this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2025
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I have just watched this video and in it 2 things are said that made my Linux newbie heart sink:

  • Debian 13 is not going to get the latest versions of Nvidia drivers and there are better distros for us.
  • Debian in general is not meant to run on the latest hardware.

I am on a regularly upgraded desktop tower gaming PC and currently I have an Nvidia card and an Intel CPU (which, I know, even just because of the mobo chipset is not a great choice).

In this conditions and wanting to invest even more in gaming and new hardware in the future, what should I run on, instead of LMDE 6?

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[–] Laavu@sopuli.xyz 5 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

Regardsless what distro you end up with, do your research before bying new hardware. Any hardware, such as keyboard, usb bluetooth adapter or gaming audio headset might be unsupported or supported poorly, and require out-of-kernel drivers, firmware or propietary vendor software, that work only with some kernel versions or certain distros. There often are options that have great linux support and work with any distro, but you'll need to find them.

Pick your prefered update interval between LTS, 6 month point release or rolling based on how much time you have for administration. If you need you PC also for work, a rolling distro might break just when you need it the most. After choosing the update interval, pick the distro with chosen update interval you like the most. Say you know and like Debian but need a rolling distro, then Debian unstable might be a good choice for you. You can also run multiple distros and dual-boot.

Special purpose distros such as gaming distros can be a good choice, but they often have less developer resources and tend to die then the few developers lose their interest.

Regardless of your choice of distro, spend some time to configure regular backups.

[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 5 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

a rolling distro might break just when you need it the most

Only if you run an update! It's not random. I only update once every two weeks or so when I know I have time to fix problems if they arise. Easy peesy. Honestly it's safer than Windows in that sense because Windows pushes updates on you and a broken Windows update did out me in a boot loop, post COVID even.

It's not a bad piece of advice, rolling is still the least stable, but there are better ways to phrase it.

[–] ticho@lemmy.world 1 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

That works until there is a critical security issue which doesn't care about your free time, but needs an update right now, and you might not be able to only apply the security fix, because your rolling distro gallops ahead in package version numbers.

Give me older, but stable and boring over that any day. :)

I've been running Gentoo and Arch on my primary desktop PC for years back when I was a student and had oodles of free time, but in past decade, Debian is what I need. Including what little gaming I do some evenings.