Yeah, I’m just another one of those who has recently switched to Linux. And, as many, what I did was to go for a distro catered for beginners. I chose Ubuntu at first because I had briefly used it like eleven years ago at high school as part of computer class, and actually liked it back then, and, all in all, I do like Ubuntu’s current GNOME adaption.
However, I decided after a few days to move on to a community-based distro as it aligns more with my way of thinking (as well as for a couple of issues which were Ubuntu/GNOME related), and the obvious choice, having tried Ubuntu, was Mint. And I do like Mint, even more than Ubuntu; I especially like Mint’s adaption of the Xfce DE and I would definitely use it if I had a low-powered computer.
What didn’t quite convince me, though, was the limited DE selection available. While learning about all the Linux stuff I came to know about desktops, and I felt like, if I wanted to ever use a different one, yes, it could be installed the hard way, but I would rather have a distro that can be installed with my desired desktop by default, and the one that got my attention was KDE.
And that’s how I’ve ended up on Debian. Yeah, not your usual recommendation for beginners but… I don’t see anything bad about it? Like, yeah, I have Nvidia, but I honestly wouldn’t mind going through the hassle of installing the GPU’s driver through the terminal (and I haven’t even bothered yet cause I don’t really game much anymore). But, apart from that, I’m delighted with what I see. I could’ve gone with Fedora, which was my next choice, but I actually like Debian’s slow update cycle, as I don’t want to be bothered often with setting up my system again. I want something as close as “set it and forget it” as possible. Plus, it is also the one I have felt the most at ease with thanks to KDE indeed.
So that’s my story! It’s been an intense few days of learning, installing, deleting, and reinstalling OSes on my system, but I now feel at ease and will be installing my favourite programmes or searching alternatives for the ones I used on Windows.
Thank you for reading and have a nice evening!
I love Debian. I’ve bounced around distros a lot, for various reasons, but I’ll always have a soft spot for Debian.
The problem with reputations — both in terms of Linux distros and just in general — is that they tend to reflect conventional wisdom from 10-20 years ago. Sometimes that conventional wisdom was off-base from the start, and sometimes it’s just outdated.
Like, “Debian is hard” and “Ubuntu is great for beginners”. That was true enough 20 years ago. But today, not really.
My last distro-hop was to Bazzite because Debian didn’t have the latest GPU drivers that I needed (Debian 13 “Trixie” does now, btw). It was just bad timing that I upgraded to a brand-new GPU toward the end of Debian 12’s life cycle. If I’d waited another 6 months (or if I didn’t need good OpenCL/ROCm/Vulkan performance) I probably would’ve stuck with Debian.
I’m fine on Bazzite, but I feel like if I ever hop again, it’ll be back to Debian. Now that I am comfortable with DistroBox, I won’t worry so much about older application packages in Debian repos; if push comes to shove I’ll just run it in a Fedora box or something like that. Drivers are the only thing to worry about, and I’m not likely to upgrade my GPU again for 5+ years so I should be fine.
Debian is a solid choice. It’s been my daily driver for years. It just works!
Mint is actually based on Ubuntu which is based on Debian.
There is LMDE which is just based on Debian.
cutting out the middleman.
FYI : The packages for LMDE are the same source as debian.
I mean, “the hard way”: install a desktops meta-package/group, then configure your display manager (login mask), some also support auto-detect.
As an Arch user (btw) Debian is more than respectable. Truly one of the greatest distros of all time alongside Fedora, OpenSuse, and Alpine
:3
No BTW in that post. I call fake.
Fixed
It’s all down to your use case. I’ve been using CachyOS on my desktop and laptop because I game, but for my homelab? Debian all the way(well Proxmox on bare metal, Debian containers).
But I don’t understand what you’re saying about Desktop Environments here? You can install most DEs on pretty much any distro…I get you probably like the Out-Of-Box experience, but I wouldn’t let that be the limiting factor in your distro choice.
I do love Plasma though and it’s my defacto DE choice with any distro I use.
If you want Debian plus some nice tools, I’d recommend MX Linux. It’s based on Debian stable and mosrly just has a few convenient extras. Like installing nvidia drivers with one click, or being able to create a bootable ISO of your exact system. It has a few other neat tools, too.
Wouldn’t be surprised if you could just nab those tools ad hoc as desired for normal Debian, though.
Debian is wonderful. Nothing to add…
Debian is a great choice.
I think the majority of modern distros are all fine for beginners really.
The advantage with debian is the very large user base and ecosystem - you won’t encounter a problem that someone else hasn’t already solved.
Yep, having a large user base for my distro of choice was also one of the requirements precisely because of that
Debian is fantastic; I use it on every server I can.
If your server doesn’t rely on docker I would give FreeBSD a try. I’ve been using Debian for 20 years and moved to FreeBSD a few years ago. Now I can never go back. Not that I don’t like Debian anymore but FreeBSD is a true server system. Simple, fast and stable. And with their jails implementation (something like docker but less obscure) you can easily isolate your services from the rest of the system.
I appreciate the heads up; BSD is on the menu.
Great choice. And if you do ever find yourself in a hurry for the latest version of something, there is flatpak and appimage.
It is a wonderful time to be a Linux user.
To enable flatpak in Discover go to its settings page and at the bottom click “install flatpak backend” or something like that. Then when thats done you need to enable “flathub” on the same page as the package source for flatpak. You might have to restart in between or after these steps if it doesnt show up.
Only “flatpak” though, not “snap” because that sucks.
, but I actually like Debian’s slow update cycle,
That’s one of debian’s strengths and an often overlooked feature that I believe many people would love as well. I even had a professor migrating from windows to debian simply because he’s, in his words: “tired of things changing all the time without my permission. I want a system that stays the same for as long as possible and barely changes”. Debian was like a natural choice for him. I thought he would be asking me for help in the transition, but he said he’s “ok and learning by searching on the internet”, and that he’s “investing some time on earning it, because the guarantee of minimal changes makes the it an investment, instead of a waste of time”.
I also find value in this.
Lately I get a lot of flack for running Debian with xfce but it looks and acts the same every time.
I’ve been through my various stages of customizing and living on the bleeding edge. But now that i have my wish and I work in linux daily, I just want the os to stay out of the way.
Debian is great, though I do wish they’d make it easier for new users to find their unofficial live image/installers since booting the desktop of your choice with no hassle is great:
https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current-live/amd64/iso-hybrid/I did not know that they have live mediums. Thank you for sharing
Linux in general is the wise choice, no matter the distribution.
Debian would be good if it didn’t use apt
Still good enough for its stability.
