this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2023
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18
Tips for switching to Debian from Ubuntu? (lemmy.sdf.org)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Title pretty much says it all. I've been using ubuntu as my daily driver for the last 5 years or so and honestly, I've had a wonderful experience with it.

That said, with the way things are going, I feel like its only a matter of time before Canonical pulls the rug out so I'd like to at least get my feet wet with something other than Ubuntu and Debian seems like the logical choice.

I mainly use my machines for gaming, self hosting, programming, and weird networking projects/automation testing.

I've heard gaming on debian isnt as 'out of the box' as it is with Ubuntu. So I'm hoping somone with more experience can share some tips on what I should be looking out for or point me to some good guides. Thanks yall.

EDIT: I fucking love this community. Thank you all for your replies. I appreciate you taking the time to help me out.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Switch to Fedora I would say. Debian is up to date currently, as things are settling down to be LTS, but over the years it will get fewer updates. Fedora is even more up to date than Ubuntu, but more stable than Opensuse Tumbleweed, which would be the Opensuse equivalent.

If you want a perfect experience with KDE, I dont know what to recommend but there are bugs that will probably simply not be fixed in Debian for the next 2 years, as they are postponed to Plasma 6, mainly the glitches when fractional scaling.

Gnome is really stable I think, Fedora should give the best experience here.

Btw using Distrobox you can run ANY Linux app easily. On Fedora Kinoite (ostree, like Silverblue) I run the VLC 4.0 beta currently, which is only available as an Ubuntu PPA. no problem at all. Do mainly for AUR or Ubuntu PPA apps Distrobox is brilliant.

Fedora itself also has COPR where lots of community packages are.

If you want recent deb-based, there also is KDE Neon user edition. Used that for a while, but I switched to immutable Fedora and never going back.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Someone familiar with Ubuntu is going to have no trouble at all with Debian.
As for updates, there's always upgrading releases, or Testing/Unstable.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Okay true, there is Debian testing aka sid. I have not tried that long term though.

But I absolutely dont agree "being used to ubuntu". Either you are a GUI person and the interface is not the same. Its GNOME and you need some extensions, thats it.

Or you are from Ubuntu and want proprietary packages, PPAs, or even Snaps! They seem pretty user friendly witg some features.

Or you want the nice background...

But apt? You just use sudo dnf upgrade" instead of sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade`. The rest is Linux, everything is probably the same. Maybe some udev stuff, but apart from ADB (which is kinda poweruser stuff) its not actually needed.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Just learn how to activate the non-free repos. Everything else except for the stupid stuff like snap that ubuntu introduced, is 99.5% the same. I've switched from Ubuntu to Debian like 15 years ago. Never looked back.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Use the net installer. Leave the root password empty if you want sudo installed. There is probably no need for you to read the official installation manual, but maybe do so if you run into any trouble.

There are wiki pages for the most common things you might want to setup, like how to install steam, nvidia driver, enable backports (good way to get (some) newer packages without breakage), and enable flatpak. Just google "debian wiki nvidia" etc.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Holy shit I never knew you could have sudo installed like that. Always done it post-install lmao

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Yeah it actually says that in the text on that root password screen. But nobody ever reads that, me included. Literally everybody I have told this to was surprised when they hear about it. It's a total UI failure.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Same lol, I was confused at why some of my selfhosting boxes had sudo and some didn't, despite being installed fresh from the same ISO

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Why not use doas instead of sudo?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

@finickydesert @gnuhaut The installer installs sudo.

Also, what are the advantages of doas compared to sudo?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

afaik, doas is a bit more minimal than sudo, so less bloatware. Sudo has a lot of CVE's every year and because doas is way smaller, it has a lot less security issues.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Protip: for anyone in the fence, you can install doas then simply alias sudo for doas. Nothing changes in how you use your shell but it's now more secure

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Just Mint it dude

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I just switched from Linux Mint to Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE). I was feeling like you; wanting to get away from Ubuntu dependency. I tried out Debian, but it just didn't feel as comfy out of the box. LMDE is working great. I even enabled backports and updated the Kernel.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You may want to try pop_os if one of your main uses is gaming. But debian is very straight forward after you enable the non-free repos.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I'm consistently amazed how intuitive and responsive the pop os interface is even on low end hardware. It is so polished and adds so much utility to using a GUI, or even using multiple terminals.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Use configuration as code. Ansible, puppet, salt, nix or something else. Debian is nice but its a diy ubuntu. You appreciate the effort cononical puts in to take away the rough edges on places. Using debian allows you to craft the OS you want from scratch, which is great! Just make sure you don't have to redo work if your system dies at some point.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Maybe a bit naive, but what is the way that things that are going? What would Canonical pulling the rug out look like?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Don't, unless you like snaps.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think you misread the OP.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Worse than that, I didn't read beyond the topic. The question itself creates like this automatic PTSD response. ;)

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Tangential question for people browsing this post: would you recommend a different Linux distribution over Debian and Ubuntu for OP? If so, which one and why?

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

On server I found it to be basically the same except for some installed programs. Dunno about gaming doe.

Why not try Mint? Also Debian based