Why is Debian always left out of the distro recommendations?
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in Debian (because Debian was always mentioned as a distro good for servers, or stable machines that are ok with outdated software)
And while I get that Debian does have software that isn't as up to date, I've never felt that the software was that outdated.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?
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.
agreed, Debian's rock solid for 99.99% of people.
i've worked on predominantly debian based infrastructure professionally for multimedia companies in the last 10ish years, so it's a little bit funny to me that og flavored debian doesn't do this, but it clearly can if you can afford an army of developers to create it for you.
entire multi-billion dollar revenue streams literally exist because of debian doing this and doing it well, but everyone popularly and unquestioningly believe that you can't do it on linux. lol
Plain bread is not a fair comparison, Debian is like an old familiar sandwich you keep going back to because it's not fancy, it doesn't use over the top ingredients so it digests very well.
Like ham and cheese in a restaurant.
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.
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.
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
This is what I got blindsided by when I tried out Mint a decade ago. OS is up to date and pretty, but kernel/drivers? Old, or "stable".
And it's weird seeing all of these recommendations for Mint on YouTube/social media this past year. And then watching the videos everyone is just gawking about Cinnamon...which you can install on any other distro too.
Lots of normies hopping on the Linux train and have no idea what they're getting into lol
I feel like I'm taking crazy pills when people insist that the kernel is not old, it's "stable" lol
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.
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.
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.
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...
Everything in Debian just works, but people are looking for more features than Debian offers out of the box.
I can see why people would want Debian if they've been burned couple of times by distros that move very fast and break stuff.
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
Yes, from version 12. I have some kind of relationship with Debian (I like the philosophy behind it) so I have always wanted to use that when I was going to switch to Linux. Version 12 was what did it for me - removed the installation pain points, as you said. I would use it on any set-and-forget computers (like parents mail-and-web computer) if I get the chance.
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.
Hot take but totally agreed
I do debian on my servers (barring specific uses), arch on my desktop.
Yeah but ppa and apt are the worse of all the options. Other wise you right.
Fuck ppas horrid system.
Debian generally doesn't use PPAs, that's an Ubuntu thing. What's your beef with apt?
debian is meant to be stable and ancient, it's for servers
Debian unstable has entered the chat
It works a treat on old laptops. I daily drive it on an old Latitude and it's awesome
Debian is more like AOSP. It's a starting point. Super bare. More commonly used in servers and such.
Also things tend to be older on Debian which isn't the fit for more gaming oriented systems. Due to optimization not being yet available and drivers for the latest hardware
Ah, ok - yeah I can definitely see how for gaming it might not be ideal. I've never thought Linux was all that smooth of a transition for gamers though, no matter what OS you're using - but I guess that heavily depends on the games you're playing.
Gaming on Linux has been really good for the last several years. The main issue is certain multiplayer games that intentionally block Linux users.
That in community apps, third party hardware and a bunch of other nice cities still don't have good support unless you're on Arch.
Things are starting to support Fedora, but it's unlikely that we'll ever see a lot of the more niche stuff support something like Debian.
This is mostly VR stuff tho.
It is annoying how often I find that pre-compiled binaries are only available on the aur. And if you want to install a community application for a game, you basically have to compile it from source for anything else.
Super annoying
It's pretty smooth on bazzite aside from kernel anti-cheat games. Just run em through steam, even pirated games
Even with games that usually use kernal anti-cheat systems like battleeye, some games specifically have enabled proton support and just work as well.
The problem hasn't been compatibility for a long time, it was developers intentionally blacklisting Linux in their anticheat. Turns out a lot of people hate their customers having freedom in their software
I think this is the key thing.
If you're always buying the newest GPU to play the latest tech- envelope-pushing AAA title that requires the latest greatest driver, then you're probably not going to have a good time with gaming on Debian.
But some of us don't care about those types of games, or maybe in some cases we do but are willing to wait a while to play a particular title (hello Patient Gamers). In that case Debian is a nice, rock solid gaming platform.
Anecdotally, I probably do 85+% of my gaming on Debian (the rest being my steam deck). And it works fine for me because of the types of games I play and/or how long I tend to wait before getting new titles (giving Debian time to catch up).
It's definitely not for every gamer, but I don't think it's as unusable for gaming as people often suggest.
These days, you can install any of the gaming focused distros (Bazzite, CachyOS, Nobara, ...). And you didn't have to do anything. It just works, and works well. Steam is either installed or suggested initially. Really trivial.
What would be considered "bare" about it? Granted, I'm not gaming on it or anything, but I've found it to work pretty well out of the box, just downloading software as I need - but nothing that has caused any sort of headache due to missing drivers or anything like that.
To me it seems like it would be pretty simple for most people to switch over from windows - albiet maybe not for the super beginners that have never seen a command line - but for most semi-tech literate, I would think it would be a decent entry into Linux.
Genuinely curious what is actually stripped down or missing, because maybe it's just something that I'm not even aware that I'm missing out on, lol
Older drivers won't support newer hardware. Only includes default apps from gnome and KDE. No DE tweaks to speak of. No performance optimizations. No Gear Lever. No fractional scaling implemented, etc. etc.
I guess it makes sense that I'm comfortable with using Debian then, lol, because I don't know what most of those things you mentioned are - haha.
Thanks for the explanation though :)
no fractional scaling? thats a DE/WM feature not distro related
old drivers? so is every stable point release distro unless you go out of your way to get an to date kernel,
only includes default apps? you mean following the DE's developer's vision? (sure for gnome it is a downside for most, tweaks should 100% be included on all gnome installs)
Lots of distros these days come out of the box with that pre-configured, so no, it's not.
Yes.
It is a distro thing. It requires configuration and most good distros have it pre-configured.
I don’t know the AOSP acronym so I’ll take a guess: Always On Server Platform?
Android Open Source Project, it's the open base that the actual Android releases are built upon. It's not really usable as is, since it lacks the required kernel blobs and software that people have come to expect (like Google's proprietary stuff).
Android open source project. It's the base behind every android variation, but it has pretty generic software (although sometimes better than the alternatives companies choose to ship instead).
Android Open Source Project. Like the very core of the android OS, which vendors fork and extend for the devices they develop.
Super bare. 🤣🤣🤣
Debian is probably Thee most supported distro with the most packages available.
Debian is also among the absolute best among Linux desktop options, and actually quite popular.
There's a reason Debian is still the most forked distro.
I'm not talking about availability. I'm talking about comes pre-installed so the user doesn't have to go out and find them to use basic functionality.
I did not say it was not great or popular.
This is not the dunk you think it is...
Apart from Steam not being a standard installed item, it is very feature full.
For 32 bit you also need to enable multi-arch.
But apart from gaming it is in no way bare and very very far from "super bare". Ans Steam is pretty easy to install.
You wrote it was mostly for servers. Which although it is an excellent server distro, it is most definitely developed at least as much for desktop use.
I don't think you really understand the implications.
I've just given you several examples of how it's not.
Just making my point for me now.
No I wrote that's it's more commonly used in servers.
I don't think you do.
I think you're treating this like a pit fight.
I dunno what that means. I gave what I felt like a very simple take and this person started to argue with me, not the other way around.
It looks like one of you is treating the other as a person deserving of respectful conversation.
While I get what you mean about things being pre-installed for super new people to Linux/terminal. . . If it has a apt package, it's as easy as "sudo apt install xyz". Also, I thi k Debian comes with the synaptic package manager which makes it fairly easy to install as well. With that said though, I do see your point, as it's one more hurdle.
This is the kind of ignorant shit that relegates Linux to nerd circles. What do you do with this information? What is xyz, and exactly xyz because if you get a single letter wrong it does not work. Further the user has to already know what they want, which a new user will not.
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
Less free than it used to be. Now you get closed source firmware by default, making the initial setup much better than it used to be.
Fedora har the same free software ethos. You can enable varies various not free repos, just like in debian. I doubt it's a real problem? Might just have been lucky.
Fedora was the first to get my NVidia Card and proprietary wifi card working out of the box without intervening. It also updates my Dell firmware out of the box. Debian, last time I checked, does not. I haven't tried since before Bullseye.
Similar to Debian but tangentally, I run Guix which falls under the same GNU umbrella of what "free software" is and I have to break that with non-free channels to get the same laptop running.
I'm running Debian 12 (Bookworm) on a Dell laptop and it updates my firmware out of the box as well. I'm not running any NVidia though, so I can't comment on whether that'd work or not.
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.
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.
Mesa has been the defacto standard for AMD for years. It's always performed better than the official driver. AMD just made it their official recommendation recently.
I think Intel also uses Mesa, with Nvidia being the odd one out
Right, I get that but also :
(Source Steam Hardware & Software Survey: January 2026 )
Entire top10, then for marketshare I don't count NVIDIA I count the rest :
AMD : ~15%
Intel : ~6%
I'm too lazy to guesstimate when it's below 0.5% but you get the idea, at least 75% is NVIDIA.
So "odd" yes but still a big deal in terms of market share for gamers.
To be clear though I am NOT advocating for NVIDIA (especially with all their AI BS) just showing how dominating they are in that segment.
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.
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"
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.
My FP right now:
The fact the other post was on /selfhosted kind of makes op's point.
It felt like a "Missed Connections" ad in a newspaper. (If you're under 40, you might have to look up what that is)
Debian and Red Hat are the foundation for most of the popular distros out there.
The reason I don't recommend it by default is that there is no updater across releases.
The official upgrade process is to modify apt sources files and run upgrade, then full-upgrade, etc.
That's fine for me but it makes it hard to recommend to people who may not be as willing to deal with modifying system files and reading some upgrade notes
If your sources track stable/testing or oldstable, you don't need to change anything, that said I think the offical stance it to track the relase name (trixie bookworm etc)
alright, but you have to do it only once in every 10 years, so...
For desktop use debian sucks. I dont want to wait a year to update my apps. For servers its fine. Arch and Nix are my favorite rn and im looking to convert my home media server into Nix soon.
Why? Are they not working as-is?
I like having the latest updates and features as soon as possible. Especially for software that's in its early stages and regularly getting large updates. But to each their own, some people value the stability more than the features.
I'll give you an example:
I tried to run an old videogame through plain wine. On ZorinOS it ran out of the box no questions attached. On Debian I had to install wine and go through a few hiccups and issues. An average user shouldn't go crazy when the command like says something incomprehensible
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.
Because Mint exists and is just ”Debian configured for regular humans”.
Anyone that would rather have raw Debian doesn’t need to be told that.
That is to say, Linux Mint Debian Edition.
Regular Mint is still based on Ubuntu.
Which is based on Debian
Which is on Earth. Which is in Canada.
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
Because linux distribution recommendations are written by people who have nothing better to do than be hypnotized by the jangling keys of whatever’s new or hot for people who have nothing better to do than be hypnotized by the jangling keys of whatever’s new or hot.
It’s the same reason rhel doesn’t get recommended tbh.
well there is more to the lack of RHEL recomendation, no sane person likes corporate lock in and although rhel is fairly open there is always a little bit more than with debian
I tend to think 99 percent of linux users or prospective users would exchange the modicum of what could be considered lock in if you were to really give it the most uncharitable read in the history of computing for the extensive documentation and support.
I have nothing but hate in my heart and vitriol in my guts for red hat but their linux is owed more recommendations than it gets.
So historically not manjaro.
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.
It really depends on the situation. Hardware support is definitely better than it used to be and everything in linux is hackable regardless of distribution if needed, but the reason I haven't switched my main tower from Arch to Debian is that fear of requiring extra work for things like gaming and music production. If you're running the newest and latest hardware you might run into an issue depending on the kernel version being used, etc.,
That being said, I use Debian every day on my thinkpad and love it. I have an interest in migrating away from Ubuntu Server and toward Debian for servers as well. I don't think I've ever heard it "not recommended", just similar caution expressed.
I like using Debian stable because I don't like being bothered every ten minutes about updates. I need a newer version of something I install a Flatpak.
I spent most of last year running LMDE6 and while it started off good, things just got more frustrating to troubleshoot and the system felt buggier over time. (Which I know is not how things are supposed to be for "stable" Debian.) Switched to CachyOS a couple months ago and things work so much smoother.
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 understand and respect your opinion. I have new hardware though, a Ryzen 7 9800X3D and 9070XT GPU. I bought them a couple of weeks after release and needed drivers for them to "get my money's worth" out of them. (CP2077 at 4k with 144hz was a must!) I needed the newer mesa drivers at the time, and this was pre-trixie, so I opted to use forky instead. I opted to not reinstall after trixie was released as I already had all of my stuff set up and configured. As far as security, package releases in deb go into sid for 10, 5, or 2 days for stability testing (depending on the urgency) before being pushed into forky, but the Debian security team does not work with either sid or forky. So, neither are really more or less secure than the other. Forky is just a teeny bit more "stable" than unstable.
I personally take a calculated risk, I understand the security implications and rely on other external network-based security measures, so probably feel a bit more confident than most users and am willing to take the risk more than others may. I also have submitted bugs and provide feedback to packages fairly often for both Debian and KDE while using both trixie and forky, which I feel is important for end-user usability. I've been using Debian for a long time and have tried to contribute back where I can.
I've been on Debian for over 20 years now, after a major issue with a LAMP server using Ubuntu Warthog and going to "the source" of Ubuntu to work out a few issues. I ended up converting all of my servers (Former SysAdmin) to Debian within a few weeks. After that, I moved from Slackware at home and Ubuntu at work to Debian everywhere and never looked back.
Fair enough, now i feel a bit ashamed since you are way way more knowledgeable than me. I have only been a Debian user for a year and half.
I made the reply because i remember that when i was looking to enter into Linux, Debian testing was recommended as a great compromise between stable and unstable.
My surprise when i went to the Debian wiki and said, pretty ambiguously at that, that i shouldn't use it! Reason being that it wasn't as updated in security patches as stable. No one told me that bit when i was asking. Since i didn't know the risks involved, i took the safe option and went with stable, in the end loved it.
I have to admit that for your case it makes sense to use it. You know the risks, know where to patch it up, and it helps to contribute to it by testing it and submitting bugs. Thank you!
I do still think that testing shouldn't be recommended, but i see and agree that it has it's niche where it works and can be great for some people.
Anyways, i hope i didn't came too hostile in my first reply! Cheers
Absolutely not, and please don't be ashamed. I didn't take anything you said as hostile at all. I always appreciate a great discussion. Asserting opinions combined with asking questions is a great way to learn. I'm glad to be able to help open your understanding about why some people use different releases and how they can be useful outside of just the current release. Thank you for being open for an exchange of ideas.
Glad to hear it! My pleasure, always happy to learn.
I think it's a reinforcing cycle. (I) Debian gets recommended less often for home use -> (II) less people become proficient in it -> (I)
While Debian is my preferred distro, I wouldn't reccomend it to others unless they are techy and don't mind fiddling with things. I absolutely wouldn't reccomend it to my grandma (I would reccomend her Mint though) and probably not to someone who just wants to play games, especially if they have an Nvidia card. I do game on Debian with a 3060, but it was cumbersome getting stuff working properly because of old drivers. I did get it working, but I think most people just want to play their games and not deal with that. I also have a nearly 10 year old laptop with Debian, and since it's so old, everything does, "just work", but I imagine most people aren't also using the same 10 year old laptop.
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.
Personally, yeah it’s the old packages. I want to play games on my desktop and have the newest DE features. An arch based distro seems like it’ll keep up better than Debian.
For my servers though, I only use Debian.
Ok, so it seems that gaming is a recurring theme from the few comments so far.
My curiosity then would lead me to wonder opinions from a non-gaming standpoint.
Do you think you would mind as much if you didn't use your machine for gaming? Would the slightly older packages still affect you?
Linux has gotten really good over the last ~15 years. It used to be that if you didn’t have the most up to date packages, you would be missing game changing features. Now, the distribution you use almost doesn’t matter because even the older packages are good enough for most things.
To answer your question, if it weren’t for gaming, no I wouldn’t mind using Debian as my daily driver. If I ever needed a new package for whatever reason, I would use flatpaks, snaps, docker, or Distrobox to get it.
In my opinion, Debian is best for small, specific purposes that don't change much over time. I used Debian for a bit as a home PC, mostly for making music with bitwig and gaming on steam as well as freetube/media consumption.
I had trouble with apps having conflicts, and combined with an nvidia card, the experience got worse over time and I had to separate my system into different bootable linux systems on the same drive, one distro for gaming and one for music. Some apps were deb files, some were apt, some were direct from websites and others immutable type apps, a mess.
Eventually I tried Arch based systems and liked how unified pacman is and how there are meta-packages full of music and RT. Then moved to Cachyos because it is just so much less annoying that vanilla Arch maintenance for me. I also used endeavorOS for a while, but at one point started having endless crashes from that distro across 2 different PCs (some black screen video issue with nvidia GPU).
As to how that applies to what I would recommend:
I think Debian is good at specific use-cases, but poor as an everyday home PC imo. Also, Debian is so barebones that things like a firewall aren't pre-configured, which makes it more of an intermediate distro that seems easy on first glance.
I wouldn't recommend Ubuntu personally, because the last few times I have tried it I found it buggy and I don't like snaps. But there are so many Debian derivative distros that in some cases Ubuntu is the best option, for example, Ubuntu Studio is actually pretty nice for quickly making creative content. There also Ubuntu distros pre-configured for other purposes.
Linux Mint seems to have outdated packages, but overall decent for beginners because it is a debian/ubuntu sub-distro that has a lot of polish and is really good at hardware detection on installation. I also think the linux mint DE is pretty good for new users.
Debian is fine distro and many people rely on it as strong foundation including the people that build ubuntu and mint. Maybe Debian is the hidden champion.
When Ubuntu became popular, it had some advantages like reliable release cycles, slightly newer packages, better integration of proprietary drivers. Stuff that was not wanted in Debian stable main at the time.
Other non-debian-based distros also brought some advantages.
Personally, I'd love to see Debian as the base distro with Mint, Ubuntu and others building ontop of it. I like my apt update. I just won't send novices straight to Debian when the derivates have more desktop users.
Linux Mint has LMDE based on Debian.
I daily drive Debian stable for the last 3 years now. I started using it because I develop software that runs on Debian so it was easier to not worry about library dependencies. I never had a problem with "outdated" software. It just works as a computer should. You have no idea what version software you run unless you need a specific feature in a later version. I don't want to play around with my work machine, I have other devices to do that. It is an amazing distro (that many others build upon), as many other distros also are. I recommend it constantly.
It's just more barebones than lots of other options, and distro hopping tends to be about exploration. There isn't a whole lot to explore on Debian, because its purpose is stability and simplicity.
You find tons of Debian-derived distros exactly for this reason. They build on that stable core but add bells and whistles. Distros usually are defined by which bells and whistles they include by default.
Debian is generalist, with it's strongest strength being it's stability. That said, I'm not sure who I would recommend it to. Zorin or Mint would be better for new linux users, and Debian's slower updates mean it will fall behind other distros for anyone wanting games. Also the rise of immutable distros means that it's stability isn't as much of a selling point as it used to be, if I'm worried about a kid messing up the install an immutable distro would be better than Debian probably.
I have a lot of respect for Debian, but the main people I hear using it these days are more experienced linux users who want to settle down (done distro hopping) and just have a reliable computer for non-gaming stuff.
Mostly, this makes sense to me - but at the end you stated that people who want to settle down and have a reliable computer for non gaming stuff - and I would think that this would be a parallel userbase for non gamers coming from windows. Granted you did say "experienced" Linux users, but I honestly find Debian to be extremely noob friendly after the initial Linux familiarization of how installing apps and such works. And with LLMs these days, troubleshooting any issues is pretty easy, especially on .deb . Idk, maybe I've just become a fanboy or something, but I just feel that the distro gets overlooked as an overly stable/outdated option for servers when I've had an absolute great experience so far as a daily driver (of course, not playing games)
It might just be that, people tend to gravitate to the next shiny new thing. But you're right, even when the application repos skew a bit older they're not really that old. And technically nothing is stopping you from running a more up-to-date application via flatpak, appimage, or just compiling directly. I think it's perfect for people looking for a more vanilla boring experience with the standard DE environments (GNOME, KDE, etc.).
I will say for total noobs another distro is maybe more friendlier, more polished installer, etc.. before settling on Debian I was happily using Ubuntu which felt easier for someone still getting used to Linux. But I always knew it was Debian based which made me curious about eventually just running Debian itself... nowadays Debian is my main and has been great.
One thing I have yet to seen brung up in the replies yet, is Debian Testing and Debian Unstable
I have been using unstable on my desktop no issues,I would say that it is suprisingly stable, I only had one breakage so far and I have used it for one year as my main and sole system
And why is Ubuntu server even a thing, often recommended?Debian is this but without a second-party repository.Edit: right, services, contracts.
You can somewhat avoid the issue of old packages by running the testing version instead of stable, but in that case you should ensure you get security updates from unstable: https://github.com/khimaros/debian-hybrid
I used to run some systems on Debian testing and never had any issues.
Just run unstable, especially on desktop. It is just unstable in name. Debian's unstable is probably 100x more stable than some other distros stable line.
In the context of Debian, "stable" means it doesn't change often. Debian stable doesn't have major version changes within a particular release.
Unstable has major changes all the time, hence the name.
I think testing is a good middle ground. Packages are migrated from unstable to testing after ~10 days of being in unstable, if no major bugs are found.
PClinuxOS sees your favourite distro omitted and understands.
In my experience, the Debian installer is just confusing. Once you're past that, the userbase is smaller than Ubuntu's. Their repos are different too, meaning software packaged for Ubuntu isn't guaranteed to work on Debian. Ubuntu itself is pretty terrible for its own reasons, so when asked for a desktop Linux distribution "close to Ubuntu" I'd put Mint first. (For general recommendation, I'd probably say Fedora now.)
Debian 13 is still relatively new, so the problems of it being out of date aren't showing yet. Debian 12 just before 13 released had tons of these issues, like glibc being too old for some binary programs, or the kernel not being new enough for some "gaming" features.
For reference, I am on Arch Linux. I feel I have a good understanding of how to manually install Linux. The Debian installer confused me in many ways, the main one being that "language and region" are closely tied, and selecting en_US "language" forces you to choose an American timezone later in the installer. In general it was a slow install process too. This is something other "user friendly" distros handle much better. A default live environment, a quick installation, and options being there, but having the defaults automatically correct (like timezone).
Like (almost) every other distro, Debian has its own benefits and downsides. These make it a good fit on desktop for slightly more experienced users, or users familiar with
apt. This means it isn't in the list of distros I'd generally recommend to people when they're not familiar with Linux.Just wanted to add that Debian officially offers live GUI installers with a bunch of DEs just like other mainstream distributions :)
https://www.debian.org/CD/live/#choose_live
Is it? I feel like there's far more Debian systems in the world, if you include servers.
Thanks for the detailed reply - great points!
I'd say it's because:
And, no, I don't use debian myself.
That's most probably because you learned how to use your system without breaking it in the meantime :)
Debian always has been a stable distro. But earlier it lacked some good DE. And most beginners didn't know or thought it was daunting to install DE. That's why it got left out but now in past 4-5 years it has been pretty good.
While it's true that Debian installation used to make use of a TUI and it did not have a nice GUI "live-CD" installation image for a long time (I think until 2019), Debian installation process included a default DE for way longer than that (2000). And before they did, the installation offered a choice between different window managers (back in the days before well established DE suites were even a thing).
They don't customize the DE much, but neither does Archlinux which is a very popular distro nowadays (and the installer on that one is arguably even less friendly than Debian used to be).
Personally, I feel it has more to do with how other distros (like Mint, Ubuntu, Knoppix, etc.) have built on the work of Debian to make their own variants that are essentially Debian + extra stuff, making them better recommendations for the average people (if one thinks of those as Debian variants then I wouldn't say Debian is "left out"). And for the not-so-average people, rolling release style distros (or even things like Nix/Guix) might be more interesting to experiment in.
I think it's a bit boring. It's fantastic for servers, and as a base for other distros. I did recently try it after using Mint for years (LMDE recently). I even used it with the Cinnamon DE I'm used to, and I just found it lacked some polish or something. Little niceties here and there. That's it really. Minor drawbacks, and no advantage to me over LMDE, so that's what I'm back to.
I recommend Linux Mint Debian Edition to anybody who will listen
i'm guessing by the name that it's based on debian instead of ubuntu?
does that it doesn't have snap?
Based on Debian instead of Ubuntu, but still an official release. I didn't quite understand the second question, sorry. Mint doesn't allow snap by default.
i was wondering if it came with snaps enabled by default and you've answered it.
how about the desktop environment, is it still stock gnome/kde/lxde/xfce/whatever?
Cinnamon
Shut up Debbie! Nobody likes your name!
Because it is barebones. New users need a distro to be configured for them to reasonable defaults.
But if I'm not able to update constantly, how else will I get the dopamine hits from watching the numbers go up?
I use Debian for my desktop, and 100% think others should, too.
I think those who know about Debian would already know if Debian's for them or not.
I'd generally recommend something a bit more beginner friendly to somebody asking for a distro recommendation.
It's default installers aren't as newbie friendly IMO. And the defaults/theming are a bit bland out of the box.
Might sound weird but I feel like it's cuz their website is boring. Debian doesn't do anything revolutionary, either. It's kind of boring to run.
I've tried every other major distro but always come back.
From my experience as someone who uses Ultramarine Linux currently: The download page is fine, but not great as a new user. That alone kind of pushed me away, since I wasn't sure if I was downloading the right ISO. I can definitely tell the packages are outdated. I like GNOME desktop (which is what I downloaded), but I definitely know that other distros make customizations to GNOME that I had begun to take for granted (e.g. pre-installed taskbar via GNOME extensions). I could definitely use Debian but I find it just... a bit behind? Like it definitely works, but other distros are slightly more user friendly. Debian can be customized to match those other distros, especially with Flatpak, but any distro that isn't user friendly out of the box I don't want to recommend.
I use Debian as one of my daily drivers. I wouldn't recommend the vanilla version to beginners, but I'd recommend LMDE.
I haven't messed with Debian in a while but I remember the install being a hassle for all of my devices. But in my experience when I go to compile something I have to tediously update scores of libraries as dependency issues metastisize throughout the system. At some point I think to my self "who am I an Ubuntu developer or something?" and I go download some upstream distro like Ubuntu or PopOS.