Addendum comment! 1. I didn't talk about Debian Testing in this video. That was deliberate, based on where we are in the release cycle at time of filming. I wanted to keep the video around 10 minutes and Testing is really its own thing. 2. Debian is one of the oldest distros, but there's certainly others worth mentioning- Slackware comes to mind. Debian's different though in that it's extremely popular in production work to this day, probably moreso than any other of the "classics". 3. You're right, I didn't mention [insert Debian-based distro here]. I wasn't talking about the "we're based on Debian" distros, I was talking about classic Debian. That was a design choice (for brevity mostly). 4. As always, if I covered everything in every detail you'd be here for decades. :P Lastly, if you want to support the channel, one of the easiest ways is to buy the shirt I'm wearing in the video! vkc.sh/merch. Thanks all!
I've been running Sid on my desktop since the late 1990's, and it is actually stable enough for most users, plus it has the added benefit of not having the version reverting that 'testing' does whenever a new bug is found.
Debian Stable for servers, Unstable for workstations. I keep my Unstable upgrades down to once a month. Wondering what will break next helps to keep me on my toes. ;)
Works beautiful. Just beautiful. Best set it and forget it distribution there ever was. You forget it’s there it’s so reliable. When it’s not there, you want it back like crazy. I miss my server.
It says a lot about the Linux user community that an OS that's stable and feature-rich is seen as boring. Is the OS the platform for your computing activities, or is it a toy you play with??
Been using Debian as my sole OS for about a decade. It's okay. It's been a long time since I spent time constantly distro hopping and trying new things, now I just want something that just works and I don't have to worry about. Debian fits that bill well enough.
For Server hardware I use Debian on the Hardware and Virtualize anything newer or less stable (ubuntu/arch/fedora), use stable on Desktop just for keeping it working, testing or backports usually have anything I need more recent versions of
I had nightmares installing proprietary firmware for wifi adapters using Debian while with Arch they were working out of the box. It's the only reason I dislike Debian. Otherwise, Debian + Snap gives the most stable experience plus not wasting time maintaining everything.
1:05 LOVE IT. Hearing "buster" I went "hey, that was a code name!". Then "stretch-ing"… I had a suspicion, and "bookworm" was the happy confirmation. Well done! :D
Debian (and working in IT) has broken me of distro hopping. I one day got tired of fixing my crap after spending 8 hours a day doing the same for others and a friend half-jokingly stopped my ranting by suggesting installing Debian stable (with a big helping of salt). I've honestly never looked back. The single app I need the latest version of can be had with flatpack and I've never had a single issue since moving. I forget what I'm dealing with half the time because it never causes me problems.
I use Debian because it's one of the few Linux distros that still maintain a 32-bit version, and I use it on some very old 32-bit netbooks I like to trot out now and then to use as "distraction-free" writing machines.
@G.C.I. what word processor(s) do you use? do you run DOS on an old PC or do you use DOSBox or an emulator? how do you handle transferring data between old proprietary word processor file formats into stuff modern computers can read? I am intrigued by your ideas and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Yeah I'm currently looking to go back to some older Debian version for my old mini-ITX mini PC that I had running some Linux Mint for a long time. I tried to install some of the latest distros like Fedora 36 I think it was and the network adapter on that machine didn't work anymore at all. I remember it having issues with some newer Linux Mint versions also. So now looking to go some older Debian where it might still work.. or maybe the chip is just busted idk. But It used to work a while ago before I went on with the update route for the machine.
@@vitasomething oh, so Debian has plans to stop supporting the 32-bit i386 architecture... oh well, at least my 32-bit netbook will keep working offline until I upgrade to a Core 2 Duo or something :D
I was among those who bought a Linux distro, it was Debian. Paid 99 euros at the time, it was 2001 and I was 20. I still have the two books, a green and a blue one. Honestly, it was a great system though most of my devices were not supported and gave major headaches just to make a simple ADSL modem working. Ah, those cxacru times... cheers from Italy.
@@CallousCoder Well, right. I was serving in 2001, so 2002, sorry. "Widespread" it's how it should have been, but for different reasons it never got the stream. It's funny to imagine an AS/400 man behind a Linux terminal rather than some proprietary OS based on an open source one.
@@Benoit-Pierre Yeah. At the time they were giving away the Ubuntu disk outside the Faculty when I was at the university (I was studying Computer Science and there was a very small Linux community... in southern Italy Linux never managed to get mainstream before Ubuntu: that was a game changer). It was a major thing back then, as it was probably the real first distro which was really sort of "plug & play" instead of "plug & pray" as it came with a lot of pre-installed drivers and the possibility to test it live without having to make partitions and so on.
@@CallousCoder Solaris, exactly, though they went to zSeries in the r&d labs when I was graduating and switched to z/OS. I remember some people having headaches with migration of some program... When I was saying "plug & play" I wasn't talking about hot plug and hardware, but the fact that Ubuntu had already a vast support to the most common peripherals, which is something other distros didn't come packed with and this discouraged most users which weren't keen to terminal. Sorry if I may seem unintelligible but English is not my first language, thanks for pointing it out :)
@@CallousCoder Exactly, that's exactly what I wanted to say, well summarized. The problems people faced were mostly related with network devices such as routers and cards. It's true that most of the brands used the same chip but when there wasn't native support you had to tweak and get your hands dirty, which is fine for those who are not afraid of the blinking prompt of the terminal but if you ask someone to switch from Windows to Linux it's not that easy. Well today actually is, but in that era I guess it was scary. I stepped into your channel and you just gained a subscriber, solid Amiga fan here! :)
For me LMDE is the perfect sweet spot between Debian's stability and ease of use from the Linux mint team, plus a very nice looking updated and rock solid cinnamon DE, with the last update to cinnamon 5.6 LMDE has become an absolute stable and productive beauty.
I used Sid for some couple of years on my laptop with unattended-upgrades running every day. In that period of time, I learned to repair all sorts of things that can break in Debian. That was valuable time. Now I'm back on stable or testing in some cases.
practice of destruction is theory for construction :) sorry, in my native it sounds better .. And yes, using Sid as daily desktop was good education. I think i could still write most of xconf myself :P
I'm a retired Unix/Linux Sys Admin. For stability and security, for me it's still Slackware, followed by Debian Stable for non-commercial use. For enterprise servers, for me the only choice has been RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) Oh and in case you are wondering, my current "daily driver" is Fedora's MATE-Compiz spin as my desktop. That said, it's JMHO and what is best for you is what works for you! That's the beauty of having all the various distros to choose from!
@@JohnGMeadows I think I had the same book! And while I mostly run Fedora on a number of different laptops and desktops, I still run Slackware (now 15.0) as my file server/backup server (waves to Patrick!) on an older HP workstation that has a DAT tape drive - yeah my life is backed up to tape!
@@JohnGMeadows That's a great typo, and suggests a name for a site for trying out different varieties of Linux: The Distro Bistro. I hereby release the title into the public domain.
Debian has been my preferred desktop for several years. I do spend time in Arch from time to time, but I usually grow weary of the Arch updates after six months. Debian stable is perfect for me. Thanks for the video.
I've been using Debian on at least one machine since the late 1990s and I've always been pleased with how it performs. My desktops run on something built on top of Debian and again, very stable. apt just makes sense to me. Even though I've been using Linux in some way since 1997 or so (yay for buying Linux Mandrake at Kmart in late '98!) I have never dabbled with Arch. I should do that. But Debian continues to be my go to, especially on servers.
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I tried Arch not long ago… nope, not my thing. Installation needs to be… not painful like Arch is. I didn't suffer that much in '96 installing Rex.
Debian testing is a happy medium :-). It's definitely worth the look. I run testing on my laptop and it seems like a healthy balance between sid and stable.
Debian is kind of underrated. it can be whatever you really need it to be in terms of super stable, to moderately stable, or nearly bleeding edge, all depending on which version you choose. this makes it a pretty easy distro to default to. If I'm installing Linux, it's either gonna be Arch or Debian(or a derivative like Siduction which is basically Debian unstable made into a rolling release distro), though I do like checking in on Fedora from time to time. I like having the new shiny features, so I'm usually doing Debian unstable or Siduction.
I like how you lay out what Debian is about here. most videos just talk about DE and package managers when discussing different distros. It makes it very hard for newcomers or intermediates to get a real handle on the differences between distrobutions and as a consequence, sometimes I can't help but feel like the plurality of choices seems pointless on the surface to some extend. Hope you'll do more of these for other distros and maybe break down further under the hood for us.
I'm a Debian user since "Sarge" and it never has let me down. I just love it - Since two years I'm using the unstable version - which is IMHO the best rolling release I have ever used. Thank you your great video!!! 🙂
I love using Debian. I have used pretty much everything under the sun from Ubuntu to Gentoo, and I have no problem calling Debian my main OS. For someone who has little time, I need something stable and reliable, and none do it better than Debian.
I recently ran deb for about 3 years but started having issues with screen sharing in zoom meetings for school. I could get it fixed but then zoom would update and it would break again. I switched up to pop os, and while the update intervals are the inverse, everything just works. Which for my school needs is very important. Right tool for the job.
RIP Ian Murdock, who went from the earth too soon for my taste. I am an artist and he was a patron of mine. We intended to collaborate on a Linux family tree poster, but I was unable to bring his vision for it into reality. I still sometimes consider giving it another go.
Linux N00b here. I started with Linux mint, and after a few weeks went to Debian which I am happy with. Easy to use, stable, and the apt package manager is so common and easy to use.
Debian SID is one of the world's greatest Nerd Secret Weapons. For learning Linux, learning open source development, toolchains, and large project organization, Debian SID is a living breathing masterclass in software engineering at a massive scale.
Almost as soon as Debian became real I had installed it. Prior to that I was "rolling my own" using HJ Liu's Root/Boot floppy set to build a Linux system on a machine with a 10 MB hard drive. While I have had to install a Centos or two systems to support customers and I toyed with SUSE for a while I've stuck to Debian and derivative OSs. I'm staring at a Debian 3.2 i386 R4 CD-ROM right now. It's the earliest one I can find in my drawer. I had earlier ones. But I think I installed my first Debian distro from floppies! Thank you for your insight. I can't argue with anything you've said.
My name is Jeremy, and I'm an addict. I keep trying to quit Debian and go to a different distro, but I keep coming back. The first time I tried Debian was in 1997. I couldn't get a desktop environment and internet connection configured. Now I only use Debian. I love it.
Another fantastic video, Veronica! I've been around your channel not a long time ago, but I really appreciate the format you follow, everything feels really personal without missing out on the details. As for Debian, well... I use it on my good old home server that I've set up from an old office machine! You can never really go wrong with Debian.
My first Debian installation was 20+ floppy disks. Then I found net install and my life changed. I'm primarily a Mac user now but still run Debian in a VM. And when its time to replace my NAS system, the next one will be Debian based.
All my boxes use Debian (or derivatives like Raspberry Pi OS or Armbian.) It's very stable and does what I need. I'm also so used to the administrative commands and file layouts that I can't be bothered to learn non-Debian-derived systems like Fedora or Arch. (First distro I used was actually Slackware, followed by Red Hat, but once I found Debian, I stopped distro-hopping.)
Debian user here, i run both stable and Sid versions at home and have done for years. In my expereince, SID breaks no where near as often as people on the net say it does, infact, ive had an install for sid for a few years on the same laptop and its still running fine running Gnome. I use Stable for my servers and then run my Sid on my laptop with flatpaks. But, the best mix for the desktop if people want up to date apps is either run them from .deb files using stable or run stable with flatpaks installed. This gives you a very stable and reliable base system with up to date apps for the desktop.
Yaay! Geek Pun at the beginning! Sid, unstable, is a rolling release. I started with Debian after a bit of research. Inspiron 8200 with all experimental hardware working. Over Christmas day, startx worked! Gnome was awesome then. SuSe was easy to get started by miles but had its issues with dependencies. Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Linux Mint didn't do it. Even trying to change Mint into Debian didn't work. Upgrading Ubuntu to the next release was hell. Debian is the next best thing to sliced bread. I also used Sid for a desktop. It was okay until there were problems requiring one to go under the hood. Looking at list changes helps a bunch. Holding off until all packages that you require and it's dependencies becomes available helps. The biggest issue with SID IMHO is the changes that occur and the subsequent breaks that happen when the district shifts major gears such as sysv to systemd and from Xorg to Wayland. Apt does well; however, good old tools and tools one's become accustomed requires a new learning curve. Sometimes these swooping changes render old packages unusable. Hey install both, keep the old, or install the new are decisions, decisions, decisions. The best advice to a Debianite is to download, read, and digest the latest Debian Reference manual, gulp. I am after 20 years hoking around. Oh yeah, like as in p.s., *untu LTS versions are based on Debian Testing IIRC. It's pretty decent. Another note, Bookworm is about to go through a freeze next month. Bookworm, the upcoming stable, and testing are tit for tat at this moment. Go needs! Fine teacher you are.
When I stared using Linux many years ago, I started with Ubuntu (when they sent you the physical disks to your home). Then with time gravitated to another Debian based distros like Linux Mint. After all this time Im really comfy with this ecosystem, In the last couple of years If I need to spin up a home server or repurpose old 32 bit hardware with limited ressources, Debian is my go to. It just works, stable as a rock, and has great community support.
I am a beginner in linux, been using it for almost a month and i am using Debian Sid. It never broke on me and if i want to do something, it just works! After using windows my whole life , debian brings me so much joy and its such a beautiful distribution, i dont think im ever gonna switch from it
How have I not found this channel before? Newbie Linux desktop user for years, and a bit of a retro enthusiast. Craft Computing chat sent me here, not youtube recommends based on my mentioned interests. I _don't_ run Arch BTW ...
Debian was the distro I stayed on the longest at in my journey of hopping. Eventually, I really did feel I was fighting the distro though with Sid and jumped to Arch for a few years. Since then though, I've switched to NixOS and as far as I can tell, this is where I'll be for a long while until something like Guix piques my interest over Nix. That said, I'm likely going to install Debian again on an old Chromebook because another place where Debian shines is supporting old and odd hardware. There is very little support for distros out there for ARM v7, but I feel with Debian, I'd have the confidence to trust that support will last for quite a while.
Debian will be fire when the stable release has apt 3.0, gnome 46 and all the software versions we have in 2023-2024 Even if by that time Gnome 48 exists and apt 3.1 is released, that stable version with apt 3.0 and Gnome 46 will be very fast, clean and in general super usable
I never mess up with "rolling releases". I am a musician. I teach, coach ensembles and record/edit/mix for a living. Simply don't have time for that. As a musician, I didn't even have time to mess with pipewire. USe Alsa/Jack among DAWs. I am a Debian/Linux Mint user.
My First Linux Distro in late 1998 was Debian, i had no experience with it, because before that, i had BeOS 3.2 installed.. right now in 2023 i have Debian 12 installed..many greetings from Brunswick in Germany and please stay safe :)
I was considering that, actually. If I was doing a tutorial about customizing Debian I would definitely discuss Testing. I left it out here for brevity- most of the questions I get are about Stable or Sid. Besides, with a new version due for release this year, Testing is going to become a whole heap, potentially worthy of a separate video.
@@VeronicaExplains thanks for everything you do. I tend to think testing as Debians rolling release. I have used debian for over 20 year and use stable and old stable for servers and critical systems and testing for desktops. Sid is mainly used to build packages, well in my buildd server it is.
I started out using a C64 with 300 baud modem dialing into BBS here local. Then jumped to DOS and then windows with win 3.1 and later Linux and Debian. Debian in 2002 with Debian 3.0 (Woody). All I can say it has come a long way. I jumped over to RPM distros, Fedora, Red Hat etc. and Tried Ubuntu, Linux Mint, and even Arch. I always come back to Debian. Plus, If I want the latest and greatest hardware I can just compile the support into a custom Linux kernel for Debian. Thanks for video, love your content and sub'd right away! So you have another computer geek follower. ;-) Load "*" ,8,1
Typically if a distro is "boring" that means it's stable and you just install it and forget it - by "forget it", I mean it gets out of your way and you can just get stuff done without having to worry about the OS keeping things running smoothly. I'll take that kind of boring any day vs something that I _have_ to tinker with to keep it running well enough to try and do work/play instead of sacrificing those to keep the OS fixed. (Venn from LinuxGameCast runs Debian XFCE for his systems since it lets him dial in his DAWs and other tools (and games) the way he wants for their show)
I'm a Debian user since the "Lenny" version, but now I'm using Arch Linux. Debian is stable and if the user installs programs with Snap and Flatpak he will have a great system with the most current programs even with older packages...
I've been getting all my work done on my my main workstation at home and at work for many, many years with vanilla Debian. MATE desktop environment. It just works. Stable, predictable, and a pleasure to use. It's better to run behind the times.
Even though I started with Kubuntu in 2007, Debian (Stable) is home for me, especially with Xfce ♥ I try other distros in VMs just to get out of my comfort zone, to see what's new, or to see what other distros ship and customise but I like my desktop the way it is. Besides, starting from a minimal install I feel I can really make it whatever I want. It's called "The Universal Operating System" for so many reasons, and this is one of them. PS: also, Synaptic. I'd love to see it on non Debian distros.
I use debian, and have for a couple months now and it's really good. very stable, packages are generally up to date "enough", and I enjoy it. before this, I'd been an arch user, which is fine. it's more of a DIY distro that has you set it up how you like it right off the bat.
I started with Linux by using Debian in around 2003. At the time I don't recall ever seeing advice for Linux starters saying what distros are best for Linux noobies. So I just got what seemed the most popular, which was Debian. After a few months I distrohopped a bit for a few months, then caame back and stayed with Debian ever since.
I'm new to the channel, and I need to say that I loved your style and charisma, I became a subscriber. I've been testing distros since the Debian 6, I've run away a lot of the KDE Plasma version because I removed the taskbar and didn't know how to put it back. Today I'm a fan of KDE Plasma since I decided to change to GNU+Linux in 2018, I've used many distros, even the simplest and lightest ones (and it always lacks some functionality). When I migrated a year ago to the programming area, I decided to settle on debian (after trying macos and even windows and finally manjaro / biglinux / garuda linux), i t's so satisfying to turn on the computer and know that it will start normally and everything is working well. (I used Sid for a while, but something always broke). I will always recommend Debian!
I personally have a soft spot for Debian and back in 2007 I actually used it as my main desktop distribution for a while. The main thing I don't like about Debian for using it primarily or as a desktop system is the package lag which I find absolutely limiting when I want to use recent packages (like Wayland or recent Gnome or KDE releases) and so I find myself tending more towards Tumbleweed or Fedora (I have recently found myself in love with recent Fedora releases). That being said however I have a few small servers that I use mostly with Docker and Debian is perfect for that as the requirements are minimal and so it'll fit on a small VM and docker keeps the software it uses up to date. I also use it for my Minecraft server due to the low overhead and it has all but replaced basically all of my Ubuntu server distributions except the ones that I can't be bothered replacing. But I think I'll always use Debian in some capacity, just probably more on the lightweight server side.
Great overview. I run Debian as my development environment at work simply because it never breaks. The only "odd" thing I do is build vim from source to get it to support the plugins I use/experiment with. For some build infrastructure, I've recently started running a few Ubuntu Server machines as they use fewer resources.
Debian. Always Debian :) Love how they wait for new features to mature before they're incorporated into the ecosystem (unless strictly necessary, ofc).
Debian is rock solid if you take care of it. i have a server with a 300 day uptime right now that i really need to reboot for a kernel update but i wanna make it a year first.
Arch for everything new, Fedora for almost everything new and rather safe, Debian to just have an OS that will NEVER break. That's how I feel about it. Now with all the RHEL implications I don't know my stand on Fedora anymore tho.
I thought I'd give debian a whirl about a year ago, seeing as how I'd been hearing about it for 20 years or so. Installed it on an old laptop and it works beautifully. I was able to get the gpu driver from SID but only that (and dependencies obviously, it was long since unsupported). I then switched back to stable, did an apt-update and use it on sable otherwise. They key to making it work was definitely using flatpak for the user-space gui applications - like browser and such. Best of both worlds. It's stable, I don't need to do any maintenance with it, and I'm confident it will keep doing so for a long time to come.
@@wikingagresor To get the most up to date version. Debian comes with ESR firefox out of the box. Basically, if you want a current browser version, but don't wish to use testing or SID repos, flatpak it is.
Debian testing is the sweet spot for home users who like to tinker. I’m running my Plex server and steam without any issues. I’m tempted to run Arch, but it didn’t play nice with my printer last I checked. Now i need to rewatch Voyager again. 😅
I currently run MX Linux for personal use which is Debian-based and it suits me well after a few additions and changes. Arch-based distros are nice and all but it breaks more than I wanted it to be whenever there's an update or I tweak something. 😅 My first Linux is Linux Mandrake... bought it from CompUSA I think... I had the box with the CD back then..
Debian was my second distro, after Slackware. Used it from 2000 to 2008, when I switched to Ubuntu. A few weeks ago, decided to use some spare SSD space and added Debian back, it's a stable, "minimalist" 12 install. This PC also runs Ubuntu Studio LTS, Windows 11 Home and of course BlissOS/Android-x86. :^) ETA: said PC has 2 2tb SSDs.
Nice config! How do you prevent windows from breaking linux? Just got a new pc, it came with win 10 pre-installed, but it kept removing linux from efi so I just deleted it and installed linux only, will try later to install openbsd next to it, hopefully these two won't be as agressive 😂.
@@AnotherSkyTV I haven't done anything specific to Windows... well OK I have. Turned off hibernate and fast boot for better access to the NTFS partition in Linux*, that's it. It came with Win10 preinstalled. After those changes, Linux works well. I cleanly installed to 11 without any problems. *This has to be done or else you risk corrupting Windows. I don't miss hibernate on SSD anyway, I don't need it.
Just found your channel after installing Debian 12 (Bookworm) onto my Raspberry Pi 400, or at least tried to... I followed the guides verbatim, yet it is error after error. I would say this is the least user friendly installation process out of all the distros I've installed on any system. Was happy to have found the channel though, as I have a huge passion for retro computing.
What I liked about Debian was it was militantly free and open source. What I didn't like about Debian was it was... militantly free and open source. Installing the Nvidia kernel and other non-free drivers was a pain... and Ubuntu just asked if you wanted non-free drivers it and *boom* it was done! But I still sing the praises of Grandma Debian. Solid, stable and great for older systems! Keep up the good work!
Oh man this just reminded me of the first time I tried Debian and sudo apt install firefox gave me a big fat nothing. Took some web searching (on a non-Debian box) to find out that while firefox was FOSS, the *name and logo* were trademarked, meaning I had to install "Iceweasel" instead.
I remember getting started with a Debian 2.0 frozen hamm prerelease image on a 240MB hard drive in the summer of 1998. I tried caldera and some red hat, but came back to Debian. I remember scrolling through packages in dselect and compiling my first customized kernel at 2.0.35. I didn’t see anything about apt until the next release I tried out. I even learned a valuable lesson about mixing Sid packages into a potato installation. Everything was breaking and I uninstalled package after package until I was able to downgrade my libc again and then reinstall everything I removed using stable versions again. Those were some good times back in the day.
Sadly, in the late-1990s, which was still the classic-Gates-era, I didn't know a thing about Linux, other than hearing and maybe seeing the name of what's the kernel. In 2002, for me, Linux was very bad, couldn't even get 3D support for my GeForce! Back to Windows I go! It wasn't Debian, though, it was Mandrake 8.1, on CD-ROMs. I guess I shouldn't have used Mandrake 8.1! I think some of my hardware was too new.
@@RJARRRPCGP I didn’t even have hardware good enough to configure X until more than a year after I started using Linux. I had 6 screens of 80x50 console and I learned to configure apache, samba, and other services using docs from the Linux documentation project.
I found your channel by serendipity when searching for what is a commodore 64. Then enjoyed that you talk about Linux, the system I am learning about. Love the rhythm of the videos, they are great for non-native English speakers (my case). Thanks for sharing your knowledge!
@VeronicaExplains 2nd this, subtitles are super useful for people who: - have difficulties in hearing - don't have adequate audio output on their devices - just prefer to watch the video without audio! Thanks Veronica for taking the time to add them in~ 🙂
I recently upgraded to Ubuntu 20.04. From 16.04. Which was an upgrade from 12.04. I'm *real* big on uptime ;-) And using an OS that has been beaten to near-death by millions of users for a year or two delivers that. In my last job, my desktop system also served as a server, controlling a network of cameras, radio links and a variety of SBCs. I liked the fact that all the SBCs also had versions of Ubuntu, so I could develop software on the desktop, and just copy source code to the SBCs and recompile. The one thing I haven't liked about Ubuntu is all the various desktop environments they've experimented with over the years. I got my start with Linux over 20 years ago, with Mandrake and KDE. Happily for me, a bunch of similar-minded people started the Trinity project, which keeps a very KDE3-like environment alive on newer versions of Ubuntu. If you're also and oldfart who doesn't like the newfangled stuff, it's a great way to KDE4 and whatever desktop fad Canonical is trying to create to get off your e-lawn ;-)
I loved the way you explain things! Also, the subtitles are immensely appreciated, you are already very clear on your own, but this will help my gf that is starting to study IT and sysadmin, she isn't yet well versed in English by hearing. We'll binge your videos
Not only turned Debian 30 years. My current desktop Debian installation turned 26 years! End of 1996/start of 1997 I installed Debian and only did upgrades afterwards! Obviously I copied it with tar/cpio/rsync to new disks and file systems, but it's still the original installation! Packages have been migrated about 99% to 64 bit over time. Also I went the systemd free route and did an in place migration to Devuan at the right time. A few files remain of the original installation from 1997, though.
I feel like Mr. Rogers would have daily driven Debian if he were a sysadmin. Maybe Mint. But yeah, I totally agree. The more I watch her content, the more I appreciate how much work Veronica does to maintain the sort of welcoming and accepting community you see far too infrequently in tech.
I used Debian from early 1996 until they adopted systemd, then moved to Devuan and then a couple of years ago switched to MX Linux and couldn't be happier.
I love Debian Linux especially the testing ones. In my laptop, I run Sparky Linux Semi-Rolling KDE. It is semi-rolling, it is Debian and it works surprisingly well. This is the distro I like to come home with. I get the latest and greatest software I ever need. Plus I don't need to update constantly. Instead of APT, I use NALA. It is beautiful and ones you learn it, it is fun. Ubuntu, Linux Mint and other Ubuntu based distros are based on Debian testing. But they make it much easier. But if you don't like Ubuntu and Snaps packages, you might want to try Sparky Linux instead. It is a very fun Debian distro I ever use.
My first distro was Slackware in 1998. But then I took a look at how many and what packages were to be used. I did venture over to a couple other distro's as certain hardware wasn't supported in sid. Eventually the kernel was brought up to version where I could switch back to Debian. I compiled my kernel while it amused me. I'd have to say apt is my favorite package manager as I'd just throw things in a script after doing my base install for the things I wanted. And if I wanted to change my DE I'd just drop to the cli and have apt do what I needed. Keep in mind that I use that same script for packages but just change the name of the package manager for whatever distro I needed usually without issue. Pretty sure I'll be backing up my current media as FreeBSD has been calling me and it has been too long since I've been there. 😉🤪✌
As a student with technical background,I use Debian,Starting from Feb last yr with minimal install,chose MATE desktop, all drivers completely work fine till date,It is faster and way better! The apt package manager is what keeps me loyal to Debian. Also dpkg I use. And longer battery life so that I don't have to keep my laptop connected to the wall. Thanks a lot.
I watched this video, and honestly, it was super helpful. I find the whole ubuntu hate pretty tiring. It was my first linux distro, and it did the job. But I've heard so much elitist hate and "philosophy" around why ubuntu is trash. But the whole issue with x11/xorg and security concerns around that honestly is more compelling to me than any mumbo jumbo. SO thank you for helping me feel less shame about liking ubuntu
I'm a distro hop, but after installing Debian 11 I'm just so satisfied and happy! No bugs!! Nothing breaks easily!! Just wow 😲 I have been using it for about 10 days now and it's just amazing.
![Coheed and Cambria - Searching for Tomorrow [Official Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/hDsYGLbmadg/mqdefault.jpg)
Addendum comment!
1. I didn't talk about Debian Testing in this video. That was deliberate, based on where we are in the release cycle at time of filming. I wanted to keep the video around 10 minutes and Testing is really its own thing.
2. Debian is one of the oldest distros, but there's certainly others worth mentioning- Slackware comes to mind. Debian's different though in that it's extremely popular in production work to this day, probably moreso than any other of the "classics".
3. You're right, I didn't mention [insert Debian-based distro here]. I wasn't talking about the "we're based on Debian" distros, I was talking about classic Debian. That was a design choice (for brevity mostly).
4. As always, if I covered everything in every detail you'd be here for decades. :P
Lastly, if you want to support the channel, one of the easiest ways is to buy the shirt I'm wearing in the video! vkc.sh/merch. Thanks all!
5. As always, if it's been here for decades, it probably covered every detail by now. That's Debian summarized...
I've been running Sid on my desktop since the late 1990's, and it is actually stable enough for most users, plus it has the added benefit of not having the version reverting that 'testing' does whenever a new bug is found.
And you now have a reason to less and less watch tv 😂😊
I would love to hear the Testing version of the Debian explainer. Say in a few months time when bookworm rolls over and is labeled stable :)
Debian Stable for servers, Unstable for workstations.
I keep my Unstable upgrades down to once a month. Wondering what will break next helps to keep me on my toes. ;)
Remember, if it weren’t for Debian there would be absolutely NO Hannah Montana Linux. Always good to know where greatness begins
Sorry, just looked up from my cli. What's a Hannah Montana? What's a reddit, or this thing called twitter..?
And no Justin Bieber OS either!
I actually extracted the wallpapers from the HML ISO.
@@Mauser1965 Miley Cyrus
This is very true.
“Some may call Debian boring”
For many use cases, that counts as a feature rather than a bug, doesn’t it? :P
Works beautiful. Just beautiful. Best set it and forget it distribution there ever was. You forget it’s there it’s so reliable. When it’s not there, you want it back like crazy. I miss my server.
It says a lot about the Linux user community that an OS that's stable and feature-rich is seen as boring. Is the OS the platform for your computing activities, or is it a toy you play with??
@@deusexaethera I mean playing around with your so called "Toy" by the GNU/Linux community isn't so bad but I get what you mean.
Instead of boring, I find Debian peaceful. No clutter, things work. Its the ultimate productivity tool and provides calm and focus.
For grown-ups, yes.
Been using Debian as my sole OS for about a decade. It's okay. It's been a long time since I spent time constantly distro hopping and trying new things, now I just want something that just works and I don't have to worry about. Debian fits that bill well enough.
2020 was my year of Desktop Linux, i suppose it's a different year for everyone.
For Server hardware I use Debian on the Hardware and Virtualize anything newer or less stable (ubuntu/arch/fedora), use stable on Desktop just for keeping it working, testing or backports usually have anything I need more recent versions of
I had nightmares installing proprietary firmware for wifi adapters using Debian while with Arch they were working out of the box. It's the only reason I dislike Debian. Otherwise, Debian + Snap gives the most stable experience plus not wasting time maintaining everything.
What about security updates though?
The only distro worth hopping to is NixOs
1:05 LOVE IT. Hearing "buster" I went "hey, that was a code name!". Then "stretch-ing"… I had a suspicion, and "bookworm" was the happy confirmation. Well done! :D
As not much of a Debian user... all 3 of those went straight over my head.
Debian (and working in IT) has broken me of distro hopping.
I one day got tired of fixing my crap after spending 8 hours a day doing the same for others and a friend half-jokingly stopped my ranting by suggesting installing Debian stable (with a big helping of salt). I've honestly never looked back. The single app I need the latest version of can be had with flatpack and I've never had a single issue since moving. I forget what I'm dealing with half the time because it never causes me problems.
I use Debian because it's one of the few Linux distros that still maintain a 32-bit version, and I use it on some very old 32-bit netbooks I like to trot out now and then to use as "distraction-free" writing machines.
@G.C.I. what word processor(s) do you use? do you run DOS on an old PC or do you use DOSBox or an emulator? how do you handle transferring data between old proprietary word processor file formats into stuff modern computers can read? I am intrigued by your ideas and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Yeah I'm currently looking to go back to some older Debian version for my old mini-ITX mini PC that I had running some Linux Mint for a long time. I tried to install some of the latest distros like Fedora 36 I think it was and the network adapter on that machine didn't work anymore at all. I remember it having issues with some newer Linux Mint versions also. So now looking to go some older Debian where it might still work.. or maybe the chip is just busted idk. But It used to work a while ago before I went on with the update route for the machine.
Debian works pretty well on my Risc-V netbook(?), better than Windows on x86...
@@vitasomething oh, so Debian has plans to stop supporting the 32-bit i386 architecture... oh well, at least my 32-bit netbook will keep working offline until I upgrade to a Core 2 Duo or something :D
I was among those who bought a Linux distro, it was Debian. Paid 99 euros at the time, it was 2001 and I was 20. I still have the two books, a green and a blue one. Honestly, it was a great system though most of my devices were not supported and gave major headaches just to make a simple ADSL modem working. Ah, those cxacru times... cheers from Italy.
@@CallousCoder Well, right. I was serving in 2001, so 2002, sorry. "Widespread" it's how it should have been, but for different reasons it never got the stream. It's funny to imagine an AS/400 man behind a Linux terminal rather than some proprietary OS based on an open source one.
i am one of those who got an Ubuntu cdrom shipped for free !!!
@@Benoit-Pierre Yeah. At the time they were giving away the Ubuntu disk outside the Faculty when I was at the university (I was studying Computer Science and there was a very small Linux community... in southern Italy Linux never managed to get mainstream before Ubuntu: that was a game changer). It was a major thing back then, as it was probably the real first distro which was really sort of "plug & play" instead of "plug & pray" as it came with a lot of pre-installed drivers and the possibility to test it live without having to make partitions and so on.
@@CallousCoder Solaris, exactly, though they went to zSeries in the r&d labs when I was graduating and switched to z/OS. I remember some people having headaches with migration of some program...
When I was saying "plug & play" I wasn't talking about hot plug and hardware, but the fact that Ubuntu had already a vast support to the most common peripherals, which is something other distros didn't come packed with and this discouraged most users which weren't keen to terminal. Sorry if I may seem unintelligible but English is not my first language, thanks for pointing it out :)
@@CallousCoder Exactly, that's exactly what I wanted to say, well summarized. The problems people faced were mostly related with network devices such as routers and cards. It's true that most of the brands used the same chip but when there wasn't native support you had to tweak and get your hands dirty, which is fine for those who are not afraid of the blinking prompt of the terminal but if you ask someone to switch from Windows to Linux it's not that easy. Well today actually is, but in that era I guess it was scary. I stepped into your channel and you just gained a subscriber, solid Amiga fan here! :)
As a long-time Debian user, I just wanted to say that this is an awesome introduction to Debian. Great video!
debian stable + backports + flatpak = awesomeness.
i was using telegram flatpak
Devuan stable + backports + flatpak is it better ?
@@mauriziotosetti2343 yes cuz no fbi in yo pc
Gentoo + emerge + eselect repository (aka layman) = awesome
@@andymorin9163 more like = fun
For me LMDE is the perfect sweet spot between Debian's stability and ease of use from the Linux mint team, plus a very nice looking updated and rock solid cinnamon DE, with the last update to cinnamon 5.6 LMDE has become an absolute stable and productive beauty.
🌹
💥
Yep, my second choice would be LMDE. Cinnamon as DE. LMDE5 looks sweet.
spirallinux
LMDE is my distro to go after Ubuntu currently, simply amazing distro
I used Sid for some couple of years on my laptop with unattended-upgrades running every day. In that period of time, I learned to repair all sorts of things that can break in Debian. That was valuable time. Now I'm back on stable or testing in some cases.
i have also switched to stable and it still breaks ...
@@Benoit-Pierre but far less often. :)
practice of destruction is theory for construction :)
sorry, in my native it sounds better ..
And yes, using Sid as daily desktop was good education. I think i could still write most of xconf myself :P
@@matikaevur6299 that sounded good actually! How does it sound in your native language?
I'm a retired Unix/Linux Sys Admin. For stability and security, for me it's still Slackware, followed by Debian Stable for non-commercial use. For enterprise servers, for me the only choice has been RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) Oh and in case you are wondering, my current "daily driver" is Fedora's MATE-Compiz spin as my desktop. That said, it's JMHO and what is best for you is what works for you! That's the beauty of having all the various distros to choose from!
My first bistro was Slackware 2.01 (or thereabouts) running on a 486, around 1994/5. Bought a book that came with the CD. Things have changed!
I still have my old Red Hat from 2002ish. I think its with the old Mandrake and Novell Netware CD's.
@@kefka900 We ran Netware at one of the places I worked - yeah them were the days! And I still have a set of Red Hat floppies ... some place!
@@JohnGMeadows I think I had the same book! And while I mostly run Fedora on a number of different laptops and desktops, I still run Slackware (now 15.0) as my file server/backup server (waves to Patrick!) on an older HP workstation that has a DAT tape drive - yeah my life is backed up to tape!
@@JohnGMeadows That's a great typo, and suggests a name for a site for trying out different varieties of Linux: The Distro Bistro. I hereby release the title into the public domain.
Debian has been my preferred desktop for several years. I do spend time in Arch from time to time, but I usually grow weary of the Arch updates after six months. Debian stable is perfect for me. Thanks for the video.
I updated Debian while I watched this video. It was painless, of course.
i learned 2 things this episode, Debian is for everyone, and you should quit using Arch, you should use Sid instead.
"I'd like to talk about Debian" (Ubuntu boot chime) - that was funny to me for some reason :P
Debian rocks! It’s my goto for servers and any machine where I care about stability and consistency.
I've been using Debian on at least one machine since the late 1990s and I've always been pleased with how it performs. My desktops run on something built on top of Debian and again, very stable. apt just makes sense to me. Even though I've been using Linux in some way since 1997 or so (yay for buying Linux Mandrake at Kmart in late '98!) I have never dabbled with Arch. I should do that. But Debian continues to be my go to, especially on servers.
I tried Arch not long ago… nope, not my thing. Installation needs to be… not painful like Arch is. I didn't suffer that much in '96 installing Rex.
Debian testing is a happy medium :-). It's definitely worth the look. I run testing on my laptop and it seems like a healthy balance between sid and stable.
Debian is kind of underrated. it can be whatever you really need it to be in terms of super stable, to moderately stable, or nearly bleeding edge, all depending on which version you choose. this makes it a pretty easy distro to default to. If I'm installing Linux, it's either gonna be Arch or Debian(or a derivative like Siduction which is basically Debian unstable made into a rolling release distro), though I do like checking in on Fedora from time to time. I like having the new shiny features, so I'm usually doing Debian unstable or Siduction.
I like how you lay out what Debian is about here. most videos just talk about DE and package managers when discussing different distros. It makes it very hard for newcomers or intermediates to get a real handle on the differences between distrobutions and as a consequence, sometimes I can't help but feel like the plurality of choices seems pointless on the surface to some extend. Hope you'll do more of these for other distros and maybe break down further under the hood for us.
I'm a Debian user since "Sarge" and it never has let me down. I just love it - Since two years I'm using the unstable version - which is IMHO the best rolling release I have ever used. Thank you your great video!!! 🙂
I love using Debian. I have used pretty much everything under the sun from Ubuntu to Gentoo, and I have no problem calling Debian my main OS. For someone who has little time, I need something stable and reliable, and none do it better than Debian.
I recently ran deb for about 3 years but started having issues with screen sharing in zoom meetings for school. I could get it fixed but then zoom would update and it would break again. I switched up to pop os, and while the update intervals are the inverse, everything just works. Which for my school needs is very important. Right tool for the job.
RIP Ian Murdock, who went from the earth too soon for my taste. I am an artist and he was a patron of mine. We intended to collaborate on a Linux family tree poster, but I was unable to bring his vision for it into reality. I still sometimes consider giving it another go.
I use Mint right now, but I am very interested in switching to LMDE. I might just do it once LMDE 6 comes out. Thanks Debian Team
Look into spiral likux
Linux N00b here. I started with Linux mint, and after a few weeks went to Debian which I am happy with. Easy to use, stable, and the apt package manager is so common and easy to use.
Now all we need is a tutorial on setting up a Debian server as a home server or use case in real world environments
For me, the main advantage of Debian is that it is completely developed by the community, and does not depend on any corporation.
Debian SID is one of the world's greatest Nerd Secret Weapons. For learning Linux, learning open source development, toolchains, and large project organization, Debian SID is a living breathing masterclass in software engineering at a massive scale.
Debian is the best distro of all time. It always works and APT is an excellent package manager. Debian cured my distro hopping.
I use LMDE (Linux Mint Debian Edition) as my daily driver now. I believe it's the best all around distro at this time.
My Last job had SID in production before I rebuild the system... That is all I am going to say about that... Oh, and Love your puns, well done.
Almost as soon as Debian became real I had installed it. Prior to that I was "rolling my own" using HJ Liu's Root/Boot floppy set to build a Linux system on a machine with a 10 MB hard drive. While I have had to install a Centos or two systems to support customers and I toyed with SUSE for a while I've stuck to Debian and derivative OSs. I'm staring at a Debian 3.2 i386 R4 CD-ROM right now. It's the earliest one I can find in my drawer. I had earlier ones. But I think I installed my first Debian distro from floppies! Thank you for your insight. I can't argue with anything you've said.
My name is Jeremy, and I'm an addict. I keep trying to quit Debian and go to a different distro, but I keep coming back. The first time I tried Debian was in 1997. I couldn't get a desktop environment and internet connection configured. Now I only use Debian. I love it.
Another fantastic video, Veronica! I've been around your channel not a long time ago, but I really appreciate the format you follow, everything feels really personal without missing out on the details. As for Debian, well... I use it on my good old home server that I've set up from an old office machine! You can never really go wrong with Debian.
My first Debian installation was 20+ floppy disks. Then I found net install and my life changed. I'm primarily a Mac user now but still run Debian in a VM. And when its time to replace my NAS system, the next one will be Debian based.
All my boxes use Debian (or derivatives like Raspberry Pi OS or Armbian.) It's very stable and does what I need. I'm also so used to the administrative commands and file layouts that I can't be bothered to learn non-Debian-derived systems like Fedora or Arch. (First distro I used was actually Slackware, followed by Red Hat, but once I found Debian, I stopped distro-hopping.)
Debian user here, i run both stable and Sid versions at home and have done for years. In my expereince, SID breaks no where near as often as people on the net say it does, infact, ive had an install for sid for a few years on the same laptop and its still running fine running Gnome. I use Stable for my servers and then run my Sid on my laptop with flatpaks. But, the best mix for the desktop if people want up to date apps is either run them from .deb files using stable or run stable with flatpaks installed. This gives you a very stable and reliable base system with up to date apps for the desktop.
Yaay! Geek Pun at the beginning! Sid, unstable, is a rolling release. I started with Debian after a bit of research. Inspiron 8200 with all experimental hardware working. Over Christmas day, startx worked! Gnome was awesome then. SuSe was easy to get started by miles but had its issues with dependencies. Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Linux Mint didn't do it. Even trying to change Mint into Debian didn't work. Upgrading Ubuntu to the next release was hell. Debian is the next best thing to sliced bread. I also used Sid for a desktop. It was okay until there were problems requiring one to go under the hood. Looking at list changes helps a bunch. Holding off until all packages that you require and it's dependencies becomes available helps. The biggest issue with SID IMHO is the changes that occur and the subsequent breaks that happen when the district shifts major gears such as sysv to systemd and from Xorg to Wayland. Apt does well; however, good old tools and tools one's become accustomed requires a new learning curve. Sometimes these swooping changes render old packages unusable. Hey install both, keep the old, or install the new are decisions, decisions, decisions.
The best advice to a Debianite is to download, read, and digest the latest Debian Reference manual, gulp. I am after 20 years hoking around.
Oh yeah, like as in p.s., *untu LTS versions are based on Debian Testing IIRC. It's pretty decent. Another note, Bookworm is about to go through a freeze next month. Bookworm, the upcoming stable, and testing are tit for tat at this moment.
Go needs! Fine teacher you are.
When I stared using Linux many years ago, I started with Ubuntu (when they sent you the physical disks to your home). Then with time gravitated to another Debian based distros like Linux Mint. After all this time Im really comfy with this ecosystem, In the last couple of years If I need to spin up a home server or repurpose old 32 bit hardware with limited ressources, Debian is my go to. It just works, stable as a rock, and has great community support.
Debian is clean, Debian is good.
I am a beginner in linux, been using it for almost a month and i am using Debian Sid. It never broke on me and if i want to do something, it just works! After using windows my whole life , debian brings me so much joy and its such a beautiful distribution, i dont think im ever gonna switch from it
How have I not found this channel before?
Newbie Linux desktop user for years, and a bit of a retro enthusiast.
Craft Computing chat sent me here, not youtube recommends based on my mentioned interests.
I _don't_ run Arch BTW ...
Welcome! Jeff is great, thank you for checking out the channel! :)
I used apt all the time in my past job (5 years), creating Deb packages and resolving dependencies. I can certainly say apt is powerful as you say.
Debian was the distro I stayed on the longest at in my journey of hopping. Eventually, I really did feel I was fighting the distro though with Sid and jumped to Arch for a few years. Since then though, I've switched to NixOS and as far as I can tell, this is where I'll be for a long while until something like Guix piques my interest over Nix.
That said, I'm likely going to install Debian again on an old Chromebook because another place where Debian shines is supporting old and odd hardware. There is very little support for distros out there for ARM v7, but I feel with Debian, I'd have the confidence to trust that support will last for quite a while.
Debian will be fire when the stable release has apt 3.0, gnome 46 and all the software versions we have in 2023-2024
Even if by that time Gnome 48 exists and apt 3.1 is released, that stable version with apt 3.0 and Gnome 46 will be very fast, clean and in general super usable
That remark with version names was bang on. Way to go.
I never mess up with "rolling releases". I am a musician. I teach, coach ensembles and record/edit/mix for a living. Simply don't have time for that. As a musician, I didn't even have time to mess with pipewire. USe Alsa/Jack among DAWs. I am a Debian/Linux Mint user.
Hy Veronica
Sorry my poor English
I’m from Brazil
You speak very well and cleary
Thanks
My First Linux Distro in late 1998 was Debian, i had no experience with it, because before that, i had BeOS 3.2 installed.. right now in 2023 i have Debian 12 installed..many greetings from Brunswick in Germany and please stay safe :)
I use Window Maker as my Window Manager. I hear it looks like the Next interface.
indeed, my first windowmanager in 1998 was windowmaker too, after that, i used enlightenment and later KDE 🙂
I was surprised that you didn’t mention the testing branch of Debian
I was considering that, actually. If I was doing a tutorial about customizing Debian I would definitely discuss Testing. I left it out here for brevity- most of the questions I get are about Stable or Sid. Besides, with a new version due for release this year, Testing is going to become a whole heap, potentially worthy of a separate video.
@@VeronicaExplains thanks for everything you do. I tend to think testing as Debians rolling release. I have used debian for over 20 year and use stable and old stable for servers and critical systems and testing for desktops. Sid is mainly used to build packages, well in my buildd server it is.
My school had a mirror and watching an install of Potato at wire speed was my first debian experience… even then the distro was a decade old.
Never thought I needed a type B pinout shirt, but now I do.
0:18 Boring is exactly what I want my OS to be. The exiting part should be the software running on top of it, so its not getting in the way
I'm running Debian servers for 18 years. My experience is, that even upgrades to the next release, were mostly without issues.
I started out using a C64 with 300 baud modem dialing into BBS here local. Then jumped to DOS and then windows with win 3.1 and later Linux and Debian. Debian in 2002 with Debian 3.0 (Woody). All I can say it has come a long way. I jumped over to RPM distros, Fedora, Red Hat etc. and Tried Ubuntu, Linux Mint, and even Arch. I always come back to Debian. Plus, If I want the latest and greatest hardware I can just compile the support into a custom Linux kernel for Debian. Thanks for video, love your content and sub'd right away! So you have another computer geek follower. ;-) Load "*" ,8,1
Typically if a distro is "boring" that means it's stable and you just install it and forget it - by "forget it", I mean it gets out of your way and you can just get stuff done without having to worry about the OS keeping things running smoothly. I'll take that kind of boring any day vs something that I _have_ to tinker with to keep it running well enough to try and do work/play instead of sacrificing those to keep the OS fixed.
(Venn from LinuxGameCast runs Debian XFCE for his systems since it lets him dial in his DAWs and other tools (and games) the way he wants for their show)
I recently installed debian 12 with kde, i am loving it.
I'm a Debian user since the "Lenny" version, but now I'm using Arch Linux. Debian is stable and if the user installs programs with Snap and Flatpak he will have a great system with the most current programs even with older packages...
I've been getting all my work done on my my main workstation at home and at work for many, many years with vanilla Debian. MATE desktop environment. It just works. Stable, predictable, and a pleasure to use. It's better to run behind the times.
Even though I started with Kubuntu in 2007, Debian (Stable) is home for me, especially with Xfce ♥
I try other distros in VMs just to get out of my comfort zone, to see what's new, or to see what other distros ship and customise but I like my desktop the way it is.
Besides, starting from a minimal install I feel I can really make it whatever I want. It's called "The Universal Operating System" for so many reasons, and this is one of them.
PS: also, Synaptic. I'd love to see it on non Debian distros.
I use debian, and have for a couple months now and it's really good. very stable, packages are generally up to date "enough", and I enjoy it. before this, I'd been an arch user, which is fine. it's more of a DIY distro that has you set it up how you like it right off the bat.
OMG the layers of meta comparing Sid to the Year of Hell from VOY. Amazing
I started with Linux by using Debian in around 2003. At the time I don't recall ever seeing advice for Linux starters saying what distros are best for Linux noobies. So I just got what seemed the most popular, which was Debian. After a few months I distrohopped a bit for a few months, then caame back and stayed with Debian ever since.
I'm new to the channel, and I need to say that I loved your style and charisma, I became a subscriber.
I've been testing distros since the Debian 6, I've run away a lot of the KDE Plasma version because I removed the taskbar and didn't know how to put it back.
Today I'm a fan of KDE Plasma
since I decided to change to GNU+Linux in 2018, I've used many distros, even the simplest and lightest ones (and it always lacks some functionality).
When I migrated a year ago to the programming area, I decided to settle on debian (after trying macos and even windows and finally manjaro / biglinux / garuda linux), i
t's so satisfying to turn on the computer and know that it will start normally and everything is working well. (I used Sid for a while, but something always broke).
I will always recommend Debian!
I personally have a soft spot for Debian and back in 2007 I actually used it as my main desktop distribution for a while.
The main thing I don't like about Debian for using it primarily or as a desktop system is the package lag which I find absolutely limiting when I want to use recent packages (like Wayland or recent Gnome or KDE releases) and so I find myself tending more towards Tumbleweed or Fedora (I have recently found myself in love with recent Fedora releases). That being said however I have a few small servers that I use mostly with Docker and Debian is perfect for that as the requirements are minimal and so it'll fit on a small VM and docker keeps the software it uses up to date. I also use it for my Minecraft server due to the low overhead and it has all but replaced basically all of my Ubuntu server distributions except the ones that I can't be bothered replacing.
But I think I'll always use Debian in some capacity, just probably more on the lightweight server side.
Great overview. I run Debian as my development environment at work simply because it never breaks. The only "odd" thing I do is build vim from source to get it to support the plugins I use/experiment with. For some build infrastructure, I've recently started running a few Ubuntu Server machines as they use fewer resources.
Debian. Always Debian :)
Love how they wait for new features to mature before they're incorporated into the ecosystem (unless strictly necessary, ofc).
Debian is rock-solid stable. The installer is very flexible, you can use Debian to make a desktop, server, and even a router.
Debian is rock solid if you take care of it. i have a server with a 300 day uptime right now that i really need to reboot for a kernel update but i wanna make it a year first.
Arch for everything new, Fedora for almost everything new and rather safe, Debian to just have an OS that will NEVER break.
That's how I feel about it. Now with all the RHEL implications I don't know my stand on Fedora anymore tho.
I thought I'd give debian a whirl about a year ago, seeing as how I'd been hearing about it for 20 years or so. Installed it on an old laptop and it works beautifully. I was able to get the gpu driver from SID but only that (and dependencies obviously, it was long since unsupported). I then switched back to stable, did an apt-update and use it on sable otherwise. They key to making it work was definitely using flatpak for the user-space gui applications - like browser and such. Best of both worlds. It's stable, I don't need to do any maintenance with it, and I'm confident it will keep doing so for a long time to come.
Why do you need flatpak for browsers ?
@@wikingagresor To get the most up to date version. Debian comes with ESR firefox out of the box. Basically, if you want a current browser version, but don't wish to use testing or SID repos, flatpak it is.
Holy Cow, 30 Years old!! I love Debian!
Debian testing is the sweet spot for home users who like to tinker. I’m running my Plex server and steam without any issues. I’m tempted to run Arch, but it didn’t play nice with my printer last I checked. Now i need to rewatch Voyager again. 😅
Thanks for talking about debian. So great!
I currently run MX Linux for personal use which is Debian-based and it suits me well after a few additions and changes. Arch-based distros are nice and all but it breaks more than I wanted it to be whenever there's an update or I tweak something. 😅 My first Linux is Linux Mandrake... bought it from CompUSA I think... I had the box with the CD back then..
Debian was my second distro, after Slackware. Used it from 2000 to 2008, when I switched to Ubuntu.
A few weeks ago, decided to use some spare SSD space and added Debian back, it's a stable, "minimalist" 12 install. This PC also runs Ubuntu Studio LTS, Windows 11 Home and of course BlissOS/Android-x86. :^)
ETA: said PC has 2 2tb SSDs.
Nice config! How do you prevent windows from breaking linux? Just got a new pc, it came with win 10 pre-installed, but it kept removing linux from efi so I just deleted it and installed linux only, will try later to install openbsd next to it, hopefully these two won't be as agressive 😂.
@@AnotherSkyTV I haven't done anything specific to Windows... well OK I have. Turned off hibernate and fast boot for better access to the NTFS partition in Linux*, that's it. It came with Win10 preinstalled. After those changes, Linux works well. I cleanly installed to 11 without any problems.
*This has to be done or else you risk corrupting Windows. I don't miss hibernate on SSD anyway, I don't need it.
Your channel is amazing, Veronica. You have great energy and I love the way you explain things. You're awesome! Keep up!
Just found your channel after installing Debian 12 (Bookworm) onto my Raspberry Pi 400, or at least tried to... I followed the guides verbatim, yet it is error after error. I would say this is the least user friendly installation process out of all the distros I've installed on any system.
Was happy to have found the channel though, as I have a huge passion for retro computing.
What I liked about Debian was it was militantly free and open source. What I didn't like about Debian was it was... militantly free and open source. Installing the Nvidia kernel and other non-free drivers was a pain... and Ubuntu just asked if you wanted non-free drivers it and *boom* it was done! But I still sing the praises of Grandma Debian. Solid, stable and great for older systems! Keep up the good work!
Oh man this just reminded me of the first time I tried Debian and sudo apt install firefox gave me a big fat nothing. Took some web searching (on a non-Debian box) to find out that while firefox was FOSS, the *name and logo* were trademarked, meaning I had to install "Iceweasel" instead.
I remember getting started with a Debian 2.0 frozen hamm prerelease image on a 240MB hard drive in the summer of 1998. I tried caldera and some red hat, but came back to Debian. I remember scrolling through packages in dselect and compiling my first customized kernel at 2.0.35.
I didn’t see anything about apt until the next release I tried out. I even learned a valuable lesson about mixing Sid packages into a potato installation. Everything was breaking and I uninstalled package after package until I was able to downgrade my libc again and then reinstall everything I removed using stable versions again.
Those were some good times back in the day.
Sadly, in the late-1990s, which was still the classic-Gates-era, I didn't know a thing about Linux, other than hearing and maybe seeing the name of what's the kernel. In 2002, for me, Linux was very bad, couldn't even get 3D support for my GeForce! Back to Windows I go! It wasn't Debian, though, it was Mandrake 8.1, on CD-ROMs. I guess I shouldn't have used Mandrake 8.1! I think some of my hardware was too new.
@@RJARRRPCGP I didn’t even have hardware good enough to configure X until more than a year after I started using Linux. I had 6 screens of 80x50 console and I learned to configure apache, samba, and other services using docs from the Linux documentation project.
I found your channel by serendipity when searching for what is a commodore 64. Then enjoyed that you talk about Linux, the system I am learning about.
Love the rhythm of the videos, they are great for non-native English speakers (my case).
Thanks for sharing your knowledge!
Thank you for making English subtitle.
@VeronicaExplains 2nd this, subtitles are super useful for people who:
- have difficulties in hearing
- don't have adequate audio output on their devices
- just prefer to watch the video without audio!
Thanks Veronica for taking the time to add them in~ 🙂
I recently upgraded to Ubuntu 20.04. From 16.04. Which was an upgrade from 12.04. I'm *real* big on uptime ;-) And using an OS that has been beaten to near-death by millions of users for a year or two delivers that.
In my last job, my desktop system also served as a server, controlling a network of cameras, radio links and a variety of SBCs. I liked the fact that all the SBCs also had versions of Ubuntu, so I could develop software on the desktop, and just copy source code to the SBCs and recompile.
The one thing I haven't liked about Ubuntu is all the various desktop environments they've experimented with over the years. I got my start with Linux over 20 years ago, with Mandrake and KDE. Happily for me, a bunch of similar-minded people started the Trinity project, which keeps a very KDE3-like environment alive on newer versions of Ubuntu. If you're also and oldfart who doesn't like the newfangled stuff, it's a great way to KDE4 and whatever desktop fad Canonical is trying to create to get off your e-lawn ;-)
I loved the way you explain things!
Also, the subtitles are immensely appreciated, you are already very clear on your own, but this will help my gf that is starting to study IT and sysadmin, she isn't yet well versed in English by hearing. We'll binge your videos
Not only turned Debian 30 years. My current desktop Debian installation turned 26 years! End of 1996/start of 1997 I installed Debian and only did upgrades afterwards! Obviously I copied it with tar/cpio/rsync to new disks and file systems, but it's still the original installation! Packages have been migrated about 99% to 64 bit over time. Also I went the systemd free route and did an in place migration to Devuan at the right time. A few files remain of the original installation from 1997, though.
For a second there ["... awesome... and so are you ..."] I felt like you were the incarnation of Mr. Rogers!
I feel like Mr. Rogers would have daily driven Debian if he were a sysadmin. Maybe Mint.
But yeah, I totally agree. The more I watch her content, the more I appreciate how much work Veronica does to maintain the sort of welcoming and accepting community you see far too infrequently in tech.
Major props for the "Year of Hell" reference! Love the shirt, will have to order one for sure.
I used Debian from early 1996 until they adopted systemd, then moved to Devuan and then a couple of years ago switched to MX Linux and couldn't be happier.
01:05 - what a bunch of Toy story reference right here, Jessie!
I love Debian Linux especially the testing ones. In my laptop, I run Sparky Linux Semi-Rolling KDE. It is semi-rolling, it is Debian and it works surprisingly well. This is the distro I like to come home with.
I get the latest and greatest software I ever need. Plus I don't need to update constantly.
Instead of APT, I use NALA. It is beautiful and ones you learn it, it is fun.
Ubuntu, Linux Mint and other Ubuntu based distros are based on Debian testing. But they make it much easier.
But if you don't like Ubuntu and Snaps packages, you might want to try Sparky Linux instead. It is a very fun Debian distro I ever use.
Interesting
My first distro was Slackware in 1998. But then I took a look at how many and what packages were to be used. I did venture over to a couple other distro's as certain hardware wasn't supported in sid. Eventually the kernel was brought up to version where I could switch back to Debian. I compiled my kernel while it amused me. I'd have to say apt is my favorite package manager as I'd just throw things in a script after doing my base install for the things I wanted. And if I wanted to change my DE I'd just drop to the cli and have apt do what I needed. Keep in mind that I use that same script for packages but just change the name of the package manager for whatever distro I needed usually without issue. Pretty sure I'll be backing up my current media as FreeBSD has been calling me and it has been too long since I've been there. 😉🤪✌
0:35 WOAH that's a blast from the past! That little drum sound effect takes me back to when I first installed Ubuntu when I was 12.
Debian was the distro that helped me stick with linux.
As a student with technical background,I use Debian,Starting from Feb last yr with minimal install,chose MATE desktop, all drivers completely work fine till date,It is faster and way better! The apt package manager is what keeps me loyal to Debian. Also dpkg I use. And longer battery life so that I don't have to keep my laptop connected to the wall. Thanks a lot.
I watched this video, and honestly, it was super helpful.
I find the whole ubuntu hate pretty tiring.
It was my first linux distro, and it did the job.
But I've heard so much elitist hate and "philosophy" around why ubuntu is trash.
But the whole issue with x11/xorg and security concerns around that honestly is more compelling to me than any mumbo jumbo.
SO thank you for helping me feel less shame about liking ubuntu
RIP, Ian. Debian is my favorite distro.
I have used Debian for over 22 years and am very happy. The only Windows I use let air into my house. This was an excellent video.
Debian linux is my favorite linux distro since moving from Manjaro. I like its stability and long term support pattern.
I'm a distro hop, but after installing Debian 11 I'm just so satisfied and happy! No bugs!! Nothing breaks easily!! Just wow 😲
I have been using it for about 10 days now and it's just amazing.