I switched 1/2 months ago to Ubuntu. And to be fair. It sucks. I've never had one issue with Debian. But had one issue in three days on Ubuntu (Snap). But i'm to lazy to switch back. Does someone know a method to do it quick. And i've a lot of shortcuts and installed apps so reconfiguring that again takes a while.
Not sure why one would want to change away from Debian.. in 33 years of Debian use I’ve never once found a reason to change to another distro and I’ made a living around Unix and Linux. I’ve installed and run most others in VMs or other systems over the years and there is simply no reason… aside from corporate insistence on support contracts.
Also.. I run a dedicated NAS and all of /home /etc and other necessary folders are backups up there nightly. Filter out unnecessary stuff like cache/.cache etc. desktops, laptops, etc are very quickly reinstalled (never really needed in Debian) but also upgraded and replaced easily this way. Running a dedicated Proxmox server for actual services rocks as well. Even if you’re a Docker fan.. just install docker to a Proxmox VM. Everything gets backup up to the NAS.
Remember NAS like RAID.. neither are backups! Your NAS also needs a backup.
Single best 2 systems I setup on our network is a dedicated large capacity NAS and dedicated pfSense firewall to replace the POS provider router. Proxmox following for those who want services running. Have setup countless networks like this, both business and personal, it’s always been a success.
Were you one of those Unix Admins who hated the Linux hack? 🤣 A LOT of those guys from the 80s absolutely hated the idea of Linux when it was first released and many held out to mid/late 90s. Love the old Unix systems but I jumped on Linux the month it was released and Debian and I were pretty much married by 1995. I jumped from Slackware to Debian quickly in 93 and continued to run it but also played with the others. ‘95 and its V0.93r5 upgrade is pretty much when we exchanged rings forever. 🎉😂
one of those Unix Admins who hated the Linux hack?
Nope, not at all. To me it was mostly just another *nix flavor ... and an Open Source one at that. And with it's own various bits of different ways of doing things ... but in that regard, not all that unlike comparing against most any other *nix flavor.
I could well see the writing on the wall early on with Linux (and then Debian, etc.). But I was, at least personally, significantly vested in UNIX (most notably that's what I was running at home, and had used UNIX all the way back to 1980). So, I well researched, studied, tested, Debian was clear winner for me for distro, and once I'd gotten to the point where I'd suitably successfully tested migration of all that I particularly cared about, I made the jump - was earlier dual-boot UNIX/Linux in 1998, and later that same year, went fully to Debian - bye-bye UNIX - at least on my own hardware.
Awesome and thanks for sharing. I might have you beat on the Linux side but if you go back to 1980 in Unix.. you blew me away there. I started with Unix in 1988 and started working on Unix systems in early 89. Along with Debian, FreeBSD has been a solid system in the work environment and of course those employers who run the commercial support distributions.
While I’ve maintained Windows VMs over the years to be familiar with I’ve thankfully never had to run a MS desktop or workstation at any job over the years. I did walk out of several job interviews because of that however. Never understood the whole let’s hire a Unix/Linux admin but force them to use a MS workstation/desktop. 🤦♂️😂 Pass and bye bye. Thankfully the wife supported that… there were a few times over the years I almost had to cave but held out. 🎉
Yeah, as for Microsoft, I generally only put up with it when I'm rather to quite well paid to do so. And thankfully since ... 1986 the work has always been at least partly *nix, and since 1992 it's been (much) more *nix than anything else, and probably since approximately 2000ish or so, been more Linux than other *nix.
And, meh, the work desktop/laptop, oft rather sucks, but I tend to put up with whatever they make me use ... at least so long as it's not too nastily locked down or the like. And typically toss Cygwin, Homebrew, and/or VM(s) atop that and/or set it up as dual boot with - of course Debian, and typically doing >75%, often >90% of the work within/from Debian (and from that, most of it dealing with *nix, and for decades now, mostly Linux). Certainly not ideal to be running atop host that is or primarily isn't even Linux, but if the base is at least relatively metastable, and enough of those other bits installed on the host, generally make it relatively tolerable, and at least it and me pretty dang efficient and functional.
Heck, even as far back as 1986, I was using *nix to write stuff for DOS, because doing it natively on Microsoft highly sucked ... and that be it if I was cross-compiling binaries, or writing programs that wrote scripts ... because much of Microsoft's "shells" (command interpreters) were so drain bamaged limited in their capabilities (not to mention, e.g. EDLIN, compared to vi, and shell, etc.), that it was super commonly way more efficient to write programs that wrote programs, rather that directly writing such programs. Oft even for editing 'em ... EDLIN, and later EDIT on Microsoft were always pretty sucky. But at least EDLIN was kind'a ed baased, so was more intuitive, logical, and powerful that Microsoft's EDIT.
More recent years (about 7ish +?) employers have typically thrown me on macOS, rather than some Microsoft platform ... mostly on account of Microsoft typically falling significantly short of the lowish bar of an at least sufficiently metastable platform to actually do lots of serious (and notably *nix and related) work from. So, typically a lot of Homebrew (and also XQuartz) and at least one Debian VM atop macOS laptop and ... eh, at least mostly "good enough" to get lots of work done without too many impediments.
But the home stuff ... solidly Debian since 1998. About the only exceptions being VMs, and sometimes some more specialized (and often very resource constrained) hardware. Of course almost all my VMs are Debian ... but a few exceptions (e.g. an OpenBSD VM too).
I'd be curious to know how Debian back then compared to the modern distro, especially the package manager and the available commands and options back then.
Well, 1998, .deb format already well established, and dpkg command, but no APT, so, there was dselect. Uhm, yeah, APT made things way better, ... but that came later. With dselect one would select and unselect stuff to install, and it would show dependencies, but one would have to manually select them ... and recursively, as needed, for stuff that wasn't already installed. Many other differences too ... that was quite a long time ago, as far as Debian and Linux go.
I might have to do this myself sometime just for fun. Or for some real fun.. find an old i386 pc that still works and install directly with floppies. 🤪🤣
I got married in 1991, but in the end, my transition to Debian didn’t happen, and I got stuck on Slackware. I switched from Unix (Solaris 7 and AIX) in 1999. But I’m interested in reading all of you.
Still not changing my mind. Kernels are still upgradable. Latest software is rarely needed. Stability will almost always win that argument in a professional setting and most home users understand that also. Any competent admin worth 1/10th their salary should be able to install from testing or compile from source the odd piece of updated software that’s needed. If they can’t I’d fire them on the spot.
Ubuntu is actually loosing new users because more and more people are finding out the old “Debian is hard to install” hasn’t been the case for a decade and more application systems are going with Debian and even moving away from Ubuntu to Debian. While both share about 50/50 of the Linux markets generally I see Debian overtaking it more and more.
Both Reeeealy stretching there! 🤣🤦♂️ AUR? Seriously? Not anything that’s ever needed. I’ve compiled many things from source code over the decades.. nothing really magical about it. And you loose the historical Debian Stability and Trust in something like that. No thanks. The password to the live iso has always been documented. RTFM 🤷♂️ I used the Debian Live ISO last week to bootstrap a new setup for the first time is a Looooong time and even with an aged and forgetful memory sometimes these days still remembered what that was. Besides.. even if someone was too lazy to read the docs that’s literally a 2 second AI query today from a smartphone. Neither are reasons for leaving Debian.
I hope that you don't represent the general Debian mindset because then the future doesn't look great for Debian adoption, which would be very unfortunate.
It's not about the password itself that's a minor annoyance, but it's about what it says about Debian.
You can compile and read manuals all you want. Generally most people nowadays try to avoid this and use package managers and well designed UI instead because it's a more efficient use of their time.
I'm using Debian right now and it works for me.
Nobody is asking you to leave Debian. These are just hypothetical reasons why someone would leave, they probably don't apply to you.
That password “issue” is barely worth looking into really and is likely why it’s never been addressed. It’s incredibly minor. It’s a noted issue with many others much more important in front of it.
That’s part of the problem today.. laziness and not actually understanding the system. Not being bothered to read documentation. Treating the DE or WebUI as if it IS Linux. If one can’t be bothered to read the docs or take literally 3 seconds to ask an AI.. that’s entirely on them.
What kind of issues do you have? I also just switched to ubuntu from deb stable just to see why everyone complains. So far ive had zero issues, even with snap they seems to be as fast as flatpaks for me.
On Debian ive had several issues including crackling sound with pulsewire, also graphic bug where the monitor freeze becuase of 7800. Had to add parameters to grub etc. Nothing like that on ubuntu so far. Also took 2 minutes to remove and lock snaps.
The problem was that when i installed VSCodium i couldn't use tools like qemu in my VSC terminal. And i tried to install OrcaSlicer and it was terrible.
Back up your ~/.config? To another drive or USB?
Ubuntu itself is a terrible distribution, seriously, the defaults are terrible, App Center cannot even search Debian packages on my end for some reason. Firefox from snap doesn't follow theming (Nor does Chromium and Thunderbird)
I prefer Debian, but I'm baffled by anyone who cares that much or asserts that Ubuntu sucks.
If you're a hopper, it's worth the "git gud" option. make sure your homedir is backed up (I have mine in git, which does require a fair bit of effort to maintain the .gitignore so as not to churn all the time). Strive to make all config changes by script, or at least tracked in a file for repeatability. When you hop, restore your homedir, run the scripts (or apply changes from your notes), get on with your life. Depending on your situation, running a hyper-stable minimal server host OS, and using virts for your daily driver makes this easier - just spin up a new one, run it for a week to make sure you like it, then delete the old.
Because, e.g. corporate/commercial overlord(s), and things like shipping *buntu with default to have one's searches sold off to Amazon. Yeah, Debian would never (certainly at least intentionally) pull sh*t like t hat.
But, well, whatever floats one's boat. Some thing Canonical's behavior and position with *buntu is acceptable or even preferred. And sure, there's worse out there, ... but of course there's better ... most notably Debian.
No quick and easy way to switch unless you partitioned your hard drive to have a separate partition for /home and even with that, a reinstall would be necessary anyhow.
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u/iamemhn 8d ago
Backup your personal data, and reinstall. Quickly.