Should I stop using Debian for my Desktop?

Hey guys, I'm a Debian user, and Debian is my first Linux based OS and I'm really enjoying it.

Alot of my friends though who are Arch and Ubuntu users tell me that Debian is used more for servers instead of desktop usage and that I should switch, but I already have everything set up and working on Debian.

What would I benefit from jumping to Arch? I had trouble installing it at first, but this was before Debian and now I'm confident I can breeze through the installation with minimal effort.

My friend told me that Debian packages are older, but they are more stable than other releases and that getting the most up to date software is essential on a desktop. I can't say I agree fully, but I can see he has a point.

What does Sup Forums recommend?

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Don't jump to Arch, if your happy and it works then you don't need to switch

Only switch if you feel like you need to. Debian's GNOME packages are too old for me, so I'm using Ubuntu and the GNOME Staging PPA to resolve that; it was the reason I switched from two years of Debian usage in 2013(?).

Do you know about pinning? If not, read about it.

You can have a mix of stable and testing packages. Or testing and unstable. Also, apt's -t switch allows you to specify from which repository (stable, testing or unstable) to install packages, so if you need the latest version of something you can get it.

Debian can be just as bleeding edge as Arch, but without the inherent instability of the system. Debian isn't called the 'universal operating system' for nothing; it is run on desktops, servers, supercomputers, phones, Boeing aircraft, the ISS, etc.

You made a great choice, OP.

>muh old packages
Unless there is specific packages you need to be updated for some reason I dont see what your complaining about faggot

Debian is comfy.

Install gentoo.

a lot

>Debian is used more for servers instead of desktop
And?
I use Debian on everything. Desktop, laptop, servers; hell I would install it on my toaster.

If it works, stick with it.

Bugs, vulnerabilities. I neved understood why people use Debian on a desktop. I installed it once and I didn't enjoy a bit of it. There are better distros for desktops.

Just use testing/unstable
Problem solved

>bugs
tested packages don't have too many of these
so Not a big deal to update
>security
makes sense but your system is as secure as you make it.

I recently "downgraded" removed 1 of my videocards was using amd crossfire. and got off windows to debian. Had used fedora before and that bleeding edge wasn't a make it or break it to me
So this time around I went with debian for my desktop. wasn't planning on vydia but steam runs fine so I gave up on the dualboot/ vga passthrough Idea and just using debian for everything. Including a home server

>your

I've been using Linux for almost a decade now and I always go back to Debian. Explore other distros if you want to but you're already using the best.

If you want more recent updates modify your sources.list:

debgen.simplylinux.ch/generate.php

I've been on Unstable for about a year and it works without issues.

I'm using Arch on my laptop at the moment but I wouldn't mind if Debian would become THE Linux distro that everyone everywhere is installing when they want to use Linux.

Except for mobile devices, maybe Ubuntu is better there. I could see myself using a Ubuntu phone or tablet. You don't have to be able to modify things that much on mobile devices and the UI must be touch-oriented.

>debgen.simplylinux.ch/generate.php
debgen.simplylinux.ch is right link, where you actually choose which sources you want.

Also, about bugs and security, and many told above, security patches got backported to whatever current stable is, and if you want some package more bleeding edge - you can just install it from testing/unstable, without hurting your base system too much.
Debian is great choice for desktop also, don't change anything, if it working for you. If you want to look on other stuff - just use vm/containers for it.

Debian is a great server OS since it's lightweight and pretty user friendly. It has most of all the Server tools you need right off the bat.

But I also wouldn't discount it on the desktop. A LOT of distros almost completely base the entire OS model around Debians stability and ease of use *cough*Ubuntu*cough*, Ubuntu and Mint just add more GUI tools and programs you dont need if you are comfortable with Debian.

Arch is enthusiast tier.
It's a bit more bloated than say FreeBSD (thx systemdicks). Where you start off with no much more than Pacman (package manager) and the bash shell on top of the Linux Kernel. You'll spend a lot of time after install setting the OS up and customizing it to your liking. Arch is nice if you like manually configuring details about your system and aren't concerned with wasting some time troubleshooting.

So I say if you like Debian stay on it.

>I always go back to Debian
this. I've tried all the distros and debian has the best combination of ease of use, stability and it doesnt get in your way when you want to do something. I dont have any reason to use anything else.

Debian can be just as bleeding edge as Arch, but without the inherent instability of the system.

No

SteamOS is a fork of Debian. Stick with what you have.

How does that work with dependencies ? Dont you end up baically upgrading the whole system ?

>Debian is used more for servers instead of desktop usage

They're wrong. Debian aims to be a 'universal operating system' which tries to fulfill the needs of every single user and their use case. That's why you can do a minimal install where you can choose which components you want to install, also why it has so many flavours. It happens to be great for servers too because it tries to fit as many use cases as possible.

In short, Arch, gentoo and debian all follow the same idea of trying to make an operating system which fits everyone, but they all follow different philosophies. Really, it just depends on which you like more.

Yeah, it's effectively useless for anything significant.

Why would anyone use debian instead of ubuntu
There are only disadvantages

>gif
what is the point of all that?

I actually ran into more issues and headaches with ubuntu than I did with debian. Which is ironic, considering ubuntu is based off of debian and is aimed to be even easier to use. Really, in terms of overall stability and ease of use, nothing beats debian. I've had things spontaneously crash and weird stuff happen on all distros, but never debian. It just werks.

No reason to switch unless your distro is getting in the way of what you want to do.

If you want/need more recent packages, just use testing, it's still way more stable than most distros.

>not using quotes to quote

rice is nice

because whoever recorded that didn't make it a webm

>windows tiling
what? how? what is this wizardry?

but can you actually do something with linux
other than make it look like a prop from a hacker movie?

Can I ask what program this is, that looks pretty damn good & useful.

You can do tons of things with linux. Provided you know how to use a terminal. You could also just ask in forums and people will try to help you.

it's an autohotkey script

Debian is best Linux. Stay with it.

Though if curious, can play with other distros in a VM.

Unless you have specific needs like highly stable system or latest packages or best performance possible, just use whatever strikes your fancy.

Could you share it, if you have access to it

Debian is love debian is life... The only problem i have is the systemd :( why did they have to fall victim to this degeneracy

I’d just like to interject for a moment. What you’re refering to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX.

Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called “Linux”, and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU project.

There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use. Linux is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine’s resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Linux is normally used in combination with the GNU operating system: the whole system is basically GNU with Linux added, or GNU/Linux. All the so-called “Linux” distributions are really distributions of GNU/Linux.

yes.
bash is far more efficient then powershell, GNU/Linux has far better more useful tools for developing then on windows and yet still has the basic applications for the idiot end user.
too bad little boys just mess with some leet looking WM then start a matrix hacking or whatever animation in their terminal and post it on Sup Forums "hi guis desktop tread pls"

That's a good reason not sticking to debian, unless it's packages are updated as soon as bugs etc are known what I actually expect. Am I wrong?

I've used Ubuntu for 1 year and Gentoo for around 3 years.

Now I'm using Debian on nearly all my computers for about 4 years. Stable on my servers and at work on my laptop, Sid on my personal laptops/desktops.

Stable is, well, stable (much more than RHEL/CentOS), the security fixes are published quite fast, and I've never seen an update breaking something on my servers. At one time I even put an auto update cron job every night on our dev' plateform without any issue.

Sid is, for an experimental distro, quite stable. The only annoying issue I had was with chromium crashing regularly for around 10 days until an update fix it.

There tooling is quite fun. At first it seams a little strange and old school but it's actually quite powerful. I'm thinking for example about reportbug. The first reaction is: WTF, a bug tracker system entirely based on emails..., the second is: whaou, it's powerful, it automatically recovers all the relevant information (architecture, version, dependancies, relevant log files), it gives you a list of other bugs that might be relevant, it automatically notifies the maintainer/group of maintainers in charge of the package... all this in a normalized and automated workflow.
And It's just on example, other part of their infrastructure are really nice (daily snapshot of their mirrors, rss feeds for security alerts, package searching though the web interface...)

Backports are also really nice.

And there are shit tons of packages available, including stuff many other distributions haven't included yet in their repositories (ex: grafana/influxdb).

Their packaging tooling is quite nice to.

The two things I dislike are isos without non-free firmware (even if non-free install iso does exist) and preseed which is painful to use and instrument to automate deployment (compared to kickstarts).

>Arch, gentoo and debian ... follow different philosophies
what are these?

It's different tiers of autism in a nutshell

What's this cli music player ?

Install Funtoo.

At least your toaster works normally with debian

>dude installs arch on toaster
>puts toast in
>toast gets burnt
>error message: "X is broken"
>housefire

>What's this cli music player ?

Kek
I have Elementary on my Toaster

It's probably mpd+ncmpcpp

I always think about installing Debian stable, but xubuntu just werks on my ThinkPad, and it would suck to lack dependencies for newer packages.

Although I don't know if it's as big of a deal as I make it out to be.

>tfw i got the update to gnome 3.20.3 today on debian sid
If you like it, use it. You can always upgrade to stretch or sid if you feel the need to do so. And don't forget to sudo aptitude install apt-listbugs

Sid is "unstable", not experimental. "Experimental" is experimental.

If you are comfortable with Debian that means you would have no real benefits going to a rolling release bistro such as Arch (you probably don't compile from source to need up to date libs). There is not a real benefit in going to Ubuntu since it is just bloated Debian (the only advantage of Ubuntu is being easier to install, but that is not a problem to you).

Bullshit. If you like debian and it's working fine for you, why should you switch?

>getting the most up to date software is essential on a desktop
Bullshit. I've used Debian as my main desktop OS since 2008 and it's always been fine for me. In fact I'm still using oldstable right now because I can't be bothered to update my system, and it's still perfectly adequate for desktop use.

Don't be a mindless fashion trend follower, don't switch to Arch just because your peers tell you it's cooler than debian.

That and legible font rendering

shut up