this post was submitted on 04 Feb 2026
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Should I be using Debian? (lemmy.blahaj.zone)
submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by Marshezezz@lemmy.blahaj.zone to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
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I’ve been getting more into self hosting lately, grabbed an optiplex 3050 for everything and I’m running Mint currently. Looking more into things though, I saw Debian come up as a more barebones distro and now I’m wondering if there is a lot of benefit to going more barebones. I’m not having any issues with my current setup but now I can’t stop thinking about it. I am newer to Linux but having to learn new things doesn’t wig me out much if there is a lot more involvement with Debian

Edit: I appreciate the responses. I do see where I could just end up creating problems that don’t exist by experimenting with it more. Debian does sound enticing so it’s definitely something I’ll mess about with virtually for now and see how I like it in comparison. But I definitely have to agree on the “don’t mess with a good thing” if it’s working for me. All your answers have definitely given me something to play with now as well, I want the problems to solve but doing it in a separate environment would suit me better to learn a few things. This community rocks.

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[–] fizzle@quokk.au 12 points 5 months ago

Should I be using Debian?

That's unanswerable but ...

I've used Debian exclusively for many years. There are several aspects that have served me well:

  • debian is one of the older, more popular distros - huge community and catalogue of solved problems.
  • it just makes sense to run the same OS on my desktop and on servers, no oddities between them.
  • it's stable and boring.

On that last point, before switching to debian I (like everyone) enjoyed different DE's and distros because they look great and the constant change gives a feeling of progress. However, at some point I realised that I didn't want my OS to be a distraction from what I'm actually doing. Like I want to get my work done, and something not working quite right with the OS due to some bug or update is a huge distraction. Debian's release cycle mitigates that problem.

In the before times it used to be annoying that the software in Debian's repos lagged a long way behind the current releases, but that's not really a problem with the advent of flatpak, nix, and (my preference) AppImages.

Recently I was tempted to switch to NixOS, but I didn't.