# Debian 552 Hacker News commenters recommended Debian and 191 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 13 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 10 years (62 owners). It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule. **Verdict:** A community-run, free Linux distribution recommended for rock-solid stability, curated trustworthy package repositories and painless in-place upgrades; critics say stable packages are old and bug fixes rarely get backported. ## Why people recommend it - Stable, updates rarely break things (6 comments): "I love debian: stable, it creates the right environment to feel at ease without the fear that every update can break something." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50104153)) "Debians steady and professional approach on shipping security patches with very little to no functional difference" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48067550)) "Debian has a stable branch which receives only security fixes, and even then, only if you run the update scripts." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49801053)) - Trusted curated package repositories (6 comments): "The Debian packaage maintainer checks if the update is fine, is compatible with Debian policies, then includes it in the packages repositories." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48023046)) "Trusted repositories work best when the repository maintainers build and read the code themselves, like on f-droid or Debian." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46200169)) "I was super happy about all the gifts that I received from anonymous strangers through the Debian package repository." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47752212)) - Smooth in-place upgrades for years (3 comments): "I've done in-place upgrades of Debian from version 5 to 11 at my last job on many machines, never once re-installing from scratch, and they've all gone fine." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48116469)) "with Debian-like release cycle you can do it system by system when new version comes up and the "old" one still gets security fixes" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48119991)) "The big sell of Debian, and Debian-derivatives, is that you install once, and then it's just in-place upgrades forever." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48533701)) - Community-governed, no corporate control (3 comments): "You have a non-commercial entity steering the project, it has a governance model, and the goal is to create something that ultimately, no one owns or can take full control over." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45980707)) "In the case of Ubuntu and Debian, and to a lesser extent RedHat, I trust the developers not to do that because they have a history of not "just pushing whatever"." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46349164)) "It seems that Debian doesn't fall for marketing or corporate pressure, but they sometimes fall when they are surrounded by people" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47470713)) ## What people warn about - Old packages, backport model limits fixes (3 comments): "the shape of the old linux distros like Debian that laboriously re-package years-old software have been one of the biggest failures of open source" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47445213)) "the backport model heavily discourages the kinds of refactorings and architectural cleanups that would address bugs systemically" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48113508)) "issues related to Debian Stable get closed automatically on their bug tracker because fixes don't get backported" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46928188)) - Hard for newcomers to install (3 comments): "really felt like it took some doing on the HP all-in-one that I was trying to put debian on... maybe because it was debian being debian" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47698195)) "debian has it's installation guide that's perhaps presented in the most intimidating way possible to a new unwitting user" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46579993)) "A lot of the prior experiences I had with Debian or other "friendly" distros kind of put me through the ringer too" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46470101)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [Ubuntu](https://hackerapproved.com/p/ubuntu.md): 560 recommend - [Fedora Linux](https://hackerapproved.com/p/fedora.md): 437 recommend - [Arch Linux](https://hackerapproved.com/p/arch-linux.md): 362 recommend - [Linux Mint](https://hackerapproved.com/p/linux-mint.md): 277 recommend - [Asahi Linux](https://hackerapproved.com/p/asahi-linux.md): 260 recommend ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "Debian", https://hackerapproved.com/p/debian/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).