this post was submitted on 24 Apr 2025
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submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
 

I have used Debian for the past 3 years, who else uses Debian?

Also, what makes you use Debian?

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

I love Debian, its IMO the best distro even though atm I dont use it. Its the most stable and by far the distro that just works the most.

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

Sure its the most stable, but the packages are usually out of date

[–] [email protected] 1 points 20 minutes ago

Tbh sometimes having the most up to date packages isnt very important

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 hours ago

It's what I know and love, just Debian, bspwm and startx. Servers and desktop both. I feel somewhat grumpy that I can't run xorg on remote servers, but I made my peace.

Apart from my current complete move to Linux, I'm contemplating setting up a prettier Debian for my folks.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 day ago

Thank you Deb and Ian.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago
[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Debian on Servers. Not-Debian on not-servers.

It's doesn't have to be complicated.

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

Exactly this, unfortunately we have a company policy from the group which says we must use Ubuntu Server as a server OS... 😬

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 23 hours ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 hours ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 39 minutes ago

I mean youre right. But as someone who's used both I couldn't tell you the difference between the two except for snap.

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

Debian on servers. Mint for my friends' laptops.

Debian in Qubes for me.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago

I'm a big fan of a minimal Debian system with Flatpaks.
Technically, Fedora Silverblue would be perfect for me, but I had way more issues with it than with Debian, despite it being immutable and atomic.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Debian since 1998 checking in

I use it because it's just always been there it's the foundation for so many other distros and can be customized the way I want it to be. All the packages are for the most part vanilla other than fixing them to follow the Debian rules. The Debian rules are great since once you learn them. You knows where to find anything on a Debian system.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 days ago
[–] [email protected] 25 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Stable, fully foss and commonly used.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 days ago
[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I appreciate their philosophy. I've been a Linux user since the early 2000s and have cycled through 30-40 distros at least. I'm not a highly technical user. I would consider myself a solid intermediate. For a daily use system I prefer arch, but my servers run Debian. Most of the people writing install guides for the software I deploy seem to use Debian so I run into less issues this way. It can be hard to follow a guide for Gentoo when you're using Hanna Montana Linux, know what I'm saying? Same thing with Debian. It's just a solid choice with the bonus of having a better, more ethical philosophy, and the benefit of being widely adopted and supported by people who can help when you get stuck. I don't even mind gnome on my servers since it works well with a single screen and it's super rare that I actually need the server GUI anyway.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago

This is the way.

I have 3 servers that are all on some flavor of Debian, but Arch on my personal rig.

Stability where I need it for those always-on workloads, and the ability to fuck around as much as I want over in the corner.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

The most reliable Linux OS out there, software and community. If there's still people and computers in 50 years, Debian will still be around.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 days ago
[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I'm using Debian too. I switched to linux because of privacy reasons and my second thought was that it would be nice if it's completely developed by an open community without a bigger corporation behind it.

Works great so far. See no reason to change distros.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (4 children)

Yes, Debian is run by the people for the people, no corporate giant behind it!

The Debian community is so sweet and caring, MiniDebConf Berlin 2024:

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago

This pic made me smile.

I haven't been to DebConf since before COVID, but I definitely recognize a few people in that pic.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 day ago

Jeez, dat internal to external genital ratio

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago
[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago

I've been using Debian for 20 years now, since Debian 3.1 "Sarge".

My first distro was Knoppix, and it was incredible that I could run a Linux desktop from a CD without installing it. Back then I had something like 96 MB of RAM and my computer was an already ancient Pentium II. And yet it worked fine. This opened my mind about what a computer can actually achieve so I asked around forums in my country and met a guy who had the installation media for Debian. I only had dial-up so downloading DVDs was impossible.

Installed it and used it non stop since then. I'm running Debian Testing with the Unstable and Stable repositories pinned at a lower priority.

It's hard to describe but the first time I used Linux it just felt like home. I have used DOS 6.x and Windows since 3.1 but it didn't feel like I was in control of the computer; in retrospect it felt something like an amusement park instead of the engineering marvel it really was. We take it for granted now and don't completely realize that we have actual super computers in our pockets!

Debian was the epitome of this, for the first time I could understand and control the entirety of the software and best of all: it is a community effort. Smart people all around the world donate their time and skills to create something to improve humanity. What's not to love and appreciate?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 day ago

I have been using Debian - it's the only distro I've used in my 3 years of Linux as a daily driver, and I started using it in VMs instead of Ubuntu a while before that.

I also like stability and Debian's community-oriented nature.

I am currently on Testing for my desktop, but plan to either go stable or do a reinstall when Trixie hits stable - I'm tired of rolling release and my programs changing frequently. I have really enjoyed Debian 12 + Flatpaks on my Thinkpad, so I think I will do that when summer rolls around.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

I use it on every server I set up. Just configure it once and leave it, it works. I love not having to constantly adapt to changes from package updates, since I rely on Debian's index, which is updated quickly only in case of critical security issues.

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

Yeah, Debian for services/servers (Raspberry Pi in my case) and Gentoo on the desktop.

But for the not tech-savy family members I've choosen Fedora for them. They need more GUI.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago

😀 ❤️

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago

Debian-head here, daily driving it for the last 5 years. I distrohopped a lot before but Debian made me stay, mainly because of its stability and the fact that it's community driven.
It's getting harder everyday making your needs fit your ethics, but this is one of the few cases and it makes me feel good with my choices.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago

I love Debian because it just works, its administration is completely open, and there's a lot of software support.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago

I've been using it on my server for 6 or 8 years, and on my desktop and laptop for maybe a year. I'm not sure when I switched.

I like the stability, I generally don't need bleeding edge software. And as someone else mentioned, it's one of the packages distributors always offer.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago

I've been using Debian since 2000 (potato).

I've occasionally had to use other distros for work (Red Hat or Ubuntu, typically), or to verify/troubleshoot bugs reports in upstream packages.

But my preference is Debian all the way, for servers or workstations.

It's stable, and it has a great community. Also ideologically speaking, it has the Debian Social Contract and Debian Free Software Guidelines.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 day ago

Also have been using Debian for the past 3 years. It just works on all of my machines and comes with just enough features to make life easy. Also love the variety of packages and compatibility with pretty much anything I need that isn't in the official repo.

Many would beg to differ but I love how stable and predictable it is. I have a very particular taste in UI and the less work to maintain that cozy look, the better. Having been a holdout on old Windows versions in the years before I moved to Linux, getting new features at all is already very exciting. I had thought for several years that nothing would beat the comfort and reliability of Windows 2000, but Debian proved me wrong.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago

I use it because of the lack of BS.

Secondly, it's stable.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Are You on stable or testing repo? Do You use flatpaks?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I'm running Debian on multiple computers and laptops. This screenshot is of my desktop running Debian Trixie and yes I use flatpaks!

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

I see. Im asking because software in debian is old and so I wonder if this bothers desktop debian users or maybe they like it this way. If I were a debian user I would probably stay on testing to get some packages faster. Thanks for a reply!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 13 hours ago

I like it this way. When you say old, I hear "the environment is predictable". What works today won't break in a week because an update changed functionality of something. As long as I have hardware support, I don't need the latest packages for what I do.

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

I always use Debian unstable, but my desktop has an Nvidia GPU and I want some stability for #Warframe and #Minecraft, the only two games I play.

So I just installed the latest update by changing my /etc/apt/sources.list.d from Bookworm to Trixie.

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

What flag is this, by the way?

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

genderfluid flag

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Hell yeah, debian stable on my servers and testing on my laptop. #perfection

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I use it for when I want a custom system. Big ripo, and clean minimal installs along with security updates. I run it my workstation and on my vps systems.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago

I use Arch on my main machine, but I just got a new (old!) laptop that I'm going to set up probably with Debian. Someone mentioned I might try Devuan.... and learn about all the init stuff.... but I'm thinking I'll keep it simpler for this one and go straight Debian first.

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