Is there any reason to run Debian as a user, as opposed to a sysadmin? I love running Debian on my servers, it's boring and rock-solid, but why should I run it on my PC instead of a derivative distro?
There are many reasons to run Debian as a user, why wouldn't there be? I'm sure there's also many reasons not to. By "derivative distro" I assume you mean for example Ubuntu, or maybe Linux Mint -- personally my love for Debian is that it's _not_ Ubuntu. There's no "firefox installed as snap", it just feels cleaner and snappier while still being very similar to what I'm used to. Debian used to be slightly more difficult to install, but I don't feel that's the case anymore, especially not since they ship non-free firmware on the install media now.
The only reason I'm on Ubuntu is that Gnome on Ubuntu permanently displays a visible dock. In vanilla Gnome on Debian, there is a dock extension, but it's only visible when the full-screen Applications menu is visible. I don't get how people can work with this. How have you adressed this?
Most people I've heard from who want 'Ubuntu, but without the 'bs' end up on Mint, since there you get the benefits of Ubuntu, but without all the stuff nobody actually wants, rather than 'not Ubuntu to begin with'.
I guess if you like Gnome that doesn't really apply, since that isn't availible easily on Mint, but Gnome is one of the reasons I didn't want Ubuntu.
My experience is that the only concrete "benefit of Ubuntu" is that ZFS ships pre-compiled as a kernel module instead of having to be compiled on upgrade, other than that I am not sure what benefits Ubuntu provide on desktop over Debian.
Saying that Debian is "not Ubuntu to begin with" is of course technically true, but the similarities are so large that I have a hard time seeing anyone would have much of an issue switching, Ubuntu is and always has been based on Debian.
On servers, my experience is that Ubuntu is, while not "better", far more common, simply because of the fact that they have a more clear and understandable paid support plan, which I guess makes sense. Not that most users bother to pay for it anyway, but at least it's there if you end up with an EOL system you can't decom.
Well... it just works, so it's fine. I remember a time when I was a student where I would change distribution every six months: Fedora, Debian, Archlinux, Gentoo, FreeBSD, etc. but I finally landed on Debian and stayed there as I grew older.
In the stable distribution, packages tend to be a little dated obviously, but at least it is _stable_. And you can go with the _testing_ distribution for more up-to-date packages.
Also, as a sysadmin, I like having it on my computer to develop and test scripts without having to SSH in a dedicated environment (I still have to eventually but only for the final tests).
My own view: rolling release distros gets less in my way than distros like Debian. They allow me to install anything I want, as close as possible to upstream.
Not saying one is better than the other, just remarking that it's interesting to see 'getting in the way' meaning completely opposite things for different people :).
But... Debian is also a rolling release distro. Just use the "testing" or "unstable" suite. I am using Debian unstable on my main desktop since 1999, and had very little issues with it. The testing suite is the one which filters out most bugs found in unstable, and is something you can definitely use as a regular user.
Can confirm, have been using Debian testing branch on my local server for AI experiments for a year and it works great. Never hit any major issues, always have (reasonably) up to date software.
I've found both to be true at different times in my life. When I was younger and had time to read release notes I found rolling release made my life a lot easier, because my software was always close to the documentation online, always had the latest fixes etc.
But now my schedule only lets me do an update once a month rather than daily, so it feels more likely to introduce breaking changes and I'd rather just leave her all until a specific moment when I have the time to work through it all, and the longer term support distris help with that because those big all-at-once upgrades seem to be better documented.
> My own view: rolling release distros gets less in my way than distros like Debian. They allow me to install anything I want, as close as possible to upstream.
Debian comes with backports repositories which allow you to cleanly install newer versions of selected packages, without affecting the rest of the system.
One could argue that in that case Rocky Linux (or any EL) would be perfect, but I think that touches on what I like the most about Debian: it has a very good trade-off between stability and including new software.
Well, right now I'd say it would be _consistent_, at least. I run Fedora on my desktop/laptop/remote devboxes and use Debian as either a base container image (for Docker/LXC) or as a server (whenever the option is there), and I must say I like Trixie's little CLI quality of life improvements.
Not really sure I'd swap Fedora's _really good_ driver support for it, but since I'm running Silverblue and most of my "civilian" apps are flatpaks I probably wouldn't notice the difference.
Yes. I've been running Debian unstable as my desktop for almost two decades. Especially nowadays its usually less hassle, more stable and more up-to-date than the derivatives.
I don't really see a difference between using Debian for workstations and servers.
The only real reason to use Debian is that you think what Debian is trying to do is a good thing. They have a very clear definition of what they consider acceptable software engineering practices, how they think things shoud work, what's acceptable from free software and they do a lot of work to ensure what they ship fit that. They value portability to an extreme, have strong opinions about how linking should be done, separations of concern and what can be considered free software. It's an extremely political distribution with a lot of patching happening to try to shoe horn things into their vision.
I personally think it's extremely misguided, breaks a lot of good sotfware, mostly unsafe, a significant drag on the people actually developping what they ship, and basically the embodyment of everything that is wrong with Linux distribution as a concept. Others will tell you they are fighting the good fight for their users freedom and the guardian of the kingdom.
How you stand on this will determine if Debian - and its derivatives which bring its flaws with the Debian inheritance - makes sense for you.
I installed it on my Dada laptop and for me its great since I can forget about it until the next major version releases.
The unattended updates also ensure he gets the latest security patches without me coming over and running apt every other week.
I would think more than 90% of all computer users (be it in their personal life or profession) do not need the latest versions of anything, but would prefer a stable system with no sudden changes. It's also much less on a burden on those that manage the systems for them.
Some common software gets very annoying or even unusable with age. Try using a version of yt-dlp older than a few months (Debian's is several years old and is completely useless). Or software like Discord which doesn't play well with Debian because it can't keep itself up to date.
I think of yt-dlp, Discord, or Debian (Debian proper, not downstream distros like Ubuntu), the order in which ordinary, non-computer people are likely to us them is, from most to least likely, Discord then yt-dlp then Debian.
I agree that there are probably more users of Discord and yt-dlp outside of the computer field than Debian users. However, people who use computers do use an operating system, and typically have/require somebody that they ask for help when they can't fix it. The question was, why Debian on a Desktop. Like other commenters, I had great success moving people to Debian because all they need nowadays is a browser, and it requires a lot less maintenance (by themselves or third parties) than other distributions. Most "ordinary" people just want their system to stay the same, and are not enjoying constantly having to adapt to new UIs.
It is targeted towards humans. The person managing the Debian system is not necessarily its user base. I find that I can easily introduce people to the few concepts they need to understand and then they can use it almost as fluently as their previously never really grasped Windows. And it gets in their way way less often. The experience on any and all operating systems for most users seems to be to have to confirm random dialogs at random points in time, with random words assembled almost like hieroglyphs, to get back to what they wanted to do.
I drive a car. For almost anything besides wiper water, gas and oil in terms of maintenance, I go to a mechanic. OK, yes, in theory I know how to change tires, and I even have the tools to do it myself, but I let a workshop do it for me, purely out of convenience. I couldn't care less about the guts of the car; the only thing I care about is how often it annoys me and basically requires me to bring it to a mechanic. Is the motor "not targeted at me"?
This is how most people I know see and use their computers/tablets/phones.
