Linux

I think it's a reinforcing cycle. (I) Debian gets recommended less often for home use -> (II) less people become proficient in it -> (I)

In my opinion, Debian is best for small, specific purposes that don't change much over time. I used Debian for a bit as a home PC, mostly for making music with bitwig and gaming on steam as well as freetube/media consumption.

I had trouble with apps having conflicts, and combined with an nvidia card, the experience got worse over time and I had to separate my system into different bootable linux systems on the same drive, one distro for gaming and one for music. Some apps were deb files, some were apt, some were direct from websites and others immutable type apps, a mess.

Eventually I tried Arch based systems and liked how unified pacman is and how there are meta-packages full of music and RT. Then moved to Cachyos because it is just so much less annoying that vanilla Arch maintenance for me. I also used endeavorOS for a while, but at one point started having endless crashes from that distro across 2 different PCs (some black screen video issue with nvidia GPU).

As to how that applies to what I would recommend:

I think Debian is good at specific use-cases, but poor as an everyday home PC imo. Also, Debian is so barebones that things like a firewall aren't pre-configured, which makes it more of an intermediate distro that seems easy on first glance.

I wouldn't recommend Ubuntu personally, because the last few times I have tried it I found it buggy and I don't like snaps. But there are so many Debian derivative distros that in some cases Ubuntu is the best option, for example, Ubuntu Studio is actually pretty nice for quickly making creative content. There also Ubuntu distros pre-configured for other purposes.

Linux Mint seems to have outdated packages, but overall decent for beginners because it is a debian/ubuntu sub-distro that has a lot of polish and is really good at hardware detection on installation. I also think the linux mint DE is pretty good for new users.

While Debian is my preferred distro, I wouldn't reccomend it to others unless they are techy and don't mind fiddling with things. I absolutely wouldn't reccomend it to my grandma (I would reccomend her Mint though) and probably not to someone who just wants to play games, especially if they have an Nvidia card. I do game on Debian with a 3060, but it was cumbersome getting stuff working properly because of old drivers. I did get it working, but I think most people just want to play their games and not deal with that. I also have a nearly 10 year old laptop with Debian, and since it's so old, everything does, "just work", but I imagine most people aren't also using the same 10 year old laptop.

I haven't read through the other responses in the thread, but I don't think it's the slightly old software that's the problem. I think it has more to do with using older kernels, meaning that the latest hardware won't always be supported (on the stable branch at least - there's always testing and unstable too of course which may have better hardware support).

That may have changed with recent releases though - I haven't used Debian for several years now. But if your hardware is supported then it's a pretty solid choice.

Some other people sometimes mention that Debian isn't as beginner friendly as Ubuntu or Mint, but my experiences have been similar to yours - I found Debian to more user-friendly than Ubuntu for example. Assuming that the hardware works of course - if it doesn't then it obviously is a worse choice.

Why would one recommend Debian? I guess being actually community made might be worth it for some.

It's not particularly beginner friendly.

apt is kinda meh.

Using up-to-date software isn't just for the users. It's for the devs too so they don't need to deal with bug reports for long fixed issues.

My laptop and dev box are Debian Trixie along with two home servers that are Debian Bookworm. My gaming computer is Debian Forky. Looking for the latest stable release to play games with, which is what most recommendations are for, will tell you to use Debian stable builds but stay away from Ubuntu LTS because they're not up to date .

Forky (testing) is a great gaming distro with the latest drivers, but people are afraid it's unstable (which is Debian Sid), so they choose to compare other distros to the last stable release while pushing Arch and the latest Ubuntu because Debian testing is too bleeding edge for what they think of Debian, which is supposed to be stable.

I like using Debian stable because I don't like being bothered every ten minutes about updates. I need a newer version of something I install a Flatpak.

Debian is fine distro and many people rely on it as strong foundation including the people that build ubuntu and mint. Maybe Debian is the hidden champion.

When Ubuntu became popular, it had some advantages like reliable release cycles, slightly newer packages, better integration of proprietary drivers. Stuff that was not wanted in Debian stable main at the time.

Other non-debian-based distros also brought some advantages.

Personally, I'd love to see Debian as the base distro with Mint, Ubuntu and others building ontop of it. I like my apt update. I just won't send novices straight to Debian when the derivates have more desktop users.

I daily drive Debian stable for the last 3 years now. I started using it because I develop software that runs on Debian so it was easier to not worry about library dependencies. I never had a problem with "outdated" software. It just works as a computer should. You have no idea what version software you run unless you need a specific feature in a later version. I don't want to play around with my work machine, I have other devices to do that. It is an amazing distro (that many others build upon), as many other distros also are. I recommend it constantly.

Personally, yeah it’s the old packages. I want to play games on my desktop and have the newest DE features. An arch based distro seems like it’ll keep up better than Debian.

For my servers though, I only use Debian.

It's just more barebones than lots of other options, and distro hopping tends to be about exploration. There isn't a whole lot to explore on Debian, because its purpose is stability and simplicity.

You find tons of Debian-derived distros exactly for this reason. They build on that stable core but add bells and whistles. Distros usually are defined by which bells and whistles they include by default.

~~And why is Ubuntu server even a thing, often recommended?~~ Debian is this but without a second-party repository.

Edit: right, services, contracts.

But if I'm not able to update constantly, how else will I get the dopamine hits from watching the numbers go up?

Is there something I am missing, or does it really just come down to people not wanting software that isn’t “cutting edge” release?

It might just be that, people tend to gravitate to the next shiny new thing. But you're right, even when the application repos skew a bit older they're not really that old. And technically nothing is stopping you from running a more up-to-date application via flatpak, appimage, or just compiling directly. I think it's perfect for people looking for a more vanilla boring experience with the standard DE environments (GNOME, KDE, etc.).

I will say for total noobs another distro is maybe more friendlier, more polished installer, etc.. before settling on Debian I was happily using Ubuntu which felt easier for someone still getting used to Linux. But I always knew it was Debian based which made me curious about eventually just running Debian itself... nowadays Debian is my main and has been great.

PClinuxOS sees your favourite distro omitted and understands.

You can somewhat avoid the issue of old packages by running the testing version instead of stable, but in that case you should ensure you get security updates from unstable: https://github.com/khimaros/debian-hybrid

I used to run some systems on Debian testing and never had any issues.

Debian is generalist, with it's strongest strength being it's stability. That said, I'm not sure who I would recommend it to. Zorin or Mint would be better for new linux users, and Debian's slower updates mean it will fall behind other distros for anyone wanting games. Also the rise of immutable distros means that it's stability isn't as much of a selling point as it used to be, if I'm worried about a kid messing up the install an immutable distro would be better than Debian probably.

I have a lot of respect for Debian, but the main people I hear using it these days are more experienced linux users who want to settle down (done distro hopping) and just have a reliable computer for non-gaming stuff.

One thing I have yet to seen brung up in the replies yet, is Debian Testing and Debian Unstable

I have been using unstable on my desktop no issues,I would say that it is suprisingly stable, I only had one breakage so far and I have used it for one year as my main and sole system