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in Debian (because Debian was always mentioned as a distro good for servers, or stable machines that are ok with outdated software)
And while I get that Debian does have software that isn’t as up to date, I’ve never felt that the software was that outdated.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?
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
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?
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
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.
I dont want to wait a year to update my apps
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.
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.
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.
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
I use Debian for my desktop, and 100% think others should, too.
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.
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 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.
For reasons similar to why plain bread doesn’t show up in sandwich recommendations.
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.
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.
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.
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
