Why switch?

I played with the idea of switching for quite a while. Having switched my daily driver from Windows maybe 6-9 Months ago I made many mistakes in the meantime.

Good and bad

This may have led to a diminshed experience with ubuntu but all in all, I was very pleased to see that Linux works as a daily driver. Still, I was unhappy with the kind of dumbed down gnome experience.

Problems

There were errors neither I nor people I asked could fix and the snap situation on ubuntu (just the fact that they’re proprietary, nothing else).

Installation

Installing debian (and kde) was easier and harder than I expected. The download mirror I used must not have been great although its very close to my location because it took ages although my internet connections is good.

Apps

Since I switched to Linux, I toned down my app diet a lot. Installing all my apps from ubuntu was as easy as writing a short list and going through discover. Later I added flatpak which gave me a couple apps not available through discover (such as fluffychat). The last two I copied directly as appimages.

Games

I was scared that the „old kernel“ of stable debian would be a problem. As it turns out, everthing works great so far, a lot better than on ubuntu which might or might not be my fault.

Instability

Kde does have some quirks that irritate me a bit like installing timeshift (because I tried network backups which dont work with it and the native backup solution does not seem to accept my sambashare) led to a window I could only close by rebooting.

Boot time

What does feel a bit odd is the boot process. After my bios splash, it shows „welcome to grub“ and then switches to the debian start menu for 3 seconds or so, then shows some terminal stuff and then starts kde splash and then login. This feels a lot longer than ubuntu did. Its probably easy to change in some config but its also something that should be obvious.

Summary

So far I‘m incredibly happy although I ran into initramfs already probably because of timeshift which I threw out again. I might do a manual backup if nothing else works. My games dont freeze or stutter which is nice. All apps I had on ubuntu now work on debian and no snaps at all.

TL;DR: If you feel adventurous, debian and kde are a pretty awesome mix and rid you of the proprietary ubuntu snap store. It also doesnt tell you that you can get security upgrades if you subscribe to ubuntu pro. Works the same if not better.

  • haui@lemmy.giftedmc.comOP
    191·
    10 months ago

    I did that, on a vm though. I learned a ton and would not want to miss the experience.

    But arch is absolutely not something I would daily drive even if you paid me for it. It’s like driving a car which you have assembled from parts only. It works but you never know it it will start this morning.

    • 4vr@lemmy.ca
      1·
      10 months ago

      Installed Arch couple of weeks back and was surprised how easy it had become once I overcame the first hurdle of connecting to wifi from command line.

      Only thing I’m not happy with is the font rendering in Firefox. Hard to say if it is Arch or Firefox.

    • yianiris@kafeneio.social
      23·
      10 months ago

      You are reproducing a myth started from Arch to keep newbs and those with learning disabilities out of the way. The 2nd largest distribution after debian didn’t survive this long if this myth had any truth to it.

      @haui_lemmy @BaalInvoker

      • haui@lemmy.giftedmc.comOP
        2·
        10 months ago

        I have provided ample reasoning for my conclusions. I find it very disturbing that you call this a myth. Are you saying I didnt experience what I did?

      • haui@lemmy.giftedmc.comOP
        111·
        10 months ago

        Although I get that arch based distros can work great, they’re not arch, same as ubuntu is not debian.

        But I‘m happy that you’re happy.

          • haui@lemmy.giftedmc.comOP
            1·
            10 months ago

            I have no idea how much difference there is… debian and ubuntu are not the same, one could argue that ubuntu and mint are very close but still they are different.

    • BaalInvokerA
      610·
      10 months ago

      Dude, I daily drive my Arch for a few years and it does not gave me any major issue until today

      It’s a myth that Arch is not stable

      If you don’t do anything crazy, it will be stable, exactly like any other distro

      • haui@lemmy.giftedmc.comOP
        163·
        10 months ago

        Sorry but you’re oot. People who switch to linux today are complete noobs compared to you and will do a ton of things you consider crazy.

        The other distros will accept this or prevent it but arch wont even boot to the DE if you dont follow the wiki to the letter. I had to reaearch some stuff since I didnt get it from just the wiki and still got repeated freezes although I‘m a sysadmin for many years and have two linux servers (one of them for two years) which make no problems at all.

        Arch is a pro distro, feel free to prove otherwise.

        • itchick2014 [Ohio]@midwest.social
          3·
          10 months ago

          I agree that Arch is a pro distro. I do IT tech support, have background with Ubuntu, Mint, Debian, Knoppix, and Fedora and installing Arch was hard mode for me. Would I do it again? Hell yeah. Would I recommend it as a second or third install experience? Nope. Too many distros that are beginner to intermediate friendly. That said, I will forever have a fondness for pacman just because I like the name. I am still working out device drivers and a few smaller details a month later. Also, the wiki is written by someone who doesn’t do good technical writing. It assumes too much back end knowledge. I kept having to follow blog or article posts and still had to sandwich those snippets I got together hoping something worked…and again, I have some background knowledge of Linux already. An absolute beginner would be totally lost.

            • itchick2014 [Ohio]@midwest.social
              2·
              10 months ago

              Glad I am not alone, though I follow unixporn and other communities so was very familiar with the overall sentiments about Arch before diving in. I look forward to when I know a bit more about it. I put it on a laptop I specifically bought to install Linux alongside the existing windows install (LG Gram) so I knew I had nothing to lose and my whole intention was to learn. I would have never installed Arch on a machine I actually need to use at this point. I am lucky that I got as far as I did so quickly. lol.

        • BaalInvokerAPortuguês
          22·
          10 months ago

          I’m suggesting it to you, not to a completely noob. You know this caveats and probably will be fine

          Anyway, use archinstall script. You don’t have to follow the wiki to the letter anymore.

          • haui@lemmy.giftedmc.comOP
            6·
            10 months ago

            I get that. But people will take „its a myth that arch is not stable“ out of context. It is absolutely not as stable as any other OS, at least if you use the wiki. I have not known about the script until recently.

      • drndramrndra@lemmygrad.ml
        41·
        10 months ago

        If you don’t do anything crazy, it will be stable, exactly like any other distro

        Tell me you haven’t used a stable distro without telling me you haven’t used a stable distro.

        Do you know why Debian, a stable distro, releases noncritical updates every ~2 years? Because they test their packages and make sure grub doesn’t release a faulty update and leave your machine in an unbootable state.

        • BaalInvokerA
          14·
          10 months ago

          Stable for what, buddy?

          Debian for sure is stable for a server and Arch may not be as stable.

          However if we are talking about a home use, Arch is stable enough. And with up to date packages.

          I rather use Arch Linux with up to date packages then Debian with 2+ years out dated packages for my daily non-server use.

          You’re not taking into account the use case. It’s simplistic to say that “Arch is not stable”. It is and it isn’t, depending on use case.

          The same for Debian, I can say it’s outdated, and again, it is and it isn’t, depending on use case.

          If you wanna play latest games, use latest softwares and be on the edge of the latest versions, Debian sucks. If you wanna a stable rock solid server, with all packages well tested, well, Arch sucks.

          Just don’t be an asshole saying that X is better than Y dismissing the use case.

          All I said at the beginning was: time to try Arch Linux.

          But some of you can’t live with different opinions and downvoted my comment, as well tried to refute my comment. But, well, I wasn’t even arguing, I was doing a suggestion. So, yeah, do whatever you want, I don’t care

          • drndramrndra@lemmygrad.ml
            1·
            10 months ago

            If stability is a spectrum, you’ve got to admit that Arch is on one end and Debian on the other.

            I ran it on multiple devices for like 3 years. It breaks. Updates are stressful, especially if you have horrible internet in a foreign country.

            Arch has many benefits, but it’s dishonest to call it stable. No amount of relativism will change that.

      • Jones@graeber.social
        2·
        10 months ago

        @BaalInvoker @haui_lemmy
        One just has to learn pacman, the package manager, or, better, some tool like yay, wrapping around pacman and offering an easy way to install packages not only from Arch’s repos, but from the AUR too; and to use some diff tools, like meld, to merge changes from new configuration files into those which they are actually using; and, for the rest, to read the ArchWiki; that way, i have had Arch running on my desktop pc since, like, 10 years ago. Only shame: systemd.

      • Prunebutt@slrpnk.net
        42·
        10 months ago

        Maybe if you don’t touch the AUR, or at least: if you’re really careful with it. But who could resist this tasty, tasty, unstable forbidden fruit of random software?

        • BaalInvokerAPortuguês
          31·
          10 months ago

          Yeah… AUR is what Arch community likes the most, but also what makes Arch unstable the most.

          I don’t use AUR at all. I’m always on Flatpak…