I have just watched this video and in it 2 things are said that made my Linux newbie heart sink:
- Debian 13 is not going to get the latest versions of Nvidia drivers and there are better distros for us.
- Debian in general is not meant to run on the latest hardware.
I am on a regularly upgraded desktop tower gaming PC and currently I have an Nvidia card and an Intel CPU (which, I know, even just because of the mobo chipset is not a great choice).
In this conditions and wanting to invest even more in gaming and new hardware in the future, what should I run on, instead of LMDE 6?
I would recommend Nobara, Bazzite or PopOS for gaming; My personal experience with Debian is that it’s a great OS, but the focus lies less on cutting edge features or support of the latest hardware, and more on stability over everything else, and the desktop environment is more of an convenience feature - Debian is very happy as a headless server. If you want an OS with record setting uptimes, pick Debian; but for gaming you want to be on the cutting edge, and that’s simply not the case with Debian.
Cachyos, its popular for a reason, the wiki is really helpful, and the goal is to quickly get you setup for gaming with the correct drivers
If you’re currently running on LMDE and are enjoying it, why not just switch to the “vanilla” non-debian Mint? It should be similar enough to what you’re used to, but with more up to date software.
If you want something stable but up-to-date, Fedora is a very good option. Plus it has a bunch of “Spins”. The two main ones are Gnome and KDE Plasma, but there is a bunch more, and they’re all officially supported.
Then there’s also Arch. Arch should not be considered stable, but anecdotally I’ve not heard many problems with it in the past few years, so you’d probably be fine. I’d go with EndeavourOS or CatchyOS if you want Arch without the tedious setup process.
Debian is what you put on your grandma’s Facebook machine
To put it in a less elitist way: you can put it on a family PC for light entertainment or for things like homework for kids
To be perfectly clear: most people use their PC as a glorified Facebook machine.
(it also doesn’t have to be Facebook but the concept is the same)
Debian is what you put on a system you want to work forever with minimal maintenance. Whether that be your Grandma’s computer or my headless server.
Isn’t Debian the FOSS-only one? Or am I misremembering?
I’m sure one can have their install that way but mine isn’t.
I’m gaming perfectly fine on my Debian machine. Only one single time in years I had a problem with some custom tailored script from someone that linked as minimum a dependency that was newer than the version served in apt
This. My main rig runs arch and I do my heavy gaming there, but for travel I have a laptop running Debian, it has no problem running Steam and games via Proton. I’ve also done some light coding, even a bit of 3D modeling. It’s not basic, it’s bulletproof.
Ubuntu-based, Arch-based, Fedora-based distributions will do you fine.
Debian is great for having a rock solid stable system that works, but not for the latest and greatest software or hardware combis.
I like endeavoros. I can’t say how well it is for gaming, aside from installing steam and playing a few games…
It’s pretty simple. Endeavor has their own easy update script.
I haven’t watched the video. I’ve used Debian as my operating system of choice for over 25 years.
Debian is intended to be Free, it goes to great lengths to achieve this. Many of the popular distributions are based on it as a result.
It has the option to use non-free components like firmware blobs and weird vendor encumbered video drivers.
In addition, Debian runs on a large collection of different hardware platforms and as such is supported across more devices than many other alternatives.
If you run bleeding edge hardware, you have the option of running bleeding edge software within the Debian framework. It comes in flavours: stable, testing and unstable specifically to cater to different requirements.
Pick what you need depending on your use case.
Debian is like that. Mature. The point releases are thoroughly tested for reliability, but the cost is that they can’t include bleeding edge software in the middle of the release cycle. The “stable” branch (currently Trixie) is always lagging behind, and the “testing” branch (Forky, next in line to become “stable”) will be frozen long before it is released.
You might want to try a rolling release distro. Arch Linux or something based on it (EndeavourOS, Garuda, CachyOS), or Debian Sid (the unstable branch).
Maybe just regular Linux Mint then, which follows Ubuntu release schedule.
If gaming is your main goal. Bazzite or similar should likely be your first target. If you want a more desktop experience. I’d probably recommended vanilla mint. LMDE and Debian are great. But LMDE is a side project, that gets a bit less support and updates. And Debian is about stability over cutting edge anything.
Also worth noting that Debian’s definition of “stability” doesn’t mean “doesn’t crash” even in the slightest. It means “doesn’t change.” That means not changing broken software to be newer working software.
Any non-security bug that exists will stay because new software only ships for backported security updates. So if you have a crashing issue, Debian has no interest in fixing it until the next release. Unchanging is more important than working.
If you don’t have any crashes or bugs popping up, Debian is great, because it won’t introduce crashes or bugs. Nothing unexpected will happen.
By Debian’s definition, the Titanic is now VERY stable, unmoving at the bottom of the ocean.
This is not how Debian works … at … all.
Source: I’ve used it for 25 years.
Agreed. Pushing 20 years now myself. Miss debian-administration.com like Hell
what is the story on that domain why does it lead to a gambling site now
I’ve been told plenty of times that when I had bugs that weren’t getting fixed that “stability means no unexpected changes, not uptime, compile the package yourself if you need it fixed.”
There are plenty of examples of upstream projects asking debian to not package their stuff because they get bug reports for things that were fixed months ago.
Debian does not ship bugfixes. Debian only ships security fixes.
If something works, it’s not going to break. But if something doesn’t work, it’s not going to unless you fix it yourself by going outside of the official packages.
That’s bollocks. Bookworm has received 11 point release updates, and they were definitely not only security updates. Read through the the 12.1 release notes, for example. “Fix playing of custom alarm sounds” does not sound like a security fix, nor a severe issue.
Security updates are released frequently, often just days apart, to individual packages. https://www.debian.org/security/
Point release updates (12.1, 12.2, up to 12.11) are released several months apart. They are thoroughly tested and verified to work together.
Ok? “You only have to wait a few months for this crash to be resolved.” still doesn’t resolve people’s issues.
“Fix playing of custom alarm sounds” doesn’t sound like a severe issue to you, but it was also something that if someone needed, they were forced to wait a few months.
Debian would rather have broken custom alarm sounds for several months, even if it was fixed earlier. Fixing a bug to me lands closer to a security issue than “shipping bleeding edge feature sets”.
It ultimately means if something you need is broken for a non-security reason, it is not being fixed until the next point release. There is a fixed unit of time in which you know your problem will not be resolved.
Packages are individually updated for security fixes. Individual packages are NOT updated for bugfixes.
Did Debian hurt you or something? You’re just raging for the sake of rage.
I’ve also used Debian on my computer for decades and rarely did any application crash. It’s just not a thing. Well… I had FreeCAD crash regularly. But it did that for years and on any distribution. Other than that I did stuff on Debian all day every day and it was just fine.
I’m not raging and I’m not even saying that Debian is bad. I’ve just been told MANY times over the years (including on Lemmy), when I’ve commented about bugs and issues I’ve had on Debian, that stability doesn’t mean “without bugs, always upright” it means “not moving, not changing.”
Debian has a very specific use case. And when people say Debian is stable they mean the base platform isn’t going to change under you and suddenly a config file doesn’t work anymore because Package v2.0 uses a different format.
This is good for people who want a low maintenance system that won’t unexpectedly break due to a random Windows update.
This is good for probably the vast majority of people that fall under “normal” computing habits. If there was a major groundbreaking bug that affected everyone, it probably would have been caught in testing.
This is not good for people who have quirky computing needs or otherwise do things in slightly niche ways, IF a bug shows up. Some bugs are minor annoyances, some require different workflows to get around.
But ultimately, people should know that if they are experiencing an issue with Debian, and it’s not just a configuration issue, they either need to have a solution for themselves (recompiling), or switch distros.
I personally stopped using Debian for my desktop around linux 3.16 days, but I do still use it for my home servers (where I don’t want to be updating things constantly). If Debian works as a desktop platform for you, that’s awesome.
But OP was having issues with Debian. So OP should know that due to Debian’s unchanging nature, it will be quite a while before things start working. And they shouldn’t expect otherwise. And that’s ok, their use case is going to just be a bit more bleeding edge.
For fastest hardware support, you will want a rolling distribution like Arch (requires a do-it-yourself attitude) or OpenSUSE Tumbleweed (complete out of box, but some quirks, like missing codecs requires manual work). Fedora also has decent new hardware support, not rolling so not as good, but same problem as OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. You can also consider derivitives like CachyOS (Arch, but has a nice installer).
Ubuntu and Linux Mint have OK new hardware support. Twice a year they release new “hardware enablement upgrades” to bring new support.
And worst is Debian. They don’t do hardware ennoblement upgrades at all. It’s something you have to do yourself by using backports. They bring new hardware enablement by default with new releases every 2 years.
+1 for OpenSUSE Tumbleweed.
I had noob problems with so many distros, and Tumbleweed gave me the least problems getting started. Good GUI based control with Discover and YAST. OpenSUSE really doesn’t seem to get recommended enough.
I follow the channel OP linked and he’s had a similarly positive opinion of Tumbleweed (2 years ago).
You clearly have no idea what you are talking about. Debian stable is not the same as Debian testing or Debian unstable.
You want to run bleeding edge hardware, you’ll need to run bleeding edge software, which you’ll find in Debian unstable.
Debian unstable and Debian testing aren’t meant for daily use, I’m not sure why you’re even bringing them up.
That is demonstrably incorrect.
https://wiki.debian.org/DebianUnstable
Debian Unstable (also known by its codename “Sid”) is not a release, but rather the development version of the Debian distribution containing the latest packages that have been introduced into Debian. It is not a “rolling release”, as no release-like quality assurance and integration testing is done on it.
You need some amount of testing because packages do break, the 2 week testing window on arch is really important in making sure your pc can at least boot.
Debian is awesome. For servers. For desktop I would use something else that pushes updates more frequently.
My personal opinion ofcourse, use what you like!
Yours is the first comment in this thread that didn’t make me want to simultaneously upvote and downvote.
Pika… pika pi!
Pika… PikaOS?
Pika pi, pi ka, pi chyuu, pika ¡pi! pika chyuu.
Pika pika pi chyu chyu pika pi?
Translation:
Hey! If you like Debian, but want something a bit more cutting edge…
Have you heard of PikaOS?
Roughly, PikaOS is to Debian as Nobara is to Fedora.
Also, I am hungry, can you spare an onigiri?
I have to agree, rolling release distributions are the greatest recent development in desktop linux because they make the surface area for updates small (fewer packages more frequently, so if something breaks you have fewer places to look). Immutable distros make reverting a bad update foolproof.
I ran bazzite for a while but then my work changed their VPN endpoints to use oauth, which didn’t work on the openvpn2 version available. I switched back to Fedora (which updates pretty frequently, just not constantly) so I could install and use openvpn3. I’m sure I could have figured out a way to get it running by patching it into ostree, but that felt a bit like breaking the rules.
Debian is the underpinning for all of my homelab gear.
I’ve found CachyOS to be a good fit for me, sounds like I’m in a similar position to you.
Same here! It’s Arch-like in having the latest updates, but I’ve found it to be a lot easier and forgiving than “vanilla” Arch. Been running it for a while now and it’s been a great fit.
I would recommend Linux Mint for stable general purpose, or Bazzite as I see other people recommend it for more gaming oriented until SteamOS 3.0 comes out for desktop PC’s
