i set up a bunch of machines at my new place. ubuntu.

my weekend project is moving them over to debian.

it pains me, ubuntu used to be “the” linux i would point people to. the “un-fuckup-able” thing people should try if they’re switching.

The Rustaceans will come for you too. While you’re asleep, they’re watching Claude port the entire Debian userspace to Rust in the name of Jesus Christ amen.

You're so very right https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50399400

Oohhh there’s one more C vulnerability. Oh my gosh, what ever will I do? Should I buy a new smart toaster? I’m not sure. I just really don’t know what to do right now.

It’s called pay attention and f*king upgrade your packages.

I guess I forgot the /s on my post.

I don't understand the behaviour behind "the language I'm using is better than X because it has option M and N"

I was there not so long ago when Java was supposed to replace everything, and then C# came, and then Go but my pay was still handled by COBOL that was also supposed to be better.

Yeah I hear ya. I mean they all work fine there will always be something better at some things than others. And there will always be vulnerabilities.

Programmers have some hyper optimization disease where they don’t see things clearly.

what has this got to do with rust?

As someone who's been using ubuntu since warty warthog, what did you end up switching to / what are other people using these days?

They said—Debian

doh - im an idiot. I read that as "from debian", assuming they were referring to the wider debian suite. TY.

I used to use ubuntu for most everything. This year I'm trying arch a la cachyos. It's actually super nice to not have to wait for hardware support and security patches. Has anything broken? Nope. In fact, things that I would just have to deal with as "teehee isn't linux quirky?" shit is mostly gone. Turns out that it really is as simple as canonical and gnome being the problem.

I use Fedora if that's helpful. Well, I've been using Bluefin for the last few months and it's certainly different.

Bluefin uses sudors and uutils too!

Debian for servers and could also be for desktop, though for desktop Mint seemed okay (still Ubuntu based, just without the focus on snaps and the Cinnamon desktop is nice).

Whereas on the RPM side Fedora is pretty good for desktop and something like RockyLinux for your servers (essentially carries on the spirit of the old CentOS).

Then again, I never really needed any of the more fancy modern distros, most of the time I just need good LTS and to run Docker, many might prefer Podman.

[delayed]

Debian, SuSE, Fedora, Rocky depends what you are using for. One of the first 3 if you're running it on a desktop.

I mean i switched because of current packages including changes like rust sudo if it makes it better (I do remember a few sudo CVEs).

Are you know running debian with testing or unstable?

My employer has similar plans. Ubuntu 24.04 will be the last Ubuntu release. We are migrating to NixOS.

I don’t have any skin in this rs-coreutils debate. But Ubuntu still hasn’t patched CVE-2026-98432. We’re migrating too

They have. I just updated my resolute system to the patched kernel 7.0.0-43.43.

> we are migrating to NixOS

So you're moving from a distro that's being wrecked by ideologically-driven decisions, to one that is almost entirely ideologically motivated and notable for internal drama. Great choice, best of luck.

Care to elaborate?

We're an redhat (originally) and derivatives based shop for 30 years now, but if I was going to choose a different stable enterprise level distro to base a fleet on, there's a very good chance it would be Debian.

Why would you move to Debian? Have you used it recently?

I am struggling to remember, but the last time I tried Debian a year ago there was a lot of setup and a few things broken (I think it was outdated packages). One of the things I tried to setup was a RAID array which was a very involved experience. It felt like things were not being tested. While on RHEL it was a simple point and click in Cockpit.

I honestly don't understand why there isn't more people talking about debian. Ubuntu is always mentioned, but it's going down hill, and debian is the obvious alternative. When I went from Ubuntu to debian, I got way more recent versions of my software. That used to be the only complaint people had with debian.

Ubuntu is a frozen debian/sid. At least it was back in the day.

I wish debian would include ssh-import-id in the installer, its a minor change but big quality of life improvement that ubuntu has

would Userify solve that need for you? old but reliable

Whether Debian or Ubuntu LTS have newer versions of software really just depends on which was most recently released - they both have a 2 year release schedule but release on alternating years.

Debian testing seems to be more stable than what most distros put in main. I bend the rules and get most everything from backports to have the best of both worlds (stable + testing).

From my experience (albeit 20 years ago) Debian testing was basically unusable since it could get into an unworkable state quite easily. You were much better off running unstable instead if you needed the absolutely most recent versions of stuff. It would still break occasionally but would get fixes would be available much sooner.

Backports are quite variable. Distro packaging systems are really awkward for software from language ecosystems with many dependencies. I end up having to install a static build of podman if I want a recent version. A backport basically seems impossible.

I have been running with backports for years and can't remember the last time I had a problem. Perhaps things have matured over the years to explain the different experiences.

Backports don’t break a stable install, they tend to either work or are incompatible due to underlying library mismatches (eg libc upgrade.)

However running a testing install can result in a broken system after an apt upgrade and it can stay broken for some time while fixes work their way in from unstable.