A tier list with Debian in every category, no other distros
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[–] 38 points 9 months ago (37 children)

Currently running PopOS and thinking about switching to Mint but maybe Debian?

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  • [–] [S] 65 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (12 children)

    Do you want to live the boring stable life, where you can just build and build and build your personal poop castle on top of that solid OS for years and years? If yes, switch to Debian. You won't be reinstalling till you get so bored that you get the urge to self-harm (by reinstalling). We can't afford new hardware anyways, but even if we do, the same install will work on the new system with few tweaks. πŸ˜†

    The initial setup is a bit more annoying than Pop/Mint/Ubuntu but not too much more. Upgrades are also a bit more annoying but not too much more. There's good documentation for both of those procedures.

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  • [–] 3 points 9 months ago (5 children)

    What if my new hardware ends up being RISC V?

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  • [–] 9 points 9 months ago (3 children)
  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago (2 children)

    IIRC the x86_64 binaries won't work, so you will require a reinstall.

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  • [–] 4 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    Yes, but that's always the case when you're switching architectures. The x86 binaries won't work on ARM, either.

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  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago

    And that's where my comment matches what the Avid Amoeba is going with, that Debian will make the hardware usable for so long that RISC V might be mainstream (and maybe even powerful enough compared to current x86_64) by the time I decide to change the system.

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  • [–] 5 points 9 months ago* (6 children)

    I run Mint with Cinnamon on my Desktop PC and Debian with Gnome on a mini PC. I use the latter as a server and disabled the GUI, but Gnome was hard to get used to. I use my PC for casual gaming, browsing, and casual Python development. I am not a Linux power user but pretty familiar with the terminal. Setting up native Python without relying on UV/conda on Debian was a nightmare, but I guess that's an edge case. I really love Linux Mint, and I also really like Cinnamon.

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  • [–] 8 points 9 months ago* (4 children)

    If you're used to Windows then maybe give KDE a shot. Similar concepts to Windows (like a taskbar at the bottom of the screen) but extremely customizable. You can install KDE on Debian - on an existing system, the easiest way is to run tasksel and select KDE Plasma.

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  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago* (2 children)

    I disabled the graphical interface as I use the mini PC with Debian as a server and only ssh to it. I used Ubuntu with gnome at work for a couple of years (I could ignore it back then with the Ubuntu theme, which I liked more)

    Never tried out KDE, I know it is very popular. But I am super happy with Cinnamon and I don't see a reason to switch on my main PC. Of course I grew up with Windows, that may explain why I get along with Cinnamon so well..

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago

    Yeah, I mean Cinnamon matches what Windows does really quite closely, down to even the default keyboard shortcuts being virtually the same.

    KDE doesn't match it quite as closely, but it's just power-user heaven...

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago

    Python without UV/Conda is always somewhat of a pain on Linux, well, if you need a specific version that is. It comes pre-installed on virtually all distros, because the distros use it themselves to script stuff in the OS. That also means, if you install a different Python version OS-wide, you can break those OS scripts.

    Admittedly, it is somewhat of a larger pain on Debian, though, because it will stay behind on older Python versions for longer than most other distros. After the Python 2β†’3 transition, they also continued to alias python to python2 for quite some years (I'm actually not sure, if they alias to python3 by now)...

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  • [–] 4 points 9 months ago

    I’ve got two computers. My gaming pc is running CachyOS, and my other computer which is basically for messing around with and watching movies, used to be running Mint, but I just today switched over to Debian with XFCE as the DE and I’m liking it so far. Super bare bones but that’s what I wanted for this computer anyway so it works great for me.

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