5 ms·

If you're looking for an alternative to Ubuntu but want to stick with a Debian-based distribution, I'll continue to recommend Debian testing. It's a rolling re

by ohazi 6y ago

If you're looking for an alternative to Ubuntu but want to stick with a Debian-based distribution, I'll continue to recommend Debian testing. It's a rolling release, so you don't have to stop what you're doing every 6 months - 3 years to install a huge update that changes the way everything works. It's more stable than the name would suggest, as long as you follow a few reasonable best-practices [1]. Software available on Debian testing is pretty up-to-date... If you're previously tried Debian stable but were put off by ancient packages, you won't see this in testing. Keep in mind that Debian testing (not stable) is upstream for Ubuntu's releases, so Debian testing's packages will be about as new as Ubuntu's packages on release day (but they're updated continuously, so they stay fresh). I have personal systems running Debian testing or unstable that have been running continuously for 5-10 years without issues. They don't look or feel any different than systems I set up a few months ago. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23044878 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23044878

wegs 6y ago
Is there any stable way to go Ubuntu -> Debian? I don't want testing. Stable is fine. I find each version of Ubuntu worse than the previous. It's change for the sake of change, and as in this case, something really thoughtful like .deb gets replaced with something which appears slapped together poorly. I just want a stable, working system, and Ubuntu seems to no longer be the way to have that.
- simcop2387 6y ago
  Best way is to backup your home directory and re-install. trying to do anything else is going to cause you far more headaches than anything could be worth. You may also want to keep some places like /var/lib/ if you have databases going, etc. I'd just do a complete backup and restore pieces as you find you need them.
- paines 6y ago
  Set your system up to have like 90% of the available disk space for /home. Rest is root. You can replace your whole system within half an hour.
  - lucb1e 6y ago
    Personally, and I'm not new to this, I find these partitioned setups to be quite a pain. On server systems I can see the point of limiting /var/log and /tmp and such, but on simple desktops, I only know of people dreading the decision to go with that historical setup instead of one big root.
    - morsch 6y ago
      It's been completely painless for me for years. I've got it set up pretty much exactly as the grandparent described: 50 GB partition mounted at /, 600 GB partition mounted at /home. The graphical installer has made this easy since ~forever. The only pain I can come up with is that I'm wasting about 20 GB, because the operating system doesn't actually need 50 GB. So maybe not a great solution for people who have to do with Laptop with a non-replaceable 128 GB SSD. But 20 GB is not a big deal to me. The upside is that I've done clean Ubuntu reinstalls two or maybe three times since then, and my data was a non-issue, just reassign the existing partitions and don't format /home. I'd estimate it takes rather less than the 30 minutes the paines refers to, and I always grin despite myself when Firefox restores the browser window as if nothing had happened.
    - simcop2387 6y ago
      When I do it, anymore I refuse to do it with standard partitions. LVM makes this whole setup much more painless in the end since you can nearly endlessly change the splits without dealing with copying and moving partitions around when a change is needed. I wouldn't recommend thin provisioning for this kind of setup though since it carries some burdens when things fill up.
darren0 6y ago
I tried going this route and the desktop experience was rough. Debian doesn't seem to have reasonable defaults for fonts so I spent way too much time learning and configuring all the font systems. So literally just the font configuration was enough for me to switch back to Ubuntu and just only install the stuff I like (no snap, gnome).
- wegs 6y ago
  I ran Debian for maybe 15-20 years before switching to Ubuntu. The first few weeks are rough. But once you get it configured up the way you like, it keeps on ticking for a decade with no announced changes or surprises. You front-load a lot of the work, but then productivity stays high. Those 15-20 years, it was the same Debian install. Everything else in the computer changed, but Debian kept on ticking. There was a while Debian was behind on supporting things like laptop power management and graphics cards, when I switched to Ubuntu. For a while, it was a more polished, user-friendly up-to-date Debian. That was nice. Now that Ubuntu re-invents the wheel each new release (and quite often, replacing a spoked, pneumatic-tired wheel with a square piece of wood), and hardware support is a little more standardized, I think it's time to switch back. It feels more like a tech gizmo, designed for Ubuntu developers, than an end-user OS.
- ohazi 6y ago
  Yeah, I remember this... fontconfig can be kind of a bear. Once you find a configuration that works for you, save your fonts.conf somewhere so you don't have to do it again. The Debian wiki page on fonts is helpful. The Arch wiki page is better, and most of it still applies: https://wiki.debian.org/Fonts https://wiki.debian.org/Fonts https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Font_configuration https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Font_configuration
- lucb1e 6y ago
  > Debian doesn't seem to have reasonable defaults for fonts When was this? I can confirm that it breaks from time to time but usually that means I haven't rebooted for four months and by restarting everything, it all works again. I never needed to dive into the font system at all while using Debian stable or testing in the past 5+ years with Cinnamon as DE. (Firefox, not from the repositories, being the exception where one might need to toggle gfx.canvas.azure.backends in about:config.)
ChrisSD 6y ago
Be aware that Testing may get security updates much later than Unstable or Stable. https://www.debian.org/security/faq#testing https://www.debian.org/security/faq#testing
- lucb1e 6y ago
  Does that actually happen in practice though? And as for the severity, we're talking desktops so the most critical piece of software is the browser. Firefox is the only piece of software I download outside of the repositories to make sure the updates come directly from the source, but other than that, openssh very rarely has serious vulnerabilities, to attack Thunderbird you'd already need to mitm my traffic... it's all rather unlikely.
  - ohazi 6y ago
    The only guarantee that the Debian project makes is that the stable branch is the security team's main priority. In practice, I've found that unstable and testing usually get patches pretty quickly.
  - ufo 6y ago
    It is particularly bad during the freeze before the new stable version comes out. Some updates can be delayed for months.
    - lucb1e 6y ago
      Also security updates? Wouldn't that make the new version insecure at launch until someone pushes a thousand security updates at once (making it kind of 'testing' again because none of these were in testing before and thus haven't been widely tested)? You raise a good point since I notice I don't know the process as well as I thought I did, but it seems odd that the frozen testing repo would only get all security updates all at once months later.
      - ufo 6y ago
        IIRC, Debian testing doesn't have a separate channel for security updates. Security updates are handled like regular updates: they start on Debian unstable and then flow down to Debian testing. The Debian wiki mentions that delays can be specially large after a new release comes out. I don't know if I was misremembering it or if it can be problematic both before and after a stable release comes out. Hopefully someone with more Debian experience can clear this up. https://www.debian.org/security/faq#testing https://www.debian.org/security/faq#testing
thebruce87m 6y ago
Can you use xfce as the window manager easily? Basically all I want is an LTE release of something with xfce or some other “plain” window manager.
- ohazi 6y ago
  Yes! It's what I use! :-) Just apt install xfce4 Most of the package names are the same between Ubuntu/Debian. Honestly, using testing just feels like using a "level headed boring adult" spin of Ubuntu. Instructions for installing or compiling XYZ for Ubuntu will typically work without modification on testing.
- ufo 6y ago
  The default Debian installer asks what desktop environment you want to use. XFCE is one of the options available.
jlgaddis 6y ago
> ... I'll continue to recommend Debian testing. I run the "unstable" branch, personally -- but I've been using Debian for ~22 years now. It's definitely not for everyone (and not for production!) but a lot of the "power users" here on HN would manage just fine with it. Just make sure to read the tips linked in the parent and the "Don't Break Debian" [0] page. --- [0]: https://wiki.debian.org/DontBreakDebian https://wiki.debian.org/DontBreakDebian
ComputerGuru 6y ago
Is there a way to get ZFS on Debian the same way as with Ubuntu (for someone that prefers text-based installers and is fine with an unsupported solution)? Debian has always had more ideological purity that got in the way of users being able to actually use their machine efficaciously.
- hhw 6y ago
  It's not about ideological purity, but about respecting the GPLv2. https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2016/feb/25/zfs-and-linux/ https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2016/feb/25/zfs-and-linux/ IANAL but Canonical's justification for the ZFS kernel module and Linux kernel being totally separate works, and the distribution itself not being a derivative work of GPLv2 seems dubious to me. https://blog.dustinkirkland.com/2016/02/zfs-licensing-and-linux.html https://blog.dustinkirkland.com/2016/02/zfs-licensing-and-li... Seeing as how the Software Freedom Conservancy believes this to be a GPLv2 violation, and Oracle could launch a lawsuit as a result of it also being a CDDLv1 violation, I think it's safe to say that it's not just ideological purity that factored into Debian's decision not to include ZFS.
  - ComputerGuru 6y ago
    No, I didn't mean ZFS in particular when I said that. See for example how long it took to get Debian to allow non-free drivers.
sascha_sl 6y ago
I'm avoiding Debian like the plague since finding out a bunch of packages (client ones too, like nfs-common[1]) pull in rpcbind, which has been bugged close to ten years to accidentally bind to all interfaces [2]. [1]: https://packages.debian.org/buster/nfs-common https://packages.debian.org/buster/nfs-common [2]: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=621807 https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=621807

by ohazi 6y ago

wegs 6y ago

Is there any stable way to go Ubuntu -> Debian? I don't want testing. Stable is fine. I find each version of Ubuntu worse than the previous. It's change for the sake of change, and as in this case, something really thoughtful like .deb gets replaced with something which appears slapped together poorly. I just want a stable, working system, and Ubuntu seems to no longer be the way to have that.

simcop2387 6y ago
Best way is to backup your home directory and re-install. trying to do anything else is going to cause you far more headaches than anything could be worth. You may also want to keep some places like /var/lib/ if you have databases going, etc. I'd just do a complete backup and restore pieces as you find you need them.
paines 6y ago
Set your system up to have like 90% of the available disk space for /home. Rest is root. You can replace your whole system within half an hour.
- lucb1e 6y ago
  Personally, and I'm not new to this, I find these partitioned setups to be quite a pain. On server systems I can see the point of limiting /var/log and /tmp and such, but on simple desktops, I only know of people dreading the decision to go with that historical setup instead of one big root.
  - morsch 6y ago
    It's been completely painless for me for years. I've got it set up pretty much exactly as the grandparent described: 50 GB partition mounted at /, 600 GB partition mounted at /home. The graphical installer has made this easy since ~forever. The only pain I can come up with is that I'm wasting about 20 GB, because the operating system doesn't actually need 50 GB. So maybe not a great solution for people who have to do with Laptop with a non-replaceable 128 GB SSD. But 20 GB is not a big deal to me. The upside is that I've done clean Ubuntu reinstalls two or maybe three times since then, and my data was a non-issue, just reassign the existing partitions and don't format /home. I'd estimate it takes rather less than the 30 minutes the paines refers to, and I always grin despite myself when Firefox restores the browser window as if nothing had happened.
  - simcop2387 6y ago
    When I do it, anymore I refuse to do it with standard partitions. LVM makes this whole setup much more painless in the end since you can nearly endlessly change the splits without dealing with copying and moving partitions around when a change is needed. I wouldn't recommend thin provisioning for this kind of setup though since it carries some burdens when things fill up.

darren0 6y ago

I tried going this route and the desktop experience was rough. Debian doesn't seem to have reasonable defaults for fonts so I spent way too much time learning and configuring all the font systems. So literally just the font configuration was enough for me to switch back to Ubuntu and just only install the stuff I like (no snap, gnome).

wegs 6y ago
I ran Debian for maybe 15-20 years before switching to Ubuntu. The first few weeks are rough. But once you get it configured up the way you like, it keeps on ticking for a decade with no announced changes or surprises. You front-load a lot of the work, but then productivity stays high. Those 15-20 years, it was the same Debian install. Everything else in the computer changed, but Debian kept on ticking. There was a while Debian was behind on supporting things like laptop power management and graphics cards, when I switched to Ubuntu. For a while, it was a more polished, user-friendly up-to-date Debian. That was nice. Now that Ubuntu re-invents the wheel each new release (and quite often, replacing a spoked, pneumatic-tired wheel with a square piece of wood), and hardware support is a little more standardized, I think it's time to switch back. It feels more like a tech gizmo, designed for Ubuntu developers, than an end-user OS.
ohazi 6y ago
Yeah, I remember this... fontconfig can be kind of a bear. Once you find a configuration that works for you, save your fonts.conf somewhere so you don't have to do it again. The Debian wiki page on fonts is helpful. The Arch wiki page is better, and most of it still applies: https://wiki.debian.org/Fonts https://wiki.debian.org/Fonts https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Font_configuration https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Font_configuration
lucb1e 6y ago
> Debian doesn't seem to have reasonable defaults for fonts When was this? I can confirm that it breaks from time to time but usually that means I haven't rebooted for four months and by restarting everything, it all works again. I never needed to dive into the font system at all while using Debian stable or testing in the past 5+ years with Cinnamon as DE. (Firefox, not from the repositories, being the exception where one might need to toggle gfx.canvas.azure.backends in about:config.)

ChrisSD 6y ago

Be aware that Testing may get security updates much later than Unstable or Stable. https://www.debian.org/security/faq#testing https://www.debian.org/security/faq#testing

lucb1e 6y ago
Does that actually happen in practice though? And as for the severity, we're talking desktops so the most critical piece of software is the browser. Firefox is the only piece of software I download outside of the repositories to make sure the updates come directly from the source, but other than that, openssh very rarely has serious vulnerabilities, to attack Thunderbird you'd already need to mitm my traffic... it's all rather unlikely.
- ohazi 6y ago
  The only guarantee that the Debian project makes is that the stable branch is the security team's main priority. In practice, I've found that unstable and testing usually get patches pretty quickly.
- ufo 6y ago
  It is particularly bad during the freeze before the new stable version comes out. Some updates can be delayed for months.
  - lucb1e 6y ago
    Also security updates? Wouldn't that make the new version insecure at launch until someone pushes a thousand security updates at once (making it kind of 'testing' again because none of these were in testing before and thus haven't been widely tested)? You raise a good point since I notice I don't know the process as well as I thought I did, but it seems odd that the frozen testing repo would only get all security updates all at once months later.
    - ufo 6y ago
      IIRC, Debian testing doesn't have a separate channel for security updates. Security updates are handled like regular updates: they start on Debian unstable and then flow down to Debian testing. The Debian wiki mentions that delays can be specially large after a new release comes out. I don't know if I was misremembering it or if it can be problematic both before and after a stable release comes out. Hopefully someone with more Debian experience can clear this up. https://www.debian.org/security/faq#testing https://www.debian.org/security/faq#testing

thebruce87m 6y ago

Can you use xfce as the window manager easily? Basically all I want is an LTE release of something with xfce or some other “plain” window manager.

ohazi 6y ago
Yes! It's what I use! :-) Just apt install xfce4 Most of the package names are the same between Ubuntu/Debian. Honestly, using testing just feels like using a "level headed boring adult" spin of Ubuntu. Instructions for installing or compiling XYZ for Ubuntu will typically work without modification on testing.
ufo 6y ago
The default Debian installer asks what desktop environment you want to use. XFCE is one of the options available.

jlgaddis 6y ago

> ... I'll continue to recommend Debian testing. I run the "unstable" branch, personally -- but I've been using Debian for ~22 years now. It's definitely not for everyone (and not for production!) but a lot of the "power users" here on HN would manage just fine with it. Just make sure to read the tips linked in the parent and the "Don't Break Debian" [0] page. --- [0]: https://wiki.debian.org/DontBreakDebian https://wiki.debian.org/DontBreakDebian

ComputerGuru 6y ago

Is there a way to get ZFS on Debian the same way as with Ubuntu (for someone that prefers text-based installers and is fine with an unsupported solution)? Debian has always had more ideological purity that got in the way of users being able to actually use their machine efficaciously.

hhw 6y ago
It's not about ideological purity, but about respecting the GPLv2. https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2016/feb/25/zfs-and-linux/ https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2016/feb/25/zfs-and-linux/ IANAL but Canonical's justification for the ZFS kernel module and Linux kernel being totally separate works, and the distribution itself not being a derivative work of GPLv2 seems dubious to me. https://blog.dustinkirkland.com/2016/02/zfs-licensing-and-linux.html https://blog.dustinkirkland.com/2016/02/zfs-licensing-and-li... Seeing as how the Software Freedom Conservancy believes this to be a GPLv2 violation, and Oracle could launch a lawsuit as a result of it also being a CDDLv1 violation, I think it's safe to say that it's not just ideological purity that factored into Debian's decision not to include ZFS.
- ComputerGuru 6y ago
  No, I didn't mean ZFS in particular when I said that. See for example how long it took to get Debian to allow non-free drivers.

sascha_sl 6y ago

I'm avoiding Debian like the plague since finding out a bunch of packages (client ones too, like nfs-common[1]) pull in rpcbind, which has been bugged close to ten years to accidentally bind to all interfaces [2]. [1]: https://packages.debian.org/buster/nfs-common https://packages.debian.org/buster/nfs-common [2]: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=621807 https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=621807