Linux

Debian is a great choice.

I think the majority of modern distros are all fine for beginners really.

The advantage with debian is the very large user base and ecosystem - you won't encounter a problem that someone else hasn't already solved.

Debian is great, though I do wish they'd make it easier for new users to find their unofficial live image/installers since booting the desktop of your choice with no hassle is great:
https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current-live/amd64/iso-hybrid/

Great choice. And if you do ever find yourself in a hurry for the latest version of something, there is flatpak and appimage.

It is a wonderful time to be a Linux user.

I started with Debian as a noob many years ago. Still using it. It's good. I distro-hopped a bit in my first few years but ended up with Debian. Now I've a mix of Ubuntu (which in my mind is debian), Debian and raspbian.

There's other distros that are good too, this is just what worked for me.

, but I actually like Debian’s slow update cycle,

That's one of debian's strengths and an often overlooked feature that I believe many people would love as well. I even had a professor migrating from windows to debian simply because he's, in his words: "tired of things changing all the time without my permission. I want a system that stays the same for as long as possible and barely changes". Debian was like a natural choice for him. I thought he would be asking me for help in the transition, but he said he's "ok and learning by searching on the internet", and that he's "investing some time on earning it, because the guarantee of minimal changes makes the it an investment, instead of a waste of time".

I started with Ubuntu (when it was left, right and center in my country) but soon gravitated towards Debian. The old packages can be a pain sometimes ( I even tried running Debian Unstable for sometime and ironically that is quite Stable as well) but other things are quite sane.

The distro isn't hard to use (though it does not hand hold like Zorin OS, say) compared to likes of Gentoo or Arch and deb packages are quite common (for third party software).

I ultimately(distro hopped a lot) settled on Void Linux but Debian, IMO, is still slightly easier. The only Achilles' Heel is the woefully sore update cycle since the focus is on stability.

Nothing wrong with Debian.

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Linux in general is the wise choice, no matter the distribution.

I used to live in a place where the internet was very fast, so I could use Arch Linux with its large daily updates without any problems. Then I moved to a place where the internet is very slow, and continuing to use Arch Linux is no longer an option. As a result, I switched from Arch to Debian, and the first thing I noticed is that I rarely have updates.

I have 15 years of experience and use Ubuntu. It doesn't matter as much as people make it seem (including for tech savvy beginners)

It's a peaceful life.

Solid choice 👍

Only downside ive seen with Debian is slower rollouts and some packages missing in their repos. Its because they prioritize stability.

If Debian fits your use case theres no reason not to stay. I ditched Debian after I accidentally created my frankendebian monster which i was way too unknowledgable to save back then.

And hey, welcome to Linux!

One of my favorite things about linux is the freedom to choose. There is not a perfect one size fits all starterpack. Everyone has different needs and expectations which is why the starter distro questions have so many different answers. Those answers aren't wrong as they meet the needs from the presenters point of view.

Debain is a great choice. Nothing wrong with debain. I use it for my media server.

Welcome to your linux journey.

I think Linux mint Debian edition is cool if you want to use Cinnamon, but otherwise Debian makes sense.

All distributions are easy as long as forum posts and well sorted documentation exists.

And all distribution can be hard when they're nerfed. Try modding Debian to behave like like a crazy arch setup. Program X requires KDE Plasma 6.5.x, you can only use 6.3.6 because Debian. Then you have to go to a GitHub page and compile an earlier version of program X by yourself. During this you get errors and mess your installs up. You clean up. Rinse and repeat until you have got something working. By then you'll have spent an hour, if not two. On Arch I would have only had to have typed a little thing into the terminal. This is one of the less complex examples fyi.

In the end it's gotta work out. A nice evening to you too

I actually like Debian’s slow update cycle, as I don’t want to be bothered often with setting up my system again.

I've been there too!

Updating to a new version is such a chore: you have to follow the news, then wonder how long to wait before updating, then you have to set aside at least a few hours for the actual update (well, for fixing what may go wrong - not that stuff actually goes wrong, but you still set aside some time just in case).

The solution to this is in the exact opposite direction you'd imagine.

For a few years (since last time I got a new PC), I've been running a rolling distro (tumbleweed *) and... it's been great: no big updates, just incremental ones.

If anything breaks (and it never happened to me: there has been times where errors prevented the system to update, but never has it broken on me), you just boot the snapshot before the last update and try again in a few hours/days.

I want something as close as “set it and forget it” as possible.

That's nixos :) It takes a long time to "set" (and you never really finish doing it) but you can switch to a new PC at any time and have your exact system on it (bar what the few things you have to change to account for the different hardware, of course).

* I hear that with arch&co you actually have to follow the release notes as sometimes there are manual tasks to do - it's not so in tumbleweed (at least, as much as i know and as far as me experience goes) - IDK about other rolling distros (or debian testing/sid)

I'm a veteran and I prefer Debian-based distros because I don't want have to constantly tinker with something that I need to simply work.

I mean that is great but its far easier to add kde through the software center than add nvidia through command line.

That's what I'm using these days at home

Only thing to keep in mind is that it won't give you a notification when you need to do a major version update (pretty consistently every 2 years)

Ever since IBM / Red Hat ruined CentOS, I’ve been using Debian when I need Linux. Welcome in from the cold. We have hot coco and blankets.

Wait until you try NixOS

Debian, not a bad idea but where I live I have shared wireless only, so I'd have to install the wireless drivers manually using my phone to search for advice. Not even sure how that'd go. Easier if I had ethernet.

I like the idea of fewer updates and fewer bugs.

While learning about all the Linux stuff I came to know about desktops, and I felt like, if I wanted to ever use a different one, yes, it could be installed the hard way, but I would rather have a distro that can be installed with my desired desktop by default, and the one that got my attention was KDE.

'sudo apt install kde-full' is "the hard way"?