Debian operating system

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Debian is a free operating system (OS) for your computer. An operating system is the set of basic programs and utilities that make your computer run. Debian provides more than a pure OS: it comes with over 59000 packages, precompiled software bundled up in a nice format for easy installation on your machine.

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Been daily driving Arch for 6 months now, but considering moving back to Debian. Not really taking full advantage of the Arch pros (water.house)

submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by jack@water.house to c/debian@lemmy.ml

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Been daily driving Arch for 6 months now, but considering moving back to Debian. Not really taking full advantage of the Arch pros

While a bleeding-edge kernel is great, I don't particularly need it. pacman is nice, but apt gets the job done too. Has anyone else switched from Arch to @debian? If so, did you miss anything from Arch that Debian couldn't replicate?

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[–] pipes@sh.itjust.works 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

Debian stable + flatpaks is a great combo. Sometimes I still wish some packages were more recent (not fun when yt-dlp starts breaking), sometimes I've been let down by their oldness in Debian Testing, and even Unstable (wanted to test Plasma 6 for instance). Overall I'm happier that there's way more stuff in the official debian repos I would have to use AUR for otherwise.

[–] jack@water.house 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

@pipes Yeah it's biggest pro is also its con and where the reputation of Debian's stability comes from.

I was using Plasma 6 Wayland 3 months ago in Arch and half my desktop apps were busted. Discord was so bad that I had to use X11.

I was newer to Linux desktop then so I spent so long thinking the problem was with me and trying to figure it out. Wayland Nvdia stability has seemed to settle down a lot though.

I'll miss Wayland 6 as it's really nice on high refresh displays but I think it's a reasonable trade off for stability, and it'll eventually be back.

[–] xordos@lonestarlemmy.mooo.com 1 points 1 month ago

Also, don't forget Debian testing. Once you are comfortable or gain enough experience to move closer to not-that-stable, or, if you have spare machine/harddisk to try now, Debian testing is a very good balance between stable and unstable. I know many people against it, so just my opinion and I am happily use it as my main desktop as well on my home sever for 10+ years. Again I am IT person and rare case it does breaks. if you ever want to try some new packages, there is Debian testing.

[–] alkaliv2@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago

This is a fine strategy if you have very old or relatively well established hardware. But if your hardware choices are bleeding edge you'll either have to run custom kernels in Debian or necessary repos to get them fully functioning. Not always a problem for most Linux users but I remember trying to use Debian when the 7900 XTX came out and it was not a good time to get it fully supported on Stable. Unstable and Testing Debian? Absolutely. But at that point you are basically recommending the Debian version of Arch.