I started my Journey on Mint. The Install broke, but I wasn’t gonna give up that easily. So I used AI to troubleshoot it (not my best times, but I was desperate). I customized mint, I cherished it and loved my escape from the grasps of Microsoft.
Eventually, I noticed you couldn’t do rounded corners on Cinnamon (I didn’t understand DEs at the time, thinking you could only use the DE that came with the Distro).
It pissed me off so much that I went and tried something with Plasma. I went with OpenSUSE, in part cuz I liked the Chameleon, in part because I did like the concept. Bluetooth and wifi didn’t work ootb and for me as a beginner that sealed the deal, I wasn’t able to fix it.
Next, I went to Kubuntu, thinking it’ll be stable and have Plasma. And it was. It was all i’d ever hoped for. Stable, many features, super customizable. I even messed around with config files etc (mind you, this was like 3 weeks into my journey). I loved it. Even disabled snaps eventually.
But eventually I got bored. I started trying out other Distros, not hopping but just trying out their live installs. I no longer liked the corporate backend of Canonical. I wanted something new.
I also watched a lot of Linux content at the time, and I was confused and annoyed that I wasn’t getting the newest updates to stuff. That’s when I really started learning about DEs, Rolling releases etc.
I didn’t even really think of Debian as an option at the time, I kept hearing it was old and outdated, which I didn’t want.
That’s when I fell down the Arch rabbit hole. Cool logo, cool concept, hacker mode.
I wanted that, So, I tried Cachy and Endeavor. No. It wasn’t enough. I wanted that Arch logo natively in fastfetch. I wanted to say “I use arch btw”. First, I messed around in VMs. from 3pm to 3am, all I did was try and install arch in VMs. Manually, of course. I decided it was the only way to get the experience needed.
I was able to do it eventually. The Step to bare metal was… not as smooth as expected. what the hell is NVMEp02?? And stuff like that. It look a long time until I was done. And it was buggy, I had messed up. Shit didn’t work. I decided, well, it works except for weird stuff, strange issues I didn’t care to troubleshoot. So I used Archinstall, and no I don’t feel guilty, I can still do it manually if I wanted to I was just lazy.
Aaaand here we are. Arch is amazing and fantastic. But Debian Testing is almost as fast in terms of releases and I like the extra stability. Using Cosmic on Arch, actually. I love the tiling functionality. We shall see what the future brings
Be careful with Debian Testing, it is prioritized last for security patch frequency of the 3 Debian versions. It is possible to daily drive but not really meant for that, and even Arch has more safeguards.
Is it a horrendous idea? No. I do realize people daily it. It is just not designed for it. If something breaks on Arch, you can just check social media for an update and know it’ll be fixed shortly or what the fix is on your end. And the Arch community will probably loudly complain about it until it is back to normal, because people daily Arch. For Debian Testing/Unstable it’s more like you report an issue and they go “noted!” and if you complain they’ll go “use stable then”. A bit of an exaggeration but there are no patch notes and no dedicated security team. Security patches will get to you maybe at some point. This isn’t to trash Debian in any way, but it is what it says on the tin: the testing/unstable variant, not a rolling release.
Ah ok, you wanted something new and to experiment and wanted the most up to date thing without going into “side branches”.
I also really understand wanting to use a mainline Linux, I’m prouder of using main vanilla ass Debian since it feels more official and respected to present myself professionally saying “yes, I use Linux, my distro is Debian” instead of “I use mint because I need more handholding” or “I use Nobara/Pika because I am a 420 blaze it gamer”.
I did similar stuff to you, if you’re interested you can check out my journey. However, during this distro hop I did come more to terms with understanding distros are basically DE + package manager + bundled software, with a few differences and outliers.
Which led me to having the fun situation where I hated MATE, uninstalling it from my Ubuntu mate install, putting on KDE, distro hopping and when I went for Debian net install, repeating the KDE install after being shocked that a bare bones Debian install has no DE.
I did it again for a trashtop that I have, removing LMDE’s default DE and installing XFCE because I didn’t like… Cinnamon?
Do you wanna hear the whole backstory?
I’m in Ur thread, reading Ur posts.
Yes I want free entertainment.
Well, you asked for it.
I started my Journey on Mint. The Install broke, but I wasn’t gonna give up that easily. So I used AI to troubleshoot it (not my best times, but I was desperate). I customized mint, I cherished it and loved my escape from the grasps of Microsoft.
Eventually, I noticed you couldn’t do rounded corners on Cinnamon (I didn’t understand DEs at the time, thinking you could only use the DE that came with the Distro).
It pissed me off so much that I went and tried something with Plasma. I went with OpenSUSE, in part cuz I liked the Chameleon, in part because I did like the concept. Bluetooth and wifi didn’t work ootb and for me as a beginner that sealed the deal, I wasn’t able to fix it.
Next, I went to Kubuntu, thinking it’ll be stable and have Plasma. And it was. It was all i’d ever hoped for. Stable, many features, super customizable. I even messed around with config files etc (mind you, this was like 3 weeks into my journey). I loved it. Even disabled snaps eventually.
But eventually I got bored. I started trying out other Distros, not hopping but just trying out their live installs. I no longer liked the corporate backend of Canonical. I wanted something new.
I also watched a lot of Linux content at the time, and I was confused and annoyed that I wasn’t getting the newest updates to stuff. That’s when I really started learning about DEs, Rolling releases etc.
I didn’t even really think of Debian as an option at the time, I kept hearing it was old and outdated, which I didn’t want.
That’s when I fell down the Arch rabbit hole. Cool logo, cool concept, hacker mode.
I wanted that, So, I tried Cachy and Endeavor. No. It wasn’t enough. I wanted that Arch logo natively in fastfetch. I wanted to say “I use arch btw”. First, I messed around in VMs. from 3pm to 3am, all I did was try and install arch in VMs. Manually, of course. I decided it was the only way to get the experience needed.
I was able to do it eventually. The Step to bare metal was… not as smooth as expected. what the hell is NVMEp02?? And stuff like that. It look a long time until I was done. And it was buggy, I had messed up. Shit didn’t work. I decided, well, it works except for weird stuff, strange issues I didn’t care to troubleshoot. So I used Archinstall, and no I don’t feel guilty, I can still do it manually if I wanted to I was just lazy.
Aaaand here we are. Arch is amazing and fantastic. But Debian Testing is almost as fast in terms of releases and I like the extra stability. Using Cosmic on Arch, actually. I love the tiling functionality. We shall see what the future brings
Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
Be careful with Debian Testing, it is prioritized last for security patch frequency of the 3 Debian versions. It is possible to daily drive but not really meant for that, and even Arch has more safeguards.
idk, is it really that bad? I’ve heard of many people using debian sid for daily
Is it a horrendous idea? No. I do realize people daily it. It is just not designed for it. If something breaks on Arch, you can just check social media for an update and know it’ll be fixed shortly or what the fix is on your end. And the Arch community will probably loudly complain about it until it is back to normal, because people daily Arch. For Debian Testing/Unstable it’s more like you report an issue and they go “noted!” and if you complain they’ll go “use stable then”. A bit of an exaggeration but there are no patch notes and no dedicated security team. Security patches will get to you maybe at some point. This isn’t to trash Debian in any way, but it is what it says on the tin: the testing/unstable variant, not a rolling release.
Ah ok, you wanted something new and to experiment and wanted the most up to date thing without going into “side branches”.
I also really understand wanting to use a mainline Linux, I’m prouder of using main vanilla ass Debian since it feels more official and respected to present myself professionally saying “yes, I use Linux, my distro is Debian” instead of “I use mint because I need more handholding” or “I use Nobara/Pika because I am a 420 blaze it gamer”.
I did similar stuff to you, if you’re interested you can check out my journey. However, during this distro hop I did come more to terms with understanding distros are basically DE + package manager + bundled software, with a few differences and outliers.
Which led me to having the fun situation where I hated MATE, uninstalling it from my Ubuntu mate install, putting on KDE, distro hopping and when I went for Debian net install, repeating the KDE install after being shocked that a bare bones Debian install has no DE.
I did it again for a trashtop that I have, removing LMDE’s default DE and installing XFCE because I didn’t like… Cinnamon?