After I realized Ubuntu and Mint (the two distros I used the most) are both based on Debian, I switched to Debian with KDE Plasma. I don’t know why I never tried it before and I’m never going back.
The reason you’ve never tried it before is probably that they only recently made an effort to make it palatable for the average nerd. It always had a bit of a reputation of being not easy to work with.
It’s been fine for the average nerd for a couple decades. The installer has been mostly unchanged since 2005 or so, and I don’t see much difference in an installed system either. I think you can live boot it ahead of installation now, maybe that’s a big deal to some people?
It doesn’t work because the kernel is too old to support my new hardware (even though it’s not always that new).
Rather than trying to fix it, just install Kubuntu instead.
Failing to have graphics drivers for my gaming PC with a GPU I bought the day it launched is one thing, but Debian also failed to have WiFi drivers for the cheap N100 NUCs I bought for my kids the other day – with wifi hardware that’d been out for multiple years at this point – and that’s just ridiculous.
Kubuntu annoys me with Snaps, but it also Just Works in a way Debian unfortunately doesn’t.
After I realized Ubuntu and Mint (the two distros I used the most) are both based on Debian, I switched to Debian with KDE Plasma. I don’t know why I never tried it before and I’m never going back.
Yup that was me a few years ago. Its no longer the mid 2000s and stock debian can do pretty much anything right out the gate.
The reason you’ve never tried it before is probably that they only recently made an effort to make it palatable for the average nerd. It always had a bit of a reputation of being not easy to work with.
It’s been fine for the average nerd for a couple decades. The installer has been mostly unchanged since 2005 or so, and I don’t see much difference in an installed system either. I think you can live boot it ahead of installation now, maybe that’s a big deal to some people?
I’m glad they did, I like it since I was already used to the Debian way of doing things.
My typical Linux installation workflow:
Failing to have graphics drivers for my gaming PC with a GPU I bought the day it launched is one thing, but Debian also failed to have WiFi drivers for the cheap N100 NUCs I bought for my kids the other day – with wifi hardware that’d been out for multiple years at this point – and that’s just ridiculous.
Kubuntu annoys me with Snaps, but it also Just Works in a way Debian unfortunately doesn’t.