It’s my choice but Arch and its derivatives look like the trend like CachyOS which is #1 right now on visits on distrowatch. Also I’ve heard Google use Debian as gLinux and I feel many other giants also use it and sponsor it and I’m not comfortable choosing it as my distro. Can the sponsors togethwr with students or any other interested use it for their PCs, either coding or ordinary use? It strictly promotes free but worried about giants and sponsors.
Debian on my server, my desktop, my laptop, and my gaming computer. That last one might be the most questionable choice, but so far it has been working well.
Just works. No issues.
I’ve heard Google use Debian as gLinux and I feel many other giants also use it and sponsor it and I’m not comfortable choosing it as my distro.
They use Debian for the same reason all heavy industry is built using steel and not whatever flashy new composite is in the news today. It works. Debian is slightly harder than Ubuntu / Mint to install and set-up, but probably the easiest to maintain since it is extremely stable and forgiving. It will also work on just about any hardware.
And don’t worry about the sponsorships. Debian is run by the community; the sponsers don’t get to decide anything.
debian on servers all the way, since 2000
I use PikaOS, which is based on Debian. It’s right up there with CachyOS is performance and gaming, and have been using it for over a year with its hyprland variant.
I personally use DietPI on my headless servers, which is a derivative of debian, and PikaOS on my personal computer, which is the bazzite equivalent of debian. It’s great really :). At this stage, i’ve been so used to debian derivatives that I simply don’t want to use time to learn another distro’s specific ways. I’ve tried mandrake and rpm years ago, but debian simply was the golden standard I used at school and on PI.
Arch and its derivatives look like the trend
It’s because nobody writes “I use Debian BTW”.
I use Debian BTW.
I don’t really run around yelling about it. I mostly use derivatives like Mint, Raspberry PI OS (such a dumb rebranding) and armbian , but stock Debian goes on some servers since it just works. I’m not tuning anything nor looking for special packages. Unless there’s a driver issue (old Debian problem), it’ll be boring and work.
Use what tools work for you.
Huge thank you to the Debian devs. You’ve done me good tools for decades now.
My wife uses Debian and is very happy with it.
She uses it both for gaming and studio recordings with Ardour.Debian has for decades been among the most respected distros in the Linux world, and it still is.
If you want something solid, Debian should be your first choice.Edit PS:
She also uses it for programming occasionally. Debian is an excellent platform for “coding” with its huge repositories.
But most Linus distros are very good for programming, and will have all the common necessary tools readily available.She uses it both for gaming and studio recordings with Ardour.
How is the gaming experience on Debian nowadays? Last time I tried it (several years ago now), it was kind of a nightmare jumping through all of the various hoops required to get it to pay nicely with an Nvidia GPU.
Nvidia drivers do not always play nice with the kernel, and can disrupt high end audio use. If you use Linux you should use an AMD or Intel GPU.
My wife used to use Nvidia, because it worked better for some games, but she finally ended up getting pissed with the proprietary Nvidia drivers, and switched to AMD about a year ago. And now all her games that used to work with Nvidia drivers also work with AMD.
AFAIK Debian support Nvidia proprietary drivers reasonably well today, but for older Nvidia cards you may be out of luck, they can be a real shitshow to get to work if you want to use the proprietary driver.
Best option is to just stop using Nvidia on Linux!
Good to know I just can’t help it cuz I hate Arch and CachyOS. I dont like their websites either.
debian has been my first choice since the 90s, but i use arch’s excellent wiki all the time.
Personally I prefer an Arch derivative, and neither of us can convince the other. 😋
However we both see the merits of “the other side”, we just have different preferences. But we also have some fun with it if some times. 😎If you wonder if “anyone uses Debian” (lol) I’m extremely curious to hear your reasons for hating Arch lmao
Edit: to answer your question, yes. Yes. “Some people” do indeed use Debian
I have Arch on my desktop, and all my laptops, but all of my servers run Debian. If you want your machine to have all the latest stuff, then Arch is great. If you want it to Just Work™ all the time without any concerns, Debian is great.
I have Arch on my desktop with the CachyOS repo enabled and the CachyOS kernel and also have all my servers running Debian.
It just works for me.
I use Debian on all my servers and virtual machines due to its slow update cadence and leanness.
I mean I run one arch machine but have 10 ish Debian machines.
DistroWatch isn’t an OS ranking system, its a “How many hits” or " “how many recent users claimed to use” a certain system.
This has no real correlation to actual deployed OS in the world.
It’s more of a buzz ranking; like a lot of people went to Debian recently because of Canonical being a less disrable OS builder. So Distrowatch got a ton of Debian searches at the beginning of that switch, but probably way less now.
Only dislike I have with Debian is upgrading it was always a headache, but I think rolling release just suits me more.
Its a great distro
ymmv, but debian has always been near perfect through upgrades for me: even a recent buster -> bullseye -> bookworm -> trixie went smoothly.
issues usually arise from not maintaining a clean debian stable install (e.g. you were using backports or lots of 3rd party repos). if those are cleaned up prior things still usually go well.
not saying you didn’t have issues, but in my experience with with lots and lots of debian systems, upgrades have been 99.9% cakewalk.
the same goes for any distribution not just debian. installers and upgrade processes cannot possibly account for the infinite number of unexpected things they could encounter. the more you go ‘off book’ with third-party repositories, backports, manual configuration changes, manual package installs and what-not, the greater the chance for having ‘issues’ with version upgrades.
I tried Debian when I built my PC back in 2025. It didn’t have any support for the bleeding edge parts I chose.
I then tried LMDE as a compromise. It also didn’t have the support I needed.
It’s a little too stable for my use-case… but runs well on my older laptops.
Maybe Debian is not for gaming?
Nah, this wasn’t an issue with gaming. This was just that the parts were new. The motherboard I chose used a 2024 chipset that Debian didn’t recognize. Basic stuff like detecting drives and outputting video beyond VESA standards was busted because of it. It took around 6 more months until Trixie came out with support.
I currently use LMDE, yes. I just have spent too much time on the programs I already installed to move on from it I guess. Nothing’s come up. It Just Works™ and the wife loves it
Heard some stuff about them introducing bugs via the downstream patching system though? All that package management stuff is a bit over my head.
In my understanding, Linux distros have different flavors and play in different arenas. For instance, there are “community-driven” distros like Debian, Arch, or Gentoo, and there are other “industry-driven” distros that are developed by companies, such as Fedora or Ubuntu. Another aspect to consider is the support for new software. With Arch and similar distros you get support for bleeding edge software, whereas Debian supports more stable releases and officially supports older version of softwares that have been tested and reliable. Then there are a myriad of other things to consider, including the Desktop Environment, using X11 or Wayland, SystemD, support for graphics cards, etc…
I wouldn’t care much about who uses it, but about who takes the decisions. In this case, Debian has a very open system that you can check on their website. I think that corporate interests such as what Google or Microsoft want don’t have a space in the Debian decision-making processes. I tend to trust more the community-driven distros and stable releases, so Debian does the trick for me.
You described the basics, anyway, some universities use it as their OS, no giant techs involved.
