I distro hopped for a bit before finally settling in Debian (because Debian was always mentioned as a distro good for servers, or stable machines that are ok with outdated software)
And while I get that Debian does have software that isn’t as up to date, I’ve never felt that the software was that outdated. Before landing on Debian, I always ran into small hiccups that caused me issues as a new Linux user - but when I finally switched over to Debian, everything just worked! Especially now with Debian 13.
So my question is: why does Debian always get dismissed as inferior for everyday drivers, and instead mint, Ubuntu, or even Zorin get recommended? Is there something I am missing, or does it really just come down to people not wanting software that isn’t “cutting edge” release?
I’ll be honest : because people is ignorant.
They tried Debian once few years ago, it didn’t have the exact driver they wanted out of the box, they gave up. They think that’s the normal and current experience.
Reality is I use Debian every day on my servers, SBCs, laptop but also my desktop. I’ve been gaming on it since the first day of the installation and it just worked. Sure I had to follow https://wiki.debian.org/NvidiaGraphicsDrivers and basically follow those steps. It took me maybe 15min and 1 reboot but since then NO tinkering, 0, and I’m gaming nearly daily from indie to AAA, from 2D to 3D to VR. As I mentioned in another reply sure I might not have perfectly optimized all my performance but I don’t give a shit, I’m just gaming!
Also as I mentioned elsewhere the “cutting edge” is bullshit. You can have a Debian installation, stable, and cherry pick the packages you want. Heck you can even pull from a forge the software you want, built it, run it. That’s how “bleeding edge” it can be. Of course you can use VM (with GPU passthrough), distrobox, AppImage, Nix (different from NixOS), etc so they are many many ways to make sure you use the absolute latest without breaking your system.
TL;DR: Debian does not position itself as a gaming distribution. A lot of gamers want to optimize everything for gaming and consequently assume a specialized distribution will do better. Meanwhile people who JUST want to play can definitely do so on Debian.
Hot take but totally agreed
I do debian on my servers (barring specific uses), arch on my desktop.
I think it’s a reinforcing cycle. (I) Debian gets recommended less often for home use -> (II) less people become proficient in it -> (I)
My 2¢:
I think it’s gamer discourse bleeding out into other fields. Gamers need the newest libraries and the newest drivers or their stuff might not run as well as it possibly could, because gaming is a relatively young but aggressively growing field with the Linux ecosystem in general. Sure games have always been around, but it’s never been the focus.
Now that gamers are switching more frequently, and that the average user is likely to play a game occasionally, it’s becoming relatively important that packages be up to date for desktop workloads.
Considering games are the most intensive things most people will use their computer for, I think it’s fine to optimize for that use case and assume everything else will be “fine”
Gamers need the newest libraries and the newest drivers or their stuff might not run as well as it possibly could
No they don’t. They think they do because they believe they run their precious expensive hardware only at 99% whereas they imagine, I bet due to trying to compete with each others on benchmarks, that with the absolute latest driver they can actually push their GPU at 99.99% and gain .1FPS in the most popular game they might not even like and 2 points in the trendy benchmark.
Source : I’m a gamer playing on Debian, from indie to AAA, from 2D to 3D to VR, and it just works. Sure I’m not at 99% perf on my hardware, I might even be at 80% but I’m definitely spending 0% time tinkering and 100% having fun.
I’ve literally had to wait for fixes to hit new mesa versions to play newly released games. Having those packages be up to date is just going to be a better experience for people that care about that kind of stuff
Newer packages will in theory always be better, that doesn’t really matter which distribution or use case (gaming or not) one has.
Even if Debian were generating packages the second a pull request was accepted and making it available to everyone and any one it wouldn’t change that the next pull request would, in theory (without regression) be more up to date.
If people have to wait 1s or 1 year, for gaming or not, they can have fun.
If hardware is not properly supported though it’s a different issue. It means people need to buy hardware that is well supported. It’s not specific to a distribution.
I’m playing old and new games on the SteamDeck and it works even if I don’t update it. That’s how things should be, that’s how things already are.
Anecdotes, even if important personally of course, showing things don’t work in a specific context don’t make a trend. There are plenty of things that don’t work well on Debian but also on Arch, Mint, etc and of course on Windows too. It’s very annoying but I don’t see how that helps.
you’re probably right as to why.
I’ll note that on my gaming desktop I decided to try out Debian instead of my usual choice of Fedora and its worked fine for gaming with latest gen CPU and GPU. I did install the steam flatpak which will have a newer version of Mesa. I think this is a good middle ground for a system you don’t want to mess with too much.
I haven’t messed with Debian in a while but I remember the install being a hassle for all of my devices. But in my experience when I go to compile something I have to tediously update scores of libraries as dependency issues metastisize throughout the system. At some point I think to my self “who am I an Ubuntu developer or something?” and I go download some upstream distro like Ubuntu or PopOS.
People asking for distro recommendations usually ask for their desktop.
Debian is great, but it’s hardly ever the best choice for a desktop, at least not for the kind of people who ask for distro recommendations.
I’ve used it for a few years. What issue does it have for a desktop? I’ve had everything “just work”.
Old packages in repos. I tried some stuff on LLM and VR and ubuntu had package more updated than Debian. That sad you have to reinstall Ubuntu each time you have to do a security update…
There is absolutely no issue with it.
But there are lots of other distros that add things to it which are great for desktop.
GUI tools for driver installation and kernel switching, snapshots, preinstalled Steam+Wine+Codecs+Flatpak, newer and more software, atomic updates, a faster package manager, more third party support, etc.Debian is better than it ever was, but so are lots of other distros, especially the ones that build on it.
Nowadays you really have the choice between “good” and “better”.Debian might work but it will always be behind and if any performance upgrades are done at a kernel level or a DE then you won’t get them until those fixes are potentially already obsolete.
then why do people suggest Mint so often? especially to gamers who often have new hardware
Mint is Debian based but isn’t Debian.
Same with Ubuntu.
The reason people recommend mint is it’s easy to install and has a familiar DE.
I was talking about the update timing, Mint isn’t very up to date which can have downsides
GPU drivers and DEs lagging behind, mostly.
Something like Fedora which releases newer code quicker will provide a better desktop/laptop experience. It’s the same reason other stable distros, like the EL distros, aren’t the best for desktops/laptops.
Historically, desktop applications would also be versions behind, but Flatpak really helps with this.
At this point, Debian is probably fine as a distro for a few year old computer that won’t be helped by fractional scaling. Pick a DE and install applications from Flathub.
I think it’s a bit boring. It’s fantastic for servers, and as a base for other distros. I did recently try it after using Mint for years (LMDE recently). I even used it with the Cinnamon DE I’m used to, and I just found it lacked some polish or something. Little niceties here and there. That’s it really. Minor drawbacks, and no advantage to me over LMDE, so that’s what I’m back to.
For reasons similar to why plain bread doesn’t show up in sandwich recommendations.
That’s my take too… it’s certainly a soild choice, but not incredibly exciting.
boring is awesome if you need to just work all the time and for a long time.
My FP right now:
The fact the other post was on /selfhosted kind of makes op’s point.
It felt like a “Missed Connections” ad in a newspaper. (If you’re under 40, you might have to look up what that is)
The reason I don’t recommend it by default is that there is no updater across releases.
The official upgrade process is to modify apt sources files and run upgrade, then full-upgrade, etc.
That’s fine for me but it makes it hard to recommend to people who may not be as willing to deal with modifying system files and reading some upgrade notes
If your sources track stable/testing or oldstable, you don’t need to change anything, that said I think the offical stance it to track the relase name (trixie bookworm etc)
One of the main historical reasons was the Debian project’s puritan approach to open source, meaning the distro was very picky about what it could easily run on. As an example, most network drivers for Realtek nics weren’t included out of the box as they contained non-free code, there was no direct way to install Nvidia drivers instead of nouveau, a lot of the hardware didn’t work in the installer unless you sideloaded the drivers from a usb stick and so on.
There was a non-free ISO version to get around this, but you needed to know of it to use it, and it wasn’t provided anywhere by default. The download page for it was just a barebone directory listing within the mirror. No link or information was provided for it on the main project page.
Starting from version 12 or 13 (don’t remember exactly) proprietary drivers have been included in the installation images, which removed the biggest pain point (IMO) for novice users. Apart from that Debian has been one of the easier distros to install, and has things like a considerably better experience when updating to the next major release. It’s not really slower to update packages than Ubuntu, as I’d be wary of recommending the non-LTS versions to novice users. They tend to be quite unstable compared to LTS.
Personally I’ve daily driven Debian for close to five years, on all my devices except the work laptop. That one is running Ubuntu 24.04 as the employer requires either that or Fedora for Linux users.
Thanks for the info, I was not entirely aware about the fact that they recently changes their proprietary software approach.
it is from debian 12 onwards that installer includes non free firmware, and also has a easy opt in for non free firmware repo enabling
Debian always has been a stable distro. But earlier it lacked some good DE. And most beginners didn’t know or thought it was daunting to install DE. That’s why it got left out but now in past 4-5 years it has been pretty good.
I use Debian as one of my daily drivers. I wouldn’t recommend the vanilla version to beginners, but I’d recommend LMDE.
While Debian is my preferred distro, I wouldn’t reccomend it to others unless they are techy and don’t mind fiddling with things. I absolutely wouldn’t reccomend it to my grandma (I would reccomend her Mint though) and probably not to someone who just wants to play games, especially if they have an Nvidia card. I do game on Debian with a 3060, but it was cumbersome getting stuff working properly because of old drivers. I did get it working, but I think most people just want to play their games and not deal with that. I also have a nearly 10 year old laptop with Debian, and since it’s so old, everything does, “just work”, but I imagine most people aren’t also using the same 10 year old laptop.
Debian is more like AOSP. It’s a starting point. Super bare. More commonly used in servers and such.
Also things tend to be older on Debian which isn’t the fit for more gaming oriented systems. Due to optimization not being yet available and drivers for the latest hardware
Ah, ok - yeah I can definitely see how for gaming it might not be ideal. I’ve never thought Linux was all that smooth of a transition for gamers though, no matter what OS you’re using - but I guess that heavily depends on the games you’re playing.
Gaming on Linux has been really good for the last several years. The main issue is certain multiplayer games that intentionally block Linux users.
It’s pretty smooth on bazzite aside from kernel anti-cheat games. Just run em through steam, even pirated games
Even with games that usually use kernal anti-cheat systems like battleeye, some games specifically have enabled proton support and just work as well.
The problem hasn’t been compatibility for a long time, it was developers intentionally blacklisting Linux in their anticheat. Turns out a lot of people hate their customers having freedom in their software
I guess that heavily depends on the games you’re playing
I think this is the key thing.
If you’re always buying the newest GPU to play the latest tech- envelope-pushing AAA title that requires the latest greatest driver, then you’re probably not going to have a good time with gaming on Debian.
But some of us don’t care about those types of games, or maybe in some cases we do but are willing to wait a while to play a particular title (hello Patient Gamers). In that case Debian is a nice, rock solid gaming platform.
Anecdotally, I probably do 85+% of my gaming on Debian (the rest being my steam deck). And it works fine for me because of the types of games I play and/or how long I tend to wait before getting new titles (giving Debian time to catch up).
It’s definitely not for every gamer, but I don’t think it’s as unusable for gaming as people often suggest.
What would be considered “bare” about it? Granted, I’m not gaming on it or anything, but I’ve found it to work pretty well out of the box, just downloading software as I need - but nothing that has caused any sort of headache due to missing drivers or anything like that.
To me it seems like it would be pretty simple for most people to switch over from windows - albiet maybe not for the super beginners that have never seen a command line - but for most semi-tech literate, I would think it would be a decent entry into Linux.
Genuinely curious what is actually stripped down or missing, because maybe it’s just something that I’m not even aware that I’m missing out on, lol
Older drivers won’t support newer hardware. Only includes default apps from gnome and KDE. No DE tweaks to speak of. No performance optimizations. No Gear Lever. No fractional scaling implemented, etc. etc.
I guess it makes sense that I’m comfortable with using Debian then, lol, because I don’t know what most of those things you mentioned are - haha.
Thanks for the explanation though :)
no fractional scaling? thats a DE/WM feature not distro related
old drivers? so is every stable point release distro unless you go out of your way to get an to date kernel,
only includes default apps? you mean following the DE’s developer’s vision? (sure for gnome it is a downside for most, tweaks should 100% be included on all gnome installs)
no fractional scaling? thats a DE/WM feature not distro related
Lots of distros these days come out of the box with that pre-configured, so no, it’s not.
only includes default apps? you mean following the DE’s developer’s vision?
Yes.
Super bare. 🤣🤣🤣
Debian is probably Thee most supported distro with the most packages available.
Debian is also among the absolute best among Linux desktop options, and actually quite popular.
There’s a reason Debian is still the most forked distro.Debian is probably Thee most supported distro with the most packages available.
I’m not talking about availability. I’m talking about comes pre-installed so the user doesn’t have to go out and find them to use basic functionality.
Debian is also among the absolute best among Linux desktop options, and actually quite popular.
I did not say it was not great or popular.
There’s a reason Debian is still the most forked distro.
This is not the dunk you think it is…
I’m talking about comes pre-installed
Apart from Steam not being a standard installed item, it is very feature full.
For 32 bit you also need to enable multi-arch.But apart from gaming it is in no way bare and very very far from “super bare”. Ans Steam is pretty easy to install.
I did not say it was not great or popular.
You wrote it was mostly for servers. Which although it is an excellent server distro, it is most definitely developed at least as much for desktop use.
This is not the dunk you think it is…
I don’t think you really understand the implications.
Apart from Steam not being a standard installed item, it is very feature full.
I’ve just given you several examples of how it’s not.
For 32 bit you also need to enable multi-arch.
Just making my point for me now.
You wrote it was mostly for servers
No I wrote that’s it’s more commonly used in servers.
I don’t think you really understand the implications.
I don’t think you do.
I think you’re treating this like a pit fight.
I dunno what that means. I gave what I felt like a very simple take and this person showed to argue with me, not the other way around.
It looks like one of you is treating the other as a person deserving of respectful conversation.
While I get what you mean about things being pre-installed for super new people to Linux/terminal. . . If it has a apt package, it’s as easy as “sudo apt install xyz”. Also, I thi k Debian comes with the synaptic package manager which makes it fairly easy to install as well. With that said though, I do see your point, as it’s one more hurdle.
If it has a apt package, it’s as easy as “sudo apt install xyz”
This is the kind of ignorant shit that relegates Linux to nerd circles. What do you do with this information? What is xyz, and exactly xyz because if you get a single letter wrong it does not work. Further the user has to already know what they want, which a new user will not.
I don’t know the AOSP acronym so I’ll take a guess: Always On Server Platform?
Android Open Source Project, it’s the open base that the actual Android releases are built upon. It’s not really usable as is, since it lacks the required kernel blobs and software that people have come to expect (like Google’s proprietary stuff).
Android open source project. It’s the base behind every android variation, but it has pretty generic software (although sometimes better than the alternatives companies choose to ship instead).
Debian and Red Hat are the foundation for most of the popular distros out there.
