Debian for everything.
this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2026
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Yes ! I don't get why debian always seems to be forgotten outside of its server use. I have been running it for 2 years now (homelab, laptop and desktop).
Beyond none of its branches actually satisfying my preferences, I feel like the way it handles major version upgrades is way too involved. I suppose it makes sense; it's paying back the accumulated debt of a couple years worth of bliss...
Having said that, my experience on Fedora Atomic is (almost) equally blissful without requiring any of that whenever a major version update strikes.
Don't get me wrong; I definitely do believe Debian has its uses on desktop Linux. But I can't shake off the feeling that they're definitely more niche compared to say Fedora.
The upgrade issue is exactly why I don’t like Debian-based distros for my desktop
I love Debian, I use it as a desktop and it's installed on all my machines, but it has some problems/quirks that make it hard to recommend it for desktop usage.
First one is that it doesn't have sensible defaults, the OS expects a user who is an admin, one who will configure things to their liking. I would consider this to be a feature, if it weren't for the second problem, the documentation. The documentation is wayy too dated, lots of pages in the wiki haven't been updated since Debian Buster days!
A better recommendation would be probably a Debian derivative like MX Linux. They are more opinionated, but as far as I know, they come with better defaults and offer newer guides, documentation, etc.
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Debian is nice & boring, but I have had issues with how old its kernel and software versions are. 6.12 isn't too bad for Trixie, but previously it was really terrible. When I was running Bookworm, I ran into plenty of situations where software I was compiling or getting from outside the repos (for niche software), wasn't backwards compatible to the library versions Debian provided.
No hate for Debian, but it just doesn't work for a lot of people. However, these days I would go for Debian over Ubuntu 10 times out of 10.
That is a release engineering issue on the developers side in my opinion though no less real. Developers targeting Linux should target the current version of big LTS releases like debian and Redhat enterprise if they are serious about compatibility beyond "works on my system"
For the vast majority of computer users I'd says debian is fine since most users hardly step out of the browser these days.
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I did the same thing. Settled om Baazite
Me too, on all my desktop PCs. Aurora on my work laptop. Ublue rocks.
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I have been on this Linux jam since 1996 with a CD copy of Red Hat that came with a magazine (Byte, maybe?). In 2018 I made the jump to Debian based distros specifically because I got tired of the surprises. Now my lab runs LMDE. The only thing more stable and boring is Debian Stable itself.
Like you said, I want to focus on my projects, not have the OS be my project.
it's kind of strange hearing about all this stability and everything on debian stable (and lmde by extension), when it was constantly broken for me and i had to do all kinds of weird fixes
i have a lenovo thinkpad t490s too so it's not like im running on brand new components or anything either
been running fedora kde for a few months and it's been running like a dream
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Debian for servers and fedora for desktop for me.
Some people I will put on Mint for desktop use, if they are super non-technical.
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Selinux
Rootless podman networking
These things are awful on their own to comprehends for those of us without comp-sci degrees, but fedora has me boxing with them more than I expected and fuck everyone involved with that!
I fell for the Arch/AUR trap for a while, but I got tired of spending my weekends debugging file manager crashes instead of maintaining my home lab.
What sort of file manager crashes were you having?
Right mouse click, it was an intermittent issue and never did get to the bottom of it as the only forum posts I could find were from 10 years ago. Yes I know I could of used the keyboard shortcuts but my muscle memory is more mouse orientated than keyboard lol
What is it with everyone going to Fedora? New Ubuntu apparently.
I always had too many bugs on Ubuntu. Fedora has been solid from the beginning. Only ever had two issues with it in 4 years. I never had such stable experience before.
Fedora is solid these days, well the last few years. It's been so easy and everything is up to date, not lagging behind lke Ubuntu.
Ubuntu been awful since the beginning, always buggy always needing to be rinstalled at some point.
It lives on hype alone. I would choose anything over Ubuntu.
Fedora recently provided some exciting developments in the Linux world, and it's genuinely interesting to follow.
It's also reasonably new and reasonably stable, which is often so much of a pain point to balance.
Also, I mean, it is the distro Linus himself prefers.
Linus liking something doesn't mean anything. He has some other strange opinions too.
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Don't get comfy, I used to be fedora, then debian, then arch. Mint + Cinnamon is my final resting place.
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Kinoite user here - no urge to hop. Distrobox if I need something else
I just swapped over yesterday to Fedora from Ubuntu. It’s been a good experience so far! Except for installing nvidia drivers, still working on that
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NixOS for everything except my phones (one clean iPhone with Lockdown mode enabled and one Pixel 9a with GrapheneOS).
This is the way.
Fedora (Silverblue in particular) was the end of my distro hopping journey too. It’s just so pleasant to use and it’s comfortably up to date. I also like its tendency to push newer technologies.
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