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
      181·
      11 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·
        11 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.

        • haui@lemmy.giftedmc.comOP
          11·
          11 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.

      • yianiris@kafeneio.social
        13·
        11 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·
          11 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?

      • Responsabilidade@lemmy.eco.br
        59·
        11 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·
          11 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]
            3·
            11 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]
                2·
                11 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.

          • Responsabilidade@lemmy.eco.brPortuguês
            22·
            11 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·
              11 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.

        • Prunebutt@slrpnk.net
          42·
          11 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?

          • Responsabilidade@lemmy.eco.brPortuguês
            31·
            11 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…

        • Jones@graeber.social
          1·
          11 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.