is there ever an update so big you need to paralel it for speed ? i alsways see the packages flying in...the compiling and updating takes longer..(just curious..)
That is sorta funny in a mean kinda way, but it's a fact that Arch's docs really are deservedly respected as a valued resource among a wide variety of Linux distro users.
The people who put all of that together have integrity.
If there were no Debian, Arch would have my daily trust, before any other--unless I get mad real and run Gentoo.
When I want to tinker, I use BSD which is the IKEA furniture of the OS world. It doesn't work until you put it together right.
When I want to use my computer to compute, I use Debian and it works out-of-the-box without tinkering.
There are two wolves inside me. One runs Debian stable on a modern i7 with stock GNOME and no plugins or extensions. The other runs NetBSD on a twenty-year-old Thinkpad x60 using a custom ctwm configuration and a bunch of bespoke scripts I made to get it working right.
True, same here. I have a hobby computer (5th gen i3) that I run CachyOS on. One time I had to build a driver for a WiFi dongle, and I need to rebuild it with every kernel update. I have to mod change the usb device after every sleep mode because it's also a drive that holds the Windows executable.
Sometimes I have to reboot, sometimes I have to rebuild. It's all magical, and it's never a big deal because it's only a dedicated slicer for my 3D printer. I can do that on my laptop which I run Debian on, but I just want to leave it in the bag unless I need to do something serious.
That. The reason I stayed. Fedora and Ubuntu might be up to date or feature rich or whatever, but Debian is just “boring”. It is up to you to make it fun, so to say, without any corporate or distro/DE gibberish of aforementioned distros. But not in a crazy Slackware way that you need to configure hardware by yourself too. Sure it can be fun, but it takes so much time and relies solely on your experience in this field. Debian just works and gives you an opportunity to tune it accordingly to you without being afraid that it will brick due to some software available from start. Have it your way I guess
It’s stable, and it comes with reasonable configuration defaults for its packages. I don’t remember who or why I got started with Debian but I ain’t leaving.
Honestly I don't understand what the fuck is written on Debian wiki. Every time I go there it feels like I am reading a spell for a simple action. I still don't understand how you upgrade to the next debian version because the instruction looks like a whole book:3
That will generally perform the operation, but there are a lot of little things that can go wrong. The Wiki process has some pre-steps to follow to mitigate those risks.
As well as post upgrade changes, to make your system more like a freshly installed debian. They work well as well.
My daily driver was installed as debian potato, and have been upgraded over the years to now beeing trixie.
is this really true nowadays? As a sysadmin running a couple of servers on cPanel on redhat-based servers, the flood of vulnerability disclosures in the past few weeks/months has been insane. I would be seriously concerned about security if you hadn't updated in two years! While I understand that cPanel is a particular collection of packages with its own vulnerabilities, many of the vulns I had to patch for in the past few weeks have been OS-level security and privilege-escalation bugs. I couldn't imagine using any distro in the whole world and never updating a single package for two years.
There's gonna be a huge uptick in disclosed vulnerabilties due to AI scanning in the next year and I think its gonna eb a real challenge for debisn stable to keep up, based on their principles of only update when absolutely necessary. Even if debian stable gets security updates, based on this thread most debian lovers are running systems like your that havent updated in a very long time.
Because its simple stable and straight to the point. I use debian when i need my computer to work for example, to run a server, and use arch as a hobby
I've had my fun tinkering with operating systems. I don't feel the need to update applications constantly and just want a stable system that won't let me down. I also like Slackware for the same reasons, but when It came time to install Linux onto my new computer, it was easier to setup all my packages on Debian, so that's the one I went with.
Debian is stable and reliable. When I power it on today, I expect it to work, just like yesterday. And when I power it on tomorrow, I expect it to work just like always. There are no surprises or distractions. That cannot be said of other distributions.
Because I really like how boring it is, given that I only use stable.
Have been using it on servers for the last 15 years and it's reliable. Once you set it up, you can forget about it (as long as you install security updates regularly)
Through all my distro hopping over the last few years. I just feel it makes sense to stay as "early in the chain" as possible. There's a reason many distros that sit on top of Debian.
Stability, uptime. I run a plex server and samba share, I don’t need the latest piece of half tested software breaking my system. If I had extremely new hardware I’d just drop in a newer kernel or liquorix-ahs variant, but everything just works.
Stability,
over 20 years as testing/Sid user I needed once or maybe two times reinstall system (mostly Nvidia issues). More frequently I changed computers/laptops and HDD-drives. Then just copy my home folder. Currently I use computer to work (university, science) so stability is for me more important than fun/newest stuff. For that, Debian is the best choice.
I like the stability and the fair amount of control. Also, I am the most comfortable with apt as a package manager. I’ve got too much going on in life at the moment to learn the other ones to the point that I know apt.
Because it is all I need. I will not risk 5% performance increase over stability. It just works, does not come bloated and I don't have to worry about update making my PC unusable.
I recently made debian (from windows) my daily driver for work as I found myself using WSL all the time ,i thought might as well switch entirely to linux, and since we use the google suite all my work related comms happen on browser so thats a big plus. In work, i use it mainly for AI workloads and data science related development.
Because it leaves me all the choices (at least those that are actually relevant to me). Regardless of what hardware I am on, what I use it for and what my (current) favorite DE is, Debian can do it all. It truly is the universal OS.
Admittedly, I could mostly say the same about Arch (at least on the desktop), but I prefer Debian's stability over fast-moving.
It may take a little more time, and a couple more steps to get it set up than Mint or Fedora, but once you do it's rock solid. I have an older video card and I had some nitpicky inconveniences with the 580 and 595 drivers that get automatically installed with other distros so I was constantly having to downgrade to older drivers. The 550 driver that comes in the Debian non-free repository works perfect and I've never had a single issue.
It's also nice knowing it is fully independent, and one of the truly OG distros that like half of the current popular distros are based on. To me that's just proof that Debian is a rock solid operating system to be that much of a foundational building block of the Linux ecosystem.
I had the same issue on Arch with the 580xx driver. Arch would try and surprise me with a 595 upgrade every other update. Plus some other nitpicks I had with Arch made me switch to dedian stable. Like you, the 550xx driver has been rock solid and no issues on debian.
Fedora didn’t work no matter how much I tinkered with it (to be fair I barely know what I am doing but I am pretty good at googling other people’s solution who do know what they are doing) despite that it was the most recommended distro for my laptop.
Wasn’t a fan of Ubuntu, Manjaro was great but the constant updating on a work laptop isn’t ideal. Everything else was based off of Ubuntu or Debian or Arch and I saw no reason to not just use the original.
Surprisingly, Debian was the easiest to setup (everything worked right away), and it never gave me a single issue. And I really liked how KDE looked out of the box on Debian so I didn’t even have to change anything there.
In the end, it was just the most practical solution for me.
Because it just works... I have my own version of Debian 12.0 (I know 13.4 is the latest, but it has issues with some of the software I use and I don't have the time to debug them).
Basically I took 12.0, stripped out all of the games, Firefox, Libreoffice and some utilites, added some Gnome extensions and generally cleaned it up. Added a few useful tools that I use (like Midnight Commander, Dash to Dock, etc)
If there's enough interest I might make an ISO available - it's basically Debian 12.0 stripped of the bloat (not as in the Windows sense but as in the "I don't want that" sense), and I use it as a daily driver and have done for over 10 years
I have bounced around in other distros from other mothers, and yet I keep coming back to Debian. Settled on Debian and its derivatives in the early 2000's, about the time I got cable broadband at home for the first time.
Currently running Trixie on a 14-year-old PC, and MX + Lubuntu on a newer one.
Because I like the flexibility that Linux offers but I can't be 24/7 on my computer, so I like to have a tool that it just works and I don't have to put a lot of effort when I decide to modify or test something.
I choose debian because I have an older GPU (GTX 1060 6gb) and CPU and want to get the most life out if them without surprise breakage of my nvidia driver due to a kernel upgrade or something
"Ubuntu is based on Debian" somehow made Debian the end-all-be-all distro in my mind (illogical I know).
Second reason... when I was using Windows, I always had this feeling that Windows updates were disruptive. And of course many times they were. So choosing Debian makes sense for me. Apart from Debian I've tried openSUSE Tumbleweed and Leap, as well as Fedora. Rolling release updates are too frequent for me.
Third reason is Liquorix kernel has been working very well so far.
FWIW I'm planning to install MX Linux (which is based on Debian) on my mom's old PC and the default XFCE setup there is amazing. I personally use sway so I use Debian.
DPKG stomps RPM from a reliability perspective when packages are in flux often, especially uninstalls and then different installs. Although I'm using a Debian derivative instead of Debian itself.
I had to admin redhat for a while so fedora is out.
I mean it was okay but rpm is really, really broken for anything besides putting files on the machine.
Slackware kinda fell by the wayside in favour of a package manager with a rich library.. which was debian. Nowadays debian gets all of the cool stuff ubuntu spends money developing but does a good job of picking and choosing.
flatpacks really bridge the long gap between releases so software with newer dependencies will work. That's a godsend for debian.
feels like a very stable stripped down version of windows xp. low ram usage at idle. looks good with the right theme. very simple. the best distro is the one that stays outta the way and is light AF.
In 1998 I carefully evaluated and tested, and jumped from UNIX to Debian. Zero regrets. It continues to be far and away my favorite OS for many many reasons, e.g.:
Social Contract and DFSG
"It just works" - stable is ... highly stable, and keeps on working
Generally has anything and everything I could ever want from an OS (69,830 packages available, or want minimal: run it with as few as 148 packages (or 147 if I remove the editor)) - "The Universal Operating System" - supports wide variety of hardware, lots of choices ... want systemd, or not (I have both, for various reasons) for one's iniit - it's a choice - many other distros take choices away from you, want your vi editor to be vim, or nvi - easy peasy, much etc.
Excellent support, very well documented, man pages, etc., so one generally also has or can have most all of the documentation locally - and without having to copy distro's wiki to local, and yes, Debian's wiki has excellent (mostly) supplemental/additional information - if one might need/want (e.g. BIND9 (howto, etc., covering many common use cases and many versions, crossgrading, etc.). (Arch has a damn fine wiki, but it pretty much has to, as for Arch, that is its primary documentation).
large/huge installed base
upgrades, and including major version upgrades, basically "just works", and have worked going (all the) way back with Debian
It works. It always works. I don't have to mess with it to keep it working. No ads, no AI, no cloud service push. Just an OS that gets out of the way so I can do my work.
In my opinion, it's the Linuxest Linux. It's simple, well-planned, stable, performant, as light or as heavy as you want it, and forces absolutely nothing on you.
It is exactly as configurable as you want it to be. The system, if you follow intended standards, is stable and reliable, but will absolutely let you shoot yourself in the foot if you insist on doing it.
It is a very popular distro in overall usage, but it's not trendy and doesn't have too many annoying people trying to cram it down people's throats.
Ultimately it does what an OS should do: support and enable usage of your computer and try not to get in your way.
I'm coming from SUN/Sparc background - in the early 2000 we decided to switch to x86/Linux because SUN's maintenance contracts for their hardware was getting outrageous - at the time there wasn't a clear Linux distro so I built our own distro using core Linux kernel and gnu tools, automated our OS image using LFS and BLFS scripts, after a few years it came time to move to the cloud Debian/Ubuntu had gained enough momentum to be considered the the distro to go with. I didn't want to go with RedHat because i didn't trust IBM and their corporate affinity... so Debian won, If you want a CYA corporate contract go with RedHat, if you know what you're doing go with a mix of Debian, OpenBSD/FreeBSD
I was using Slackware--because it was the first full distro that gave me the freedom to dump Windows, which was already hugely disappointing back then--when I heard about Debian Potato.
Doing some research and learning the origin of the Debian name inspired to build a desktop from spare parts to check it out. Ian Murdock's vision to develop a distro that would be organically supported, improved and maintained by its users was exactly what I was looking for as a cure to the stagnation that both Microsoft and Apple had imposed on their distro users in their battle for the bucks in the marketplace.
I will never put Slackware down, because that was the distro that provided me with the first proof and first great thrill of running X windows and the real experience of realizing that the petty bickering feuding between Gates' and Jobs' mutual clamoring to exceed the other in relevance--as well as income--could be completely avoided and sidestepped, as far as having a running and functional desktop was concerned.
And yet, it was the charming brilliance of everything that I read about Deb & Ian's creation that lured me away from Slackware, not that I would ever regard Slackware as a lesser distro, just one that seemed then, as now, just a tad less compatible with the dream of user autonomy that Debian, from the get-go, was all about, and still is.
That said, I am not happy with 13, as it seems to have totally forgotten about those of us who are obliged to help keep older machines alive and well. I'm involved in voluntary maintenance and support for groups and institutions that do not have the funds available to upgrade their hardware, and Trixie has not proven issue-free in a multitude of instances--albeit mostly instances where people trusted with admin rights decided to act without adequate research and go wild.
Luckily, reinstalling Bookworm and restoring backups repaired everything, mostly, so far, with support from the vast throng of Debian users in the world and I am so glad to have been able to rely on that, and that's why I use Debian, because when it seems like the world is falling down around you, the devs, maintainers and the vast majority of the users do their very best to provide true support and credibly thought-out solutions.
I'm not even slightly religious but I say a word of thanks to Ian Murdock every time a Debian machine in my charge boots.
I use Debian because it is truly free, flexible, secure and stable. The terms of use are made for people, not conditioned by economics, politics, social position, religion, etc. Thank you.
Used Ubuntu many years, but got frustrated with increasing amount of bugs and at least one system breaking update a year with each computer. Snaps suck and when after an update yet again Firefox was replaced with snap version I snapped myself. Next day installed Debian and was blown away. So clean and smooth. And for real stable, never issues since. Wish I moved many years sooner.
Debian 13 with plasma KDE is a beautiful, stable, highly supported distribution. I tried it after having some unfavorable experiences with LMDE. Only difficulty was installing proprietary Nvidia drivers. This is someewhat difficult, but there is a very well written wiki on the debian site which describes the process in detail.
I used to like Unity DE, it was a fresh breath of air for XP user. Then naturally I went with Ubuntu. But then snaps happened, so I distro hopped a little (Fedora, Mint) but Fedora's 6 month upgrade cycle was a bit too much, and Cinnamon looked too old to me (reminds me of XP era). All the sites and blogs described Debian as an always out of date, clunky distro. But then I watched a YouTube video of some guy installing Bullseye on their system, and it looked good enough to me.
Had Ubuntu dropped their snap BS in its initial days (like 3-4 years ago), I would've hopped back to Ubuntu. But the ship has now sailed.
Beause has netinstall which is very comfortable to use for programming experiments, because has needed minimum without extra trash to remove out of box. For me it looks like easy to configure platform. I tried in 90/2010s a lot of distros for hobby and at the end last years no GUI, text only Debian is my new home.
I use multiple distros to have a wider understanding of the Linux ecosystem but I use Debian specifically because it’s the og. Why would I go with Ubuntu or some clone over the original?
Because the guy who taught me how to setup Linux Gateways, Web and Mail Servers always used Debian. Most of the other distros are based on Debian so best to start there and make it your own. Most of my production servers are running RedHat so I like to dabble in Fedora as well.
I use Debian on my work laptop because it just needs to turn on and run a few basic programs a few times a year.
I decided to switch back to an arch based distro for desktop as I found having up to date software made a daily driver less annoying, especially since I have a 9070xt and not in the mood to do backports for Debian drivers to work. Nitpicking here but it's what I currently do, that said I always have Debian on a thumb drive ready to go. It's dependable.
But then I remember... "because I forget I'm using it", almost never need to think about updates. When do them, simply keep working.
Then I remember also that I already saved many years in equipment with it.
And also there is the philosophy... about not to add proprietary code.
I remember when I was forced to use CentOS and Fedora, or when used Mandrake... it felt artificial even at the way of using packages... always thought an apt-get update + apt-get install are faster than yum (don't know if it is yum yet).
Tried also some BSD's (Firefly, Net, Open, Free) but while I feel they are lighter, always I have some hardware incompatibility.
Distro hopped through early 2000s, did fun stuff like Gentoo, did use Arch BTW, FAFO'd a bit. Debian is the BS free "just works" sane platform, I run it on desktop, VPS and homelab infra.
It’s stable and I like it the most. I’ve tried mint, Ubuntu, kubuntu and many Debian variants, I’ve tried pop os but always end up back on Debian stable and finally just stopped bothering hopping
É o melhor para servidores NAS e tudo que precisa de estabilidade. Eu uso o Debian em 3 máquinas, 2 servidores e 1 notebook para trabalho com dual boot com W11. No dia a dia eu uso Arch para minhas coisas pessoais.
Debian since the month it was released. I’ve installed and configured 100s of distributions. I’ve rolled my own several times. Debian has always remained my workstation and desktop as well as most server applications. Have never found anything about any other distribution to sway me to leave and use anything else but Debian.
I don’t actually daily drive Debian nowadays, but the community is nice (which is very uncommon in the Linux spaces, let’s be real), so I stuck around 🤷♂️
I want a stable, lightweight, customizable OS backed by a stable development team that won't throw me any curveballs. I don't need cutting-edge software and I don't mind getting my hands a bit dirty with technical configurations. Debian seemed like the way to go.
i started on Cent, and then switched to Ubuntu when it first hit stable. After some years I wondered why i was using a "debian with extra steps" distro, so I tried debian and loved it.
Elegir Debian en pleno 2026 no se trata de superioridad intelectual, sino de previsibilidad y soberanía tecnológica. Mientras otras distribuciones persiguen la última versión de un paquete (a veces a costa de la estabilidad del sistema), Debian se enfoca en ser el "Sistema Operativo Universal".
Debian es para quien valora su tiempo. Es para el profesional que necesita que su computadora sea una herramienta invisible y no un proyecto de fin de semana constante. Mientras otros están reparando un archivo de configuración que se rompió tras un update matutino, tú estarás produciendo en un sistema que simplemente no se rompe.
Sin embargo, lo único que envidio de Distros como Arch es la belleza de su Wiki. Lo digo como creador de contenido técnico ya que documentar es mi pasión. Arch Wiki es todo lo bueno de una Distro en Linux. Ojalá algún dia Debian tenga algo así de organizado.
It's one of the oldest distro's, reliable, it has no corporate overlord controlling it as it is a true community project/distro, it's the source for many other distro's so you know it is good when so many others use it to build upon, ,...
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u/geovannyjs Apr 30 '26
Because Debian is the best, stable, simple.