pointed it out. Perceived marketshare is often based on desktop use. See EU OS’s FOSDEM presentation on how opensuse has a bigger company behind it than ubuntu.
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On “latest drivers”:
- It used be much harder to configure Debian. Recently ( think it was with Bullseye) I installed it on an old machine, and debian didn’t install the right wifi drivers by default. I think it also lacked the proper firmware. This changed only with Bookworm. Back in 2008, I also tried it on my pentium 3 I had then. Debian didn’t have ath5k at that time, and the ndiswrapper hack was harder to pull off for me than just using mandriva, or later, lubuntu and salix.
- I heard that these days, people expect linux to fully support their hardware on day1. They also expect it to just run on any new hardware they buy. Also, games often need the latest optimizations in drivers: it might just be the thing that pushes the fps count above 30, 60 or 120. They also that they want the driver bugfixes to come ASAP. Early on during a release cycle of a game, driver updates sometimes give big improvements. While using the latest drivers on debian is possible, and not too hard (Compiling a newer stock kernel is easy, even if it complies slowly. Mesa isn’t hard either. Still, these require knowledge of old & basic dev tools, and also new ones.), ubuntu offers new drivers to LTS kernels, they are called HWE. No idea how doable this on debian, I never needed such things.
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On “stability”:
- What people usually don’t think about it that there are different kinds of stabilities. Debian offers something like API stability, so that user-provided software on the same version of debian rarely - if ever - breaks. It’s not necessarily shipping the most stable software, but it has a guarantee that updates won’t break anything. Even a slight change can disqualify being included. This very slow process resulted in the old and famous xscreensaver vs debian drama. The abovementioned stability also applies to other distros, but to a lesser extent, I believe. Mostly due to the 2-year release cycle.
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On “ease of use”:
- Debian doesn’t have a user repo like AUR, so it isn’t as easy to install 3rd party stuff (I know, makedeb, flatpak, snap, pkgsrc, nix & guix exist), debian is so big that anybody providing packages will do it (to list a few examples: freetube, discord, librewolf, signal, Trinity DE, and there are bleeding edge emacs packages available).
- Debian has docs, but I often just use arch wiki or the gentoo wiki to figure out stuff. I can only do that because I understand the differences and the similarities. Newbies would have trouble with this. Also, ubuntu automatically configures a few things, like installing something with a systemd service also will enable that service. Debian doesn’t do that.
Thanks for the thorough response :)
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And why is Ubuntu server even a thing, often recommended? Debian is this but without a second-party repository.
As much as I’d like to recommend Debian, its release cycle really leaves a lot to be desired for pragmatic computer users.
Bugs stick around for years, and with each new release you get new bugs that won’t be fixed for years.
It could be better if the ecosystem had more support, but as it stands right now there are just better options for the desktop space.
It’s fine for servers because they have the resources to make sure server programs aren’t a buggy or featureless mess.
My laptop and dev box are Debian Trixie along with two home servers that are Debian Bookworm. My gaming computer is Debian Forky. Looking for the latest stable release to play games with, which is what most recommendations are for, will tell you to use Debian stable builds but stay away from Ubuntu LTS because they’re not up to date .
Forky (testing) is a great gaming distro with the latest drivers, but people are afraid it’s unstable (which is Debian Sid), so they choose to compare other distros to the last stable release while pushing Arch and the latest Ubuntu because Debian testing is too bleeding edge for what they think of Debian, which is supposed to be stable.
I disagree, the strong points of debian are the stability (long periods of testing, without new changes) and security (by applying security updates quickly).
Using testing or sid means to forego the strong points. At that point you are better served by other distros which focus on having newer packages.
Also i would be cautious about using Debian testing (forky).As far as i know its the worst in terms of security. Stable has security update priority over testing. And some people say even sid it’s better on that front by having even newer packages.
Disclaimer: I daily drive debian stable and game on it without hiccups. Rock solid. BUT i have 7 year old amd rig and the games are not demanding.
I’ll be honest : because people is ignorant.
They tried Debian once few years ago, it didn’t have the exact driver they wanted out of the box, they gave up. They think that’s the normal and current experience.
Reality is I use Debian every day on my servers, SBCs, laptop but also my desktop. I’ve been gaming on it since the first day of the installation and it just worked. Sure I had to follow https://wiki.debian.org/NvidiaGraphicsDrivers and basically follow those steps. It took me maybe 15min and 1 reboot but since then NO tinkering, 0, and I’m gaming nearly daily from indie to AAA, from 2D to 3D to VR. As I mentioned in another reply sure I might not have perfectly optimized all my performance but I don’t give a shit, I’m just gaming!
Also as I mentioned elsewhere the “cutting edge” is bullshit. You can have a Debian installation, stable, and cherry pick the packages you want. Heck you can even pull from a forge the software you want, built it, run it. That’s how “bleeding edge” it can be. Of course you can use VM (with GPU passthrough), distrobox, AppImage, Nix (different from NixOS), etc so they are many many ways to make sure you use the absolute latest without breaking your system.
TL;DR: Debian does not position itself as a gaming distribution. A lot of gamers want to optimize everything for gaming and consequently assume a specialized distribution will do better. Meanwhile people who JUST want to play can definitely do so on Debian.
Yeah but ppa and apt are the worse of all the options. Other wise you right.
Fuck ppas horrid system.
Hot take but totally agreed
I do debian on my servers (barring specific uses), arch on my desktop.
I think it’s a reinforcing cycle. (I) Debian gets recommended less often for home use -> (II) less people become proficient in it -> (I)
My 2¢:
I think it’s gamer discourse bleeding out into other fields. Gamers need the newest libraries and the newest drivers or their stuff might not run as well as it possibly could, because gaming is a relatively young but aggressively growing field with the Linux ecosystem in general. Sure games have always been around, but it’s never been the focus.
Now that gamers are switching more frequently, and that the average user is likely to play a game occasionally, it’s becoming relatively important that packages be up to date for desktop workloads.
Considering games are the most intensive things most people will use their computer for, I think it’s fine to optimize for that use case and assume everything else will be “fine”
Gamers need the newest libraries and the newest drivers or their stuff might not run as well as it possibly could
No they don’t. They think they do because they believe they run their precious expensive hardware only at 99% whereas they imagine, I bet due to trying to compete with each others on benchmarks, that with the absolute latest driver they can actually push their GPU at 99.99% and gain .1FPS in the most popular game they might not even like and 2 points in the trendy benchmark.
Source : I’m a gamer playing on Debian, from indie to AAA, from 2D to 3D to VR, and it just works. Sure I’m not at 99% perf on my hardware, I might even be at 80% but I’m definitely spending 0% time tinkering and 100% having fun.
I’ve literally had to wait for fixes to hit new mesa versions to play newly released games. Having those packages be up to date is just going to be a better experience for people that care about that kind of stuff
Newer packages will in theory always be better, that doesn’t really matter which distribution or use case (gaming or not) one has.
Even if Debian were generating packages the second a pull request was accepted and making it available to everyone and any one it wouldn’t change that the next pull request would, in theory (without regression) be more up to date.
If people have to wait 1s or 1 year, for gaming or not, they can have fun.
If hardware is not properly supported though it’s a different issue. It means people need to buy hardware that is well supported. It’s not specific to a distribution.
I’m playing old and new games on the SteamDeck and it works even if I don’t update it. That’s how things should be, that’s how things already are.
Anecdotes, even if important personally of course, showing things don’t work in a specific context don’t make a trend. There are plenty of things that don’t work well on Debian but also on Arch, Mint, etc and of course on Windows too. It’s very annoying but I don’t see how that helps.
My example applied to all distros, the difference would be the time it takes that code change (which resolved a critical to me bug) takes to actually be available to use.
There’s also very little that’s specific to me about that, it’s a real use case that comes up repeatedly for new releases that tend to push things graphically. I’m only going to recommend distros that minimize the time to get those fixes because it’s a better user experience for the target demographic with little downside.
I’m sorry but I might be totally out of the loop here, do gamers use Mesa? I thought proprietary drives from NVIDIA and AMD, sadly, was what most people actually used nowadays. Again to be clear I’m NOT saying it’s a good thing (it’s not!) just wondering what’s the actual share of users relying on it.
Edit: oh, looks like Mesa is now the default for AMD “AMD promotes their Mesa drivers Radeon and RadeonSI over the deprecated AMD Catalyst” (via Wikipedia), then yes it’s a big deal. Still makes me wonder what’s the current share but mostly out of curiosity.
With how frequently I have to wait on mesa updates, kernel updates and package updates to even hit my arch systems for functionality.
No fucking world exists where Debian with out a bunch of fucking around has 1/2 those fixes in reasonable time frame.
In fact I know they don’t cause I frequently have to put my Debian install aside to play various games because the fixes and packages required literally do not come fast enough.
you’re probably right as to why.
I’ll note that on my gaming desktop I decided to try out Debian instead of my usual choice of Fedora and its worked fine for gaming with latest gen CPU and GPU. I did install the steam flatpak which will have a newer version of Mesa. I think this is a good middle ground for a system you don’t want to mess with too much.
For reasons similar to why plain bread doesn’t show up in sandwich recommendations.
That’s my take too… it’s certainly a soild choice, but not incredibly exciting.
boring is awesome if you need to just work all the time and for a long time.
That’s why I recommend it for non-technical users that just need something to browse the web, Debian will not disappoint them.
Also, GNOME is good for that. Many believe it has to look like Windows for less technical people, but people nowadays mostly are more used to Android than Windows, so having overview of open apps, a menu with shutdown and brightness and volume and sort of an app launcher seems quite natural to them.
Recently installed it for people that have never used Linux before and they immediately got it. One of the two struggles with writing emails and attaching files and things like that, but GNOME is simple for them.
Often simple solutions are the best, flashy solutions break and don’t give the stability that’s expected.
Debian is the absolute goat so long as your work flow fits inside of the scope of Debian which 99% of everybody’s well, even most regular normal gamers will do just fine in Debian using flat packs.
You just have to also accept the fact that if you’re doing something niche like VR gaming or using weird third-party custom hardware or something Debian sucks ass. A lot of my VR kit straight up doesn’t even support anything that uses apt.
It only supports Fedora and Arch. Because a lot of it straight up will not work with flat pack anything. There’s just no support and s*** brakes constantly. You need up-to-date libraries and some of these libraries update multiple times a week. It’s just not inside the scope of something like Debian.
Always try Debian first. If it doesn’t work then try something else. It’s usually the best rule of thumb.
People asking for distro recommendations usually ask for their desktop.
Debian is great, but it’s hardly ever the best choice for a desktop, at least not for the kind of people who ask for distro recommendations.
I’ve used it for a few years. What issue does it have for a desktop? I’ve had everything “just work”.
There is absolutely no issue with it.
But there are lots of other distros that add things to it which are great for desktop.
GUI tools for driver installation and kernel switching, snapshots, preinstalled Steam+Wine+Codecs+Flatpak, newer and more software, atomic updates, a faster package manager, more third party support, etc.Debian is better than it ever was, but so are lots of other distros, especially the ones that build on it.
Nowadays you really have the choice between “good” and “better”.My parents for example do not care about tools for drivers installation (everything works just fine already), they don’t know what a kernel is (so there’s no need to switch), snapshots/Flatpak/Steam/Wine/faster package manager are not important (they don’t know what any of that is).
They use a browser and occasionally a text editor, that’s it. Debian + GNOME works really well for them.
Often something simple is just right.
Old packages in repos. I tried some stuff on LLM and VR and ubuntu had package more updated than Debian. That sad you have to reinstall Ubuntu each time you have to do a security update…
Debian might work but it will always be behind and if any performance upgrades are done at a kernel level or a DE then you won’t get them until those fixes are potentially already obsolete.
Debian is not behind. Changed enter the repos pretty quickly and every 25 months you get a release. Which is perfect, as it means I don’t have to maintenance for my mother that often.
Still there are security patches.
If you want the newest shiny stuff, use Testing or Unstable. I’ve done that for years, for that is not the right choice for everyone, as things change on the time. And I don’t get paid for the tech support I do for my family, so I’d rather see them have larger changes less often. Family would agree, as they find it difficult to learn how to deal with the changes.
Even Debian unstable can be months behind a lot of fixes for gaming related things.
VR for example is a fucking nightmare in general but God FUCK you wait months behind fedora or arch for a lot of fixes on Debian.
then why do people suggest Mint so often? especially to gamers who often have new hardware
Mint is Debian based but isn’t Debian.
Same with Ubuntu.
The reason people recommend mint is it’s easy to install and has a familiar DE.
I was talking about the update timing, Mint isn’t very up to date which can have downsides
Because till recently gaming on Linux was a f****** joke and meant being really easy to install and basically a derivative of Ubuntu without having to deal with canonical made it a popular choice for all of the long-time Linux uses. So it’s just what they suggested.
In reality meant is no better than just telling people to install Ubuntu or Debian if they want to game. If you just play older games then it’s whatever and it doesn’t really matter. But if you’re trying to do some niche gaming like VR or something, basically anything that uses apt is a massive pain in the f****** ass
Sure it works but you almost always end up waiting months longer than everyone else for fixes and considering some things can get updated multiple times a week for major fixes. Having to wait months for a big cumulative thing is just not okay.
Definitely! So if you’re using specialized hardware or software or third-party apps. A lot of stuff has actually gone to the point where they don’t even support Debian and Ubuntu or other activate systems. They only support Fedora or Arch
Since those are the only ones that really ever have a up-to-date libraries to actually be usable for purpose without having to do a bunch of funky s***.
Debian like normal is your best option if it works for you, it is the most reliable that you can really get. But the moment something is outside of scope of it. You’re almost always better off just using literally anything f****** else.
GPU drivers and DEs lagging behind, mostly.
Something like Fedora which releases newer code quicker will provide a better desktop/laptop experience. It’s the same reason other stable distros, like the EL distros, aren’t the best for desktops/laptops.
Historically, desktop applications would also be versions behind, but Flatpak really helps with this.
At this point, Debian is probably fine as a distro for a few year old computer that won’t be helped by fractional scaling. Pick a DE and install applications from Flathub.
One of the main historical reasons was the Debian project’s puritan approach to open source, meaning the distro was very picky about what it could easily run on. As an example, most network drivers for Realtek nics weren’t included out of the box as they contained non-free code, there was no direct way to install Nvidia drivers instead of nouveau, a lot of the hardware didn’t work in the installer unless you sideloaded the drivers from a usb stick and so on.
There was a non-free ISO version to get around this, but you needed to know of it to use it, and it wasn’t provided anywhere by default. The download page for it was just a barebone directory listing within the mirror. No link or information was provided for it on the main project page.
Starting from version 12 or 13 (don’t remember exactly) proprietary drivers have been included in the installation images, which removed the biggest pain point (IMO) for novice users. Apart from that Debian has been one of the easier distros to install, and has things like a considerably better experience when updating to the next major release. It’s not really slower to update packages than Ubuntu, as I’d be wary of recommending the non-LTS versions to novice users. They tend to be quite unstable compared to LTS.
Personally I’ve daily driven Debian for close to five years, on all my devices except the work laptop. That one is running Ubuntu 24.04 as the employer requires either that or Fedora for Linux users.
Thanks for the info, I was not entirely aware about the fact that they recently changes their proprietary software approach.
it is from debian 12 onwards that installer includes non free firmware, and also has a easy opt in for non free firmware repo enabling
