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points by davb 1 day ago | 0 comments

Further validation of our decision to move to Debian (as if the sluggish kernel updates and ramming of snaps down our throats weren’t enough). We migrated a few hundred lab machines this summer, and have around half of our servers and containers switched over. It has gone very smoothly.

[–] kbenson 1 day ago

We're an redhat (originally) and derivatives based shop for 30 years now, but if I was going to choose a different stable enterprise level distro to base a fleet on, there's a very good chance it would be Debian.

[–] csdreamer7 1 day ago

Why would you move to Debian? Have you used it recently?

I am struggling to remember, but the last time I tried Debian a year ago there was a lot of setup and a few things broken (I think it was outdated packages). One of the things I tried to setup was a RAID array which was a very involved experience. It felt like things were not being tested. While on RHEL it was a simple point and click in Cockpit.

[–] kccqzy 1 day ago

My employer has similar plans. Ubuntu 24.04 will be the last Ubuntu release in use for production. Once the support period ends, we are migrating to NixOS.

[–] stephenlf 1 day ago

I don’t have any skin in this rs-coreutils debate. But Ubuntu still hasn’t patched CVE-2026-98432. We’re migrating too

[–] MaKey 1 day ago

They have. I just updated my resolute system to the patched kernel 7.0.0-43.43. Patched kernel versions have been available via the -proposed pocket before: https://ubuntu.com/blog/fixes-available-in-proposed-pocket-f...

[–] lakeviewterrace 1 day ago

> we are migrating to NixOS

So you're moving from a distro that's being wrecked by ideologically-driven decisions, to one that is almost entirely ideologically motivated and notable for internal drama. Great choice, best of luck.

[–] poly2it 1 day ago

Care to elaborate?

[–] rzgabriel 1 day ago

Haha, I didn't believe what they told me about the community until I experienced the toxicity first hand.

Still wouldn't switch to another distro anytime soon, you know, sunk cost fallacy and all that.

[–] foxhill 1 day ago

i set up a bunch of machines at my new place. ubuntu.

my weekend project is moving them over to debian.

it pains me, ubuntu used to be “the” linux i would point people to. the “un-fuckup-able” thing people should try if they’re switching.

[–] whatthejesus 1 day ago

The Rustaceans will come for you too. While you’re asleep, they’re watching Claude port the entire Debian userspace to Rust in the name of Jesus Christ amen.

[–] whynotmaybe 1 day ago

You're so very right https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50399400

[–] whatthejesus 1 day ago

Oohhh there’s one more C vulnerability. Oh my gosh, what ever will I do? Should I buy a new smart toaster? I’m not sure. I just really don’t know what to do right now.

It’s called pay attention and f*king upgrade your packages.

[–] whynotmaybe 1 day ago

I guess I forgot the /s on my post.

I don't understand the behaviour behind "the language I'm using is better than X because it has option M and N"

I was there not so long ago when Java was supposed to replace everything, and then C# came, and then Go but my pay was still handled by COBOL that was also supposed to be better.

[–] whatthejesus 19 hours ago

Yeah I hear ya. I mean they all work fine there will always be something better at some things than others. And there will always be vulnerabilities.

Programmers have some hyper optimization disease where they don’t see things clearly.

[–] jjcm 1 day ago

As someone who's been using ubuntu since warty warthog, what did you end up switching to / what are other people using these days?

[–] everybodyknows 18 hours ago

I just sidelined Ubuntu 24.04 for Debian stable on new home desktop hardware.

Impressions:

1. Installer a bit rough. Tried both "graphical" and curses modes: Both truncated partition-specific strings from the manufacturer's Windows setup. No contextual help; wiki seemed out-of-date.

2. Good choices for initial packages; good apt speed from default server.

3. Firefox base version is four months old -- but is a ".7", so maybe seven rounds of bug fix backports? Ubuntu FF snap version on old hardware is by contrast a ".0", tracking much more recent upstream. Which mostly seems to get me a lot of annoying confections and semi-weekly demands to restart for the new version -- after each of which I must then manually repopulate GNOME's desktop workspaces.

4. Snap-induced clutter of home dir and filesystem utility output is gone! Loving that part.

[–] KronisLV 1 day ago

Debian for servers and could also be for desktop, though for desktop Mint seemed okay (still Ubuntu based, just without the focus on snaps and the Cinnamon desktop is nice; this one doesn’t fit the question exactly, but figured I’d mention it anyways cause had a pleasant experience).

Whereas on the RPM side Fedora is pretty good for desktop and something like RockyLinux for your servers (essentially carries on the spirit of the old CentOS).

Then again, I never really needed any of the more fancy modern distros, most of the time I just need good LTS and to run Docker, many might prefer Podman.

[–] nightpool 1 day ago

They said—Debian

[–] jjcm 1 day ago

doh - im an idiot. I read that as "from debian", assuming they were referring to the wider debian suite. TY.

[–] vondur 1 day ago

I use Fedora if that's helpful. Well, I've been using Bluefin for the last few months and it's certainly different.

[–] jcastro 1 day ago

Bluefin uses sudors and uutils too!

[–] willis936 1 day ago

I used to use ubuntu for most everything. This year I'm trying arch a la cachyos. It's actually super nice to not have to wait for hardware support and security patches. Has anything broken? Nope. In fact, things that I would just have to deal with as "teehee isn't linux quirky?" shit is mostly gone. Turns out that it really is as simple as canonical and gnome being the problem.

[–] juujian 1 day ago

I honestly don't understand why there isn't more people talking about debian. Ubuntu is always mentioned, but it's going down hill, and debian is the obvious alternative. When I went from Ubuntu to debian, I got way more recent versions of my software. That used to be the only complaint people had with debian.

[–] boredatoms 1 day ago

I wish debian would include ssh-import-id in the installer, its a minor change but big quality of life improvement that ubuntu has

[–] jamiesonbecker 1 day ago

would Userify solve that need for you? old but reliable

[–] laurencerowe 1 day ago

Whether Debian or Ubuntu LTS have newer versions of software really just depends on which was most recently released - they both have a 2 year release schedule but release on alternating years.

[–] sgc 1 day ago

Debian testing seems to be more stable than what most distros put in main. I bend the rules and get most everything from backports to have the best of both worlds (stable + testing).

[–] laurencerowe 1 day ago

From my experience (albeit 20 years ago) Debian testing was basically unusable since it could get into an unworkable state quite easily. You were much better off running unstable instead if you needed the absolutely most recent versions of stuff. It would still break occasionally but would get fixes would be available much sooner.

Backports are quite variable. Distro packaging systems are really awkward for software from language ecosystems with many dependencies. I end up having to install a static build of podman if I want a recent version. A backport basically seems impossible.

[–] sgc 1 day ago

I have been running with backports for years and can't remember the last time I had a problem. Perhaps things have matured over the years to explain the different experiences.

[–] laurencerowe 16 hours ago

Backports don’t break a stable install, they tend to either work or are incompatible due to underlying library mismatches (eg libc upgrade.)

However running a testing install can result in a broken system after an apt upgrade and it can stay broken for some time while fixes work their way in from unstable.

[–] Grimeton 1 day ago

Ubuntu is a frozen debian/sid. At least it was back in the day.

[–] origini 1 day ago

I mean i switched because of current packages including changes like rust sudo if it makes it better (I do remember a few sudo CVEs).

Are you know running debian with testing or unstable?