• Cora@lemmy.worldEnglish
    10·
    5 days ago

    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.

  • Carrot@lemmy.today
    12·
    5 days 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
      10·
      5 days 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.

      • Pika@rekabu.ru
        2·
        5 days ago

        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.

      • Hule@lemmy.world
        2·
        5 days ago

        I had a few months where every update broke my WiFi.

        A second reboot always fixed it, i never found out the cause.

      • Jul (they/she)@piefed.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        23·
        5 days 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
            31·
            5 days 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.

              • Jul (they/she)@piefed.blahaj.zoneEnglish
                2·
                5 days ago

                Lots. My ASUS laptop from 3 or 4 years ago doesn’t have sound bu default in several distros. It came with Windows originally. Many of the drivers are proprietary, so they aren’t included by default if they exist at all.

                • Eggymatrix@sh.itjust.works
                  1·
                  5 days ago

                  The drivers are part of the kernel in linux, that is why you won’t find them, in most cases your kernel either supports the device or not.

                  Never had such an issue, especially on asus, and I did have a couple asus laptops to maintain

                • MotoAsh@piefed.socialEnglish
                  1·
                  5 days ago

                  Literally have never had that issue and I sadly consume new electronics on a regular basis. It may be worth seeing what specificially you have, as I’ve never had issues at least getting stereo working.

                  I’m positive the maintainers would love to know about what hasn’t been plug and play at least for the basics.

            • Eggymatrix@sh.itjust.works
              1·
              5 days ago

              I have had debian on my work laptops (3 of them, they where current gen when bought) for 10 years, the only issue I ever had with drivers was a printer driver and the supplier had a .deb on their website.

              Not everybody needs specific software and drivers, most people use the integrated microphone and camera of their laptop in their calls and that is about all that matters. Debian is pretty good at supporting the integrated stuff.

              Of course some OEMs work better than others, butthe widely available brands, which also correlate with the most users are usually well supported.

      • Pika@rekabu.ru
        11·
        5 days ago

        Expects user to solve many issues manually, and as such requires some Linux experience.

        Also, showing newbies the latest and greatest makes for a better presentation, and Linux develops so fast the 2-year cycle makes grand shifts.

        • Magnum, P.I.@infosec.pub
          1·
          5 days ago

          Getting downvoted for asking why is funny. I think your Debian Stable experience is a decade old or something. I don’t need to fix anything manually on a fresh install and can game just fine.

          • Pika@rekabu.ru
            1·
            5 days ago

            You’re quick to assume it’s my downvote. It’s not, I barely touch this button and find it counter-productive. It often makes sense to disregard it in a conversation.

            I didn’t install Debian 13, but I did work extensively with Debian 12 on several machines, and issues did arise: broken wallpaper, borked battery indicator and non-operational app store to name a few.

            • Magnum, P.I.@infosec.pub
              1·
              5 days ago

              I actually did not, I just included it in the reply that I think it’s funny.

              I think I stopped getting issues at around Debian 10. Funny enough I now experience issues on different Ubuntu installs so I stop recommending it to newcomer.

              • Pika@rekabu.ru
                1·
                5 days ago

                I see!

                For now, my least problematic picks were Fedora and OpenSUSE, most problematic - Debian, Mint and to some extent Arch. I do recognize it’s anecdotal, though.

    • ulterno@programming.devEnglish
      02·
      5 days ago

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

  • 9point6@lemmy.world
    75·
    5 days 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

    • rumba@lemmy.zipEnglish
      19·
      4 days ago

      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 :)

      edit: edit: no rest for the wicked. I ran it through Meld, and there was very little there. Best I can tell, my home manager was synlinked to the wrong config in the store. I’m running it modular, so the nixos-rebuild “should” have moved its configs. The defunct home manager somehow broke QT6 and I lost my file/edit menus in qt apps, the fix for that was a template override env var in configuration.nix. When i fixed the borked home symlink, that failure stopped being a failure and the QT override somehow gave SDDM heartburn. I hadn’t seen it because I rarely change home manager, and whatever was wrong sat that way since 25.11.

      Removing the line for QT to ignore the template stopped SDDM/Portal from loading and crashing for 5 minutes straight.

    • Avid Amoeba@lemmy.caOP
      65·
      5 days 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 (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.

    • The Picard Maneuver@piefed.worldEnglish
      5·
      5 days 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.

    • BurntWits@sh.itjust.works
      4·
      5 days 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.

    • gigachad@piefed.socialEnglish
      5·
      5 days 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.

      • Ephera@lemmy.mlEnglish
        1·
        5 days ago

        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 python to python2 for quite some years (I’m actually not sure, if they alias to python3 by now)…

      • dan@upvote.au
        8·
        5 days 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.

        • dalekcaan@feddit.nl
          3·
          5 days ago

          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.

        • gigachad@piefed.socialEnglish
          2·
          5 days ago

          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…

          • dan@upvote.au
            1·
            5 days ago

            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.

          • Ephera@lemmy.mlEnglish
            1·
            5 days ago

            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…

    • Adeptus_Obsoletus@piefed.socialEnglish
      21·
      5 days 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.

    • hushable@lemmy.world
      3·
      5 days ago

      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

  • Lettuce eat lettuce@lemmy.ml
    12·
    5 days 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.

  • Vogi@piefed.socialEnglish
    2·
    4 days ago

    Love me some Debian. But I still have to find a proper way to update only some packages to testing or unstable.

    Sway is still on 1.10 and has some problems with Godot for example.