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Tips for switching to Debian from Ubuntu?

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.

Pantherina ,

Switch to Fedora I would say. Debian is up to date currently, as things are settling down to be LTS, but over the years it will get fewer updates. Fedora is even more up to date than Ubuntu, but more stable than Opensuse Tumbleweed, which would be the Opensuse equivalent.

If you want a perfect experience with KDE, I dont know what to recommend but there are bugs that will probably simply not be fixed in Debian for the next 2 years, as they are postponed to Plasma 6, mainly the glitches when fractional scaling.

Gnome is really stable I think, Fedora should give the best experience here.

Btw using Distrobox you can run ANY Linux app easily. On Fedora Kinoite (ostree, like Silverblue) I run the VLC 4.0 beta currently, which is only available as an Ubuntu PPA. no problem at all. Do mainly for AUR or Ubuntu PPA apps Distrobox is brilliant.

Fedora itself also has COPR where lots of community packages are.

If you want recent deb-based, there also is KDE Neon user edition. Used that for a while, but I switched to immutable Fedora and never going back.

Espi ,

Fedora is fantastic, but I’m a little shaken about Redhat, which is downstream of Fedora and a big supported.

Also, Fedora is a bit annoying with codecs and non-free software in general. They are extremely anal about not infringing copyright.

dalingrin ,

I’ve done my share of distro hopping and I must agree with [email protected].

Fedora has the near perfect balance of being stable and always up to date. I found the codecs and non-free software to be a non-issue. You enable the RPM Fusion repos and install then like anything else.

caseyweederman ,

Someone familiar with Ubuntu is going to have no trouble at all with Debian.
As for updates, there’s always upgrading releases, or Testing/Unstable.

Pantherina ,

Okay true, there is Debian testing aka sid. I have not tried that long term though.

But I absolutely dont agree “being used to ubuntu”. Either you are a GUI person and the interface is not the same. Its GNOME and you need some extensions, thats it.

Or you are from Ubuntu and want proprietary packages, PPAs, or even Snaps! They seem pretty user friendly witg some features.

Or you want the nice background…

But apt? You just use sudo dnf upgrade" instead of sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade`. The rest is Linux, everything is probably the same. Maybe some udev stuff, but apart from ADB (which is kinda poweruser stuff) its not actually needed.

Nia , (edited )
@Nia@lemmy.ml avatar

deleted_by_author

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    AProfessional ,

    Mesa is half the story, the kernel is outdated too.

    dontcarebear ,

    Could go rolling with sid, or get Xanmod kernel. I think there’s also some git-mesa repositories, but I’m less sure about the latter.

    dontcarebear ,

    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!

    0v0 ,

    But you can do this.

    yote_zip ,
    @yote_zip@pawb.social avatar

    There are no backported kernels available for Debian 12 at the time of writing this

    Where are you looking? I see one here

    xilliah ,

    How did you get gog games to play? I tried game hub but it fails to install stuff.

    Nia , (edited )
    @Nia@lemmy.ml avatar

    deleted_by_author

    •
    xilliah ,

    Thanks. So you pronounce your name ni-a or njaaaaaaaa!?

    caseyweederman ,

    Same. I like it. Does Epic Games too.

    Dubious_Fart ,

    Lutris can let you log into your GOG account and install games no issue.

    I dont know how it handles updates, but thats only an issue if you’re playing a new game, if you’re just playing old games like Arcanum, its no issue.

    gnuhaut ,

    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.

    hemko ,

    Holy shit I never knew you could have sudo installed like that. Always done it post-install lmao

    lemann ,

    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

    gnuhaut ,

    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.

    Espi ,

    It says it? TIL

    I knew about that (kinda intuitively, openSUSE installer behaves the same way and I just assumed that Debian would be the same)

    finickydesert ,
    @finickydesert@lemmy.ml avatar

    Why not use doas instead of sudo?

    espi ,

    @finickydesert @gnuhaut The installer installs sudo.

    Also, what are the advantages of doas compared to sudo?

    legoraft ,
    @legoraft@reddthat.com avatar

    afaik, doas is a bit more minimal than sudo, so less bloatware. Sudo has a lot of CVE’s every year and because doas is way smaller, it has a lot less security issues.

    Cornelius ,

    Protip: for anyone in the fence, you can install doas then simply alias sudo for doas. Nothing changes in how you use your shell but it’s now more secure

    rufus ,

    Just learn how to activate the non-free repos. Everything else except for the stupid stuff like snap that ubuntu introduced, is 99.5% the same. I’ve switched from Ubuntu to Debian like 15 years ago. Never looked back.

    library_napper ,
    @library_napper@monyet.cc avatar

    Just Mint it dude

    TCB13 ,
    @TCB13@lemmy.world avatar

    Install your base system and get every app you need using flatpak. That way you’ll get the latest versions without poluting your system. It even integrated with the GNOME Software “store” GUI: flatpak.org/setup/Debian

    RvTV95XBeo ,

    A bit out of the loop here (my only Linux system is a stripped down Debian server), but I thought one of the reasons people are moving away from Ubuntu was because they were forcing everyone to use flatpaks.

    Genuinely asking - are they evil or not?

    cerement ,
    @cerement@slrpnk.net avatar

    other way around – Ubuntu has pretty much abandoned Flatpak and is trying to get everyone to use Snap

    RvTV95XBeo ,

    Ahh got it, thank you!

    rotopenguin ,
    @rotopenguin@infosec.pub avatar

    Oh, this is the first time I’ve heard of that. I use plasma-discover as my handy “search all 3 app sources at once” browser.

    dark_stang ,
    @dark_stang@beehaw.org avatar

    You may want to try pop_os if one of your main uses is gaming. But debian is very straight forward after you enable the non-free repos.

    constantokra ,

    I’m consistently amazed how intuitive and responsive the pop os interface is even on low end hardware. It is so polished and adds so much utility to using a GUI, or even using multiple terminals.

    cygnus ,
    @cygnus@lemmy.ca avatar

    I’m glad someone already suggested this. I was going to do the same.

    bad_news ,

    deleted_by_author

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    PeterPoopshit , (edited )

    I always get screwed pretty hard with Debian drivers. Just the other day I updated my Debian server to Debian 12 and then it refused to allow my atheros 9k PCI wifi card to work unless I rebooted after a cold boot. After an entire afternoon, I got to where it wouldn’t work after a cold boot or after a reboot. I literally had to choose between buying a new wifi card or reinstalling Debian/a different distro.

    I used to only use Debian for non-laptops but from now on I don’t think I’ll install any new Debian installations on anything.

    PseudoSpock ,
    @PseudoSpock@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

    Don’t, unless you like snaps.

    lily33 ,

    I think you misread the OP.

    PseudoSpock ,
    @PseudoSpock@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

    Worse than that, I didn’t read beyond the topic. The question itself creates like this automatic PTSD response. ;)

    electric_nan ,

    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.

    wim , (edited )

    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.

    somedude ,

    Tangential question for people browsing this post: would you recommend a different Linux distribution over Debian and Ubuntu for OP? If so, which one and why?

    Nia ,
    @Nia@lemmy.ml avatar

    deleted_by_author

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    drspod ,

    Debian is upstream from Ubuntu, so Canonical shenanigans will not affect Debian users.

    ProdigalFrog ,

    There’s also the Linux Mint Debian Edition, which gives all the Mint goodness without the Ubuntu base.

    abrasiveteapot ,

    LMDE is the backup plan the guy you replied to was referencing.

    It’s rough around the edges compared to mint cinnamon but it works just fine, just needs a bit more customising attention after the install.

    vector_zero ,

    Depends on what you’re looking for.

    • Up to date packages: Arch or Fedora
    • Stable: Rocky or Mint

    I personally love Arch for its lightweight nature, its documentation, and the AUR, but I use Fedora on my desktop and server, and Debian on my HTPC. I also have Rocky on my laptop, but that was mostly just to play around with it.

    Fedora is nice because it’s fairly up to date and has a fairly robust, self maintaining package manager (i.e. it automatically removes unused deps and cleans up after itself).

    hellvolution ,
    @hellvolution@lemmygrad.ml avatar

    No tips needed; everything will work rock-solid and you’ll never return to Ubuntu

    SK4nda1 ,

    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.

    vector_zero ,

    It’s funny, I installed Debian not knowing this, and I had very few rough edges to work out. One setting in Firefox to fix video playback, and I was up and running on my home theater PC.

    Rhabuko ,
    @Rhabuko@feddit.de avatar

    No idea if Ubuntu does some things better for gaming, but I just use the Steam Flatpak (+ the “steam-devices” package for much better controller support) and the Heroic Game Launcher Flatpak. Everything works fine on my end. I’m currently using an AMD card, but will probably switch to an Intel Arc in the near future (since they have better performance for 3d rendering in Blender, and I’m fed up with Nvidia’s prices).

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