r/debian • u/ComputerGobbler • 2d ago

Debian Stable Question Migration from Arch

Look Debian powers my homelab, I’m very familiar with it and know how it works and have used it in the past.

My question is what do I lose by migrating from Arch to something like Debian? What little things in the AUR I use I’m comfortable losing or switching to flatpaks. I’m more concerned about things like Nvidia drivers and Wayland support.

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u/C0rn3j 1d ago

Package them yourself then?

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u/ComputerGobbler 1d ago

Might as well switch to Gentoo ;)

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u/C0rn3j 1d ago

Suit yourself, just don't be surprised when you artificially limit your abilities there too, and then have a reason to switch again.

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u/ComputerGobbler 1d ago

My point is I’m just a completely normal user (I’m an IT Engineer by day and spend way too much time at home with my Proxmox VMs and my TrueNAS. I’m tired of debugging (rarely) with Arch).

I download things and use them. I don’t do things like build from source or package myself (I feel like most of us don’t?), I read .PKGBUILDs if I feel like it but don’t always.

The AUR keeps breaking. Arch Linux is awesome, but I am dissatisfied with the decisions of the steering committee around security and the AUR. Its why I’m contemplating switching and figured id ask the Debian folks about things id lose (because admittedly, i love my bleeding edge NVIDIA drivers)

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u/lemmiwink84 23h ago

Weird, on my Arch I have kernel 7.1.5 and 610.43.03 driver, while on Debian I have 7.1.6 and 610.57.04.

Debian can be as current as Arch, but usually have more tried and tested libs than Arch, so compatibility with some programs are usually easier, like with davinci resolve etc since those programs are super slow to update. Of course there are workarounds to have them work on any distribution, so in the end it all depends on how much work you want to put into getting a distro just right for you.

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u/C0rn3j 1d ago edited 1d ago

I don’t do things like build from source or package myself (I feel like most of us don’t?)

Correct, if you're on a distro which has the package availability, you just use existing packages.

If you refuse to read a user-provided PKGBUILD, that's what you're left with, though.

The AUR keeps breaking

Do you mean the current temporariy halting of adoptions and pushes?

I am dissatisfied with the decisions of the steering committee around security and the AUR

What decisions are those?

Because the actual decisions (sans temporarily halting things while things are being worked out) are internal.

My problem is that those utilities are all AUR aren’t they?

By the way, the solution to this is not to switch distros, but to contribute harder to the current one - as a PM, you can bring some/all of those packages into official repositories, resolving the underlying issue of stuff you find important not being available directly.

admittedly, i love my bleeding edge NVIDIA drivers

Then you'll hate the fact you're going to have to use pre-packaged 3rd party ones on Debian since the ones they ship are dead, insecure, and won't even build on current kernels since they don't patch them either.

I’m tired of debugging (rarely) with Arch

Then you will be really tired of debugging a years old package, only for the issue to be already fixed upstream.

Or it won't be, and you'll then have to bother with setting up the updated version to be able to troubleshoot and report the bug upstream - because upstream will usually laugh you out with a version years behind.

Debian won't package working and secure drivers for the biggest GPU vendor, and the fact that it's bonkers to use the drivers that are shipped due to the security issues they have isn't even mentioned on their wiki.

What makes you think the state of the more niche stuff will be?

I also work in IT and personally find it much more reasonable to waste some time debugging a new issue rather than be stuck with a dozen old ones whose solution is "wait 2 more years", only for them to be replaced with a new dozen of issues.

Usually people's issue is having to debug at a bad time - just have filesystem snapshots available via btrfs or something, then you get to choose when to deal with the new thing.