Same. It was one of the first distros I ever used back in the early aughts and I now almost all of my other fav distros are based on it. Haven’t tried 12 yet, heard it had some bugs hanging around still and was gonna wait a bit beforehand.
Same for me. Somehow Debian seems to be lighter and more responsive over others i tried. I love how it stays 'the same' during the install, unless you tell it to upgrade to the next version
@@thestreamreader well, in the old days it was: compile, these days their are lots of options: snap, flatpak, etc. and containers like docker, lxc/lxd. And their was also the option of installing some packages from testing or backports.
@@autohmae That has been my problem that always caused me to go back to Windows. PPA and the like always eventually screwed up the OS. I have been running Arch Linux and with AUR have had no problems installing every piece of software that I want. I have been running for a year and run my updates every 2 weeks. So far no problem with stability.
No issues with upgrading from Debian 11 to 12 with KDE. Even my AMD video drivers worked just fine without issues. Usually it messes up my three monitor settings after each upgrade but not this time which is a welcome surprise. Great work Debian folks!!
I had tried debian several years ago and yes I had issues with getting the drivers installed. I'm testing an install of debian 12 in boxes and wow its so easy now. They really improved it. Very cool!
I tried Debian before and it didn't install or notice my hdd back then which was very weird. I couldn't install it simply put and I encountered the same problem Linus Taverlod experienced. I switched to slackware and never looked back. Today my entire family and mother uses slackware. Even my 6 year old child knows how to install slackware and compile programs from source. I may try Debian but if I can't use it then it's back to slackware for 10 more years until Debian can get it's shit together. Slackware64 is the best os in the world 🌎🌍
A company I used to work with considered Debian "industrial quality" - another bit of praise. It's been a while, so I also will install on hardware just for the fun of it. Thanks!
Inspired by this, and wanting to get away from corporate backed distros, I switched to Debian Sid. Really similar to Ubuntu non LTS but pure Gnome and no Snap packages. Loving it so far. Debian was my first distro so feels like coming home.
As Ubuntu started pushing snap, I've moved all of my servers to Debian for the past two iterations. Did the upgrade to Bookworm today (this morning around 3am) and it was painless.
Don't forget: if you want to do your own partitioning but also want LVM and encryption, don't encrypt /boot, and use the partition options in the order presented on the page!
I have also switched all of my machines to Debian, having migrated over from Arch and other Arch-based distros I've been using these past few years, and I decided on this largely because of the improved hardware support. The Plasma implementation is definitely excellent out of the box, and the ability to source applications through Flatpak removed any reservations I had about switching.
YES! Debian 12 is the best Linux system ever for me. It's been 2 weeks now since I've installed it in my second internal disk in my recent PC and since then I boot rarely on my first disk with Windows 10. I'm glad I've discovered your video tonight because during the installation, I have not unchecked the default desktop Gnome and I've checked the Cinnamon desktop. So I have two desktop. I'm saying that cause you've mentioned in your video that we can choose more than one desktop during the installation and I've seen other videos where people unchecked the default Gnome and then just installed the desktop of their choice. I used to be a Linux Mint fan since 2012 but more and more it's Debian my number one. What a stable and solid distro. Thanks for your review.
Cool. I keep Debian Sid updated regularly on a couple of machines, so I've pretty much been using Debian 12 for almost 2 years. I guess now I'll be starting to test Debian 13 Trixie.
I've recently chose Debian 12 for my really old asus pro and the younger, but still pretty old, MacBook Pro 2015. The experience so far has been stellar. Being a developer I was a tad worried for the packaging situation but between flatpaks, manual builds and the possibility to switch to unstable easily, old software is not a problem. The system fits the hardware like a glove - everything works right out of the box, shocking. In my ultra modern amd laptop I have fedora 39 and I love it but had more hiccups in comparison. I also have a minisforum where I run a very riced arch with hyprland. It's great looking, but time and time again, I program on my MacBook with Debian more and more. It's just so solid and stable, cohesive looking and extra reliable. Good job Debian folks, you pulled out a masterpiece! ❤
Thank you Jay, for putting light on Debian, I feel that OpenSUSE (with their all-in-one Yast thing) and Debian are among the most underrated and underestimated distros in the linux world, and they need recognition especially from important figures like you. Many just know the stable Debian Branche (currently Bookworm), which aims for stability (stable as unchanging), which is why it is known for having outdated packages. What many dont know, however, is the testing and unstable branches, especially the testing branch (soon to be Trixie). It is very reliable while using moderately up-to-date packages. Please review the testing branche a month or so from now (or whenever you get to do so) and compare it with the stable branch. Excuse my language, English is not my first tongue.
Debian is the king of Operating systems. I am a Debian fanatic and proud of it. My company runs many Ubuntu servers and I support thousands of Ubuntu end user clients. I enjoy my job because Linux is fun to manage. The Terminal can't be beat, many of my users think I am some type of modern day wizard.
Debian is great! A truly rock-solid distro. We use it on virtualized servers, and it boots lightning-fast when compared with Ubuntu server. I used MX Linux before for my desktop, but i had some stability issues, so i switched to Debian. That fixed it. Never had issues with Debian.
There is nothing else quite like Debian. It's so nice to be able to install anything from the repositories and never be surprised, disappointed, and angry over bugs in the software that you install. I used Linux Mint for probably the last 5 years and I got annoyed with enough bugs that I got fed up and installed Debian 11 about 6 months ago. This new release feels very new but also very reliable with no surprises. I might have to install in a VM just to see if they finally have BTRFS installation that works with Timeshift without manual intervention. Today is a great great day I'm so so happy! Congratulations to everyone involved in the making of this amazing operating system and all of the fantastic packages that are included. The quality of work that goes into every Debian release is just absolutely amazing. I feel so sorry for all of the Windows users out there that don't know any better.
Yea, I had to redo my Debian 11 install too and configure the root, swap, and efi partition manually in the correct way to use btrfs so that I can use Timeshift with it effectively. It's not as easy and straight forward as other distros but once you have done it right, it runs so well! Hopefully Debian 12 will be much better regarding this. 😅
You don’t have to be sorry for me being a Windows user. I know very well what to use Windows for (as well as Mac) and when to choose Debian. It’s about the application, not the OS.
@@MR-vj8dn and integrations of applications in the desktop OS. This is big probnlem on Linux no matter what distro you use. Some are better but never perfect. On Mac or Widonws everything works same way while on Linux every app have own "standard", colors, ways to find files etc.. Still the best desktop so far for normal daily work is KDE, preferanble on Manjaro. Never any problems since at least one year or more. StillI must jump to Windows to work on Adobe damn applications :)
What I never understood: what EXACTLY makes older Software so unbearable to use? Everybody complains about older software. But why? Does anybody compete in a software competition? If a certain version runs fine and gets the job done, how is it possible that it suddenly becomes unuseable? 🤔🤔🤔
I think it depends on the type of software. Hardware support, some bugs that require rewriting half of the underlying infrastructure (remember Gnome 3 memory leaks?). So there is a point. But when it works fine and people want new just to have newer thing... Ya, that's dumb.
As a new debain user and a noob, how old is the software rule of thumb. If lets say libre office goes from v6 to v7, how long will it take to get to debain???
@@Zgembo121from the unstable branch it moves to testing, then into stable, I believe that the transition from unstable to testing takes around 6-10 days, and then from testing another 2 weeks, maybe less, but a figure around there.
@@jkgfhgkhjnvfcf1307 thanks for the reply. soo if it takes a couple of weeks for libre office to go from unstable to testing to stable, then why is gnome so slow to get into stable. from what i red it takes it till next debian release to update gnome.
Welcome to the Debian community :) I was using the "non-free" iso for a long time now, this iso included all drivers you need... It's just that it was not the "official" one, but available on debian server... And for daily usage on your computer, you can stay with testing, it's very reliable.. But for server it's only stable ofc...
Loving it! Last time I used debian was probably version 6. Moved to FreeBSD, Ubuntu Server and Mint Cinnamon after that. Recently went distro-hopping after years and Debian 12 feels bloody great! Baldur's Gate 3 runs without a hassle. Very impressed!
Very interested to see how this plays out for Linux Mint, they have been suggesting that LMDE is their future and this now gives them a very modern base to build on.
I was thinking the same. I switched to LMDE over a year ago when distro decisions started really negatively affecting my use cases. It's about as good as it gets for a rock solid "just works" distro. Debian Stable and not Ubuntu at the base is no doubt a huge reason for that.
Thank you again for your videos and congratulations for switching to Debian - after (K)ubuntu began including Snaps by default in their LTS releases in '22 I switched to Debian KDE with Debian Backports on desktop permanenty myself. :-) Servers have always been Debian.
I did the apt full-upgrade yesterday after switching all sources to bookworm on my Debian machine and was half-expecting something to go wrong by the inplace upgrade (since I'm using an nvidia gpu and raid0 on that machine), but it ran through without any error in less than one hour. Very impressive. You might almost call this a semi-rolling release with the ease of updating. Just make sure to add non-free-firmware in addition to non-free. They added that as a new package pool.
I am indeed very happy Debian 12 has included KDE Plasma v5.27!!!! 😭 Now I'm just waiting for my fav distro MX Linux to release a stable version with Debian 12. Can't wait! 😁
@@laughingvampire7555 no issues at all for me, i think sometimes if you had a stop watch you might notice some differences, but using flatpak with debian is a great way to run a desktop. i dont know how much longer things like libre office will be shipped with distros, some have already stopped
Thank you very much for the video! ❤ I love Debian already since 20 years, but I think I even love it a bit more now... I consider switching my daily worker to Debian 12 too, so very much looking forward to your videos to come!
Good Video. I agree with you on Debian completely. I believe Debian is the Linux OS to have at this point. Im on Debian for server, arch for laptop, but am seriously thinking of Debian 12 for my laptop. Reasons for Debian: Quick, reliable, flexible (with xfce4), smallest footprint in a full blown OS. I can do anything i want in Debian. I am not a Gamer, but believe i could work Debian to be able to play games.
I too switched from Ubuntu as much as I liked it. The snap issue was my reason to bailout. Now I just have to work out how to upgraded Debian 11 to 12 server and see what happens. Good video as well. Thanks from Australia. My daily OS is LMDE5.
First of all, thank you for the amazing content! Second, I wanted to love Debian so bad in the past, tried Debian 10 and 11 but I had to switch to Ubuntu at some point. I stopped using Linux for a long while but with Windows 11 coming and A.I. that will be imposed to us, I am running back to Linux. I was supposed to go with Linux Mint with one of my friends(actually my only friend that knows how to install and use Linux) but when I saw Debian 12 and how great it was, I jumped on the wagon. The only thing that almost made me quit at the beginning was Secure Boot and the difficulty to have the NVIDIA drivers sign to be able to load, it is a piece of cake on Linux Mint but it was a pain on Debian. After long hours of reading, searching and testing(and almost giving up) I finally found how to make everything work. Note: I know that disabling Secure Boot would have been much easier but even if it's not perfect, it is still an additional protection. Plus, even Debian is recommending it in their own documentation so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Cheers everyone!
I've been using Debian 12 (Bookworm) for over 12 months without issues (there was one: a GRUB update messed up a couple of installations but I managed to recover without problem). KDE user.
Thank you for the tip about LibreOffice! I manually installed the newer and more stable version 7.5 now on Bookworm and it significantly opens faster than 7.4. Icons are also updated and it feels way more modern and stable.
Apart from flatpak, there is the backports repository in every stable release of Debian, with which newer verisons of software are ported into the stable branch from testing. Sooner or later newer version of LibreOffice will appear in bookworm-backports.
i think alot of users either dont know about the backports or forget about it, mind you, it doesnt cover everything. Personally, i run Debian on important stuff, servers etc, but have had really good resukts with SID over the years, its been very reliable to say its a testng platform and imho its better then using testing
@@cjuk81 I had been using Debian as my daily driver for about a decade before switching to Gentoo (and I still keep Devuan as a fallback installation on my desktop and a Debian on my old laptop). What I can say, it's better to keep Debian as pure as possible, i.e. as less third-party repos as possible. Even backports can somewhat cripple your system, I remember, in Debian 10, there were broken dependencies in nvidia-drivers from backports (it was eventually fixed though), and in Debian 11, I had broken avcodecs from backports of the deb-multimedia repository (due to transition to ffmpeg 5.0, I suppose). But with LibreOffice, I never had any issues in Debian, and it always appeared in backports. Ofc, not all stuff appears in the backports, but there should be kernels, firmware, drivers and some utilities security programs like btrfs-progs and firejail.
@@victorbrand8913 yea, a good point, I mean, how well tested are the backports. I've personally never had the need to use them, I generally keep Debian pure, although more recently I've tended to run deb stable with flatpaks for somethings, other things I install the Deb packages. I also run deb Sid at home and that ls been great for a number of years if you don't mind alot of updates 😀
switched my main work computer from Ubuntu 22.04 to Debian 12 today, Debian 12 is an amazing release, haven't seen a linux distro release this successful in a long long time
This was a good review! Debian 12 solved almost all the complaints I have had with Debian to the point I am going to try for at least a month use it as my primary OS and maybe even my new home.
Switching to Debian 12 too. Was holding out for LMDE, but forget that. Debian + whatever DE I wanna try out. Should help me stop distro hopping as well.
🧑🏽💻 I'm very pleased with debian...also. thankful to tiny core for really teaching me what it takes to get a system customized... when I 1st meet Ubuntu some 20years ago working at a youth center...I just thought OK awesome this let's the kids have an experience using computers.. what a beautiful life sometimes you never know when you will use what you learn...just enjoy learning. & shout out to the tech lead at the center on southwest side of Chicago for giving me a peek into linux...& now here I am fully immersed 🙏💗
Its a really suprise! Loved to hear that you swiched to debian. Debian is my daily driver in the last 2 years and I'm glad its your daily driver too. It's giving me the confident that I've chosen right 👍🏻😉
I was so excited, that I installed it after going to bed at midnight 😂. I'm impressed. Debian 11 didn't come with the drivers for my graphics card, which were a pain to install after installation. But 12 doesn't need any extra graphics card drivers for my setup. It feels smooth and doesn't have as many errors - if any - during boot or shutdown. After tinkering a bit with some coding I'm quite happy with it.
Hello from France. Fantastic review, as allways. Debian 12's user here, as a daily driver for work, game, etc . Thanks for your work about Free Software.
After 7 months of experimenting with various Linuxes, I've chosen Debian 12 with XFCE. I think it's an amazing gift that such a beautiful and effective machine is free of charge
one of the unfortunate issues with GNOME desktop is that the recent GNOME versions seem to be using Wayland instead of XORG. If you are on NVIDIA hardware, make sure to select XORG in the sessions list at the bottom right when logging in. While Vanilla OS too has this issue, I expect Debian admins to be more aware of these issues and do not blindly use a desktop manager which does not work universally in all hardware, right out of the box.
I have installed it alongside Linux Mint on a Lenovo All in One PC. No hardware problems, support for driverless printing , no problems with multimedia and support for the Dutch language.
The only thing I've had to do on my Debian 11 machine was to install backported kernel (or build my own, which is surprisingly easy on Debian) and install binary blob for dimgrey_cavefish AMD GPU (RX6600). And it lasted 2 years without ever turning off no problem. I was also know wt least one Debian 9 server that was running unmantained powered on all the time for 5+ years, and the first time it turned off was when server PSU literally caught fire. So yeah, that Stable part... They really mean it. Waiting parts for my new PC and definitely sticking with Debian for that one.
I started with Red Hat Linux and stuck with an RPM based distro for almost 20 years. Sadly, that distro is not moving in a direction that I am happy about so I started looking around, I wanted to like RHEL but it was too restricted for my liking. I ended up installing Debian 11 cinnamon with a backports upgrade to get kernel 6. Upgraded to 12 yesterday and I'm pretty confident that I won't be going anywhere any time soon.
I switched all my systems over to Debian 12! Very high quality release, it is so well tested! No issues like I had with Ubuntu or Mint. WiFi works on every system! I couldn't ask for a better experience!
I'm glad to hear you switch to Debian. I'm Ubuntu user but if in the future I will try another distribution, Debian and Fedora will be my two option. Ubuntu user for more than ten years.
Over the years I have tried just about all of the distros and without fail I always come back to Debian. It's the rock foundation in my opinion. When I need it to just work, I always go with Debian.
Nice video. I came to the same conclusions myself. Debian 12 finally removes the main barriers to its wider adoption by 1) making it easier to install the (basically essential) non-free software that users need to make the most of their computer. As you say, Debian previously made life difficult for users for something that was not their fault. And 2) flatpack technology (made practical by the size and low cost of SSD drive technology) means that key software like the browser (Firefox) and word processing (LibreOffice) and maybe other stuff like OBS can be the latest and greatest version. And there's always backports for the nitty gritty stuff. Thanks.
I've been using Debian based OS for my new laptop and yes, wifi didn't work, GPU went crazy and I had all kinds of troubles, so I switched to Arch-based OS and things worked perfectly. However, after a while, things started breaking out of control on Arch and I realized I am fixing things more often than not and I got sick of it. After 2 years I decided to install Debian 12 on this same laptop and it works perfectly - no bugs, glitches, errors, no random update breaks. While it might be a bad thing things update as slowly, it's much better than receiving broken updates and your programs or OS not working. Anyway, the OS is incredible.
"Best Debian Ever" claim completely validated here. I would have liked a mention of those nifty new changes, the "flat-pack" and use of proprietary drivers, at the beginning of the video since I almost tuned out before you got to the best bit. 🤪
I've been through so many distros , both Redhat and Debian, that I've lost count. One thing that is certain is that all roads lead back to Debian. Been running Debian on my home workstations for 10+ years. Debian just works. No brainer that I've already upgraded "Bookworm/KDE".
I love Debian and have been using the release candidates for Bookworm for a while before it launched today. One word for LXQT fans (apart from the fact that a private repo with the 1.3 version is already available), Debian used XFWM4 in Bullseye (I, like it's creator, prefer Openbox but whatever) well fear not... If you don't do a core install from the terminal and use the tasksel install, you will get Openbox, XFWM4 AND KWIN! I am not joking. Not choose, GET ALL three. Happy uninstalling and reconfiguring. Don't say you weren't warned.
Man I'm in. Going to jump from kubuntu to debian soon. Update: I've installed it and it's fantastic! Getting Flatpak to work with VSCodium and rust-analyzer was a pain though.
I use Debian as my daily driver since ever (Potato) on all my systems. Just stable for servers and sometimes testing for workstations, especially after a year or so on stable when stuff may get too old and changing back to stable once testing became the new stable. That makes it convenient for having the same experience and toolset across all devices. I also never reinstall. I just upgrade and even disk clone to new hardware, because I'm too lazy to reconfigure everything.
Thanks for the review. in 2018 I switched to Fedora from Windows because I was concerned about Windows10 telemetry. Now, Fedora is contemplating collecting telemetry. Your video is very timely for me as I'm eager to try Debian now.
You weren't kidding about the bomb dropped at the end, excited to see your dedicated video on this, as I was leaning towards doing the same with all I've heard about debian 12.
Equating Debian to an old reliable friend hits perfect for some of us :D. Last I properly used Debian was in school somewhere between 2005-2008, worked really well back then, I would always stick to Debian based distro's because I liked using apt in commandline. It was actually completely random I started using Debian this time around, I'm doing a bit of a project for a cyberdeck type device, I was googling "low end debian distros" and I thought why not just use clean Debian again? So I did, and it was 12! I do remember attempting Debian before that and running into some of the issues you mention, like no wifi drivers, but 12 is smooth and seems to just work for everything so far. Main complaint from me so far is that CTRL+ALT+T doesn't work out of the box.
Great video, i have been tinkering with and learning a lot about linux for about 5 years now. Between you, Lawrence, and Chris Titus have helped me build a really nice home lab self hosting many open source solutions. Thank you for sharing knowledge!
I was watching this and thinking "If Debian 12 is so great, are you still going to use Ubuntu Server?" And then you dropped the bomb:- "I'm switching to Debian 12 for my servers". This was exactly what I was thinking. And if you have a series of videos covering key points in the switch from Ubuntu Server to Debian Server I'll watch every one (and buy the first edition when the book comes out!).
Great video Thx, debian has been my primary since squeeze back during the distro hopping days but always came back to debian and I use to watch and count the days for a new release and upgrade, But now a days, did not realize this was out, bookworm just escaped me so i will be upgrading tonight.
I run Arch Linux on my desktop because I want all the shiny new stuff, especially when it comes to drivers and games. However, I also run a small homelab with multiple servers and a couple of VPS which, after a brief stint with CentOS, have been running Debian for years. Debian is just extremely solid. I recently upgraded all my servers to Debian 12, some of which had an uptime of over 300 days. If I were to crown the GOAT of Linux distros, Debian would easily win. It's just so, so good. To anyone reading this: If you have a couple of bucks to spend, please donate a little to your favorite open source project, especially if you use their software on a regular basis. Arch, Debian and KDE have enriched my computing life immeasurably. It's only right to help out financially here and there.
I started with Linux by making my own NAS and installing Ubuntu server, that worked well for quite a few years. Then about 3 years ago I switched to Linux Desktop for most of my machines and went with Mint. It was time to reinstall my NAS OS and I decided to make it as bare bones as possible so it made sense to go with Debian 10 at the time given that that's what Ubuntu was based on and over time I became a bit of a fan. Now with this 12 release I'm thinking I might give most of my desktops a bit of a refresh and switch to Debian using Cinnamon for the desktop. I really haven't had any issues with Mint but I feel like it could be worth it to strip things back a little and I'm a little tired of daily updates for packages I never use. The 12 release feels kinda timely for me.
I had started using Ubuntu 18, 19 ... after that Pop!_OS, some problem with those distro, and now I had decided get focus stable stabilization im had install today Debian 12, thanks for all you videos! pd. I had started work with proxmox for you, thanks!
6:58 also this is a lot less risky when it's close to release, in those last months they are mostly fixing smaller issues. Not (usually) doing things which will break things in a big way.
I do software development. Some of the core people in one of the Open Source communities that I help out now and then seem to mostly use Debian Testing. I'm constantly having to rebuild newer versions of the required libraries in order to build the program since my daily use distro often has older versions for a bit more stability while not being an LTS type distro. I have several hard drive partitions I set aside for different distros and I recently installed Debian 12 in one of them. I'm thinking of switching to Debian as my daily drive distro. I need to spend a little more time trying it out before I commit to switching.
After almost 10years of use, my company is moving the servers and employee laptops to Debian! I played a role in this change, so glad I was part. :)
where is this ? wow
what's the big deal here? what was the major reason to migrate? could you kindly shed some light here?
Nice to see that you are spreading Linux to the uneduacated Windows users.
What were the laptops and servers on before?
😂 he ain't going to say it.
Debian is the underpinning of all my servers, containers and services. Proxmox, TrueNAS Scale, you name it, Debian is behind it.
Yeah even Raspbian lol
(That's for my server)
Same. It was one of the first distros I ever used back in the early aughts and I now almost all of my other fav distros are based on it. Haven’t tried 12 yet, heard it had some bugs hanging around still and was gonna wait a bit beforehand.
Same for me.
Somehow Debian seems to be lighter and more responsive over others i tried.
I love how it stays 'the same' during the install, unless you tell it to upgrade to the next version
I use it without any GUI installed so the problems mentioned in this video don’t apply to me.
used debian since version 3...all I can say.. it just works !! insanely stable like you wouldnt believe
How do you use it when you need newest package because it fixes a bug or the software is not in the repo.
Same, I've also started at 3.
@@thestreamreader well, in the old days it was: compile, these days their are lots of options: snap, flatpak, etc. and containers like docker, lxc/lxd. And their was also the option of installing some packages from testing or backports.
@@autohmae That has been my problem that always caused me to go back to Windows. PPA and the like always eventually screwed up the OS. I have been running Arch Linux and with AUR have had no problems installing every piece of software that I want. I have been running for a year and run my updates every 2 weeks. So far no problem with stability.
@@thestreamreader good to hear you found something that works for you
No issues with upgrading from Debian 11 to 12 with KDE. Even my AMD video drivers worked just fine without issues. Usually it messes up my three monitor settings after each upgrade but not this time which is a welcome surprise. Great work Debian folks!!
Do you mind sharing in what capacity you use it.
Of course your amd drivers worked
I had tried debian several years ago and yes I had issues with getting the drivers installed. I'm testing an install of debian 12 in boxes and wow its so easy now. They really improved it. Very cool!
I tried Debian before and it didn't install or notice my hdd back then which was very weird. I couldn't install it simply put and I encountered the same problem Linus Taverlod experienced. I switched to slackware and never looked back. Today my entire family and mother uses slackware. Even my 6 year old child knows how to install slackware and compile programs from source. I may try Debian but if I can't use it then it's back to slackware for 10 more years until Debian can get it's shit together. Slackware64 is the best os in the world 🌎🌍
@@ofHerWord "until Debian can get it's shit together" lol, joke of a statement
@@ofHerWord Under Slackware everything, like Wifi and printers and BT, just "work out of the box?"
Debian 12 was the first distribution that worked with the hardware on my 5,1 Mac Pro hardware out of the box. It’s fantastic.
A company I used to work with considered Debian "industrial quality" - another bit of praise. It's been a while, so I also will install on hardware just for the fun of it. Thanks!
Inspired by this, and wanting to get away from corporate backed distros, I switched to Debian Sid. Really similar to Ubuntu non LTS but pure Gnome and no Snap packages. Loving it so far. Debian was my first distro so feels like coming home.
I installed it on my laptop last week and it's been amazing. Gonna try to get on my work computer this week.
As Ubuntu started pushing snap, I've moved all of my servers to Debian for the past two iterations. Did the upgrade to Bookworm today (this morning around 3am) and it was painless.
Great video. Been using Debian, now 12.5, on all servers at a bank. Considering running Debian 12.6 as my dev desktop.
Don't forget: if you want to do your own partitioning but also want LVM and encryption, don't encrypt /boot, and use the partition options in the order presented on the page!
I have also switched all of my machines to Debian, having migrated over from Arch and other Arch-based distros I've been using these past few years, and I decided on this largely because of the improved hardware support. The Plasma implementation is definitely excellent out of the box, and the ability to source applications through Flatpak removed any reservations I had about switching.
I have a bunch of hardware that doesnt work in debian but does in arch......... Me thinks you should stay with debian.
Have you noticed GPUs, WiFi, printers etc are now detected during install as in ubuntu-based distress?
YES! Debian 12 is the best Linux system ever for me. It's been 2 weeks now since I've installed it in my second internal disk in my recent PC and since then I boot rarely on my first disk with Windows 10. I'm glad I've discovered your video tonight because during the installation, I have not unchecked the default desktop Gnome and I've checked the Cinnamon desktop. So I have two desktop. I'm saying that cause you've mentioned in your video that we can choose more than one desktop during the installation and I've seen other videos where people unchecked the default Gnome and then just installed the desktop of their choice. I used to be a Linux Mint fan since 2012 but more and more it's Debian my number one. What a stable and solid distro. Thanks for your review.
Cool. I keep Debian Sid updated regularly on a couple of machines, so I've pretty much been using Debian 12 for almost 2 years. I guess now I'll be starting to test Debian 13 Trixie.
I've recently chose Debian 12 for my really old asus pro and the younger, but still pretty old, MacBook Pro 2015. The experience so far has been stellar. Being a developer I was a tad worried for the packaging situation but between flatpaks, manual builds and the possibility to switch to unstable easily, old software is not a problem.
The system fits the hardware like a glove - everything works right out of the box, shocking.
In my ultra modern amd laptop I have fedora 39 and I love it but had more hiccups in comparison.
I also have a minisforum where I run a very riced arch with hyprland. It's great looking, but time and time again, I program on my MacBook with Debian more and more. It's just so solid and stable, cohesive looking and extra reliable.
Good job Debian folks, you pulled out a masterpiece! ❤
Thank you Jay, for putting light on Debian, I feel that OpenSUSE (with their all-in-one Yast thing) and Debian are among the most underrated and underestimated distros in the linux world, and they need recognition especially from important figures like you.
Many just know the stable Debian Branche (currently Bookworm), which aims for stability (stable as unchanging), which is why it is known for having outdated packages.
What many dont know, however, is the testing and unstable branches, especially the testing branch (soon to be Trixie). It is very reliable while using moderately up-to-date packages.
Please review the testing branche a month or so from now (or whenever you get to do so) and compare it with the stable branch.
Excuse my language, English is not my first tongue.
Debian is the king of Operating systems. I am a Debian fanatic and proud of it. My company runs many Ubuntu servers and I support thousands of Ubuntu end user clients. I enjoy my job because Linux is fun to manage. The Terminal can't be beat, many of my users think I am some type of modern day wizard.
Debian is great! A truly rock-solid distro. We use it on virtualized servers, and it boots lightning-fast when compared with Ubuntu server.
I used MX Linux before for my desktop, but i had some stability issues, so i switched to Debian. That fixed it. Never had issues with Debian.
There is nothing else quite like Debian. It's so nice to be able to install anything from the repositories and never be surprised, disappointed, and angry over bugs in the software that you install. I used Linux Mint for probably the last 5 years and I got annoyed with enough bugs that I got fed up and installed Debian 11 about 6 months ago. This new release feels very new but also very reliable with no surprises. I might have to install in a VM just to see if they finally have BTRFS installation that works with Timeshift without manual intervention. Today is a great great day I'm so so happy! Congratulations to everyone involved in the making of this amazing operating system and all of the fantastic packages that are included. The quality of work that goes into every Debian release is just absolutely amazing. I feel so sorry for all of the Windows users out there that don't know any better.
Yea, I had to redo my Debian 11 install too and configure the root, swap, and efi partition manually in the correct way to use btrfs so that I can use Timeshift with it effectively. It's not as easy and straight forward as other distros but once you have done it right, it runs so well! Hopefully Debian 12 will be much better regarding this. 😅
You don’t have to be sorry for me being a Windows user. I know very well what to use Windows for (as well as Mac) and when to choose Debian. It’s about the application, not the OS.
@@MR-vj8dn and integrations of applications in the desktop OS. This is big probnlem on Linux no matter what distro you use. Some are better but never perfect. On Mac or Widonws everything works same way while on Linux every app have own "standard", colors, ways to find files etc.. Still the best desktop so far for normal daily work is KDE, preferanble on Manjaro. Never any problems since at least one year or more. StillI must jump to Windows to work on Adobe damn applications :)
What I never understood: what EXACTLY makes older Software so unbearable to use? Everybody complains about older software. But why? Does anybody compete in a software competition? If a certain version runs fine and gets the job done, how is it possible that it suddenly becomes unuseable? 🤔🤔🤔
I honestly think it's just nerds whining.
I think it depends on the type of software. Hardware support, some bugs that require rewriting half of the underlying infrastructure (remember Gnome 3 memory leaks?). So there is a point. But when it works fine and people want new just to have newer thing... Ya, that's dumb.
As a new debain user and a noob, how old is the software rule of thumb. If lets say libre office goes from v6 to v7, how long will it take to get to debain???
@@Zgembo121from the unstable branch it moves to testing, then into stable, I believe that the transition from unstable to testing takes around 6-10 days, and then from testing another 2 weeks, maybe less, but a figure around there.
@@jkgfhgkhjnvfcf1307 thanks for the reply. soo if it takes a couple of weeks for libre office to go from unstable to testing to stable, then why is gnome so slow to get into stable. from what i red it takes it till next debian release to update gnome.
I agree that Debian 12 is the best release ever! Thanks for your content!😄
Welcome to the Debian community :)
I was using the "non-free" iso for a long time now, this iso included all drivers you need... It's just that it was not the "official" one, but available on debian server...
And for daily usage on your computer, you can stay with testing, it's very reliable.. But for server it's only stable ofc...
Loving it!
Last time I used debian was probably version 6.
Moved to FreeBSD, Ubuntu Server and Mint Cinnamon after that.
Recently went distro-hopping after years and Debian 12 feels bloody great!
Baldur's Gate 3 runs without a hassle.
Very impressed!
Very interested to see how this plays out for Linux Mint, they have been suggesting that LMDE is their future and this now gives them a very modern base to build on.
I was thinking the same. I switched to LMDE over a year ago when distro decisions started really negatively affecting my use cases. It's about as good as it gets for a rock solid "just works" distro. Debian Stable and not Ubuntu at the base is no doubt a huge reason for that.
I'm a Mint desktop user for many years and use Debian for my servers. Should I try Debian 12 on the desktop?
@@wayland7150 Only you're on Cinnamon... why not both, why not LMDE?
Debian 12 can use Cinnamon as the desktop environment. Don’t need LMDE just for that.
@@zakaluka True enough, however Mint brings more to the table than just Cinnamon, particularly for a new or novice user.
Thank you again for your videos and congratulations for switching to Debian - after (K)ubuntu began including Snaps by default in their LTS releases in '22 I switched to Debian KDE with Debian Backports on desktop permanenty myself. :-)
Servers have always been Debian.
I did the apt full-upgrade yesterday after switching all sources to bookworm on my Debian machine and was half-expecting something to go wrong by the inplace upgrade (since I'm using an nvidia gpu and raid0 on that machine), but it ran through without any error in less than one hour. Very impressive. You might almost call this a semi-rolling release with the ease of updating.
Just make sure to add non-free-firmware in addition to non-free. They added that as a new package pool.
I am indeed very happy Debian 12 has included KDE Plasma v5.27!!!! 😭 Now I'm just waiting for my fav distro MX Linux to release a stable version with Debian 12. Can't wait! 😁
me too! MX is great
Debian stable with flatpak can actually be a nice desktop experience.
how fast is flatpak compared a native app?
i use that too
@@laughingvampire7555 no issues at all for me, i think sometimes if you had a stop watch you might notice some differences, but using flatpak with debian is a great way to run a desktop. i dont know how much longer things like libre office will be shipped with distros, some have already stopped
Thank you very much for the video! ❤ I love Debian already since 20 years, but I think I even love it a bit more now... I consider switching my daily worker to Debian 12 too, so very much looking forward to your videos to come!
Good Video. I agree with you on Debian completely. I believe Debian is the Linux OS to have at this point. Im on Debian for server, arch for laptop, but am seriously thinking of Debian 12 for my laptop.
Reasons for Debian: Quick, reliable, flexible (with xfce4), smallest footprint in a full blown OS. I can do anything i want in Debian. I am not a Gamer, but believe i could work Debian to be able to play games.
I too switched from Ubuntu as much as I liked it. The snap issue was my reason to bailout.
Now I just have to work out how to upgraded Debian 11 to 12 server and see what happens. Good video as well. Thanks from Australia. My daily OS is LMDE5.
What snap issue did you have?
@@nocodenoblunder6672 no issues as such. Just the amount of snap mounts.
First of all, thank you for the amazing content! Second, I wanted to love Debian so bad in the past, tried Debian 10 and 11 but I had to switch to Ubuntu at some point. I stopped using Linux for a long while but with Windows 11 coming and A.I. that will be imposed to us, I am running back to Linux. I was supposed to go with Linux Mint with one of my friends(actually my only friend that knows how to install and use Linux) but when I saw Debian 12 and how great it was, I jumped on the wagon. The only thing that almost made me quit at the beginning was Secure Boot and the difficulty to have the NVIDIA drivers sign to be able to load, it is a piece of cake on Linux Mint but it was a pain on Debian. After long hours of reading, searching and testing(and almost giving up) I finally found how to make everything work. Note: I know that disabling Secure Boot would have been much easier but even if it's not perfect, it is still an additional protection. Plus, even Debian is recommending it in their own documentation so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Cheers everyone!
An aside: I want that t-shirt!!
No kidding.
Me too!
+1
That would require a rewrite of AC/DC's 'Highway to Hell'.
Me to 😊
I've been using Debian 12 (Bookworm) for over 12 months without issues (there was one: a GRUB update messed up a couple of installations but I managed to recover without problem). KDE user.
Thank you for the tip about LibreOffice! I manually installed the newer and more stable version 7.5 now on Bookworm and it significantly opens faster than 7.4. Icons are also updated and it feels way more modern and stable.
Apart from flatpak, there is the backports repository in every stable release of Debian, with which newer verisons of software are ported into the stable branch from testing. Sooner or later newer version of LibreOffice will appear in bookworm-backports.
i think alot of users either dont know about the backports or forget about it, mind you, it doesnt cover everything. Personally, i run Debian on important stuff, servers etc, but have had really good resukts with SID over the years, its been very reliable to say its a testng platform and imho its better then using testing
@@cjuk81 I had been using Debian as my daily driver for about a decade before switching to Gentoo (and I still keep Devuan as a fallback installation on my desktop and a Debian on my old laptop). What I can say, it's better to keep Debian as pure as possible, i.e. as less third-party repos as possible. Even backports can somewhat cripple your system, I remember, in Debian 10, there were broken dependencies in nvidia-drivers from backports (it was eventually fixed though), and in Debian 11, I had broken avcodecs from backports of the deb-multimedia repository (due to transition to ffmpeg 5.0, I suppose). But with LibreOffice, I never had any issues in Debian, and it always appeared in backports. Ofc, not all stuff appears in the backports, but there should be kernels, firmware, drivers and some utilities security programs like btrfs-progs and firejail.
@@victorbrand8913 yea, a good point, I mean, how well tested are the backports. I've personally never had the need to use them, I generally keep Debian pure, although more recently I've tended to run deb stable with flatpaks for somethings, other things I install the Deb packages. I also run deb Sid at home and that ls been great for a number of years if you don't mind alot of updates 😀
And if you don't want to use either of the two, you can use something like Distrobox and slap on an Arch container so you get the best of both worlds.
"Drama free debian". A mature friend, I whole heartedly agree
switched my main work computer from Ubuntu 22.04 to Debian 12 today, Debian 12 is an amazing release, haven't seen a linux distro release this successful in a long long time
Currently running Ubuntu 20.04. Is it straight forward to migrate to Debian 12?
All my VMs run on Debian and I always feel at home working with it. Thanks for the video: it was a very stable experience!
This was a good review! Debian 12 solved almost all the complaints I have had with Debian to the point I am going to try for at least a month use it as my primary OS and maybe even my new home.
Switching to Debian 12 too. Was holding out for LMDE, but forget that. Debian + whatever DE I wanna try out. Should help me stop distro hopping as well.
Thanks for sharng. will try Debian without going to LMDE.
🧑🏽💻 I'm very pleased with debian...also. thankful to tiny core for really teaching me what it takes to get a system customized... when I 1st meet Ubuntu some 20years ago working at a youth center...I just thought OK awesome this let's the kids have an experience using computers.. what a beautiful life sometimes you never know when you will use what you learn...just enjoy learning. & shout out to the tech lead at the center on southwest side of Chicago for giving me a peek into linux...& now here I am fully immersed 🙏💗
Its a really suprise! Loved to hear that you swiched to debian. Debian is my daily driver in the last 2 years and I'm glad its your daily driver too. It's giving me the confident that I've chosen right 👍🏻😉
Been using it bare metal in one of my PCs and I absolutely love it, It is by far now my favourite Linux distro. thank you Debian 12 team!
I was so excited, that I installed it after going to bed at midnight 😂. I'm impressed. Debian 11 didn't come with the drivers for my graphics card, which were a pain to install after installation. But 12 doesn't need any extra graphics card drivers for my setup. It feels smooth and doesn't have as many errors - if any - during boot or shutdown. After tinkering a bit with some coding I'm quite happy with it.
I'm trying on my GUI linux box. So far so good. Looks great.
The surprise ending was definitely a surprise! Thank you for a great video.
Hello from France. Fantastic review, as allways. Debian 12's user here, as a daily driver for work, game, etc . Thanks for your work about Free Software.
After 7 months of experimenting with various Linuxes, I've chosen Debian 12 with XFCE. I think it's an amazing gift that such a beautiful and effective machine is free of charge
one of the unfortunate issues with GNOME desktop is that the recent GNOME versions seem to be using Wayland instead of XORG. If you are on NVIDIA hardware, make sure to select XORG in the sessions list at the bottom right when logging in. While Vanilla OS too has this issue, I expect Debian admins to be more aware of these issues and do not blindly use a desktop manager which does not work universally in all hardware, right out of the box.
"Debian will never let you down" - Word! I always keep circling back to debian whenever I need a distro for a "real" project.
When Debian moves, everyone stands still and watches. What a unit of a distro! ❤🙏
Slackware controls the Linux market actually. With out slackware computers as we know them today wouldn't exist.
@@ofHerWord This is the dumbest comment on the internet all day.
I have installed it alongside Linux Mint on a Lenovo All in One PC. No hardware problems, support for driverless printing , no problems with multimedia and support for the Dutch language.
The only thing I've had to do on my Debian 11 machine was to install backported kernel (or build my own, which is surprisingly easy on Debian) and install binary blob for dimgrey_cavefish AMD GPU (RX6600). And it lasted 2 years without ever turning off no problem.
I was also know wt least one Debian 9 server that was running unmantained powered on all the time for 5+ years, and the first time it turned off was when server PSU literally caught fire.
So yeah, that Stable part... They really mean it. Waiting parts for my new PC and definitely sticking with Debian for that one.
I started with Red Hat Linux and stuck with an RPM based distro for almost 20 years. Sadly, that distro is not moving in a direction that I am happy about so I started looking around, I wanted to like RHEL but it was too restricted for my liking. I ended up installing Debian 11 cinnamon with a backports upgrade to get kernel 6. Upgraded to 12 yesterday and I'm pretty confident that I won't be going anywhere any time soon.
Interesting!
I made the dropout on Ubuntu when the CentOS
I switched all my systems over to Debian 12! Very high quality release, it is so well tested! No issues like I had with Ubuntu or Mint. WiFi works on every system! I couldn't ask for a better experience!
I'm glad to hear you switch to Debian. I'm Ubuntu user but if in the future I will try another distribution, Debian and Fedora will be my two option. Ubuntu user for more than ten years.
Over the years I have tried just about all of the distros and without fail I always come back to Debian. It's the rock foundation in my opinion. When I need it to just work, I always go with Debian.
What type of work do you do?
Nice video. I came to the same conclusions myself. Debian 12 finally removes the main barriers to its wider adoption by 1) making it easier to install the (basically essential) non-free software that users need to make the most of their computer. As you say, Debian previously made life difficult for users for something that was not their fault. And 2) flatpack technology (made practical by the size and low cost of SSD drive technology) means that key software like the browser (Firefox) and word processing (LibreOffice) and maybe other stuff like OBS can be the latest and greatest version. And there's always backports for the nitty gritty stuff. Thanks.
Does it still take 4 hours to make a printer work?
@@sircutious-bb1dz I got mine working right out of the box on Debian 11. Yes I thought "there must be something wrong" at first :)
I've been using Debian based OS for my new laptop and yes, wifi didn't work, GPU went crazy and I had all kinds of troubles, so I switched to Arch-based OS and things worked perfectly. However, after a while, things started breaking out of control on Arch and I realized I am fixing things more often than not and I got sick of it.
After 2 years I decided to install Debian 12 on this same laptop and it works perfectly - no bugs, glitches, errors, no random update breaks. While it might be a bad thing things update as slowly, it's much better than receiving broken updates and your programs or OS not working. Anyway, the OS is incredible.
I run Debian from almost 20 years. For me is the best linux distribution.
I am switching to Debian too. Thanks to learn linux TV, Jay is a very positive influence
"Best Debian Ever" claim completely validated here. I would have liked a mention of those nifty new changes, the "flat-pack" and use of proprietary drivers, at the beginning of the video since I almost tuned out before you got to the best bit. 🤪
I've been through so many distros , both Redhat and Debian, that I've lost count.
One thing that is certain is that all roads lead back to Debian. Been running Debian
on my home workstations for 10+ years.
Debian just works. No brainer that I've already upgraded "Bookworm/KDE".
I like your T-shirt , man!
I use Debian since 2000 and enjoy the "Bookworm" for 6 wweks now. Looks and feels grate.
the GRANDDADDY of all LInux Distributions for a reason!
I love Debian and have been using the release candidates for Bookworm for a while before it launched today. One word for LXQT fans (apart from the fact that a private repo with the 1.3 version is already available), Debian used XFWM4 in Bullseye (I, like it's creator, prefer Openbox but whatever) well fear not... If you don't do a core install from the terminal and use the tasksel install, you will get Openbox, XFWM4 AND KWIN! I am not joking. Not choose, GET ALL three. Happy uninstalling and reconfiguring. Don't say you weren't warned.
Man I'm in. Going to jump from kubuntu to debian soon.
Update: I've installed it and it's fantastic! Getting Flatpak to work with VSCodium and rust-analyzer was a pain though.
Currently using Ubuntu lts and your video has convinced me to give Debian a try, main contributors was that it ain’t held by any corps.
Great video!
I work for a major retailer and they use linux systems for daily retail use with the public. Very solid!
I use Debian as my daily driver since ever (Potato) on all my systems. Just stable for servers and sometimes testing for workstations, especially after a year or so on stable when stuff may get too old and changing back to stable once testing became the new stable. That makes it convenient for having the same experience and toolset across all devices. I also never reinstall. I just upgrade and even disk clone to new hardware, because I'm too lazy to reconfigure everything.
I just installed Debian with gnome on an old laptop, it's running fine as of now. Now I need to learn it for use.
genial muchas gracias, voy a instalar Debian 12 hoy mismo ❤
Thanks for the review. in 2018 I switched to Fedora from Windows because I was concerned about Windows10 telemetry. Now, Fedora is contemplating collecting telemetry. Your video is very timely for me as I'm eager to try Debian now.
You weren't kidding about the bomb dropped at the end, excited to see your dedicated video on this, as I was leaning towards doing the same with all I've heard about debian 12.
Just installed Debian 12 and it seems to work fine right out of the box.
I've beem using Debian for a long, long time. Still using it, both stable and Sid. Never dissapointed.
Equating Debian to an old reliable friend hits perfect for some of us :D. Last I properly used Debian was in school somewhere between 2005-2008, worked really well back then, I would always stick to Debian based distro's because I liked using apt in commandline. It was actually completely random I started using Debian this time around, I'm doing a bit of a project for a cyberdeck type device, I was googling "low end debian distros" and I thought why not just use clean Debian again? So I did, and it was 12! I do remember attempting Debian before that and running into some of the issues you mention, like no wifi drivers, but 12 is smooth and seems to just work for everything so far. Main complaint from me so far is that CTRL+ALT+T doesn't work out of the box.
The most reasonable person in reviewing any distro tbh ❤ Great work
Great video, i have been tinkering with and learning a lot about linux for about 5 years now. Between you, Lawrence, and Chris Titus have helped me build a really nice home lab self hosting many open source solutions. Thank you for sharing knowledge!
With the driver issue resolved and flatpaks available, this is going to leave Ubuntu squeezed from upstream as well as down.
What issue are you talking about? (I'm asking because I had a problem with firmware)
@@arthurwillian118 it was mentioned in the video: like Ubuntu, Debian now includes an option to use non-free drivers.
@@shaunpatrick8345 thanks! I thought it was something specific
I'm really eager for the next Mint LMDE now
I was watching this and thinking "If Debian 12 is so great, are you still going to use Ubuntu Server?" And then you dropped the bomb:- "I'm switching to Debian 12 for my servers". This was exactly what I was thinking. And if you have a series of videos covering key points in the switch from Ubuntu Server to Debian Server I'll watch every one (and buy the first edition when the book comes out!).
I have been using another Linux distro and just changed to Debian 12 which I enjoy a lot.
Great video Thx, debian has been my primary since squeeze back during the distro hopping days but always came back to debian and I use to watch and count the days for a new release and upgrade, But now a days, did not realize this was out, bookworm just escaped me so i will be upgrading tonight.
Your shirt is awesome lol. Thanks for the video as always
Great Video! Switching ENTIRELY? Brave man
I run Arch Linux on my desktop because I want all the shiny new stuff, especially when it comes to drivers and games. However, I also run a small homelab with multiple servers and a couple of VPS which, after a brief stint with CentOS, have been running Debian for years. Debian is just extremely solid. I recently upgraded all my servers to Debian 12, some of which had an uptime of over 300 days. If I were to crown the GOAT of Linux distros, Debian would easily win. It's just so, so good. To anyone reading this: If you have a couple of bucks to spend, please donate a little to your favorite open source project, especially if you use their software on a regular basis. Arch, Debian and KDE have enriched my computing life immeasurably. It's only right to help out financially here and there.
Against my better judgement, I did an upgrade. I'm not disappointed. I even did a second computer after seeing the results on the first one.
I started with Linux by making my own NAS and installing Ubuntu server, that worked well for quite a few years. Then about 3 years ago I switched to Linux Desktop for most of my machines and went with Mint. It was time to reinstall my NAS OS and I decided to make it as bare bones as possible so it made sense to go with Debian 10 at the time given that that's what Ubuntu was based on and over time I became a bit of a fan. Now with this 12 release I'm thinking I might give most of my desktops a bit of a refresh and switch to Debian using Cinnamon for the desktop. I really haven't had any issues with Mint but I feel like it could be worth it to strip things back a little and I'm a little tired of daily updates for packages I never use. The 12 release feels kinda timely for me.
Sounds impressive, always used a Debian based distro. I do like Plasma, desktop effects very pleasant, may give this one a try.
Just in time for my FreshRSS Debian install that I’m setting up. Great video!
I am also planning to switch all my server to Debian 12. The reason is that LXD is in the official repos. This is the most important change for me.
I had started using Ubuntu 18, 19 ... after that Pop!_OS, some problem with those distro, and now I had decided get focus stable stabilization im had install today Debian 12, thanks for all you videos! pd. I had started work with proxmox for you, thanks!
I've been running headless Debian installs for over 10 years and had ZERO problems.
6:58 also this is a lot less risky when it's close to release, in those last months they are mostly fixing smaller issues. Not (usually) doing things which will break things in a big way.
I do software development. Some of the core people in one of the Open Source communities that I help out now and then seem to mostly use Debian Testing. I'm constantly having to rebuild newer versions of the required libraries in order to build the program since my daily use distro often has older versions for a bit more stability while not being an LTS type distro. I have several hard drive partitions I set aside for different distros and I recently installed Debian 12 in one of them. I'm thinking of switching to Debian as my daily drive distro. I need to spend a little more time trying it out before I commit to switching.
The hardware enablement decision was a very smart one. Perfect timing given the IBM/Red Hat rug pull.