Why do you use debian?

[keithpeter]

* Upgrades are so smooth, I really think I can just keep upgrading forever and cloning my installation to each iteration of newer hardware that I get and, I love that!

Pointers to the cloning method you favour would be greatly appreciated. I'm thinking of cloning from desktop to laptop.

Why do I use Debian? With all the people who register on the forum so they can inform us how terrible Debian is and how much better Mint and Ubuntu are, apparently I use Debian because I am stupid.

I get stupider as I grow older, I think it is called learning by experience.

I'm using a Debian desktop system on the old PC because it works, has the packages I need, does not force any 'direction' especially.

[janet]

Pointers to the cloning method you favour would be greatly appreciated. I'm thinking of cloning from desktop to laptop.

keith, check out this site:http://www.clonezilla.org/
The "live-cd" version is usually the one to use.

Clonezilla came out with a new updated version today:http://sourceforge.net/projects/clonezi ... /2.1.2-43/

Good luck

[keithpeter]

keith, check out this site:http://www.clonezilla.org/
The "live-cd" version is usually the one to use.

I started a new thread in 'General Discussion' about moving Wheezy using tar. I've used clonezilla for things like preserving the Windows/hidden partition on a Thinkpad in case I want to sell the laptop in the future. Thanks

[rop75]

I will TRY and answer the original question: Why do I use Debian?:

Because it does not depend on a company (unlike Ubuntu, Fedora or SuSE it does not depend on the economic situation, nor on the profits made by a company)

Because it does not depend on just one person or on a small team (unlike distros like Linux Mint or fuduntu -do you remember FUDUNTU?, it was a great distro...now it is only a memory...-), a

And specially because it has everything I need and it is amazingly stable and reliable

[Jimmyfd]

Back in 1995 I became a Novell Certified NetWare 3.1x CNA/CNE primarily with MS Windows Clients (Windows 3.11 WFW) - The server I administered was somewhat a monster. It serviced 250 concurrent connections (license was 500 users) and it did it on a single core 90 MHz Pentium system with 256 MB of RAM and a Sony 4,7 GB (uncompressed) tape drive, a 2 GB SCSI drive for the system and a 4.2 GB SCSI drive for user data. Mounting of the data-drive alone took 20 min during startup. What I'm trying to say is, that this relative small, by todays standards, server was rock solid. It just worked and was pure joy to work with.

Having tried every MS Windows since Windows 3.00a up until Windows XP Professional I have been applauded with more than my fair share of instable and insecure systems. Day by day Windows gradually got slower and slower. So back in 2006 I tried out Ubuntu Linux and kind of kept hanging there. Tiered of the constant six month upgrade cycle I went looking for a distro with a longer lifespan. Tried Debian Lenny, but it couldn't make me settle there so I went back to Ubuntu.

For a little more than a year now I've run nothing but Debian, and I'm not going to either. Debian satisfies my needs fully, unlike all the other distros I've tried out. Debian's "learning by doing" just make me want to learn even more.

[Kov3nant]

I started with mint 13 cinnamon. Wanting to see what was out there, I bounced around distros like crazy. Trying every distro with every de. Through all that I learned a lot about Linux. I eventually installed Arch and stuck with that for a while. Now I help develop a distro called Less SystemD GNU/Linux which I dual boot with. Trying to do translations, web development and stuff under arch was a bit of a pain. I had to be very careful about when I would do updates. After lots of very small irritations like USB suddenly not auto mounting, slim breaking and failing to start X or other random annoyances, I came to Debian. The project leader for LSD Linux noticed I was constantly having to do system maintenance instead of working on our distro and suggested it.
So far I've been very pleased. Its stability is just the thing I need in a distro right now. I don't see myself hopping distros any time soon.

Edit: Don't get me wrong, Arch is a great distro. It really is. And generally, it's a fun experience and really rewarding when you're able to get everything set up and working properly. Also it taught me how to diagnose problems and forced me to learn how Linux works. That has been very beneficial for me. Just haven't the time to maintain it at the moment

Sent from my XT890 using Tapatalk 4

[sudoertor]

I ended up starting linux by using ubuntu 11.10, which I was amased when It ran on my toshiba satellite l30, although as time went by it became slower due to the fact that ubuntu simply kept becoming more resource hungry and my old system simply couldn't keep up. (It only had a single core and 512MB of ram) So I ended up being able to aquire some newer (But still ancient) hardware and it chugged along nicely again. Over time I had to keep aquiring newer hardware as Ubuntu simply kept bocoming too laggy, I never quite understood why Canonical kept making it soo heavy. Back around the start of this year I ended up discovering that Ubuntu's Unity contained spyware, possibly one of the reasons why it was soo slow, so as a result I have distro jumped to Lubuntu and modified it to my liking. (A custom distro)

However I do have concerns over what Canonical will do to Ubuntu next, such as include the spyware, not only worse in unity , but I believe that they may even put spyware into the very core of Ubuntu to the point that it would infect all the flavours and forks that use Ubuntu's core. This would make them as bad, if not worse, than Apple and Microsoft. I also have reasons to believe this theroy is correct, as In the latest pre-release of Ubuntu the spyware is worse with about 20 different sites that all keystrokes get sent to. (It actually says in the legal blurb that Ubuntu records keystrokes, and last time I checked that is spyware)

So yea, thats why I'm here. I'm trying to see If I can use something like remastersys to make a fork of debian, that way I wouldn't have to worry about the things I just mentioned. So far apart from the bug I am having with openbox in the LXDE version, I really like debian!

[shogunvsamurai]

I've used many Linux distributions in the past and started my path towards Debian about two years ago when I started using Ubuntu with it's introduction of the Unity interface. Ubuntu didn't quite agree with my laptop's graphic card and kept leaving black block artifacts on my screen from time to time depending on what program I was using. After trying to remedy that problem for a few months, I grew tired and then switched to Linux Mint 13, but had similar problems. I then switched to the Linux Mint Debian edition and found my system to be very stable for about seven months straight until I started tweaking the system a bit too much. So for my recent install, I decided to get straight to the heart and made the full switch to Debian. So far I'm enjoying the familiarity of how things work and have had a pretty easy time setting things up the way I'm use to. In a nutshell, the Debian line seems to be more compatible with my laptop.

[obry]

- rolling release (ok, depends on definitoin) - an extremely attractive quality of any distribution for me. I would never consider to switch to a non-rolling release distro.
- it's lightweight
- can be configured deeply
- netinstall that offers the possibility to install only a minimum set of packages and only add what i need. it let's me choose which desktop i want to use. I like to have these possibilities.
- the paket management is great
- loooots of packages, lots of software. From my experience so far: Hardwaresupport for recent hardware comes resonably soon.
- open source with ...
- possibility to use non-free software if needed
- huge online info /documentation that has been enough support for me so far.
- legendary stability.
- a lot of things i like and already said are based on the http://www.debian.org/social_contract

I love debian. I'm glad it exists. Thanks to all people making this possible!

[Dawg]

I had to open a new account to get back on this forum, because I mainly read to find solutions for problems I am having, and haven't actually posted in probably 4 plus years.

Debian has been my primary OS since Etch. I have used a few other distos to try out the latest stuff out there. At the end of the day it boils down to at 50 years old I just want my systems to run and do all the things I need them to do. I don't need bleeding edge I just need consistent performance.

I am currently running Jessie which on a bad day is more stable that alot of other distro's so called stable releases. I guess choice boils down to who will be using the system and how much time they are willing to invest in trying to solve problems due to their system always upgrading to the latest thing coming down from upstream.

Experience has shown me that Developers who spend a little more time working on software compadibility issues turn out a more stable product.

So I use Debian. It is very stable. It has a huge selection of software that can be installed. With a little reading time and experimenting you can customize it to suit your taste. It just works and does it's job very well.

[esp7]

there are people with the same point of view at the age of 30

[Debian4ever]

I say debian is where I feel most comfortable.
Debian is technically the first distro I have tried, so its where I like to go.

[Crewp]

I like Debian because it's so stable, well supported, and the Grandfather of many another distro. Which means it is just the best to build off of.

[arvy]

My first Linux distro was Ubuntu 8.10 or something and i didn't use it much at all. Now i installed debian few weeks earlier mainly because i bought Raspberry Pi and installed raspbian on it and i wanted simmilar OS on my pc to get comfortable with it. And I am not dissapointed, i love debian so far for it's stability (compared to numerous crashes on ubuntu) and i have plans to make my own kernel just for fun for debian.

[587jmj]

hello,
I have been a linux user since about april 2003.
I used mainly RPM distros pclinuxos, mandrivia for
most of the time, then I tried Linux Mint Debian Edition.
I learned alot about the repos, updates and stable, testing
etc.
I decided to use the REAL THING instead of a Branch,
and I love it.

I have an Acer laptop with windows vista,
still have lmde on a partition and debian wheezy
as my main distro.

[MagiChimp]

I did an online Linux Distro Selector questionnaire and Debian was recommended. I did some reading checking out the pro's and con's.
I later found this rant from what sounded like a drunken mate from abroad.

Debian 7 vs Ubuntu 13.04 Rant...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyNgK3EKxlU

His message about it being "rock solid" and "it just works", resonated with me.
And you know what they say about drunk people.
"A drunk mans words are a sober man thoughts."
I tried Ubuntu years back, was not very impressed. I later tried MINT and that went horribly wrong. Debian has me really happy, interested and excited. So far, it has been my default OS. I still have windows 7 but have not used it since I installed Debian 7.2 Wheezy. I reformatted my hard drive, made 4 partitions, installed windows 7, installed NOD32 anti virus and left it at that, then I installed Debian Now I am just here on my Linux Debian and just take it slow trying to learn my way around the OS since I am so very noob to Linux. I have nothing but time to enjoy myself and learn new things from the ground up. I am very satisfied with a very SOLID OS in Debian.

[arvy]

I did an online Linux Distro Selector questionnaire and Debian was recommended. I did some reading checking out the pro's and con's.
I later found this rant from what sounded like a drunken mate from abroad.

Debian 7 vs Ubuntu 13.04 Rant...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyNgK3EKxlU

His message about it being "rock solid" and "it just works", resonated with me.
And you know what they say about drunk people.
"A drunk mans words are a sober man thoughts."
I tried Ubuntu years back, was not very impressed. I later tried MINT and that went horribly wrong. Debian has me really happy, interested and excited. So far, it has been my default OS. I still have windows 7 but have not used it since I installed Debian 7.2 Wheezy. I reformatted my hard drive, made 4 partitions, installed windows 7, installed NOD32 anti virus and left it at that, then I installed Debian Now I am just here on my Linux Debian and just take it slow trying to learn my way around the OS since I am so very noob to Linux. I have nothing but time to enjoy myself and learn new things from the ground up. I am very satisfied with a very SOLID OS in Debian.

Welcome aboard I'm also very new to Debian and loving it. Can you replace all your need with free software on Debian rather than proprietaryor exclusive to Windows? because i still can't live without both OS'es.

[ivtec]

Well i should say why i don't use Debian! cause it has no wireless drivers out of the box.

[bw123]

Well i should say why i don't use Debian! cause it has no wireless drivers out of the box.

it's not nice to spread FUD, you might find some help on your device here https://wiki.debian.org/WiFi

[Rifester]

You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes...http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unoff ... -firmware/