Debian

Long-term owners

I moved to Debian Stable ~20 years ago because constant updates in other distros always screwed up CUPS printing

Jan 2026 · comment

Works like a charm, and the 2 years release schedule is perfect for people who don't care about bleeding edge

Feb 2026 · comment

What hackers pick instead

• UbuntuA mainstream Linux distro that mostly just works on lots of hardware, suits beginners and offers long LTS support, though critics dislike Snaps and Canonical's direction.560recommend
• Fedora LinuxA mainstream, beginner-friendly Linux distro that mostly works out of the box and balances stability with current packages, though frequent release upgrades occasionally break things.437recommend
• Arch LinuxA rolling Linux distro praised for up-to-date, near-upstream packages, excellent wiki docs and installs that last for years, though updates can break things and much is manual.362recommend
• Linux MintA beginner-friendly Linux distro that feels familiar to Windows users, works out of the box with no ads or nagware, though major version upgrades and display quirks can be troublesome.277recommend
• Asahi LinuxRecommended for running Linux on M1 and M2 Macs with great hardware, though newer chips lag behind and battery life, sleep and external displays remain weak.260recommend

Every quote

The 40 most detailed of 1017 comments. Each links to the original.

1. 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.

   Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “Your smartphone, their rules: App stores enable corporate-government censorship”

2. 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".

   Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “I can't upgrade to Windows 11, now leave me alone”

3. 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.

   Recommends · May 2026 · in “CERT is releasing six CVEs for serious security vulnerabilities in dnsmasq”

4. The Debian packaage maintainer checks if the update is fine, is compatible with Debian policies, then includes it in the packages repositories.

   Recommends · May 2026 · in “Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent”

5. 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

   Recommends · May 2026 · in “CERT is releasing six CVEs for serious security vulnerabilities in dnsmasq”

6. It seems that Debian doesn't fall for marketing or corporate pressure, but they sometimes fall when they are surrounded by people

   Mixed · Mar 2026 · in “Ubuntu 26.04 Ends 46 Years of Silent sudo Passwords”

7. I love debian: stable, it creates the right environment to feel at ease without the fear that every update can break something.

   Recommends · Oct 2026 · in “Ubuntu 26.10 (Stonking Stingray) released”

8. Trusted repositories work best when the repository maintainers build and read the code themselves, like on f-droid or Debian.

   Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “Google confirms Android attacks; no fix for most Samsung users”

9. The big sell of Debian, and Debian-derivatives, is that you install once, and then it's just in-place upgrades forever.

   Recommends · Jun 2026 · in “Linux 7.1”

10. I was super happy about all the gifts that I received from anonymous strangers through the Debian package repository.

    Recommends · Apr 2026 · in “Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (April 2026)”

11. Debians steady and professional approach on shipping security patches with very little to no functional difference

    Recommends · May 2026 · in “AI Is Breaking Two Vulnerability Cultures”

12. Debian has a stable branch which receives only security fixes, and even then, only if you run the update scripts.

    Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “I said no and Apple said yes”

13. I moved to Debian Stable ~20 years ago because constant updates in other distros always screwed up CUPS printing

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Linux is good now; to feel like you actually own your PC, put Linux on it”

14. Debian repositories still contain no malware and if you install software exclusively from them, you'll be safe.

    Recommends · Apr 2026 · in “LittleSnitch for Linux”

15. I have been using (stable) Debian+KDE for all of that period and never experienced any of the author's issues.

    Recommends · May 2026 · in “I love Linux, but I can't quit Windows”

16. Works like a charm, and the 2 years release schedule is perfect for people who don't care about bleeding edge

    Recommends · Feb 2026 · in “Resizing windows on macOS Tahoe – the saga continues”

17. downloading from a curated package repository maintained by a respected community with well-defined processes

    Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “llama.cpp”

18. experienced people used to rely on linux OS distributions like debian and co to source package and libraries

    Recommends · May 2026 · in “'No Way to Prevent This,' Says Only Package Manager Where This Regularly Happens”

19. 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

    Criticizes · Mar 2026 · in “Astral to Join OpenAI”

20. 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

    Criticizes · Apr 2026 · in “Microsoft Abruptly Terminates VeraCrypt Account, Halting Windows Updates”

21. the backport model heavily discourages the kinds of refactorings and architectural cleanups that would address bugs systemically

    Criticizes · May 2026 · in “CERT is releasing six CVEs for serious security vulnerabilities in dnsmasq”

22. debian has it's installation guide that's perhaps presented in the most intimidating way possible to a new unwitting user

    Criticizes · Jan 2026 · in “I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too”

23. A lot of the prior experiences I had with Debian or other "friendly" distros kind of put me through the ringer too

    Criticizes · Jan 2026 · in “Linux is good now; to feel like you actually own your PC, put Linux on it”

24. issues related to Debian Stable get closed automatically on their bug tracker because fixes don't get backported

    Criticizes · Feb 2026 · in “Microsoft Account bugs locked me out of Notepad – are Thin Clients ruining PCs?”

25. I've run both Debian (and their LTS project version at one point) and Ubuntu LTS on my servers, both have been generally okay, albeit with a snag or two along the way.

    Mixed · Feb 2026 · in “What it means that Ubuntu is using Rust”

26. Have application repositories, but open ones like Debian or Linux in general, so that application developers can publish and don't ask for a cut of every sale.

    Recommends · Feb 2026 · in “Windows Notepad App Remote Code Execution Vulnerability”

27. The level of bloat from ~2000 is perfect for 2025, especially if you want to be able to set up and run virtual machines without worrying about resource use.

    Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “My productivity app is a never-ending .txt file (2020)”

28. My experience with dependencies in Debian-derived distributions is actually very good, far less problematic than any other packaging system I ever used.

    Recommends · Feb 2026 · in “A header-only C vector database library”

29. It'll be easy to use through point-and-click, decent hardware support, and the local nerds will almost certainly be able to reverse any software issues.

    Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “Ask HN: How would you set up a child’s first Linux computer?”

30. Really once you get software that works all of this is pointless anyway, you have working software and you update once every year or so

    Recommends · Feb 2026 · in “The Switch to Linux and the Beginning of My Self-Hosting Journey”

31. I can rely on gifts to the world like Linux, Debian, PostgreSQL, Apache, Nginx, Caddy, and Yggdrasil without any problems for decades.

    Recommends · Oct 2026 · in “Ask HN: What do you run on a $5 VPS that's worth keeping online 24/7?”

32. Debian gives attribution to every single open source project in existence that is capable of running on Linux, and is Free Software.

    Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “Debian votes to allow "responsible use of generative AI"”

33. still suffers from split-brain: If patches are sent upstream first, Debian can't start digesting them until they're already public.

    Mixed · May 2026 · in “Maybe you shouldn't install new software for a bit”

34. Went from ~2 hours of battery life to 10, and no more of the constant jet engine level fan activity I experienced with windows.

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “I replaced Windows with Linux and everything's going great”

35. Ubuntu has a good system to get everything into mainline (mostly because Debian has nearly everything and they ship Debian)

    Recommends · Jun 2026 · in “Package Managers need global hooks”

36. Never needed to compile OS kernels or standard DLLs, other people already did and published in these package repositories.

    Recommends · Jun 2026 · in “Is it time for a new Embedded Linux build system?”

37. This allows for the most egregious bugs to be spotted before anyone not directly developing Debian starts using it.

    Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “Shai-Hulud Returns: Over 300 NPM Packages Infected”

38. I applaud the debian project for their recent decision to defer and think harder about the nature of this problem.

    Recommends · Mar 2026 · in “Give Django your time and money, not your tokens”

39. as an end-user it's adequate for installing applications it's still an enormous pain to use packages as libraries

    Mixed · May 2026 · in “Maybe you shouldn't install new software for a bit”

40. Everything works for me on Debian, with the additional bonus that my operating system is no longer spying on me.

    Recommends · Jun 2026 · in “WSL 3 gives developers a compelling reason to stick with Microsoft”