Help support the channel and get great merch! shop.thelinuxcast.org for shirts, hoodies, caps and more!

My favourite distro. For me, stability is everything. I don't need the latest and greatest software.

Debian being "boring" is exactly what I love about it. It's the most stable Linux distribution IMHO. Rock-solid, indeed! :)

Kudos to Debian for putting the "Screenshot" button on the installer screens! This is helpful for newbies or anyone that has questions about installing or wants to investigate after installing.

Stable: The production version of Debian. Updates are usually security patches and critical bug fixes. Testing: Contains packages being tested for stability and compatibility. A preview for what will become the next Stable. Lots of people run this as a daily driver. Unstable: AKA "Sid," where new and updated packages are introduced. Not for production. suggested users: Devs and pkg maintainers -but lots of us normies run it. Debian isn't a distro I currently run, but it's probably the distro I respect the most.

Just waiting for LMDE 6 to be released nd you doing the review

Debian Stable is the one distro that made my distrohopping issues go away. Kudos to the team, Debian 12 is nothing short of great.

Great video as always, Matt!

excellent review

I remember two minute start up times on my family's first PC. A throwaway my dad brought home with windows 95 still on it.

Thanks Matt, Debian is so great for single purpose backend setups, I've had setups run for years with no interaction besides checking for updates here and there with extreme low worry about something breaking. Good video dude, :)

Man, You really hit the nail on the head with this one. You dispelled many Debian myths and misconceptions. By giving a clear and accurate overview of what to expect with SW availability, outdated versions and possible solutions (Flatpak, Distrobox). The extra attrition with BTRFS, bluetooth being finnicky I can confirm has been a Debian issue for quite a while. Most important of all the target users for it. Great Job!

Linux poster on the wall,your nerdiness far exceeds mine, well done.

Great review, very detailed and its clear you know your stuff and have a real passion for this stuff. Was on the fence on whether or not to use Debian as distro on work machine and you made the decision easy to make

Thanks! Really liked the review.

thank you for that in-depth review

Been on debian forever and didn't know about the dedicated forum page, thank you.

Debian was the first Distro that I loved back in the Debian 9 days. My tastes and preferences have changed since then. However, if stability and reliability were my main concerns, Debian would be my distro of choice.

Thanks, really helpful. With future state of Leap heading towards immutable containerized camp, I think Debian stable is the best fit for my use.

Absolutely fell in love with debian it ended my distro hopping. Its stable and works great on all my computers. I dont usually need the latest and greatest software but when I do I can build from source, find a .deb file, or use flatpak. Now if i could just find a DE to stick with. KDE? GNOME? XFCE?... There are so many to play with.

Debian has 4 pockets: Stable (or the codename of the last released version), Testing (or the codename of the next version; will continue to roll until the next version is released), Unstable (is also Sid and it always rolls) and Experimental (Which is literally what the name is, it's not a complete repo like the others but more like an addition to Unstable where things really get into it really fast and go when it lands to Unstable.)

Nice, thorough look at Debian. Not just a quick run around the bases but a genuine experience. Loved it. I've used Debian for so long that many of the reasons I chose it in the early 2000's are no longer particularly relevant and now I'm just so comfortable I can get it to do everything I want while maintaining a stable server, functional workstation, or more bleeding edge gaming experience I don't often look elsewhere. I think your long term review series here (with other distros) will likely spark that interest to check out others. Excellent work.

Great review. I switched to Debian based on some of your earlier review. I had previously been on Manjaro for a few years. The only thing I've had problems with is the native steam and element apps audio not working between the sound and microphone. The web app of Element worked great. I think Chrome may have had the permissions to the microphone locked down.

Great review! Longterm Debian fan and MX main here. Having very few updates is one of the main reasons I use Debian or non-Ubuntu Debian based distros. It's just super-comfy to use and doesn't require much maintenance. The boot taking a very long time might be because of file system checks during startup. But you'd easily see that from the logs and it shouldn't happen too often.

Excellent review. Thanks.

great was looking for a os just to run a 3 bits of software and that is it. i dont like to play about with the os and im not one for change. Debian fits, your review was spot on and answered all my questions. big thanks

Great video! Running debian for a long time as I prefer stability over latest packages and as you say single programs can be pinned or you can get them through flatpaks or even snaps. I changed however from Gnome to KDE as it supports better my workflow. I'm running also dual monitor and had issues with them going to sleep. I found hower that switching off source detection on the monitor solved that issue. Another thing I noticed that looking at sleep modes, that suspend to ram was not there only S2idle and Deep. By enabling deep sleep mode in the bios it works like a charm with the energy settings in KDE. It seems to me where it comes down to dual monitor setup that the scan takes place from both ends, the monitor and the system and conflict, however I'm not an expert on that.

Great review of a great distro! I'm so amused that we both like the same distros. I only moved to Debian because I wanted something more community-based rather than corporate. It's been a great experience so far. Definitely not for new users, but if you know your way around and have the ability to do a little research, it's a fantastic option to use. I'm going to try and stick around for an entire release cycle to see if it works for me even when the packages are years out of date.

Thanks for the review. Not sure if the guys on Debian watched your video but I installed it last week and I was able to setup btrfs through the normal installation that you showed at the beginning of the video. I haven't checked out yet how to setup sub volumes or such but my system is running well with the basic btrfs on all partitions.

Hey Matt, I'm so happy I discovered your channel! You are extremely thorough in your reviews regarding Linux and I can tell you put great care into crafting your content. Glad you reminded me about Hearthstone... I don't think I'll return to ladder (I played many years ago at the peak of Pirate Warrior, Handlock, Face Hunter, the Mage Deck with the Giants...) but the Bartender Bob Battlegrounds mode is so fun! I got absorbed so much when I switched to Arch. Unfortunately I chose it as my first distribution, so you can imagine how much of my time it garbled up :D Keep up the awesome content, I'm looking forward to seeing what else you make! :)

Great review! Debian is very stable (I once made a Spongebob "Ol'Reliable" meme about Debian, didn't realize how right that was) and to be honest I feel that it's stability is it's greatest strength. I installed Debian on my potato Hewlett Packard all-in-one desktop from 2018 and it runs pretty fluid. I chose XFCE because of my hardware limitations and it works well (plus I've used XFCE in the past and loved it because it's lightweight). I tried Nala because of this video and was so impressed that I think it's better than apt and pretty close to pacman. Yes, the software isn't bleeding edge, but with my potato desktop it doesn't need to be. I think Debian is where I'm going to stay for a while. Keep up the great work, Matt!

Some clarification regarding PIP, it's not blocked by any system. Warning says you must use python-venv and pipenv basically a containerised dev environment. So the PIP packages won't cause any issue with host system. It's a python thing since 3.3 if i remember correctly. But you can still use it, ignore warning and install packages in host system = and wait for disaster. :D Distros didn't care about it and it was bypassed by most of them for years. I use Debian stable for main system stuff etc, all aps I get from flatpak or backports. Fantastic combo.

Been daily driving Debian Unstable Trixie/sid for the last few weeks. Haven't had any problems. They've even started rolling out Gnome 45 to it too.

Thanks Matt. This was really great, in depth review. Sometimes I wonder if I would be happy with Debian and Flatpaks, but then I remember that they are usually severely outdated on the desktop environment front. I prefer Fedora. Or my second choice, openSUSE Tumbleweed.

Good long term review.

I've been using LMDE 6 for about the past week and love it. I am not big on always having to update my system so like the fact there is very little updates.

44:40 Very well done. Thank you very much.

"Debian is boring" this is the greatest endorsement I could've heard for my use case. Cheers!

I saw a comment from someone involved who said the installer is that way because it needs to be able to tun on some weak hardware liker embedded or something with like 12Mb of video memory or RAM or something. That makes sense as Debian needs to think about Servers all the time.

Instead of pinning unstable, you can also use backports as well. Not as many packages available, but it's less likely to cause issues and better supported

I also ran into a similar multi-monitor KDE issue, I personally solved it by creating a shell script to set the appropriate monitor states by calling the “kscreen-doctor” CLI utility, then for convenience adding a keyboard shortcut so I can trigger that script whenever the monitor issues do crop up. It’s not ideal and would be much nicer if issues didn’t happen, but it’s certainly a lot less painful of a workaround than opening system settings each time to fix things.

Super helpful review for a Linux newbie like me. Reading and listening around for a while, I sort of had a idea of Debian, but this gave a more compolete picture of what it is about. For me who is looking to set up a stable and predictable working machine Debian seem pretty spot on. Most of the software I use for work is not very updated anyway (same goes for the user BTW :) so not having the latest and greatest sound relaxed and safe for me. Thanks!

Nice job!

For python stuff you can always use virtual environments. There is a lot of ways to do it, I like using miniconda with the forge repos. It's easy to create/recreate environments using yml files. Pip packages can also be installed from the yml file.

On Debian 12 I recently switched from using Debian Sid/Unstable in a Distrobox container to using an Arch Linux Distrobox container. Absolutely slaps as a combination.

@44:50 you should be a chad and just say that you deserve a thumbs up if not more. You did put in 5mo of work after all lol ty, the vid was great

When you record a video so fluid and streamlined that the editing is nier.

Also you can configure PIP to be exactly like it was before the "system breaking" thing. The pip-dot-conf file either under etc or your XDG config dir is your friend.

Great video and channel.

Whenever i think of a Linux user, i think of this guy. Man definitely looks like one. Thank you for the awesome content. 😎

Debian stable is my go-to distro for running a home server. It's so stable I sometimes forget it's even there

Very good channel.

I love Debian, I use it on all my servers and recently started using it as my daily driver because of gaming (Crazy, I know right?). I started having issues getting Day of Defeat: Source to launch and after doing some digging it turned out to be a bug in a library. This bug currently exists in all Arch and Ubuntu based distros as I tested a few. Then it hit me that Debian probably would be running the older version of the library file due to how they hold back packages and sure enough. Boom! I'm back in my favourite game. Just a coincidence, but this happened on September 15th (The 30th anniversary of the first release). I thought it was cool that all my machines were running Debian or a variant of it on that day.

I'm so glad that debian has kept it's installer. It's not flashy but works and works well! Yes, LXDE is supported!

Nice review, one nitpick is ABI stability is different from OS reliability, also try out Debian unstable/sid.

I tried Debian on an older laptop. My first foray into Debian. Took like 2 hours to install. Immediately had an issue with airplane mode being stuck on. The fix was to run RFkill - which wasnt installed. I rebooted and got passed that first issue temp. Tried to install some apps and got a error asking me to switch a CD. Learned VI and edited a file to fix that, took maybe 15 min. Started downloading some more software. During this time the laptop went into sleep mode. When it came back up it was stuck in airplane mode again.. I have had enough of Debian and will avoid in the future.

great review

I have only had Debian Stable install on my ThinkPad I bought four years ago as new. It is amazing if you don't need the newer stuff. But if you do, testing and unstable aren't the best options, because in the end they weren't made to be used as a daily drive, although I didn't have any issues usind Debian Sid on my PC for 2 months.

I'm on Debian with BTRFS and yeah, I had to learn about it to install it ...but it's GREAT!

Excellent review! Thanks Matt!

i had issues with the controller on kde. but it ended up just working when i turned it back on. thats a bluetooth xbone controller. also if i remember correctly i had to use gdebi to install the vivaldi deb package

I always run pulseaudio not pipe, mainly because my audio box for music production doesn't play well with any other alternatives. Are you able to run pulseaudio on deb?

Can you do a little tutorial on how to install Qtile on Debian? Tried it myself but struggling. There's nothing on UKposts.

Novice new linux user from windows.... I love mint, great video and look forward to a solid Mint LMDE but I might try Debian.

You can mount over ssh, using fuse and sftp? There is also NFS, no?

Debian's great and all, but nowadays I've found Manjaro Cinnamon to be the combo that just works and stays out of my way. The package update frequency is perfect imo.

pip is blocked for security? I just remember, that it is blocked by default to install python packages system wide for stability reasons. You can force it or adapt to start the software from the path under you user home.

if you are using a Window manager you are most likely used to command line and it's easy to install Debian without desktop environment and then add your own stuff. That's what I do when I install my customized openbox "DE". mostly because I don't like that Debian installs libreOffice by default (I don't want no office stuff). IMO it would be better to run Stable Debian and using Flatpak for more recent applications. Because using testing/unstable applications may be compiled using a newer toolchain

I tried using Btrfs with linux, and every time I tried doing a previous restores, I lost Linux and had to reinstall it all the time. Could you please tell me if you hava a video on how to use btrfs because all the videos I have tried did not work.

Why don't you try dual boot setup? One for stability and the other for rolling release?

I needed to host a Discord bot locally (don't want to pay to host it). I have an old laptop that I thought I could run it on. My go to was Debian specifically for it's stability. Bot's been running for months with no issues. Thanks Debian!

Device drivers are part of the kernel package, and even Ubuntu doesn't come with the latest kernel enabled by default so try updating the kernel before switching to Fedora to have a working device but ugly greeter.

You speak very well thank you

Debian unstable has the most recent packages how can it be behind arch and gentoo? Edit: Never mind I thought you were talking about unstable/sid.

17:00 actually there is a Stable, Testing, Unstable (Sid), And Experimental branch. So when you Say you've been calling it "unstable" by mistake. That's actually a thing as well. One thing to keep in mind, the "Security" repo only applies to the Stable branch. You may or may not get zero day patches if you're on one of these other branches. Also Debian does have an "Unattended Upgrades" Option. You install the package, give it permission, and it sets up a cron job and will auto update the whole system for you. I have my mother's computer setup this way. I haven't touched it in 2 years. Still working fine. Also Pipewire is only on by default in the Gnome version. If you're using KDE you're on pulse. Even though Pipewire is mostly installed. Just FYI.

I have finally come to appreciate debian stable. I do not need weekly updates. Im now using debian gnome and ungoogled chromium. Both clean source. I am coming off a long 4 years of kde plasma kick. If i was to use anything else it would be Arch and no derivatives. Im sure i will be putting it on boxes soon. I tested out ubuntu to see gnome 45 and i am content with 43.6 from debian, but as time goes on it will be tempting to move to TESTING.

i was a wanderer i tried every distro out there but some thing or the other is lacking in each distro then last went with debian 12 but i need some what latest packages then switched to testing and its been 3 months this is the first time i stayed on a distro i love debian

I love Debian. I want an O.S. with a big repository of packages that I install and runs and keeps running because I have work to do.

I have the same issue with bluetooth controllers on Arch Linux, I seriously have no idea why there's no sort of documentation of people experiencing this issue since this wasn't even the first time this happened as it also occurred on Ubuntu but did work on Fedora.

My first distro is D12. I've noticed that it's a good newbie distro, especially for those that are not comfortable using the terminal. But if you are comfortable using the terminal, it's a bit of a pain. Especially in regard to pip (installing python libraries) and some other admin related features. I also have an issue with bluetooth on D12, very similar to what you described in your video, so it's not just you. Again, I don't see this is the go-to distro for developers, but it's perfect for the generic user.

Great review of one of my favorite distros (I'm on LMDE btw). Some points I thought to share after watching the whole video: 1. I think the qtile installation issue you mentioned is with the python/pip guys being extra careful not to have conflicts with python packages shipped by the distro. So if you want to install packages from pip you now have to pass in an ominous looking flag that says "break system packages" or something along those lines. 2. I was surprised to see you use Samba for network file sharing while NFS exists and is faster/better in every way on Linux. Of course this is assuming you don't have Windows machines on the network. 3. I think you mentioned this, but it was confusing to refer to testing as unstable. testing and unstable are completely different branches. The current testing branch is based on debian 13 (trixie) while unstable is always called sid. I know there are many youtubers like Chris Titus and others who advise to use testing branch if people want a rolling release debian or more up to date packages but I would not recommend it as testing currently does not receive timely security updates. So if you want the latest software and the latest security updates as soon as they're available (which is really important for zero day CVEs like the recent one for WebP images) then you should use unstable/sid.

I'm also an openSUSE fanboy, except I haven't signed up to be one. I've been using it since 11.4 if not earlier. I was using it with KDE 3, watched the PR disaster when they went to KDE 4 until it stabilized, watched again when it went to KDE 5. I haven't customized it like I could, but that's a me problem. I'm more autistic than artistic. I also have Debian as a vm in virtualbox. I'm going to be exploring how I want to design my systems going forward, i.e. start using flatpaks instead of distro versions. I already have a number of appimages, which I love, mainly for portability, but dislike that many appimages are no longer being kept up to date. I'm so old school, I remember the OG gaming consoles where the game came as a cartridge and everything you needed software-wise to play it was in the cartridge. It couldn't be updated. It can be shared between like consoles. I am waiting for the day that the kernel and related tools are bundled as an appimage and boot from that.

testing is the next release candidate for Debian 13 (Trixie). Unstable does exist - sid - the kid that breaks toys in Toy Story. Mixing distribution candidates really isn't recommended.

One thing's for sure - this review will still be up to date! I like Debian, but mainly as a base. Prefer something downstream (Mint, PopOS) or adjacent (Manjaro). I often use newer hardware, which is finicky (even Mint required a non-default kernel to work with my motherboard).

+1👍 💪 i've upgraded in-place, from Debian 8 through Debian 11 on my WORK computer. (yes, PC that old 😹) soon it shall be time for 12.

I don't care about how modern the installer is. It works fine. Now in terms of being newbie-friendly? Well, that's where it could use some help. Even if Debian used Calamares, they'd still want to keep the text-based installer because so many of us use it for setting it up as a server which doesn't need a gui installer.

xfce's whole thing is that it was made for stuff from last century

I used Debian Xfce for a while, but I don't like Xfce anymore, so KDE Neon. Latest KDE stuff with LTS base. I don't need rolling like for instance Tumbleweed, because the main stuff I use is Thunderbird and Firefox. I always use the tarballs, which are already the latest versions.

Debian 'Testing' (via SparkyLinux or Spiral Linux) is my second chose, very close to first one: 'Tumbleweed' (via Gecko Linux)

I think I recognize a Dualshock 4 from the "Wireless Controller" label. It's worth noting that there are a huge number of counterfeit Dualshock 4s in circulation. These counterfeits can't connect to Linux via Bluetooth, only via USB. This could be the reason for this failure. Dualshock 4s also require additional bluez packages, so perhaps one or two were missing. But then, you seem to know your stuff, so I guess you already knew. Thanks for this video, I really enjoyed it.

debian sid is rock solid I'm loving it

I agree with your choice of Debian. I am a dedicated Debian fan. I have found that Debian 12 with the latest KDE makes the Debian12 the best, in my opinion of course!

Testing, I feel, does have a place in general user land as well. I guess one audience in people who want Ubuntu without Canonical's increasingly-controversial influence. I just went whole-hog into Stable after being dissatisfied with Mint, but I do understand that not everyone wants the "stability at all costs" approach, and so testing could be a decent balance.

Hey man, I want to ask how to install the lsb package for printer driver installation. The lsb-compat package is no longer available for download in the Debian package. Thanks.

Debian is great if you have two to three gen back hardware or as is the case right now, match your newish hardware to a new Debian release.

Speaking of OpenSUSE, have you heard of slowroll?

I installed Debian on my main machine after 5+ years of using Arch. I am looking at my screen already on at my work laptop so I wanted to minimize my time doing maintanance. While Debian is easier to install than Arch, (in fact its a breeze if you choose the calamares installer iso), its not easier to set up than Arch. Many new users will have problems in the beginning and may even screw up a config or two. I use btrfs for both snapshotting (timeshift) and incremental incremental backups (btrbk). For me it's not such a scare, as with Arch it has to be done similarly and considering you spend a bit of time setting up your machine that has support for 5 years, is not that bad really

Yea, it took me about 15 minutes to find the ISO download from the Debian website. They had it hidden well, but not well enough!

Gnome desktop is the one checked by default if we don't install another desktop environment during the installation process. Me, I've checked and installed Cinnamon desktop but I didn't uncheck the default Gnome desktop. Is that OK if I have 2 desktop environment? Is there a problem with that cause my system is working perfectly. It's so stable! It's been more than 2 weeks now that I'm using Debian 12 in my second internal disk of my PC and I have to say, it's the best Linux distro ever for me!

The default desktop (for those that are wondering) is GNOME.