I’ve been getting more into self hosting lately, grabbed an optiplex 3050 for everything and I’m running Mint currently. Looking more into things though, I saw Debian come up as a more barebones distro and now I’m wondering if there is a lot of benefit to going more barebones. I’m not having any issues with my current setup but now I can’t stop thinking about it. I am newer to Linux but having to learn new things doesn’t wig me out much if there is a lot more involvement with Debian
Edit: I appreciate the responses. I do see where I could just end up creating problems that don’t exist by experimenting with it more. Debian does sound enticing so it’s definitely something I’ll mess about with virtually for now and see how I like it in comparison. But I definitely have to agree on the “don’t mess with a good thing” if it’s working for me. All your answers have definitely given me something to play with now as well, I want the problems to solve but doing it in a separate environment would suit me better to learn a few things. This community rocks.
Debian is … fine. It’s the Toyota Corolla of distros. It’s reliable, it’ll likely do what you need it to do. It’s not fun or exciting or packed with the latest tech, it just does its job with minimum fuss.
Toyota Corolla is not “fine”, it’s a marvel of engineering, reaching levels of reliability and quality control previously unfathomable, the world’s best-selling car of all time, still going strong and still constantly improving after six decades.
But yes, Debian is the Toyota Corolla of Linux.
The new Toyotas aren’t as reliable as before. Slowly getting worse. Which is a shame.
It’s not so much a marvel of engineering as much as “if you make the tech as boring as possible, there’s less to go wrong”.
The Germans will sell you a luxury performance SUV with the same highway fuel consumption as the Corolla. Of course the Corolla will be more simple and reliable.
Which is what makes it an excellent server distro. And also why I don’t tend to use it on anything with a screen.
The most messing around I’ve done with my server after setting it up is update to trixie. I think I might have had to reset it two or three times in the past 6 months for the reason of “I didn’t feel like actually troubleshooting”