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I've been running Debian stable on servers for like 8 years now. Up until recently I had a server running Debian Jessie with 1,802 days of uptime. It served a decent amount of traffic. Services on there ran unattended for literally years and it was rock solid. I ended up decommissioning the server because for the same price I could get better hardware specs so I made a new server and put on Debian Bullseye (the lates…
You didn't patch in almost 5 years?
I switched to Debian on servers & was impressed enough (previous experience with Ubuntu & RHEL) that I even went ahead & installed it on desktop. That was a mistake for a few reasons so I quickly switched away* on desktop but it's still my choice on servers, with a few caveats... 1. Snaps are infecting all distros, not just Ubuntu. This affects desktop more than servers, though LetsEncrypt/Certbot are major culprits…
I'd recommend you look at Linux Mint as a desktop replacement for Ubuntu.
It's cool if you like it's default DE setup, but I don't see any real advantage over Debian, & unless you're using LMDE, it's gonna suffer from all the disadvantages of modern Ubuntu. It's been hit just as hard by snaps - Debian is being hit too but not as hard as Mint or Ubuntu.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've used exclusively Debian on all my servers and laptops for the last 20ish years. Can confirm, it will continue to keep working, however there might be some things that piss one off in a similar manner as Ubuntu's snaps. I hate systemd for example, but grudgingly accept it.
why the aversion to systemd?
- "something that will be stable and supported for the next twenty years" Then the safest bet is to choose something that was popular and stable twenty years ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect ( "...the longer a period something has survived to exist or be used in the present, the longer its remaining life expectancy" ) You *probably* just want Debian. There's many reasonable options but that one's the S…
Ubuntu is completely based upon Debian. Going back to Debian ensure familiarity with tools (like apt). Also, the longer release cycle is perfectly adapted for people using only Ubuntu LTS (which, in itself, is quite awkward as Ubuntu was created to allow short release cycle for desktop users).
There’s also multiple companies offering Debian support if needed.
And it can safely be assumed that Debian is probably one of the 10 operating systems with the most probability of still being supported in 20 years.
On the downsides, you may end using some experimental/external repositories to have some bleeding edges applications and those make dist-upgrade often problematic (not that it is better with Ubuntu). You may also lose some automatic configuration at install time. I’ve one laptop which, for example, does not have middle-click working out-of-the box (it is just one apt-get away but you have to know what you want).
So, yeah, Debian should be one of the first to consider.
Similarly, having any custom configuration inside of "configuration.nix" is way nicer to use than manually editing /etc/whatever.conf. I can have one place to store any custom hacks, with a nice comment as to why + git history.
Another advantage that is portability. Snap export nextcloud and import somewhere else!
Sure, snaps are slower, and take some space, but with todays CPUs and storage, that’s not a dealbreaker. BTW, if you don’t like snap, you just remove it. What else would be the problem?
Check out also Pop!_OS based upon Ubuntu. Ubuntu itself has excellent hardware support.
Look no further than Debian. After switching from Ubuntu I started to understand why people view Ubuntu as a bit dirty.
Ok, but which release channel? And can I convert an Ubuntu into a Debian by reinstalling it while keeping my home directory?
You can do that with any distribution, unless you expect your configs to line up exactly.
If you don't keep your /home on a separate partition, back it up. Install Debian, making sure to separate /home and root into different partitions this time. Go through your ~/.configs, find the ones you've changed (most of this will probably be browser shit) and put copies aside. Then take all of the configs out of your home directory backup (including the originals of your changed configs) and put those aside in a different place, deleting them from the backup of your home directory. Backup the virgin ~/.configs from your new install (do not delete them from the new home directory.) Then copy your old home directory files (sans configs) over your new ones using rsync. Compare your manually changed files to the virgin files from the install - has the format changed, will they still work? Are they located in the same directory in Debian as in your previous distro? If it looks fine, copy them in. See if they work. If they don't, look up why not. They probably will.
If you keep your home on a different partition, then install as if you don't, and let Debian create a home in the same partition as the new OS. Do the same config dance as above (annihilating your old configs other than the customized ones), and switch your /home to be mounted from your old home partition.
Or at least this is what I do. On your desktop, you probably want to install testing, on your servers stable.