A user case that is not often mentioned for when people should use Debian is people who travel a lot for work. When you regularly leave for 1, 2, 5 months, there aren't that many distros that can guarantee you that you will be able to just come home, launch an update, and everything will be just fine. Debian does that.
That's why I love Debian on my laptop that I don't use often and don't want a lot of updates but prefer a rolling release like Tumbleweed on my main system.
Not for me. When I used Debian a few months back, there was an update that broke my laptop to the point that it won't even boot that I just had to move to another distro. The update only affected AMD iGPUs which I was a part of. They fixed it in two days which I'll admit is a quick reaction to that by Debian but it annoyed me enough that I refused to believe that Debian is a stable distro anymore. It's still rock solid but calling it a distro that "just works" is a bit of a stretch for me.
@@RoelandJansen "Stability" is a relative concept. Stable compared to what? The other distributions don't "fail" as much as they will require you to be more on top of your installation and solve problems by yourself sometimes. The issue is the more often your software updates, the more issues you might meet. Because of a bunch of reasons. 1 - If you push updates as soon as they are released (the Arch model) you will push more faulty updates. You will also push the subsequent update that solves the problem quickly, but you will often find that a given software stops working properly, and you'll have to wait a few days for the solution to arrive. But a faulty update can also break your system. It can definitely happen on Arch, although it is very rare and people have maintained a working Arch system for 6, 8 years on end. 2 - The more often you update all your software, the more likely you are, arithmetically, to have incompatibility issues between versions of your software or between your software and your hardware. 3 - The more often you update the kernel, the more you expose yourself to running into incompatibility issues as well. For comparison, you can update your Arch system 4 times a day, and you will find that there always are updates available. With fedora, it's once every day, sometimes 2 days. With Debian even if you update once a week sometimes you will find there is nothing to do. Debian and other distributions that put the emphasis on stability like CentOS before and Ubuntu LTS take a radical approach to stability: They do a point release about every 2-3 years, only shipping versions of software that have already been quite thoroughly tested in their testing version. Then they lock on those software versions for the entire time this release will be available, only pushing security updates and software updates that solve a newly discovered issue. This makes these distributions very stable, which is why they are preferred for servers, for example, but this also means that by the end of your releases' life cycle you will be using software that is about 3 years old, which really should be fine for most people, but also means you might run into problems with new hardware that is not yet compatible and there might be a new software you want to use now that might only appear in your repository until 2 years from now. Basically, for a desktop user, a stable release is your best option for example if you need - a basic use of your computer (office work, database work, navigating the internet, etc.) - a media server Specially if this is for your job, and you can't afford a given piece of software not working any more all of a sudden and having to dedicate time to troubleshoot the issue. On the other hand, you might need a bleeding edge distribution if - you are a developer who needs to work with the latest versions of software - you want to be able to use the newest released games, etc. Although, this paradigm is shifting now as software deployment platforms like flatpak are maturing, allowing you to install a new software on stable systems in a containerized manner. This is now your best option if you work professionally in photo, video or audio editing, for example.
Note on nala vs APT: apt upgrade and nala upgrade will not always yield the same results. apt upgrade will keep some packages back if they break dependencies, while nala will not. Something to be aware of, as you may end up in dependency hell if you use nala which apt would have prevented. Make sure to check the list of packages to be removed before accepting an upgrade with nala. I believe “nala upgrade” is actually equivalent to “apt full-upgrade”, not “apt upgrade”. The latter is safer.
I installed nala on a test machine. It worked great... for a couple of months. Then it broke something. I don't remember what, it was a year ago. I needed apt to fix the problem, and have been using it exclusively ever since.
I started using Debian as my main OS about a month ago. It is my first time using linux as my main OS and I am loving it. Apart for some sound issues on my laptop everything went smoothly, even upgrading to the testing branch was quite straight forward. Debian seemed the most interesting to me for the stability. I dont want to lose half my day fixing my OS because an update broke it.
Just a tiny comment about Firefox ESR. Extended Support Release was intended for enterprise environments and businesses / corporations to make it easier to manage on a large scale. This works fine for most people in their day-to-day use, the reason sometimes websites will complain that ESR is 'an outdated' version is because the website itself doesn't recognize that ESR has patched security vulnerabilities that are resolved in current Firefox versions. You can almost always ignore those warnings, but its probably worth having a regular Firefox around if the website decides to restrict features based on your browser version.
@@alexstone691 Nothing wrong with that. Just felt the need to highlight this because it wasn't quite accurate in the video when he described what ESR Firefox is.
@@Kerea09 IM sorry my first comment was unfinished i edited it now, Its important people know that, if debian actually had a good website they would state these caveats on the front page
I rally appreciate how you are helping the LInux community. Newbs and Intermediates. I consider myself somewhere in between but I get a lot of vlaue from your videos.Thanks.
I think both get rated highly, as they should, it's just Debian is boring and openSUSE has got a really small market share so people don't really think to mention it.
Good timing - I'm at my absolute wit's end with Red Hat's shenanigans... Going to do some research/testing and see if i can switch over to Debian. Thanks for the video brother.
I use Debian Unstable/Sid on my desktop workstation, it's versatile, reliable & robust. It doses everything I need & I have the benefit of native modern packages with Sid (Debian 13/Trixie reported in neofetch) plus Flatpak & being Debian it's not a fork like Ubuntu or Mint, no third-party in between me & the upstream I like that directness. Debian is horrid out of the box but with a couple of hours of tinkering & a Timeshift snapshot afterwards you've got a damn great OS. Cause of my SSD upgrade I performed a fresh installation of Debian with the new improved ISO my old Sid install was from December. I'm very happy with Debian & very optimistic about it's future.
If you run Debian Unstable/Sid, you need to be a bit more of an advanced Debian user, because it will break some day. Not in a bad way that can't be fixed, but it will break.
I just moved back to Debian Sid from OpenSuese tumbleweed because it broke something so Diablo 4 did not work any more. Zypper is nice, the search is great but I really do like apt and I will never ever use a third party package manager. Currently I'm running my Sid install on ext4 but I have plans to re-install it using btrfs and snapper to have snapshots just in case an update breaks. Altough I also have plans to run Debian stable with flatpaks because I really don't need the latest and greatest, I want stable. More Debian videos!
I started using Debian a couple weeks ago and I actually like it. I have been having problems and bad luck with Linux for a little while. When I was thinking about switching to Debian I wasn't sure if I wanted to because the last time I tried installing Debian, it really bad messed up my old laptop.
In my perspective, Debian already gave a big jump ahead when it brought calamares with a Live Image making the installation easier, however Debian still lacks many things that can make it still easier to the common user like a *debian-drivers devices* or a *debian-restricted-extras.* These kind of things captivate users. If difficulty was captivating, slackware would be the most used distro ever, but, in reality, it is forgotten in the oblivion.
Thank you for posting your videos, as someone who desperately wants Linux to be something I can use exclusively I find your videos very informative. Sadly as long as no developers for dictation software like Dragon, and some other niche programs I need I will have to keep a windows machine.
13:48 part generally yes. Debian is debian and has it's ways for dealing with things. No one will shout at you for doing things difrernt, yet almost everybody will warn you that you may have find your self between the rock and a hard place because of the way you deal with things. And thats on you.
First off, I love your videos. Secondly, I'm a little sad that you switched from OpenSuse so quickly. I was hoping for some more suse videos before the switch. I did enjoy your recent dwm video, though. Would you ever consider a pop os vs debian video? Or a debian sid vs opensuse tumbleweed? Thanks, and keep up the great work!
I think I did figure out what was wrong with OpenSUSE, so I may give it another try some day. It's not dead to me. But it was just so buggy after whatever I did to it, I had to have something stable. So I will likely give it another go some day.
I switched to Debian a few months ago. For once, I'm ahead of the pack. :-). A word of caution about nala, however. I've been using it since I switched but returned to apt last week after I noticed nala kept saying that there were no updates available for a couple of days. (I'm on sid so that's difficult to accept). When I tried sudo apt update, there were more than a hundred updates waiting that nala had failed to find.
I switch from fedora38 KDE to Debian12 KDE. It's just awesome. Granted I was using Fedora for quite a while. My os might have been bloated a little bit. And Debian12 is brand new and has this fresh install feeling. But men it run so smoothly ! And also yes, I'm relying a lot more on flatpak compared to Fedora.
Sorry that openSUSE didn't work for you! Tumbleweed is a great distribution once you get used to it, and I hope you give it another shot someday in the future. That said, I've always been intrigued by Debian. It's a very foundational distribution and seemingly made to Just Work. With things like Flatpak, Nix, and Distrobox, the older package versions might not matter as much anymore (as long as the things I mentioned keep working with THEIR older versions)
Good video. One thing id like to add is that i think people should talk about all the different versions of Debian and the such. I prefer debian testing. Ive been just sitting in the backgrounds for awhile i havnt done a video in forever.
Better Debian than Ubuntu, don't be eventually gaslighted by some corps like Valve that officially support only Ubuntu users due to the fact that Ubuntu is the only distro reference for their technical charts. They're rotten wrong.
Thanks for the video. I have done distro hopping for quite sometime. I wasn't sure if i new what i was looking for. I realized that distro were mostly about the desktop environment. After using debian on and off (between arch and fedora) i found debian to actually more useful. I would suggest to all Linux Users, to choose a OS (debian, Arch, or Fedora) that offers an integrated way to install more than one desktop environment. Debian using tasksel, allows you to very easily add another Desktop Environment. I find this to be quite usefull and better than just installing a Desktop environment maunally, just due to the amount of configuration one will need to do. Currently, and for the near future. I use Debian BTW! 👍😎
Debian comes from a time when uptime was King. Same with Red Hat. That's why their stable is legitimately stable. With the youtube Linux community it seems like "rolling new & shiny" is King, and some probably don't care at all about things like uptime.
@@RoelandJansen I don't disagree, but on some of the most popular distros nowadays, those reboots aren't for security patches, they are for willy-nilly feature requests with very little testing.
@@autohmae for the kernel itself yes. How do you think glibc will go? How would a systemd security patch go? we have zypper ps that shows deleted linbraries and so, yes you can do, with some work, many times get along without a restart. but lkp won't help you. You can update tzdata, java, vim, you name it, generally yes. Just restart the application. (tzdata probably doesn't require anything. just like updated manpages etc) So again: a long uptime tells you that either it's not an issue because isolated env, OR a sloppy security or admin. Example: RHEL6.x with maintenance support, ended nov 2020 or so. It still runs. Cool uptime.. Just some thoughts on it.
on another channel, I read something very interesting about the debian installer, and why it looks somewhat oldfashioned. they use a kernel draw mode to create everything in the installer. reason for it: in order to not break anything amongst the vast amount of supported platforms, they wanted to keep the installer below 64mb ram requirement. by todays standards, that means that you can probably install debian on a toaster. and regarding debian being a boring system: from what I understand, if you don't torture debian, it behaves like a well built tank. it will take whatever you throw at it like a champ.
I am waiting for Devuan Daedalus Stable. In my main computer I use Debian Testing + Plasma 5.27.5 + Steam. On my laptops I use Devuan Daedalus/Chimaera.
If you haven't already you should give nixos a try, its easy to install, takes a bit of learning once installed, but once you get to know it its really unique.
Great, as always, Matt! Can you customize your desktop using window managers like AwesomeWM and rofi, without relying on a desktop environment, just as you did with Arch? I think this will be a fun experience!
Honestly, I may try this after my recent opensuse experience. I loved Fedora on my laptop, opensuse felt like a hiccupy mess in comparison on my desktop, and this wasn't even on tumbleweed, it was on leap. I have a 3080 on a 13900k, the KDE UI was just laggy and would randomly freeze a few seconds for absolutely no reason while trying to work with PYCharm or VS code. Docker and kubernetes was the one thing which ran perfectly and I didn't have to touch anything, it just worked. However, from having to deal with installing various drivers, which you think would be shipped by default even if they are proprietary. I'm very much okay with a few updates as long as they work, stable releases are what I'd prefer anyway. I don't have the luxury to tinker with every little aspect of a OS, from dealing with Bluetooth drivers not recognizing earbuds as audio devices to attempting to find why my experience isn't just fluid and painfree. Good review however, hopefully Debian 12 is what I'm looking for in a OS!
Continuity is most important in a business environment. I prefer Debian and .DEB distros such as MX or LMDE6. I do this as updates never broke my system like Arch or Windows. I travel to and work in rural areas with little or no Internet access. One simply cannot be stuck without help, instead use what is boringly reliable, stable, dependable, predictable and trustworthy. It has to be consistent. It is spelled D e b i a n which is ancestorial Linux, when Deborah and Ian first started out decades ago. Time-tested, the Geländewagen of Linux.
the way you explained the package counting number stats was good, your content is very much filled with lot of information, i think you can do better on presentation part. Above all I learnt a few things. Good luck for the next ones.
I think your Debian experience with vary on how its installed. I went through a phase of putting Lubuntu on everything (especially my old crap) because it generally just worked and I like the lxqt desktop. However I've been trying to switch away from Ubuntu distro's recently and increasingly install Debian using the live CD "calamares?") installer without issue. That was until I tried to install Debs 12 on my "daily driver" which has a Nvidia card, and that proved problematical. The kernel module failed to build and I couldn't believe Debian would release something so bad. However I tried again using the net install minimal image and did an "expert" install (Debians more traditional graphical installer) and that went extremely smoothly and the kernel module built without issue, so I now do it that way! Lesson learned! Also worth adding I had to turn off secure boot to install Debian (because of the kernel driver - a few extra steps are required) which wasn't necessary on Ubuntu.
I'm looking for tiling WM to install onto Proxmox, can you help since you are a great fan of Tiling WMs. Thanks for this Debian update👍 I'm running antiX on lapton & love it to give you an idea as to where I'm at with Tiling WM, FYI running PopOS tiling on PC ear marked for personal production projects. I'm happy w/Debian stable was not happy w/ constant updates. PS Need a video regarding Mastodon. I come from slackware miss. Long story how I wound up distro hopping.
Debian Sid is pretty much a rolling release. Packages updated daily to their latest versions or close. It’s quite stable too honestly, back in 2010 I’d have X break (unsurprisingly) every few updates or enter dependency hell, but no longer. APT won’t upgrade packages that may break dependencies by default.
The only problem i have encountered in the 2-3 months i've been using Debian12+KDE is a freak error where it randomly hangs during shutdown/reboot. It's not as bothering as it might sound though. Other than that, as an amateur user, it's solid
Want to dump Fedora and stop supporting anything to do with the evil IBM Hat, but looks very close to impossible to install hyprland on Debian right now.
How do you get some info in your terminal do be boxed into that awesome green box? like Downloading... Updating Packages, etc? Is that some sort of code in your .bashrc?
Ya, right, I downloaded Debian to try on my VM. It took several hours to load up, and then the audio part would not work right. I also tried Zorin OS and had no trouble at all. Also, you cannot get help with Debian but you can with the Zorin Community. So, which do you thin people want to use?
OK, one comment on the nala thing... I love nala as an installer, but, if it cant fond something, it will go 'nope', but apt will go 'nope, but we have that on snap'.
I'm sure it's still there. May even still be installed. I don't know. I don't ever use it. I always prefer the terminal. It's a bias that I have for sure.
Had graphical problems with debian 12 media installer and had to install from live media and had problems with grub and ended up archinstall script and had smooth experience
There.. I "Smashed that f*cking like button like a true wanker!!"... lmao.. great video as always Matt, even though I was really hoping you were serious about Gentoo #disappointment
I really thought about it, I really did, but I just need my computer to work for a while and I don't think I can do that with Gentoo given how noob I am
idk why bro but if you compare play on steam in linux on debian ubuntu and arch, debian ssack with xorg and i have more lag ad graphic glitch on debian compare to ubuntu and arch, so yea debian is easy etc. but on steam ssack.
Hey mate, i'd like to ask an honest question, i'm not trolling or anything. My POV is: i'm an IT guy, who specializes in printing technologies, i'm also on my way to becoming a cloud architect, I'm interested in IT security. Because of this printing stuff, i mainly use windows, i also play some computer games, with dual boot i also have ubuntu. When i need i use MacOS on VMs or other linux distros. After watching Your video, and some others that praise Debian 12, i'd like to ask You: why should i use it over, for example, ubuntu, mint, pop? I've installed Debian 12 on VM and the installation process was needlesly complicated (more so than Ubuntu, for example), or should i say: more complicated. What is it with this debian release, that's so good, cause i would very much like to know :D Cause, as my understaing goes, Debian can have the same graphic interface, uses more or less the same tools (programs) as ubuntu. So what's so special? Cheers!
Debian's main quality is its stability and package testing. The "stable" branch is one of the most stable that you'll find. Ubuntu, is of course very close to that, but their package testing isn't as stringent as Debian's is (though some of it is, of course, given that Ubuntu uses some of Debian SID's repositories.) Yes, the Debian installation can be complicated, but they have isos available that have a standard Calamares installer (similar to Manjaro), that is just as simple as the one for Ubuntu, Mint and Pop!OS. The trouble is that you kind of have to dig for them. Let me know if you'd like me to get you a link. As for gaming, for me, Linux is good enough, but I'm not a AAA gamer. I think you'll be surprised at how many WIndows games play great inside Steam with Proton enabled.
@@TheLinuxCast Thanks for the quick answer. I've just watched a video on different channel, that suggested to try debian version live, with different installer, my download notification popped like seconds after i got notification from YT about your answer, so now i'm gonna check Deb12 some more. Thanks very much! :)
I'm so shocked about people complaining about Debian's installer being hard... This shows how many linux users out there are beginners. Not trying to be mean or eliticist, I just really can't understand what's hard about installing Debian. Yet I see people complaining about it in comments on different channels.
@@AnotherSkyTV I'm hardly a beginner. But when i've used the iso with no live-boot, i've made a mistake at one point and I WASN'T ABLE TO GO BACK. Making installer harder than it should be is really an unnecessary complication, and, comparing to that from livecd (i've checked this one after the dialogue with our "Host" here), is just not intuitive enough. Now i'm using the one installed with liveiso. And if You think that's ok, though You see people complaining about this, that might mean that: either You're in a technological bubble, or You ARE an elitist (snob). Did You compare both of these installers? The one from official iso, and the one You can download, when You go deeper on Debian site? That approach "what's so hard about " is really counter-productive and makes (in this regard) Linux not progress the way it could. Just check how easy is Ubuntu to install - do people complain? So tell me, why do You think they complain about Debian, hm? And if it's so common, what's the conclusion? cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/amd64/iso-cd/debian-12.0.0-amd64-netinst.iso
You have your question backwards. All the OSs you mention are based on Debian. The question you should be asking is what do the others offer that make it worthwhile for YOU to use them over Debian. For me the answer is nothing. YMMV.
@@TheLinuxCast Thanks. Im gonna migrate from ubuntu to debian in months. Which package manager do you think is better to use alongside APT? Is APT enough for a daily linux user or I have to use some others like Flatpak?
Leaving a like really helps the channel! So does following me on Mastodon: fosstodon.org/@thelinuxcast
A user case that is not often mentioned for when people should use Debian is people who travel a lot for work. When you regularly leave for 1, 2, 5 months, there aren't that many distros that can guarantee you that you will be able to just come home, launch an update, and everything will be just fine. Debian does that.
I use Debian btw 14:13
That's why I love Debian on my laptop that I don't use often and don't want a lot of updates but prefer a rolling release like Tumbleweed on my main system.
Not for me. When I used Debian a few months back, there was an update that broke my laptop to the point that it won't even boot that I just had to move to another distro. The update only affected AMD iGPUs which I was a part of. They fixed it in two days which I'll admit is a quick reaction to that by Debian but it annoyed me enough that I refused to believe that Debian is a stable distro anymore. It's still rock solid but calling it a distro that "just works" is a bit of a stretch for me.
And why do others fail? Like all these other mentions, stability fast updating etc.
@@RoelandJansen "Stability" is a relative concept. Stable compared to what? The other distributions don't "fail" as much as they will require you to be more on top of your installation and solve problems by yourself sometimes.
The issue is the more often your software updates, the more issues you might meet. Because of a bunch of reasons.
1 - If you push updates as soon as they are released (the Arch model) you will push more faulty updates. You will also push the subsequent update that solves the problem quickly, but you will often find that a given software stops working properly, and you'll have to wait a few days for the solution to arrive. But a faulty update can also break your system. It can definitely happen on Arch, although it is very rare and people have maintained a working Arch system for 6, 8 years on end.
2 - The more often you update all your software, the more likely you are, arithmetically, to have incompatibility issues between versions of your software or between your software and your hardware.
3 - The more often you update the kernel, the more you expose yourself to running into incompatibility issues as well.
For comparison, you can update your Arch system 4 times a day, and you will find that there always are updates available. With fedora, it's once every day, sometimes 2 days. With Debian even if you update once a week sometimes you will find there is nothing to do.
Debian and other distributions that put the emphasis on stability like CentOS before and Ubuntu LTS take a radical approach to stability: They do a point release about every 2-3 years, only shipping versions of software that have already been quite thoroughly tested in their testing version. Then they lock on those software versions for the entire time this release will be available, only pushing security updates and software updates that solve a newly discovered issue. This makes these distributions very stable, which is why they are preferred for servers, for example, but this also means that by the end of your releases' life cycle you will be using software that is about 3 years old, which really should be fine for most people, but also means you might run into problems with new hardware that is not yet compatible and there might be a new software you want to use now that might only appear in your repository until 2 years from now.
Basically, for a desktop user, a stable release is your best option for example if you need
- a basic use of your computer (office work, database work, navigating the internet, etc.)
- a media server
Specially if this is for your job, and you can't afford a given piece of software not working any more all of a sudden and having to dedicate time to troubleshoot the issue.
On the other hand, you might need a bleeding edge distribution if
- you are a developer who needs to work with the latest versions of software
- you want to be able to use the newest released games, etc.
Although, this paradigm is shifting now as software deployment platforms like flatpak are maturing, allowing you to install a new software on stable systems in a containerized manner. This is now your best option if you work professionally in photo, video or audio editing, for example.
I switched from Linux Mint to Debian 12 over the weekend and I love it.
same
@@r.razamhdI plan on doing the same
Note on nala vs APT: apt upgrade and nala upgrade will not always yield the same results. apt upgrade will keep some packages back if they break dependencies, while nala will not. Something to be aware of, as you may end up in dependency hell if you use nala which apt would have prevented. Make sure to check the list of packages to be removed before accepting an upgrade with nala.
I believe “nala upgrade” is actually equivalent to “apt full-upgrade”, not “apt upgrade”. The latter is safer.
Important point indeed. I was just about to write "Don't use nala, it can blow your install to hell". Your explanation is better. :)
absolutely right ... Nala is a hot iron in your hand when it comes to upgrades
I installed nala on a test machine. It worked great... for a couple of months. Then it broke something. I don't remember what, it was a year ago. I needed apt to fix the problem, and have been using it exclusively ever since.
I used ubuntu22.04 and was using Nala for installation and upgrades. This hell you mention happened and I am now a debian user
Apt is perfectly fine if you full screen the terminal. I don't see any legit use case to use nala. Always use what your distribution provides
I started using Debian as my main OS about a month ago. It is my first time using linux as my main OS and I am loving it. Apart for some sound issues on my laptop everything went smoothly, even upgrading to the testing branch was quite straight forward. Debian seemed the most interesting to me for the stability. I dont want to lose half my day fixing my OS because an update broke it.
Just a tiny comment about Firefox ESR. Extended Support Release was intended for enterprise environments and businesses / corporations to make it easier to manage on a large scale. This works fine for most people in their day-to-day use, the reason sometimes websites will complain that ESR is 'an outdated' version is because the website itself doesn't recognize that ESR has patched security vulnerabilities that are resolved in current Firefox versions.
You can almost always ignore those warnings, but its probably worth having a regular Firefox around if the website decides to restrict features based on your browser version.
I prefer using firefox flatpak, like back when i used kodi it was a pain as debian rebuilt it themselves and it had issues
@@alexstone691 Nothing wrong with that. Just felt the need to highlight this because it wasn't quite accurate in the video when he described what ESR Firefox is.
@@Kerea09 IM sorry my first comment was unfinished i edited it now, Its important people know that, if debian actually had a good website they would state these caveats on the front page
I rally appreciate how you are helping the LInux community. Newbs and Intermediates. I consider myself somewhere in between but I get a lot of vlaue from your videos.Thanks.
Debian and openSUSE are underrated great distros.
I think both get rated highly, as they should, it's just Debian is boring and openSUSE has got a really small market share so people don't really think to mention it.
Good timing - I'm at my absolute wit's end with Red Hat's shenanigans... Going to do some research/testing and see if i can switch over to Debian. Thanks for the video brother.
Please let us know
I use Debian Unstable/Sid on my desktop workstation, it's versatile, reliable & robust. It doses everything I need & I have the benefit of native modern packages with Sid (Debian 13/Trixie reported in neofetch) plus Flatpak & being Debian it's not a fork like Ubuntu or Mint, no third-party in between me & the upstream I like that directness. Debian is horrid out of the box but with a couple of hours of tinkering & a Timeshift snapshot afterwards you've got a damn great OS. Cause of my SSD upgrade I performed a fresh installation of Debian with the new improved ISO my old Sid install was from December.
I'm very happy with Debian & very optimistic about it's future.
If you run Debian Unstable/Sid, you need to be a bit more of an advanced Debian user, because it will break some day. Not in a bad way that can't be fixed, but it will break.
I just moved back to Debian Sid from OpenSuese tumbleweed because it broke something so Diablo 4 did not work any more. Zypper is nice, the search is great but I really do like apt and I will never ever use a third party package manager. Currently I'm running my Sid install on ext4 but I have plans to re-install it using btrfs and snapper to have snapshots just in case an update breaks. Altough I also have plans to run Debian stable with flatpaks because I really don't need the latest and greatest, I want stable. More Debian videos!
I started using Debian a couple weeks ago and I actually like it. I have been having problems and bad luck with Linux for a little while. When I was thinking about switching to Debian I wasn't sure if I wanted to because the last time I tried installing Debian, it really bad messed up my old laptop.
In my perspective, Debian already gave a big jump ahead when it brought calamares with a Live Image making the installation easier, however Debian still lacks many things that can make it still easier to the common user like a *debian-drivers devices* or a *debian-restricted-extras.* These kind of things captivate users.
If difficulty was captivating, slackware would be the most used distro ever, but, in reality, it is forgotten in the oblivion.
Thank you for posting your videos, as someone who desperately wants Linux to be something I can use exclusively I find your videos very informative. Sadly as long as no developers for dictation software like Dragon, and some other niche programs I need I will have to keep a windows machine.
Debian was the first distro that I really loved. I still like Debian. It is a great distro. Enjoy!
Same
13:48 part generally yes. Debian is debian and has it's ways for dealing with things. No one will shout at you for doing things difrernt, yet almost everybody will warn you that you may have find your self between the rock and a hard place because of the way you deal with things. And thats on you.
First off, I love your videos. Secondly, I'm a little sad that you switched from OpenSuse so quickly. I was hoping for some more suse videos before the switch. I did enjoy your recent dwm video, though. Would you ever consider a pop os vs debian video? Or a debian sid vs opensuse tumbleweed? Thanks, and keep up the great work!
I think I did figure out what was wrong with OpenSUSE, so I may give it another try some day. It's not dead to me. But it was just so buggy after whatever I did to it, I had to have something stable. So I will likely give it another go some day.
So what was wrong?
Debian Live is easy to install, I used this recently for the Windows users who migrated to Debian. :)
Very timely, the recent developments with redhat made me think over my distor of choice fedora and I was pondering switching back to mother debian.
I switched to Debian a few months ago. For once, I'm ahead of the pack. :-). A word of caution about nala, however. I've been using it since I switched but returned to apt last week after I noticed nala kept saying that there were no updates available for a couple of days. (I'm on sid so that's difficult to accept). When I tried sudo apt update, there were more than a hundred updates waiting that nala had failed to find.
Debian and I share a birthday. Now that the hardware support is better I’ll be switching to it. Our 30th is coming up 🥲
I use Debian BTW…. Ugh … I need a shower.
Man I’m glad I discovered you, you’ve been very helpful in my decision making
I switch from fedora38 KDE to Debian12 KDE. It's just awesome. Granted I was using Fedora for quite a while. My os might have been bloated a little bit. And Debian12 is brand new and has this fresh install feeling. But men it run so smoothly ! And also yes, I'm relying a lot more on flatpak compared to Fedora.
Sorry that openSUSE didn't work for you! Tumbleweed is a great distribution once you get used to it, and I hope you give it another shot someday in the future.
That said, I've always been intrigued by Debian. It's a very foundational distribution and seemingly made to Just Work. With things like Flatpak, Nix, and Distrobox, the older package versions might not matter as much anymore (as long as the things I mentioned keep working with THEIR older versions)
I always recommend Leap to anybody "normal" who wants to try out OpenSUSE. 🙏
THEIR looks so weird in capitals, i thought it was misspelt
i never used nix or distrobox, let me look at this here.
@@ArniesTech Isnt leap going away soon? I heard there wont be leap 15.6
15.6 is last. Tumbleweed stays
Good video. One thing id like to add is that i think people should talk about all the different versions of Debian and the such. I prefer debian testing. Ive been just sitting in the backgrounds for awhile i havnt done a video in forever.
One massive advantage that Debian/Ubuntu has is options
They (especially debian) support EVERYTHING (in a stable-esque fashion)
Better Debian than Ubuntu, don't be eventually gaslighted by some corps like Valve that officially support only Ubuntu users due to the fact that Ubuntu is the only distro reference for their technical charts. They're rotten wrong.
Love the review 🎉
Debian simply is and remains the OG of the Linux Distros 💪
Slackware.
@@folksurvival Maybe Debian is the OG community distro ? Because Slackware is pretty much one person.
Thanks for the video. I have done distro hopping for quite sometime. I wasn't sure if i new what i was looking for. I realized that distro were mostly about the desktop environment. After using debian on and off (between arch and fedora) i found debian to actually more useful. I would suggest to all Linux Users, to choose a OS (debian, Arch, or Fedora) that offers an integrated way to install more than one desktop environment. Debian using tasksel, allows you to very easily add another Desktop Environment. I find this to be quite usefull and better than just installing a Desktop environment maunally, just due to the amount of configuration one will need to do.
Currently, and for the near future. I use Debian BTW! 👍😎
I'm looking forward to the review. Great and informative video.
Awesome video Matt! Thank you!
Debian comes from a time when uptime was King. Same with Red Hat. That's why their stable is legitimately stable. With the youtube Linux community it seems like "rolling new & shiny" is King, and some probably don't care at all about things like uptime.
Uptime and secure does not go well hand in hand. 700 days uptime is not an accomplishment, it is a security hole.
@@RoelandJansen I don't disagree, but on some of the most popular distros nowadays, those reboots aren't for security patches, they are for willy-nilly feature requests with very little testing.
@@RoelandJansen Well, unless you get kernel live patching I guess.
@@autohmae for the kernel itself yes. How do you think glibc will go? How would a systemd security patch go?
we have zypper ps that shows deleted linbraries and so, yes you can do, with some work, many times get along without a restart.
but lkp won't help you.
You can update tzdata, java, vim, you name it, generally yes. Just restart the application. (tzdata probably doesn't require anything. just like updated manpages etc)
So again: a long uptime tells you that either it's not an issue because isolated env, OR a sloppy security or admin.
Example: RHEL6.x with maintenance support, ended nov 2020 or so. It still runs. Cool uptime..
Just some thoughts on it.
@@RoelandJansen personally if you want instead reduce down time instead of increase uptime, kexec is a tool I install
on another channel, I read something very interesting about the debian installer, and why it looks somewhat oldfashioned.
they use a kernel draw mode to create everything in the installer. reason for it: in order to not break anything amongst the vast amount of supported platforms, they wanted to keep the installer below 64mb ram requirement.
by todays standards, that means that you can probably install debian on a toaster.
and regarding debian being a boring system: from what I understand, if you don't torture debian, it behaves like a well built tank. it will take whatever you throw at it like a champ.
I am waiting for Devuan Daedalus Stable. In my main computer I use Debian Testing + Plasma 5.27.5 + Steam. On my laptops I use Devuan Daedalus/Chimaera.
If you haven't already you should give nixos a try, its easy to install, takes a bit of learning once installed, but once you get to know it its really unique.
No
@@AcidiFy574 Yes
The mirror I chose is at the university in my hometown. That university is 3 miles from my home.
Great, as always, Matt! Can you customize your desktop using window managers like AwesomeWM and rofi, without relying on a desktop environment, just as you did with Arch? I think this will be a fun experience!
Honestly, I may try this after my recent opensuse experience. I loved Fedora on my laptop, opensuse felt like a hiccupy mess in comparison on my desktop, and this wasn't even on tumbleweed, it was on leap. I have a 3080 on a 13900k, the KDE UI was just laggy and would randomly freeze a few seconds for absolutely no reason while trying to work with PYCharm or VS code. Docker and kubernetes was the one thing which ran perfectly and I didn't have to touch anything, it just worked. However, from having to deal with installing various drivers, which you think would be shipped by default even if they are proprietary. I'm very much okay with a few updates as long as they work, stable releases are what I'd prefer anyway. I don't have the luxury to tinker with every little aspect of a OS, from dealing with Bluetooth drivers not recognizing earbuds as audio devices to attempting to find why my experience isn't just fluid and painfree. Good review however, hopefully Debian 12 is what I'm looking for in a OS!
Instead you could fix it.
I've been thinking about going back to Debian. Was playing with it earlier this year.
What the GIMP team has done is a lot of work. There is a v3 coming, yeah it a long time, but I been following it for a long time.
I know. I'm just impatient.
Continuity is most important in a business environment. I prefer Debian and .DEB distros such as MX or LMDE6. I do this as updates never broke my system like Arch or Windows. I travel to and work in rural areas with little or no Internet access. One simply cannot be stuck without help, instead use what is boringly reliable, stable, dependable, predictable and trustworthy. It has to be consistent. It is spelled D e b i a n which is ancestorial Linux, when Deborah and Ian first started out decades ago. Time-tested, the Geländewagen of Linux.
Awesome video, thank you much and GOD bless you always
the way you explained the package counting number stats was good, your content is very much filled with lot of information, i think you can do better on presentation part. Above all I learnt a few things. Good luck for the next ones.
I think your Debian experience with vary on how its installed. I went through a phase of putting Lubuntu on everything (especially my old crap) because it generally just worked and I like the lxqt desktop. However I've been trying to switch away from Ubuntu distro's recently and increasingly install Debian using the live CD "calamares?") installer without issue. That was until I tried to install Debs 12 on my "daily driver" which has a Nvidia card, and that proved problematical. The kernel module failed to build and I couldn't believe Debian would release something so bad. However I tried again using the net install minimal image and did an "expert" install (Debians more traditional graphical installer) and that went extremely smoothly and the kernel module built without issue, so I now do it that way! Lesson learned! Also worth adding I had to turn off secure boot to install Debian (because of the kernel driver - a few extra steps are required) which wasn't necessary on Ubuntu.
Thank you for the tip on nala!
thanks for the review
Thank you. Enjoyed it.
I was gonna be mad about the firefox comment, but then I remembered that the latest update totally blew up usercss and transparency.
run debian stable and then distrobox unstable/sid for those programs you need newer version of..........beats the heck out of apt pinning.
Arch cannot be compared with Debian stable, the former is a rolling release, please compare it with Debian Testing or Sid.
You know me, I'm a Slackware person, but here's a comment to help with the algorithm.
Debian is as good as it gets. :)
I'm looking for tiling WM to install onto Proxmox, can you help since you are a great fan of Tiling WMs. Thanks for this Debian update👍 I'm running antiX on lapton & love it to give you an idea as to where I'm at with Tiling WM, FYI running PopOS tiling on PC ear marked for personal production projects. I'm happy w/Debian stable was not happy w/ constant updates. PS Need a video regarding Mastodon. I come from slackware miss. Long story how I wound up distro hopping.
I were happy on Debian 11 but only for Maya I had to switch to Fedora. I kinda miss Debian
Good vid, thanks
i love debian
Debian Sid is pretty much a rolling release. Packages updated daily to their latest versions or close. It’s quite stable too honestly, back in 2010 I’d have X break (unsurprisingly) every few updates or enter dependency hell, but no longer. APT won’t upgrade packages that may break dependencies by default.
Stable is also a rolling release
@@joshua_lee732 yeah, just replace bookworm with stable in your sources.list. You will be in for a surprise 2 years later!
Very nice video 👍👍👍
Debian Sid is the best it's rock solid
Debian is the one Distro I'm most happy with packaging. Also eww verticle panel...
I was giving it a try. But there are no good vertical clocks so I've already switched back
I really like Debian I just keep getting this weird issue where UA-cam lags really badly. Don't get the same issue with Fedora or Endeavour OS.
VAAPI is disabled
At around 2.00 into your post, you started to say Ubuntu, a few times when I presume you meant Debian.
helpful ty
I decided to go Debian on my desktop and am watching this to see if things I did not do on my Debbox
debian, the gnu/linux distribution for lesbians
Or for anybody who loves women
The only problem i have encountered in the 2-3 months i've been using Debian12+KDE is a freak error where it randomly hangs during shutdown/reboot. It's not as bothering as it might sound though. Other than that, as an amateur user, it's solid
Debian mention = instant upvote
What is that color scheme youre using in your terminal? I like that.
Want to dump Fedora and stop supporting anything to do with the evil IBM Hat, but looks very close to impossible to install hyprland on Debian right now.
been using nala for almost two years. I can't go back. apt just looks and feels so old.
Have you used Debian Testing, Unstable, or even Experimental? How do these compare with flatpacks, or rolling releases?
How do you get some info in your terminal do be boxed into that awesome green box? like Downloading... Updating Packages, etc? Is that some sort of code in your .bashrc?
That's an app called Nala. It's. Replacement for Apt
Ya, right, I downloaded Debian to try on my VM. It took several hours to load up, and then the audio part would not work right. I also tried Zorin OS and had no trouble at all. Also, you cannot get help with Debian but you can with the Zorin Community. So, which do you thin people want to use?
I just got the urge to hop again. How's Debian vs Fedora Immutable currently look?
OK, one comment on the nala thing... I love nala as an installer, but, if it cant fond something, it will go 'nope', but apt will go 'nope, but we have that on snap'.
No Debian doesn't have snap by default.... and apt doesn't suggest it like you say.
Matt your wrong, you can totally make Debian a rolling release, just change /etc/apt/sources.list and point Bookworm to Stable
Yyy.. rolling is SiD
*you're
Spiral Linux is awesome
But is it using Debian 12 yet?
@@folksurvivalyes, they always use Debian’s repo
Any chance you know if CORECTRL can be installed on Debian now. I had issues using it before. Thanks ahead Matt.
Here is your like bro and always got love your takes on linux stuff also join me and zaney to play some 0ad on that debian lol
I am a new user and really enjoy Debian. However for the first time I have become stuck with getting a stand alone brother scanner to work 😔
Are you sure about daily using of nala? I used it before and i felt it had some bugs. Unfortunately i dont remember the bugs because it was years ago
It's always worked fine for me, and I used it for about five months during my LTR. But no software is bug free.
What happened to Synaptic? It was quite easy GUI tool to select and install all the software from the packages that you want
I'm sure it's still there. May even still be installed. I don't know. I don't ever use it. I always prefer the terminal. It's a bias that I have for sure.
Had graphical problems with debian 12 media installer and had to install from live media and had problems with grub and ended up archinstall script and had smooth experience
There.. I "Smashed that f*cking like button like a true wanker!!"... lmao.. great video as always Matt, even though I was really hoping you were serious about Gentoo #disappointment
I really thought about it, I really did, but I just need my computer to work for a while and I don't think I can do that with Gentoo given how noob I am
@@TheLinuxCast Yeah I get ya, it’s pretty understandable with you considering you actually need a working pc for an actual job and the channel.
@@TheLinuxCast and I don’t think it would be as hard as you think it would. You did fine on Redcore, which is Gentoo 🤟
idk why bro but if you compare play on steam in linux on debian ubuntu and arch, debian ssack with xorg and i have more lag ad graphic glitch on debian compare to ubuntu and arch, so yea debian is easy etc. but on steam ssack.
Hey mate, i'd like to ask an honest question, i'm not trolling or anything. My POV is: i'm an IT guy, who specializes in printing technologies, i'm also on my way to becoming a cloud architect, I'm interested in IT security. Because of this printing stuff, i mainly use windows, i also play some computer games, with dual boot i also have ubuntu. When i need i use MacOS on VMs or other linux distros. After watching Your video, and some others that praise Debian 12, i'd like to ask You: why should i use it over, for example, ubuntu, mint, pop? I've installed Debian 12 on VM and the installation process was needlesly complicated (more so than Ubuntu, for example), or should i say: more complicated. What is it with this debian release, that's so good, cause i would very much like to know :D Cause, as my understaing goes, Debian can have the same graphic interface, uses more or less the same tools (programs) as ubuntu. So what's so special?
Cheers!
Debian's main quality is its stability and package testing. The "stable" branch is one of the most stable that you'll find. Ubuntu, is of course very close to that, but their package testing isn't as stringent as Debian's is (though some of it is, of course, given that Ubuntu uses some of Debian SID's repositories.)
Yes, the Debian installation can be complicated, but they have isos available that have a standard Calamares installer (similar to Manjaro), that is just as simple as the one for Ubuntu, Mint and Pop!OS. The trouble is that you kind of have to dig for them. Let me know if you'd like me to get you a link.
As for gaming, for me, Linux is good enough, but I'm not a AAA gamer. I think you'll be surprised at how many WIndows games play great inside Steam with Proton enabled.
@@TheLinuxCast Thanks for the quick answer. I've just watched a video on different channel, that suggested to try debian version live, with different installer, my download notification popped like seconds after i got notification from YT about your answer, so now i'm gonna check Deb12 some more. Thanks very much! :)
I'm so shocked about people complaining about Debian's installer being hard... This shows how many linux users out there are beginners. Not trying to be mean or eliticist, I just really can't understand what's hard about installing Debian. Yet I see people complaining about it in comments on different channels.
@@AnotherSkyTV I'm hardly a beginner. But when i've used the iso with no live-boot, i've made a mistake at one point and I WASN'T ABLE TO GO BACK.
Making installer harder than it should be is really an unnecessary complication, and, comparing to that from livecd (i've checked this one after the dialogue with our "Host" here), is just not intuitive enough. Now i'm using the one installed with liveiso.
And if You think that's ok, though You see people complaining about this, that might mean that: either You're in a technological bubble, or You ARE an elitist (snob). Did You compare both of these installers? The one from official iso, and the one You can download, when You go deeper on Debian site?
That approach "what's so hard about " is really counter-productive and makes (in this regard) Linux not progress the way it could. Just check how easy is Ubuntu to install - do people complain?
So tell me, why do You think they complain about Debian, hm? And if it's so common, what's the conclusion?
cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/amd64/iso-cd/debian-12.0.0-amd64-netinst.iso
You have your question backwards. All the OSs you mention are based on Debian. The question you should be asking is what do the others offer that make it worthwhile for YOU to use them over Debian. For me the answer is nothing. YMMV.
Hi Matt, I was wondering how good is gaming on Debian? how well do Steam games work vs other distros ?
I haven't got that for yet. But I will definitely do so before I do a long-term review of it.
I play on debian (testing) ; nvidia drivers ; and no problem at all...
Note, I play only with Steam.
@@TheLinuxCast Looking forward to that video then!
@@LtSich awesome, thanks for replying. Will have to dig into debian
Do you do Android development? Why? I do and I need to be sure that Debian has no problems with Android Studio.
I do not. But Android studio is available via flatpak so you shouldn't have any issues no matter the distro you choose
@@TheLinuxCast "shouldn't have any issues" I love the sentence.👍
Debian is such a based stable distro
What are the benefits of debian over ubuntu except more stability stuffs?
No Canonical nonsense
@@TheLinuxCast Thanks. Im gonna migrate from ubuntu to debian in months. Which package manager do you think is better to use alongside APT? Is APT enough for a daily linux user or I have to use some others like Flatpak?
@@alizolfaghari3951 Flatpak is supplemental, so you can get what you can't get easily on Debian. So I used both
Why would I leave a like until after I listen to the whole video?
using debian since 2000 ... :)
Is it possible to install Debian 12 as it were before, ie only *FREE/FOSS* ???
Yes. You need to choose the expert install, and then there are a couple options you need to say no to.
@@TheLinuxCast Perfect! I'll try later!
I love Debian, but no, it is not for everyone... Probably LMDE, that one perhaps...
ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh look at that a new video oh gosh.
GVM
Debian + Flatpaks = 💪
I use Debian BTW
Btw i usw Arch.