Title pretty much says it all. I've been using ubuntu as my daily driver for the last 5 years or so and honestly, I've had a wonderful experience with it.
That said, with the way things are going, I feel like its only a matter of time before Canonical pulls the rug out so I'd like to at least get my feet wet with something other than Ubuntu and Debian seems like the logical choice.
I mainly use my machines for gaming, self hosting, programming, and weird networking projects/automation testing.
I've heard gaming on debian isnt as 'out of the box' as it is with Ubuntu. So I'm hoping somone with more experience can share some tips on what I should be looking out for or point me to some good guides. Thanks yall.
EDIT: I fucking love this community. Thank you all for your replies. I appreciate you taking the time to help me out.
To add - if you liked PPAs, they don't exist on Debian. You'll need to add repositories as seen by Nia's comment. To be honest, it's something you get past easily and quickly.
Embrace thine sources.list.d!
Use the net installer. Leave the root password empty if you want sudo installed. There is probably no need for you to read the official installation manual, but maybe do so if you run into any trouble.
There are wiki pages for the most common things you might want to setup, like how to install steam, nvidia driver, enable backports (good way to get (some) newer packages without breakage), and enable flatpak. Just google "debian wiki nvidia" etc.
Holy shit I never knew you could have sudo installed like that. Always done it post-install lmao
Yeah it actually says that in the text on that root password screen. But nobody ever reads that, me included. Literally everybody I have told this to was surprised when they hear about it. It's a total UI failure.
Same lol, I was confused at why some of my selfhosting boxes had sudo and some didn't, despite being installed fresh from the same ISO
On server I found it to be basically the same except for some installed programs. Dunno about gaming doe.
Why not try Mint? Also Debian based
Standard Mint is based on Ubuntu, but they modify it to remove things they don't like, and can hold back cutting edge changes that might break things. They also give you the option to not use the Snap Store.
There's a Mint Debian Edition that is forked directly from Debian. This might be better for OP, as it's not going to get anything that Ubuntu has added. However, Ubuntu and Mint add their own fixes, so it might be missing those, depending on whether Debian decided to implement them.
No tips needed; everything will work rock-solid and you'll never return to Ubuntu
Maybe a bit naive, but what is the way that things that are going? What would Canonical pulling the rug out look like?
I just switched from Linux Mint to Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE). I was feeling like you; wanting to get away from Ubuntu dependency. I tried out Debian, but it just didn't feel as comfy out of the box. LMDE is working great. I even enabled backports and updated the Kernel.
I’ve heard gaming on debian isnt as ‘out of the box’ as it is with Ubuntu.
Depends on what your hardware is. Debian typically runs some older versions of pretty much everything. If you have newish hardware, you might need to run a newer kernel than Debian ships by default for full support. When that happens to me, I usually run the Liquorix kernel packages, which has been around for more than a decade and has never caused me problems on Debian.
For some graphics drivers, you might need a newer Mesa, which is typically available from Debians' own backports.
Don't do either unless you know you need to, because both lead to a somewhat higher risk for an unstable system.
You can just install Steam using Flatpak, and it works just fine.
Use configuration as code. Ansible, puppet, salt, nix or something else. Debian is nice but its a diy ubuntu. You appreciate the effort cononical puts in to take away the rough edges on places. Using debian allows you to craft the OS you want from scratch, which is great! Just make sure you don't have to redo work if your system dies at some point.
There was an issue with Debian installs a few weeks ago where it broke due to some modules. It can be avoided by using the net installer.
If you’re using an Nvidia card, you will need to download the appropriate drivers. The Debian docs explain the steps, just read carefully to make sure you don’t miss something small.
If you want to make it as seamless as possible, use Debian with Gnome.
Apart from that, there is virtually no difference. You can get and use all the same packages. Games on steam run without issue (or any more than reported by other distributions). I don’t use PPAs but between official debs and flatpak, I haven’t had any issues getting software that I needed.
FWIW I ran: Apex Legends, Resident Evil 1+2, FFXIV, Gears 5, Bomb Rush Cyberfunk and plenty more without a single crash or glitch.
I also switched to Debian from Ubuntu. It wasn’t perfectly smooth but once you get set up, it’s as stable as can be.
Worse than that, I didn't read beyond the topic. The question itself creates like this automatic PTSD response. ;)
