Debian 12

[BBQdave]

For all the complaining about the Debian installer being old and dated, it's actually perfect just the way it is! It's not pretty or fancy but it gives you choice. You can install any DE you like and all your packages are current! I guess they could pretty it up but it works perfectly and for all the more time spent using it, if it's not broke why fix it?

+1 And nice instructions with each step of the install. Comparing: Ubuntu installer is very polished and is a good standard to measure against.

The vanilla Gnome Debian provides is excellent! ...I mostly like Debian's default apps...

In my daily use, I have not ran into a single problem. I would go as far as recommending Debian 12 to new user's. If you can read, there is really nothing to it!

I have had the same experience, with both Debian 11 and now Debian 12. With the latest release, I did a vanilla install (Gnome) and added Google Chrome and GIMP. Simple easy. Makes a great workstation and provides all the function I need

[exploder]

If anyone prefers the way Ubuntu handles the dock, I used Dash to Dock and No overview at start-up. If you use the dark theme, Legacy (GTK3) Theme Auto Switcher will take care of the apps that have not been ported to GTK4. I personally like the way Ubuntu uses the dock rather than Gnome's default behavior. I had been so used to the dock being already set up in Ubuntu and thought I would share this to save people time that might be interested.

[TheFu]

+1 And nice instructions with each step of the install. Comparing: Ubuntu installer is very polished and is a good standard to measure against.

Provided you like the defaults that Canonical provides. If you want to do anything non-standard, the Ubuntu installers are less than great.

Plus, they seem to change every LTS, so what we've learned for the prior release installer doesn't apply to the next installer. It is very frustrating. If they had little improvements with each installer, then it would be different. But Canoncial likes to throw out everything and start over far too much. NIH - Not Invented Here doesn't describe Canonical's installers. NITY does - Not Invented This Year.

If you want to point-n-click and manually install the OS, then it probably doesn't matter. OTOH, if you need to install to 500+ desktops using PXE boot and all these desktops have different hardware, then it is a big problem.

With Debian, we have an installer with incremental improvements, so any changes aren't complete, throw out everything previously known.

[bernard010]

Debian 12 is very impressive. Calamares installer,
I installed xfce desktop.
The release contains:
11,089 new packages for a total count of 64,419 packages.
Just think Ubuntu is derived from Debian, this just makes Ubuntu..Better.
There is support for Secure Boot on ARM64
Even more

[Dennis N]

Debian 12 is very impressive. Calamares installer,
I installed xfce desktop...

I understand Calamares is only available from the Live media. I used the net install which uses Debian Installer and is the promoted iso at the top of the download page:

https://www.debian.org/download

In the past, where I encountered Calamares (in particular, Manjaro) it was NOT LVM aware. In Manjaro's case, I put aside my objection and installed it anyway to a partition.

But, Debian Installer IS LVM aware, thank goodness. I wouldn't have done this Debian 12 (Gnome Desktop) install if LVM were not available.

That net installer itself is only 740 MB, and the completed install with the default applications was 4.9GB.

[Tadaen_Sylvermane]

I did a chroot installation a week or so ago with KDE via xorg. Not a hitch. Solid as a rock. Only 5 updates since. Using flatpak for Bottles it runs my Blizzard games perfectly.

I started my Linux journey with Debian back with Wheezy. It's only gotten better since.

[exploder]

I have done the net install on four systems now with no problems. The last install was the most interesting, it was on a Dell XPS 8940. I did the install using the Intel graphics and added an NVidia 1650 super after I got it running.Started out with the open source drivers, the system was really fast! Ended up installing the NVidia drivers in the end because apps started crashing. I was shocked by how fast the open source driver was under wayland!

Installing the NVidia drivers left me with just xserver sessions. The system works flawlessly now and it was interesting that system knew to change the available sessions accordingly. I followed the Debian instructions for installing the NVidia drivers. According to the documentation, my system should not suffer from issues with kernel updates breaking the NVidia drivers.

I have installed Debian 12 on systems now with AMD, Intel and NVidia graphics with no issues. No WiFi issues of any kind either, all my systems use a WiFi connection. Hardware support seems excellent! I have been reading a lot of documentation! I came across this and it offers some great advice!

https://wiki.debian.org/DontBreakDebian

I am honestly blown away by the quality of Debian 12, so much attention to detail where it really matters. I thought it was odd that since release there have only been a handful of minor updates. Seems that if you build it right in the first place there is no need to hammer the user with updates. This takes some getting used to!

[mikodo]

Debian has extensive documentation. (This is not an exhaustive list).

Here is the Debian Users' Manuals page. It is a good reference:

https://www.debian.org/doc/user-manuals

And Debian FrontPage. (Collection of Portals):

https://wiki.debian.org/

If one doesn't know where a page on a subject is, often a simple search term is successful in finding it.

Example:

Debian Virtualization

finds:

https://wiki.debian.org/SystemVirtualization

and:

https://debian-handbook.info/browse/...alization.html

[exploder]

I read and followed the documentation for nvidia drivers! In Ubuntu 22.04 kernel updates usually break the nvidia drivers. I installed a kernel update yesterday in Debian and the drivers were fine. Glad I did a little reading!

[gezzer2]

i dont post much as i can normally sort most things on Ubuntu myself. ive been using Ubuntu since 'warty' (still have the install CD) then moved over to Ubuntu LTS. never had that many problems except now with 'snaps'. i think i will give Debian a whirl its been a long time since i last used Debian. thanks for the heads up best of luck too all ...

edit.
i have just finished --purging snaps completely from a clean minimum install of 22.04.2 LTS. i have the SSD partitioned boot/efi 555MB, / 55555MB, /home rest of the 1TB drive. (no swap) as i have 64GB of DDR4 installed.
now Ubuntu is running as smooth as silk and everything just works as it should and i mean everything. ain't the world wonderful when things just work. all the best ...
ps. it now can work with my Ubuntu (pixel 3a) phone ...