• Carrot@lemmy.today
    2·
    59 minutes ago

    I use arch (btw) on my personal machine because I hate myself, but on my servers and the computers of people I move off of Windows I always install Debian and KDE/Gnome, for simplicity and stability.

    • tempest@lemmy.ca
      2·
      18 minutes ago

      For all the fear mongering about rolling release distros I’ve only been burned once like 5 years ago by some Nvidia driver bug.

      I still do the same thing though.

  • 9point6@lemmy.world
    28·
    3 hours ago

    All my personal servers/sbcs run Debian

    I do enough DevOps at work, I don’t need my free time to be a job too

  • Lettuce eat lettuce@lemmy.ml
    6·
    3 hours ago

    I’ve been liking vanilla Debian more and more lately. It takes a bit of time to set up properly, and there are some drawbacks for certain software stacks. But in general, rock stable, no muss, barely any fuss.

    Once it’s set up, it’s awesome for workhorse servers.

    And as long as you don’t need anything cutting edge, it’s not bad as a desktop OS. I used Debian12 with the Plasma DE for a while at a job I had and it was very usable. A few weird issues, but nothing terrible.

    • Avid Amoeba@lemmy.caOP
      30·
      5 hours ago

      Do you want to live the boring stable life, where you can just build and build and build your personal poop castle on top of that solid OS for years and years? If yes, switch to Debian. You won’t be reinstalling till you get so bored that you get the urge to self-harm. We can’t afford new hardware anyways, but even if we do, the same install will work on the new system with few tweaks. 😆

      The initial setup is a bit more annoying than Pop/Mint/Ubuntu but not too much more. Upgrades are also a bit more annoying but not too much more. There’s good documentation for both of those procedures.

    • BurntWits@sh.itjust.works
      2·
      3 hours ago

      I’ve got two computers. My gaming pc is running CachyOS, and my other computer which is basically for messing around with and watching movies, used to be running Mint, but I just today switched over to Debian with XFCE as the DE and I’m liking it so far. Super bare bones but that’s what I wanted for this computer anyway so it works great for me.

    • Adeptus_Obsoletus@piefed.socialEnglish
      13·
      4 hours ago

      It’s just the matter of defaults, especially since Mint has Debian edition too. Personally I just cut off the “middleman” and go straight to Debian. Unless you really like Cinnamon, because you’ll obviously have better experience on Mint with it.

    • The Picard Maneuver@piefed.worldEnglish
      4·
      4 hours ago

      I just did this as a complete noob. Well, PopOS is still on my gaming rig, but my secondary PC is now Debian.

      I expected it to be way more barebones, but it turns out that my experience has been like 90% identical.

    • gigachad@piefed.socialEnglish
      4·
      5 hours ago

      I run Mint with Cinnamon on my Desktop PC and Debian with Gnome on a mini PC. I use the latter as a server and disabled the GUI, but Gnome was hard to get used to. I use my PC for casual gaming, browsing, and casual Python development. I am not a Linux power user but pretty familiar with the terminal. Setting up native Python without relying on UV/conda on Debian was a nightmare, but I guess that’s an edge case. I really love Linux Mint, and I also really like Cinnamon.

      • dan@upvote.au
        3·
        4 hours ago

        If you’re used to Windows then maybe give KDE a shot. Similar concepts to Windows (like a taskbar at the bottom of the screen) but extremely customizable. You can install KDE on Debian - on an existing system, the easiest way is to run tasksel and select KDE Plasma.

        • gigachad@piefed.socialEnglish
          2·
          4 hours ago

          I disabled the graphical interface as I use the mini PC as a server and only ssh to it. I used Ubuntu with gnome at work for a couple of years.

          Never tried out KDE, I know it is very popular. But I am super happy with Cinnamon and I don’t see a reason to switch on my main PC. Of course I grew up with Windows, that may explain why I get along with Cinnamon so well…

  • dan@upvote.au
    121·
    5 hours ago

    I’ve been using Debian on servers for 20+ years, but ended up using Fedora on my desktop and laptop.

    Debian is stable, meaning it doesn’t change often. Packages don’t get major version upgrades during the lifetime of a Debian release. That’s fantastic on servers, but can be annoying on clients since you don’t get the very latest drivers, the newest version of KDE, etc. Linux drivers move pretty quickly, especially for newer hardware.

    You can run Debian testing, which is a more up-to-date development branch, but you need to make sure you pull security updates from unstable as the security team do not upload to testing. https://github.com/khimaros/debian-hybrid

    If you’re new to Linux, then also consider Linux Mint Debian Edition.

    • Jo Miran@lemmy.ml
      6·
      4 hours ago

      I’m literally the opposite. I have been on Red Hat since Halloween and all servers I have ever touched have been Red Hat or a close fork of RHEL. When I decided to go Linux for my daily driver and more self hosting I went Pop!_OS on my laptop, Linux Mint for my wife, and Linux Mint Debian Edition for all my home systems.

      Red Hat is for work. Debian is for life.

      • Janx@piefed.socialEnglish
        2·
        3 hours ago

        I realize that’s it’s completely irrational, but I hate the name Pop!_OS, such that it may have kept me from checking it out to-date! I think it’s so stupid. And why does it need the exclamation mark?? But maybe I should look into it…

        • Jo Miran@lemmy.ml
          1·
          3 hours ago

          I actually do not recommend it at the moment. They are working on their new DE (Cosmic) so the current stable release is very old.

    • Avid Amoeba@lemmy.caOP
      2·
      4 hours ago

      Personal anecdote - a year ago I switched my Framework laptop from Ubuntu to Debian, on ZFS, and it’s been smooth sailing. The kernel is surprisingly new.

    • Magister@lemmy.world
      2·
      4 hours ago

      This is why I use MX, it is Debian based, but always up to date, for instance I have kernel 6.18.6. Firefox is always the latest a few hours after release, and always in .deb, no flatpak. MX has a couple of their utilities that are useful to setup your system too.

    • ulterno@programming.devEnglish
      11·
      3 hours ago

      As long as the new user makes the mistake of buying a perfectly matching desktop, it’s fine.

      • ohshit604@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        1·
        30 minutes ago

        I describe Debian as the “raw” linux experience, where you have to do a lot of manual work for specific things to work like drivers.

        For example on Debian you have to follow This Manual for Nvidia drivers whereas on Linux Mint (and iirc this opens immediately after installing the OS) you have Driver Manager and press the install button for the driver you need.

      • Jul (they/she)@piefed.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        22·
        4 hours ago

        Only if you have an older computer and dont need any modern drivers and dont care about graphics or music creation or gaming, and dont care that you right have to put a lot of work into getting up and running like you’re used to. But new users usually care about one or more of those things. That’s why the distros that build on Debian exist.

          • Jul (they/she)@piefed.blahaj.zoneEnglish
            1·
            3 hours ago

            I think that’s a high number, maybe 90% use a browser 90% of the time. But it’s pretty common to need to use a printer or scanner which many new ones aren’t easy to get Linux drivers for, watch a video that requires audio drivers for your computer, use a video camera and mic for a telehealth visit or school which requires drivers and software. Most of that doesn’t come with Debian or on the default repos. Web browsers do more than just read the web.