Debian 10.4 (opens in new tab)

I use both gentoo and debian. I find it hard for either one to replace the other. I can't let go of the control gentoo gives me and as you noted the smooth and stable binary based debian let's you get the job done fast with little hustle. I try to mix and match, using gentoo as a minimalist and debian as a full blown desktop or prod network(http,etc...) server.

Ubuntu is based on Debian so things such as the way to install applications and the variety of applications available are very similar especially when compared to Fedora, Arch and others which use different package managers.

Main difference you might notice on Debian 10.4 vs Ubuntu 20.04 is that the default Gnome on Debian is a couple of versions behind. Debian only updates security patches rather than new releases between main Debian version releases (10.4 is more like a security update rather than a major new release). You would have to run Debian Testing or Debian Unstable/Sid in order to get the same Gnome version (3.36) as on Ubuntu 20.04.

Other than that there are no Snaps enabled/installed by default (you can install/enable them yourself if you choose to do so) and Debian Gnome is the way the Gnome developers intended it without any extra extensions and customization done (Ubuntu comes with several extensions and other customization enabled by default). You can install these manually yourself if you choose to do so.

Do remember to pick the non-free (as in it includes non-free firmware) ISO from Debian's website as chances are your WiFi won't work if you go with the official free software only ISO.

If you go with the NetInst ISO you can install minimal Gnome which comes without any additional software (untick everything on the last step, log in when the install is finished and then install gnome-core using apt install gnome-core).

I can't stand gnome3 on Ubuntu. It's just dysfunctional and slow in so many ways. I could expand on that, but lets just say I had installed 19.10 in Feb for testing, and when I occasionally switched back to using my old notebook (with 16.10 and Unity), which I had to to search files since 19.10 doesn't find anything, I was shocked how much faster and usable it is. And while Ubuntu offers other flavours (Lubuntu, Xubuntu, etc.), once you leave the mainstream setup, you can as well use something else altogether since you're loosing the network effect and QA through crowd-testing that Ubuntu has anyway. Mandatorily updating Snap packages on 20.04 were the last straw for me, as I'm having no use for such a setup; as developer working with multiple customers and customer data, and often times from remote and not-so-well connected spots, I absolutely need to be in control of what SW is on my system so I decided I'll go back to using Debian proper (Devuan, specifically, so I can also get rid of SystemD).

Well the packages in Ubuntu are newer than those in Debian 10. Ubuntu also makes some usability upgrades to GNOME that Debian doesn't out of the box.

One nice thing about Debian is they don't try to push snaps on you. Nowadays you can also use Flatpak get get more up to date apps on it.

I moved away from Ubuntu to Debian, four ideological reasons, roughly a decade ago, when Ubuntu started to do crazy UI changes, and included ads in the OS (I don't know if this is still the case).

Debian on xfce4 also works fast on my old laptop (and my new laptop).

No ads in your MOTD

Debian is my go to dist for older equipment e.g. I have Kodi running on a 15yo laptop w Debian 9.

Not really.

So your point is that a .x release is a minor, point release? Isn't that obvious by itself?

For me it was: Redhat-> Slackware -> FreeBSD -> Debian

I should probably donate

Hear! hear!

You can avoid installing non-required dependencies by adding the following (based on your preferences and/or use case) to a file in the /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/ directory:

  APT::Install-Recommends "false";
  APT::Install-Suggests "false";

Alternatively, you can do as pengaru suggested and the pass "--no-install-recommends" and/or "--no-install-suggests" parameters when installing packages, as described in the apt-get man page [0].

---

[0]: https://manpages.debian.org/buster/apt/apt-get.8.en.html

--no-install-recommends

You can’t even install a GUI without getting every web browser, mail client, office suite, and more under the sun.

I built a PC in 2005 with an Nvidia graphics card and ran Debian on it exclusively. I had a lot of trouble with that graphics card over the years, but that wasn't caused by Debian, but rather by Nvidia, because they did neither offer nor even support open source drivers. My conclusion was to not buy any Nvidia product again, until they offer proper open source drivers for it. Since I retired this PC I haven't owned any Nvidia product anymore and I couldn't be happier. Sure the drivers for other graphics cards aren't perfect either, but at least I don't have to deal with binary blobs anymore where nobody except of the manufacturer can fix issues.

Well, it's hardly a new issue.

Hardware support and lack of polishing has always been an issue in the Linux world and all distributions have suffered from it one way or another.

Having spent quite a lot of time in the past on this kind of issues, I do sympathize.

But from my experience, things actually tends to get a bit better now days, for example, I'm far less cautious about avoiding Broadcom ethernet and wifi cards as they generally tends to work out of the box today (even if I still prefer Intel for these).

Fighting hardware/default configuration issues is unfortunately be part of the game, but in my experience, it's a game I play less and less often.

it really is.

thank you to the team for a great OS and for keeping the spirit of ian murdock alive.

the tough decision for me right now on my laptop, is whether to use MX Linux, which has been great the last few years, or this Linux Mint Debian Edition, which i've been trying since the latest release and is very nice.

My first Debian was also Slink, installed from a box of floppies onto a 486. Had to use rawrite to put the disk image onto the floppies. That box of floppies is still around here somewhere, though the 486 is long gone.

Snap. It's only the last year I chucked away my slink, potato and woody CDs.

I had terrible problems with NFS and systemd. In fact, when testing Ubuntu 20.04 in a VM, the problems are still there even today. It's not freezing on boot as regularly, but it's still unpredictable and often freezes on shutdown.

Younglings...

0.93r5