1y ago

Switched from Ubuntu to Debian yesterday

Why switch?

I played with the idea of switching for quite a while. Having switched my daily driver from Windows maybe 6-9 Months ago I made many mistakes in the meantime.

Good and bad

This may have led to a diminshed experience with ubuntu but all in all, I was very pleased to see that Linux works as a daily driver. Still, I was unhappy with the kind of dumbed down gnome experience.

Problems

There were errors neither I nor people I asked could fix and the snap situation on ubuntu (just the fact that they’re proprietary, nothing else).

Installation

Installing debian (and kde) was easier and harder than I expected. The download mirror I used must not have been great although its very close to my location because it took ages although my internet connections is good.

Apps

Since I switched to Linux, I toned down my app diet a lot. Installing all my apps from ubuntu was as easy as writing a short list and going through discover. Later I added flatpak which gave me a couple apps not available through discover (such as fluffychat). The last two I copied directly as appimages.

Games

I was scared that the „old kernel“ of stable debian would be a problem. As it turns out, everthing works great so far, a lot better than on ubuntu which might or might not be my fault.

Instability

Kde does have some quirks that irritate me a bit like installing timeshift (because I tried network backups which dont work with it and the native backup solution does not seem to accept my sambashare) led to a window I could only close by rebooting.

Boot time

What does feel a bit odd is the boot process. After my bios splash, it shows „welcome to grub“ and then switches to the debian start menu for 3 seconds or so, then shows some terminal stuff and then starts kde splash and then login. This feels a lot longer than ubuntu did. Its probably easy to change in some config but its also something that should be obvious.

Summary

So far I‘m incredibly happy although I ran into initramfs already probably because of timeshift which I threw out again. I might do a manual backup if nothing else works. My games dont freeze or stutter which is nice. All apps I had on ubuntu now work on debian and no snaps at all.

TL;DR: If you feel adventurous, debian and kde are a pretty awesome mix and rid you of the proprietary ubuntu snap store. It also doesnt tell you that you can get security upgrades if you subscribe to ubuntu pro. Works the same if not better.

145 comments

Ubuntu is a great gateway distro. When I dumped Windows back in the Windows 10 days, Ubuntu made it an easy transition, time elapsed and there were things that didn't work right that I found frustrating. I eventually ended up trying out Fedora and the rest was history. I'm glad you found a good fit for you.
- These days, Linux mint should be recommended for people coming from windows. I rate their desktop environment and intuitive style better and faster understandable for people coming from windows compared to ubuntu. If a person always wants the newest stuff recommend OpenSuse Tumbleweed now, since it a is rolling distro but very stable and you don’t have to use Terminal at all, there.
  
  I can see why you would recommend it. For me though, it's too close to the Windows UX. I try and make people break away from what they know in order to have the cleanest transition.
- I agree. It was a good gateway for me as well. We will see if debian is the end but so far it looks promising.
  One thing I do find odd in my linux experience is that I find myself wanting to track down every last bug in my system (fruitless most likely). It has bothered me in ubuntu and now with debian I also want pretty much no warnings in my syslog if possible. We‘ll see if that works.
  
  The fact that you report bugs you find makes you nothing short of a legend.
  
  Many of my graphic applications spit out warnings on terminal about dbus not responding, because it never runs, neither do logind, but everything works for me. I don't pay attention!
  @hauilemmy @sabreW4K3
- It used to be at least, but I'm not so sure that it still is. I've been using Linux full time for over a decade, mostly Xubuntu but also other distros and vanilla Ubuntu. Last year my wife decided that she wanted to ditch Windows for good so we installed Xubuntu on her pc, her netbook and our new htpc, and I was surprised that we ran into so many different issues. I could solve some of them but I think it would be much more difficult for a first time Linux user, and potentially give them a bad first impression of Linux OS:es.
  
  What kind of issues did you run into if you don't mind me asking? I jumped ship from Ubuntu just when they started with the snap nonsense, so things I found egregious, like them dropping Unity, aren't really valid in the grand scheme of things.
- Devils advocate here, but what makes Ubuntu a great gateway distro nowadays?
  When Ubuntu came out it had a graphical installer and UI improvements allowed users to do more without the terminal. I feel like at some point other distros caught up and Unity was the unique selling point. Then canonical became more focused on the server and killed Unity. I am not sure what is the selling point of Ubuntu as a desktop in 2024.
  This all comes from my personal experience of Ubuntu being my main distro for 10+ years. But when I started distro hoping I realized there wasn’t much difference between Ubuntu and other distros nowadays.
  
  It still has FAT32 support. I think that's the last thing.
- Things have changed since those days fam. For example, if you install Steam on Ubuntu (snaps) today it's highly likely to break. If you want a solid Ubuntu recommendation go with the downstreams: Mint, PopOS, etc.
  
  I would argue that no one should install any snaps.
You could try Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE) it has timeshift installed in the live iso, useful to restore a system when it's unbootable. Anyway it doesn't come with KDE but Cinnamon or XFCE.
For me Debian or LMDE is good for a home server due to not continuous package update, just major security an important ones.
For a Deskop or laptop in my opinion Fedora KDE or Gnome is the best experience.
- For me Debian or LMDE is good for a home server due to not continuous package update, just major security an important ones.
  You can have a similar experience from a rolling release with debian !
  Trixie (testing) or Sid (unstable) or backports !
  Backports seems promising because that's the version of the package going into the next debian release.
  
  Don't you mean Sid (unstable) ? :)
- Interesting! I have not tried fedora yet. I really like to be able to get some time off gnome for now though. Is there a particular difference between debian based distros and fedora? I cant really say I know them. The biggest differences I see make the desktop environments. Everything else, like package managers are also flexible.
  
  There is all but no difference if you use a desktop environment. That's where the variation is.
- I run Debian since 1998 and am happy.
  
  I went from Debian to centos in the 2000s for work, to ubuntu and now all my creations are debian again, I've come full circle.
- I agree that normally, it isnt. But my post also was about the installation process and the changeover from one distro to the other. They were both very smooth. I was prepared for a lot more issues.
  Generally yes, I will report back further down the line.
Ubuntu is Debian anyway. Why not installing MX (based on Debian too) with XFCE, it is the best experience I have had.
I come from good old LFS from the 90s and for me, a distro is just a kernel with some GNU utils, a window manager, and a way to get packages (which is about the only diff between "distro")
- Makes sense. This is also what I deduced after installing arch in a vm. Its basically just a couple options. It would be awesome to have a distro where you can just mix and match all the things.
  
  It would be awesome to have a distro where you can just mix and match all the things.
  You may be interested in Bedrock Linux.
Unfortunately Debian stable doesn't ship our bugfix releases after the major Debian version gets tagged - KDE Plasma in Debian is currently at 5.27.5, and 5.27.10 was released upstream two months ago.
In other words, you'll be experiencing bugs that have long been fixed... I'd advise to stay away from Debian for KDE Plasma because of that. If you want a Debian based distro with a good KDE Plasma experience, KUbuntu is likely a better choice, even with forced snaps. If you don't need Debian though I'd recommend taking a look at Fedora KDE or Arch (derivatives).
- Thanks for the heads up. I do get that faster updates mean a lot to some folks. There is always an argument for more up to date software but one needs to compromise sometimes. Using debian has been great so far and its working better than ubuntu (which might be a configuration issue). I'll update if stuff starts breaking.
  
  Man, I feel you. Sometimes you just want to get on with your life without babysitting the OS. Debian will stay out of your way and just work. Enjoy it!
Thx for the post. Nice reading your experience.
Fluffychat flathub https://flathub.org/apps/im.fluffychat.Fluffychat
- Thanks. I failed to mention that I found fluffychat from flathub shortly after through their website. :) but thanks for mentioning it.
After my bios splash, it shows „welcome to grub“ and then switches to the debian start menu for 3 seconds or so, then shows some terminal stuff and then starts kde splash and then login.
Yeah, the reason for this is that sometimes Debian doesn't enable Plymouth splash screens by default, so you just see the text stuff. It actually annoys me a bit.
Not on my computer at the moment, so I can't remember the exact packages you might need, but if I recall, they should be plymouth-themes and kde-config-plymouth (so that you can choose the splash screen theme in your system settings). You can also find other themes online, but I forgot the name of that website where all the stuff is. Pling? I think it's that.
Anyway, once you have the themes installed, you need to sudo edit /etc/default/grub and append "quiet splash" (with the quotes) to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT= ("quiet" might already be there).
You can also change the value of GRUB_TIMEOUT= in that file to whatever your preference might be for the duration of grub's boot menu, but there might be other things you need to adjust in order to hide it completely and still be able to access it if necessary.
After that, run sudo update-grub so that it's using the new config and choose whichever theme you want in the system settings.
Alternatively, grub-customizer is a GUI app that you can install to do all of the above (which will also update grub when you save your changes). Just don't touch anything that's not relevant. Stick to just the duration of the grub boot menu and add the splash parameter. Ignore boot priority, etc.
It should feel less "slow" to start up once all that's sorted.
- I did this recently but for gnome. There are some cool custom splashes at gnome look - maybe there is something similar for KDE too.
  
  gnome-look is just one of pling's many rebranded mirrors. KDE does also have one, but you might as well just use pling directly.
- Yeah, the reason for this is that sometimes Debian doesn’t enable Plymouth splash screens by default, so you just see the text stuff. It actually annoys me a bit.
  I always go through and turn off all the stuff that's covering up the diagnostic information that I want to see, myself.
I have been happy with Pop!_OS but the idea of LMDE (Linux Mint Debian Edition) is very tempting.
- I have not tried pop os yet. Whats the selling point again?
  
  The biggest is the baked in support for nVidia GPUs, but their DE has a lot of work done to it for usability purposes. No real advances have been made over the past few years to really set it apart again, but there is a massive overhaul coming that will make it one of a kind again.
- LMDE is really great. Just migrated an old 2013 iMac to it today. Everything works out of the box. Everything easy like you can expect from Mint and stable like on Debian. Difficult not to love.
  The only thing you have to like is Cinnamon.
(begging forgiveness, I haven't read the comments yet).
Regarding backups - I started with using Ubuntu and its Backup application. This application is a front end for a command line package called Duplicity. One of the things that annoyed me about the backup app was that I couldn't work out how to reschedule the scheduled backup.
Taking control of my own backup setup was the answer. Learn about bash scripting so you can create a short bit of code to handle your backups. Read up a little on duplicity, read up a little on mounting remote file shares, read up a little on setting up an ssh key for encrypting your backup.
This may be an heretical thing to say but I found ChatGPT quite useful in answering these questions (as always with anything you get from an LLM, double check it's answers against reliable sources).
- Thanks for mentioning this. I‘m actually scripting quite a couple of things in bash and some in python already. I had the exact same idea.
  But one reason I wrote the post was because I wanted to share my experience with debian (and ubuntu) for users that are less experienced than I am.
  I even have a custom made backup script for the 50 services I run on my two ubuntu servers. It is even self cleaning.
  Also tried chatgpt but so far I didnt have any luck. The code it spat out (was for screen brightness control) didnt work. But I did get it to work in the end.
It also doesnt tell you that you can get security upgrades if you subscribe to ubuntu pro
Wow, do Ubuntu not have security updates in the "free" version?
- Sorry, I meant „Additional security updates“. its not very useful for normal users and canonical is targeting enterprises with it but looking at it every day without a non hacky way to disable it just wore on me.
- They do, including those that are in Debian, but they also have an additional source of faster security updates developed in house, which they hold back from the free path in favor of the pro package.
  Personally, I feel a bit torn about this. On the one hand, this should be, officially at least, purely an additional service on top of what's available in the baseline distro, and isn't taking anything away from that.
  On the other hand, I strongly disagree with holding back security fixes from anyone, ever, for any reason. Also, the claim that it will never take away anything from the free base distro is at least a little bit suspect. I would not be surprised if the existence of the pro path were to gradually erode the quality and timelyness of the base security upgrade path over time. Also, Ubuntu is now very annoying about nagging you to upgrade to pro, and the way to disable that is fairly involved and very much non-official. The whole thing goes against what I expect from a F/OSS operating system. I don't quite understand why this topic hasn't been a much bigger issue in Linux circles yet. It certainly doesn't sit right with me...
  
  Not that I'm a fan of Ubuntu here (I generally don't run it when I can run anything else), but I do want to say I think you've missed the point of the Pro tier.
  Ubuntu releases two stable versions a year which are supported for 2 years or so. This is like a slow rolling distribution, and makes the newest software's available. It receives regular security updates from upstream, from Canonical, and from backports, again for up to about 2 years. Most users install this version.
  Ubuntu LTS editions are similar to the above, but receive all the same security updates for 5 years instead of 2. These distributions are generally targeted for Enterprise users who value stability over having the newest software, and for whom upgrading comes with significant time, expense and risk. The 5 year window is customary among other distros, and is largely supported by and throughout the Dev community.
  Ubuntu LTS Pro editions extend the LTS support editions for an additional 5 years, meaning a Pro distro enjoys 10 years of security updates from upstream, backports, and from Canonical where needed. Canonical might even open source their fixes back into upstream for other maintainers and distros to use, depending on the situation. However, since Canonical is providing the work, they charge subscription fees to cover their costs for it from their target audience: Enterprises who can't or REALLY don't want to upgrade
  Why an Enterprise might not want to upgrade has to do with risk and compliance. Corporate IT security is a different world, where every bit of software may need to be reviewed, assessed, tested and signed-off upon. Major software upgrades would need to be recertified to mitigate risk and ensure compliance, which takes significant time and expense to complete in good faith. Not having to do it every 2 or 5 years is money in the bank, especially when the environment doesn't introduce new requirements very often.
  Canonical is meeting a market demand with their Pro tier by allowing these customers to spend a fraction of their recertification costs on a software subscription. It's overall good for the ecosystem because you have what amounts to corporate sponsors pumping money into keeping older packages maintained for longer. This let's them keep using the same software distro all the rest of us can use for free.
  I'm not shy about calling bullshit on ANY distro that operates in bad faith, and they all get into some BS from time to time. Nevertheless, Canonical are acting in good faith on this, and are merely collecting money for their time and skill to provide maintenance on FOSS packages that might otherwise go unmaintained.
  tl;dr: Pro tier is for Enterprise customers who need extra-long term support and are willing to pay for it. Canonical is meeting a market demand so they can remain competitive for use in those environments, which is good for everyone. It's benign. Keep the pitchforks sharp and the torches dry for another day.
  edit: typos
  
  The additional Ubuntu Pro security updates are also open source, which means open source maintainers are free to adopt them for the regular security updates (and some do).
  If Canonical didn't charge for those additional security updates they wouldn't be able to pay for developing them, which would result in only core packages getting patched again. Also it's possible to make an account and get them for free on a few devices, so it's really not so bad. This way of doing things is better than what RedHat is doing with RHEL.
  If Canonical restricted maintainer from applying Canonicals patches, I'd change my opinion. For me I don't need security updates that badly, so I'm fine with Debian, NixOS (or Ubuntu non-Pro).
- you hit apt update and get an add for Ubuntu pro. Invasive ads in my linux? no thanks.
- All of them receive security updates.
  \ Wether you're a pro user or not only matters if you're an LTS user.
  
  https://noobient.com/2023/04/19/canonical-starts-charging-for-ubuntu-lts-security-updates/
  
  With the LTS versions being the best and obvious choice for your average non-technical user who just wants to get some work done...
- This is disingenuous on OPs part.
  All LTS releases get 5 years of updates. Ubuntu pro (which is free for non-commercial users FYI) extends the LTS support window to 10 years, which is 5 years more than any other Linux distribution I know of
  
  Red Hat (and Oracle, Rocky, Alma Linux), SUSE, openSUSE Leap are ten year lifecycles. openSUSE Leap may move to something else though.
KDE is the default DE for Debian these days?
- No, gnome is. But debian in opposition to ubuntu gives you a choice at install. You can use gnome, kde, cinnamon and a couple others which I forgot.
  
  debian in opposition to ubuntu gives you a choice at install
  That's nice.
  
  Is it gnome 3 (shell)?
  
  More mythology, ubuntu is just a layer of fluff over debian. Ubuntu wouldn't exist if it wasn't for debian. Just check your repositories. It is a fake distribution without character, mixing Free and non-free software from anywhere they can find them and promotes installing "foreign" pkgs to the system just to show they provide a wider variety.
  @hauilemmy @AnneBonny
Yeah the boot process is a mess! Debian's noisy GRUB and unsightly boot text is an obvious and unnecessary paint point for a desktop user but very desirable for server installations. You do have some options though!
Carlo Contavalli apparently has a relatively simple work-around discussed at https://rabexc.org/posts/grub-shush. What I've done in the past is rebuilding Ubuntu's source deb package for GRUB against my Debian system. You can grab it at https://packages.ubuntu.com/source/lunar/grub2. Build instructions can be found here https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/117503/how-to-compile-a-debian-package-from-source.
The great thing about Debian, Linux, and FLOSS is that you can even automate downloading Debian's source package when it gets updated, applying the silent patch, applying Ubuntu's compilation options, compiling the deb, and installing the deb! But yeah why can some package maintainer not provide such as an option in the repository! It's really an annoyance for many and almost makes me feel like I'm not the type of user the Debian community desires. Like, "Wait... what? You like pretty stuff? GTFO!" Maybe its even true? Hopefully you will enjoy using Debian! Its most preferable to Ubuntu in many ways these days!
- Very interesting! Will save this. Thanks for mentioning it.
  I think there are a lot of unsociable people in the linux community. I should know, I‘m autistic and also pathologically unsociable but even I am shocked at the amount of elitism and RTFMing that happens on a daily basis.
  The difference I think is my self image is pretty ok and I dont need to be the greatest and most knowledgeable linux pro on the planet. Thats probably the only thing some folks have to their name.
  But I digress. Have a great day.
The splash screen (boot screen instead of text)used to get me. It provided by an application called 'Plymouth'.
You used to need to install it and configure grub, however I think if you go into 'System Settings' and type 'Splash' KDE has an option to install and choose the screen
- Very interesting! Thanks for sharing that. Will probably read up a lot.
I tried installing Debian recently as well but didn't get too far into it. I was annoyed at the base configuration though. I wasn't able to use sudo, so I went to add myself to the sudo group and it told me the command didn't exist... I looked it up and realised that /usr/sbin wasn't on terminal path. Extremely fixable but something I never ran into on other distros, made me nervous how many other tweaks I may have to do.
I was simultaneously testing Lubuntu and ended up sticking with that after following install instructions for another app kept complaining about bookworm errors. Perhaps the Debian version was too new?..
Edited a couple of details to make them more accurate.
- I suppose it depends on a lot of things. Errors are pretty common once you start installing a lot of apps in any distro imo. Especially unstable and sid are more up to date but as the name suggests less stable.
  
  As far as I know I was on the stable version. I downloaded the one right on their front page, which was 12.4.0 net install.
  
  beside op's bashrc fud, it's a common newbie misconception that testing and sid are not stable like some kind of exotic experimentation would make them so. It is more a stabilization process in respect to the project's policy/processes and you will definitely find /usr/bin in pathh in either testing and sid rofl
- I looked it up and realised that /usr/bin wasn't on the bashrc path.
  lol, no. PEBKAC
  
  Well, I don't know what to tell you when I had just installed and the system tells me the command does not exist, so I look up the error and adding the path to bashrc fixed the issue. The only PATH export in that bashrc file is the one I added after searching the issue.
Next step: try Arch Linux
- I did that, on a vm though. I learned a ton and would not want to miss the experience.
  But arch is absolutely not something I would daily drive even if you paid me for it. It’s like driving a car which you have assembled from parts only. It works but you never know it it will start this morning.
  
  Installed Arch couple of weeks back and was surprised how easy it had become once I overcame the first hurdle of connecting to wifi from command line.
  Only thing I’m not happy with is the font rendering in Firefox. Hard to say if it is Arch or Firefox.
  
  I am running an Arch based distro called Garuda, and it's been perfectly fine for me.
  
  You are reproducing a myth started from Arch to keep newbs and those with learning disabilities out of the way. The 2nd largest distribution after debian didn't survive this long if this myth had any truth to it.
  @hauilemmy @BaalInvoker
  
  Dude, I daily drive my Arch for a few years and it does not gave me any major issue until today
  It's a myth that Arch is not stable
  If you don't do anything crazy, it will be stable, exactly like any other distro

145 comments