It’s my choice but Arch and its derivatives look like the trend like CachyOS which is #1 right now on visits on distrowatch. Also I’ve heard Google use Debian as gLinux and I feel many other giants also use it and sponsor it and I’m not comfortable choosing it as my distro. Can the sponsors togethwr with students or any other interested use it for their PCs, either coding or ordinary use? It strictly promotes free but worried about giants and sponsors.
I mean I run one arch machine but have 10 ish Debian machines.
it seems to be the most hassle free rock solid distro among the popular ones. i prefer slackware on my own systems though, but i’d install debian if someone asks me to install a linux distro on their system.
In my understanding, Linux distros have different flavors and play in different arenas. For instance, there are “community-driven” distros like Debian, Arch, or Gentoo, and there are other “industry-driven” distros that are developed by companies, such as Fedora or Ubuntu. Another aspect to consider is the support for new software. With Arch and similar distros you get support for bleeding edge software, whereas Debian supports more stable releases and officially supports older version of softwares that have been tested and reliable. Then there are a myriad of other things to consider, including the Desktop Environment, using X11 or Wayland, SystemD, support for graphics cards, etc…
I wouldn’t care much about who uses it, but about who takes the decisions. In this case, Debian has a very open system that you can check on their website. I think that corporate interests such as what Google or Microsoft want don’t have a space in the Debian decision-making processes. I tend to trust more the community-driven distros and stable releases, so Debian does the trick for me.
Debian on my server, my desktop, my laptop, and my gaming computer. That last one might be the most questionable choice, but so far it has been working well.
Just works. No issues.
DistroWatch isn’t an OS ranking system, its a “How many hits” or " “how many recent users claimed to use” a certain system.
This has no real correlation to actual deployed OS in the world.
It’s more of a buzz ranking; like a lot of people went to Debian recently because of Canonical being a less disrable OS builder. So Distrowatch got a ton of Debian searches at the beginning of that switch, but probably way less now.
My wife uses Debian and is very happy with it.
She uses it both for gaming and studio recordings with Ardour.Debian has for decades been among the most respected distros in the Linux world, and it still is.
If you want something solid, Debian should be your first choice.Good to know I just can’t help it cuz I hate Arch and CachyOS. I dont like their websites either.
Personally I prefer an Arch derivative, and neither of us can convince the other. 😋
However we both see the merits of “the other side”, we just have different preferences. But we also have some fun with it if some times. 😎debian has been my first choice since the 90s, but i use arch’s excellent wiki all the time.
She uses it both for gaming and studio recordings with Ardour.
How is the gaming experience on Debian nowadays? Last time I tried it (several years ago now), it was kind of a nightmare jumping through all of the various hoops required to get it to pay nicely with an Nvidia GPU.
Nvidia drivers do not always play nice with the kernel, and can disrupt high end audio use. If you use Linux you should use an AMD or Intel GPU.
My wife used to use Nvidia, because it worked better for some games, but she finally ended up getting pissed with the proprietary Nvidia drivers, and switched to AMD about a year ago. And now all her games that used to work with Nvidia drivers also work with AMD.
AFAIK Debian support Nvidia proprietary drivers reasonably well today, but for older Nvidia cards you may be out of luck, they can be a real shitshow to get to work if you want to use the proprietary driver.
Best option is to just stop using Nvidia on Linux!
We have all the servers at work using Debian. It’s rock solid. I use Tumbleweed on home PC and CachyOS on laptop as I do some gaming and having fresh packages might help this. Both works for me.
I use Debian on all my servers and virtual machines due to its slow update cadence and leanness.
Are you drunk?
I think the typo shaming around here has gotten kut of control
Heh. ISWYDT
It wasn’t actually that, it’s just such a dumb question to ask, and insulting as hell.
Pretty much anything I do is Debian, ive said it quite a bit before so this may be a repeat of previous comments, but…
Its solid, stable, easy to deploy with incredible flexibility and just about everything out there supports it. I do have a few boxes with arch, and they are also just fine - I wouldn’t use it as a server, personally, but its perfectly good for a “very current” approach to desktops/laptops.
I am a Debian man. All my systems are Debian or Debian based. It just works!
Same here. I got installation media for Potato from a friend of a friend and I’ve been a happy user ever since. There’s been other stuff on my hardware too, and even now there’s (at least) LMDE and Bazzite around, but when I need a system which just works it’s Debian.
Good to know. It’s my distro choice.
I tried Debian when I built my PC back in 2025. It didn’t have any support for the bleeding edge parts I chose.
I then tried LMDE as a compromise. It also didn’t have the support I needed.
It’s a little too stable for my use-case… but runs well on my older laptops.
Maybe Debian is not for gaming?
Nah, this wasn’t an issue with gaming. This was just that the parts were new. The motherboard I chose used a 2024 chipset that Debian didn’t recognize. Basic stuff like detecting drives and outputting video beyond VESA standards was busted because of it. It took around 6 more months until Trixie came out with support.
I currently use LMDE, yes. I just have spent too much time on the programs I already installed to move on from it I guess. Nothing’s come up. It Just Works™ and the wife loves it
Heard some stuff about them introducing bugs via the downstream patching system though? All that package management stuff is a bit over my head.
debian on servers all the way, since 2000
It sounds like you’re concerned with EEE: embrace, extend, extinguish. While that might be a problem for centralized pieces of software, who are dependent upon revenue streams, core distros like Debian, Arch, Fedora, and openSUSE are developed and maintained by the community (and sponsors).
If sponsors all pulled their funding tomorrow, the projects would not suddenly cease to get updates. By extension, sponsors don’t get special seats at the table just for being a sponsor; it’s not some corporate buy-in where they get 5% voting share for donating $1M to fund hobbyists to work on the code full-time. Likewise, they don’t have special push access to inject “features” (read: enshittification) into the codebase that will eventually hamstring the code. Somebody would notice a bad pull-request and say something.
And even if they miraculously did, the codebase is open source. There are enough motivated people in the world who would fork the code into something free and open again. It’s one of the biggest strengths of FOSS.
Sponsorships help the development happen faster, but sponsors are not the drivers of Linux—we are. Choose the distro you like, and enjoy!
Then why sponsor?
As a sidenote, you might be asking why sponsors would give money to these projects:
- Tax write-off. Many projects are governed by nonprofits, and giving to them gives businesses a tax break.
- They get a better codebase for their own use. If they invest money, they’ll also be getting volunteer labor for free, so it’s win-win.
