i love running Debian on devices i barely use :D
Installed Debian last night hoping to try out the freedombox thing. Haven’t had much time with it but so far I’m very pleased. Runs smooth as silk on an old laptop. It also feels very clean and straightforward.
I might ditch MX for vanilla Debian down the line. (Extra points for them disabling data collection by default and having it as a choice)
There’s a reason why Debian is so popular as a base for other distros. It’s just no-nonsense, does what it’s supposed to do, never expects praise just for doing its damn job.
I switched from Mint to Debian recently and it’s been great so far. I’m still getting used to the idea of no “panel” (tasks bar), but I think I will keep it that way since it looks cleaner. I find it really easy to navigate with just keyboard shortcuts. It does really feel universal.
Only issue that keeps bugging me is that for some reason the sound quality on any Bluetooth device is trash. €100 headset sounds like a €10 one. An issue I didn’t have with Mint, Ubuntu or Windows. I haven’t had time to investigate it yet though, maybe something is missing in the default installation and is just a matter of installing the right package.
It’s probably just using the call profile for everything.
https://wiki.debian.org/BluetoothUser/a2dp
This is probably what you’d want to start with. Mint and Ubuntu are probably handling the switch automatically.
Thank you for the suggestion, it might be this. I haven’t had a lot of free time lately, but I hope this weekend I can sit down and investigate.
I never actually had to deal with Bluetooth issues on Linux so take this with a grain of salt.
BT audio devices generally support multiple different encodings, for example aptX, but they can always fall back to the most basic and most horrible codec that is universally supported on any BT host device. Sounds like that’s what’s happening. So you might want to look into why your PC isn’t using the better options.
Yes, I thought it might be a code issue. It just seemed weird that with other Debian based distros (ubuntu and mint) I have never had this issue. I hope this weekend I get enough free time to investigate further. Thank you for the tip.
Maybe the necessary codecs just aren’t installed in Debian by default? Mint and Ubuntu are targeted at laptops for general use, so it makes sense they’d bundle all Bluetooth codecs in a default installation to be ready for most users. But Debian makes fewer assumptions like that, and is often used for servers, so perhaps they didn’t want to bloat it with codecs that many installations will never need.
I’m just guessing here, but that makes sense to me.
You could also install any de on top of debian(for example cinnamon if you liked mint or KDE). Even parallel if you like
Or if you don’t want to uninstall and install a bunch of packages there are official flavors of debian https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current-live/amd64/iso-hybrid/
Yeah, I know, but as I said I kind of like it and I think I can get used to it. It’s not necessarily something wrong with Debian, it’s just that I have been a long time windows user, and then used mint also for a long time, so this is just a habit.
I love Debian. It
- works
I always go back to Debian. It’s the spiral. Even bought a t-shirt.
lets goo debian!!
Definitely need to install LMDE on my T460 one of these days. Thanks for the reminder.
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
The NixOS, it callllssss usssssss
come in they ssssaid, itssss delcarativvvveee they ssssssaid.
Wait i just put an environment variable in conifguration.nix and moved home manager back out of my home folder to a central spot why does sddm take 5 minutes to give me Wayland now?
edit: OMG 6 hours later and I have it working. I have a configuration.nix that i re-grew with my 2025 backup and a configuration.nix.slow that is still broken if i switch it out. SDDM timeouts all over the place
the diff between them give 0 indication why sddm would fail.
I kinda want to go back through line by line and find out what did it, but I kinda also want to sleep, eat and go to work in a few hours :)
I started with Ubuntu 8.10 on Gnome 2, and switched to Debian 8 after Snaps were introduced in Ubuntu 16.04.
I still use Gnome with a very Gnome 2-esque layout. AND default Adwaita. What can I say, it’s digital home for me. Almost every app I use is Flatpak, so it’s always fresh.
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.
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.
Arch and derivatives always act weird on my system when the time comes to move files.
I never figured out the root cause, but after like two months of use when I move or download files, the system lags extremely bad and hogs all the RAM.
Works just fine on any other distros.
I had a few months where every update broke my WiFi.
A second reboot always fixed it, i never found out the cause.
Currently running PopOS and thinking about switching to Mint but maybe Debian?
LMDE. Best of both worlds
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 (by reinstalling). 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.
Wait debían supports poop castles? I finally have a reason to switch from vista!
Keep Vista, get out to join the protest!
I can’t even say the initial setup was more annoying than Mint.
yeah ever since bookworm, they seemed to sort it out…
Awesome,thanks!
What if my new hardware ends up being RISC V?
RISCV, potato, unprocessed sand…it’s all hardware anyway
IIRC Debian supports RISC V
IIRC the x86_64 binaries won’t work, so you will require a reinstall.
Yes, but that’s always the case when you’re switching architectures. The x86 binaries won’t work on ARM, either.
And that’s where my comment matches what the Avid Amoeba is going with, that Debian will make the hardware usable for so long that RISC V might be mainstream (and maybe even powerful enough compared to current x86_64) by the time I decide to change the system.
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.
LMDE, best of both worlds
++ Came here to say this.
I run Linux mint debian edition. Best of both worlds.
It is the way.
Oooooh
The ultimate solution is to have 3 notebooks with 3 different distros.
Obviously
Or two notebooks, a desktop, and a server 😆
My vote is on CachyOS
its pretty good
Switched tp CachyOS on my desktop a week ago. So far I’m liking it.
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.
Nice. Thanks
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.
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.
Python without UV/Conda is always somewhat of a pain on Linux, well, if you need a specific version that is. It comes pre-installed on virtually all distros, because the distros use it themselves to script stuff in the OS. That also means, if you install a different Python version OS-wide, you can break those OS scripts.
Admittedly, it is somewhat of a larger pain on Debian, though, because it will stay behind on older Python versions for longer than most other distros. After the Python 2→3 transition, they also continued to alias
pythontopython2for quite some years (I’m actually not sure, if they alias topython3by now)…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.
I’m fairly new to Linux and I’ve been using Kubuntu, and so far I really like KDE coming from a lifetime of using Windows.
I disabled the graphical interface as I use the mini PC with Debian as a server and only ssh to it. I used Ubuntu with gnome at work for a couple of years (I could ignore it back then with the Ubuntu theme, which I liked more)
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…
Yeah, I mean Cinnamon matches what Windows does really quite closely, down to even the default keyboard shortcuts being virtually the same.
KDE doesn’t match it quite as closely, but it’s just power-user heaven…
I disabled the graphical interface as I use the mini PC with Debian as a server and only ssh to it
Oh yeah, that makes sense.
I’ve been long time Debian fan, I use it on all my servers and my laptop, however on my gaming rig I had PopOS and recently switched to PikaOS which is based on Debian and I’m absolutely loving it
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.
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 fromunstableas the security team do not upload totesting. https://github.com/khimaros/debian-hybridIf you’re new to Linux, then also consider Linux Mint Debian Edition.
I just run sid (unstable) on my desktop. Still very rare to get a broken package, and when it happens it gets fixed within hours.
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.
I have to use Fedora at work (or Windows 11 or MacOS). All our production systems are CentOS, so the supported client Linux distro is Fedora, as they can reuse a bunch of scripts, Chef recipes, etc.
I liked it enough that I started using it at home. I like using the same OS on both work and personal systems. I share scripts and dotfiles between them.
Corporations refer to this as work-life balance.
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…
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.
They have released a newer version with COSMIC as the default DE
How is cosmic? My Pop system is my main system, so I need to be cautious.
It is pretty polished to be daily driven. However you might miss some more features in settings and such if you’re coming from something like KDE.
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.
ZFS is magic if you have enough storage devices.
I was having all sorts of IO issues because a few shitty HDD cables, and the worst of the observed behavior was some hiccups and freezes sometimes. Hundreds of IO errors, and it was barely sometimes maybe having a pause…
After switching a bunch of cables around and re-scrubbing a few times, I’ve now had zero IO errors for months, and zero OS issues.
I’d hate to think how nasty things would’ve gotten and would still be if those hundreds and hundreds of IO errors were stacking up this whole time.
Been uasing ZFS with USB drives since 2019 or so. On Raspberry Pi 4, then on real computers. My laptop is on a single SSD. ZFS is the only reason I figured I have RAM issues two years ago. No errors would show up on a couple of passes of Memtest86+.
I genuinely do not remember how it acts with one or few devices, but I wouldn’t be shocked to hear the magic extends past replacing raid arrangements or other multi-HDD setups.
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.
Recently tried MX and definitely +1.
The disclaimer is I haven’t tried too many of the shiny new distros to compare to, but compared to RHEL and Manjaro (ugh), Ubuntu, Mint, and a few other ‘traditional’ choices, MX has been crazy easy to setup and use.
The one thing that hasn’t “just worked” is a USB4 dock that kinda’ works like extra PCIe lanes (it’s just how that style of dock works), which of course the OS is going to freak out if a few PCIe devices suddenly disappear when unplugged. It’s not exactly a hot-swappable protocol!
I’d like to know how to get it working flawlessly, but everything else has been great.
There is no GNU/Linux, there’s only Debian
