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in Debian (because Debian was always mentioned as a distro good for servers, or stable machines that are ok with outdated software)

And while I get that Debian does have software that isn’t as up to date, I’ve never felt that the software was that outdated.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?

  • Holytimes@sh.itjust.works
    2·
    9 hours ago

    Debian is the absolute goat so long as your work flow fits inside of the scope of Debian which 99% of everybody’s well, even most regular normal gamers will do just fine in Debian using flat packs.

    You just have to also accept the fact that if you’re doing something niche like VR gaming or using weird third-party custom hardware or something Debian sucks ass. A lot of my VR kit straight up doesn’t even support anything that uses apt.

    It only supports Fedora and Arch. Because a lot of it straight up will not work with flat pack anything. There’s just no support and s*** brakes constantly. You need up-to-date libraries and some of these libraries update multiple times a week. It’s just not inside the scope of something like Debian.

    Always try Debian first. If it doesn’t work then try something else. It’s usually the best rule of thumb.

    • eldavi@lemmy.mlEnglish
      1·
      2 hours ago

      agreed, Debian’s rock solid for 99.99% of people.

      You just have to also accept the fact that if you’re doing something niche like VR gaming or using weird third-party custom hardware or something Debian sucks ass.

      i’ve worked on predominantly debian based infrastructure professionally for multimedia companies in the last 10ish years, so it’s a little bit funny to me that og flavored debian doesn’t do this, but it clearly can if you can afford an army of developers to create it for you.

      entire multi-billion dollar revenue streams literally exist because of debian doing this and doing it well, but everyone popularly and unquestioningly believe that you can’t do it on linux. lol