After I realized Ubuntu and Mint (the two distros I used the most) are both based on Debian, I switched to Debian with KDE Plasma. I don’t know why I never tried it before and I’m never going back.
The reason you’ve never tried it before is probably that they only recently made an effort to make it palatable for the average nerd. It always had a bit of a reputation of being not easy to work with.
It’s been fine for the average nerd for a couple decades. The installer has been mostly unchanged since 2005 or so, and I don’t see much difference in an installed system either. I think you can live boot it ahead of installation now, maybe that’s a big deal to some people?
The biggest deal was including non-free firmware on the install media.
In the past, if you used the official ISO and started the installation, it would format your disk and then inform you that it can’t connect to your Wi-Fi to download additional software.
Then it would install the semi-complete bare-bones system that fit on one install disc and boot you into a desktop with no network configuration.
Ah, I forgot about that. Yes, that’s a pretty big deal. Thanks for pointing that out. Debian have always been pretty purist about non-free software, to the detriment of new users.
To be fair, back then Ubuntu was basically just “Debian preconfigured for desktop with a check-box in the installer to include non-free stuff”.
Debian today feels like old Ubuntu, and Ubuntu today feels like a distro made by a corporation desperately trying to enshittify Linux.
It doesn’t work because the kernel is too old to support my new hardware (even though it’s not always that new).
Rather than trying to fix it, just install Kubuntu instead.
Failing to have graphics drivers for my gaming PC with a GPU I bought the day it launched is one thing, but Debian also failed to have WiFi drivers for the cheap N100 NUCs I bought for my kids the other day – with wifi hardware that’d been out for multiple years at this point – and that’s just ridiculous.
Kubuntu annoys me with Snaps, but it also Just Works in a way Debian unfortunately doesn’t.
After I realized Ubuntu and Mint (the two distros I used the most) are both based on Debian, I switched to Debian with KDE Plasma. I don’t know why I never tried it before and I’m never going back.
The reason you’ve never tried it before is probably that they only recently made an effort to make it palatable for the average nerd. It always had a bit of a reputation of being not easy to work with.
And an old reputation for hiding their ISO downloads buried deep in the website.
It’s been fine for the average nerd for a couple decades. The installer has been mostly unchanged since 2005 or so, and I don’t see much difference in an installed system either. I think you can live boot it ahead of installation now, maybe that’s a big deal to some people?
The biggest deal was including non-free firmware on the install media.
In the past, if you used the official ISO and started the installation, it would format your disk and then inform you that it can’t connect to your Wi-Fi to download additional software.
Then it would install the semi-complete bare-bones system that fit on one install disc and boot you into a desktop with no network configuration.
Ah, I forgot about that. Yes, that’s a pretty big deal. Thanks for pointing that out. Debian have always been pretty purist about non-free software, to the detriment of new users.
To be fair, back then Ubuntu was basically just “Debian preconfigured for desktop with a check-box in the installer to include non-free stuff”.
Debian today feels like old Ubuntu, and Ubuntu today feels like a distro made by a corporation desperately trying to enshittify Linux.
I’m glad they did, I like it since I was already used to the Debian way of doing things.
My typical Linux installation workflow:
Failing to have graphics drivers for my gaming PC with a GPU I bought the day it launched is one thing, but Debian also failed to have WiFi drivers for the cheap N100 NUCs I bought for my kids the other day – with wifi hardware that’d been out for multiple years at this point – and that’s just ridiculous.
Kubuntu annoys me with Snaps, but it also Just Works in a way Debian unfortunately doesn’t.
Yup that was me a few years ago. Its no longer the mid 2000s and stock debian can do pretty much anything right out the gate.