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in Debian (because Debian was always mentioned as a distro good for servers, or stable machines that are ok with outdated software)
And while I get that Debian does have software that isn’t as up to date, I’ve never felt that the software was that outdated.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?
My FP right now:
The fact the other post was on /selfhosted kind of makes op’s point.
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
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 I can definitely tell the packages are outdated.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.
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”.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
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.
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.
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.
Why would one recommend Debian? I guess being actually community made might be worth it for some.
It’s not particularly beginner friendly.
apt is kinda meh.
Using up-to-date software isn’t just for the users. It’s for the devs too so they don’t need to deal with bug reports for long fixed issues.
It’s default installers aren’t as newbie friendly IMO. And the defaults/theming are a bit bland out of the box.
I guess its cause when people ask for distro recommendations they’re usually new to Linux, thus a more user-friendly distro that’s built on-top of Debian like a flavour of Ubuntu or Mint is a better fit than straight Debian
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
Outside of security patches there probably won’t be the latest version of apps available, so the software you use can be out of date and you will have to wiat for new features that have been implemented. Flatpak mostly solves this for gui user-level apps, but it’s not set up by default and can require tinkering with permissions to fix some issues.
If you have new hardware it might not work well with the kernel that comes installed, but you can enable backports and get a newer one.
Practically half the linux exo-system is built on top of debian, so you can get a different distro built on debian but with better default experience or custom guis for certain tasks like managing drivers, so people you can save time and not have to dive into terminal commands following how-to guides for various things.
I’d say it’s because:
- the people who ask for recommendations won’t like (or understand) debian? (it’s just “old packages this” and “outdated that” for most people)
- the people who do use and appreciate debian don’t read “I hate windows pls recommend me a distro” posts (or at least don’t reply as often as the <insert popular distro> fanboys)
And, no, I don’t use debian myself.
but when I finally switched over to Debian, everything just worked!
That’s most probably because you learned how to use your system without breaking it in the meantime :)
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.
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.
Because those recommendations are written for new users. A new user will be better served by a distribution which puts user-friendliness at its forefront. If you’re not a newbie you probably don’t need recommendations because you already know what distributions are available out there.
