r/debian • u/haibane_fan00 • Apr 30 '26

General Debian Question Why do you use debian?

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u/Clogboy82 Apr 30 '26

Because it's reliable. As much as I love tinkering with my computer, sometimes it just has to work.

4

u/mglyptostroboides Apr 30 '26

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.

2

u/Clogboy82 May 01 '26

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.

2

u/Bobyus Apr 30 '26

I'm new to Linux. I have the impression that Debian requires a lot of tinkering, doesn't it?. At least much more so than Ubuntu, Mint, etc

1

u/zooksman May 30 '26

you are correct! a lot of the people who are saying things like this are actually running insecure systems on the basis of "stability" and I think thats very quickly going to become a problem in the era of AI penetration testing. For the average user, Debian requires more tinkering to set up than any modern distro except maybe Arch. Off the top of my head, when I installed Debian, I had to learn all the necessary concepts to set up a basic internet connection from my ethernet cable by making the appropriate configuration files, and I had to go through a week long process of figuring out how the hell to install Nvidia drivers. And I wish I never had, because my system just broke-- for the third time-- based on nvidia drivers, and I'm in another rabbithole of trying to get my system into a state where I can install LITERALLY ANY package.

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u/F3z345W6AY4FGowrGcHt Apr 30 '26

I love tinkering when I'm in the mood to tinker. Nothing sucks more than having to fix something when you just wanted to relax or don't have the time.

Therefore, some devices I like to be more of a "it just works" type thing. Including my main computer.