Review: Debian 11 "Bullseye" - How it misses the mark, and why it's still Great!

Just tried to install Debian 11, but it wants me to pay for software to try it, good luck with that!!!!

🇨🇱🍸✊🤘👏👏👏👏👏👏👏

"Something between Debian Stable and Testing"
That's a bit of a goofy statement to be honest.

Debian's installation automation really sucks; the docs also not really helpful.
Also the net install ISO, shouldn't be called net install, due to it's bulky size.

Thank you for tipping me off to the non-free iso. I would have never known otherwise. Just installed it and it works great on my laptop with external monitor. You probably saved me a few hours of headaches.

Debian for me and I know about the non free iso’s

Debian always includes old packages, and they aren't going to change it

live media with proprietary driver link is not working.

I've been messsing with several different distro's for ARM proccessors on SBC'S. Specifically 2 in particular using Rockchip SOC's. I found that getting a stable distro that supports the hardware as well as have some continuity is extremely rare. The manufacturers of these boards put them on the market and then expect the "community" (aka volunters) to develope the software. I've tried at least a dozen between the two boards with moderate success. The hardware is unique to each board so a different "flavor" of any distro has to be developed. As an example, I can say the Rock 3A has been available since 2021. There is still no completely reliable OS that I know of. That being said I have to admit that I'm more of a GUI guy than a CLI guy. I downloaded an ideration of Debian 11 / Xfce which runs but I can't really put it through any testing of out of the ordinary software, because I don't know how to get it. The desktop does not have an "add software" icon, I assume it would use the apt repositories, but I'm not sure. When these developers offer out these items instructions should come with them; even if only a text file instead of assuming everyone who is interested in learning is already a expert.

Learned about the nonfree issue from you back when Debian 10 first came out

It's easier to install Gentoo than navigating through Debian's website trying to find the right ISO.

I disagree with the idea that Debian by default should contain proprietary software even if it is a lot harder to use. First, that's just one of the version, second it's important to many end users that their systems are as free as possible. I wouldn't call this sub-par, just different priorities. One could just use a more user friendly and non-free operating system, or the more user friendly and non-free version of Debian which maybe they should make more easy to find. They put forth what they think are their best qualities, stability and freedom. Personally I'm fine with that, because they offer all the versions a user could want as well even if non-advertised. Not all distros have to be for newcomers, there's already more of those than there are current windows, and mac versions combined. For me it's a nice intermediate distro before I step off the deep end into arch/gentoo.

Thank you for the informative video

Yes, I still have some bootable Linux iso cd's and dvd's but then one reason is older machines that I often repair/pimp out don't have usb boot support. I've been a Linux user for more than 20 years now, started with SUSE. Switched to Debian for many years, taught me a lot but then I jumped on the Mint train for a while and for the most part it was great plus I could still get my fingernails dirty in order to get hardware and programs I needed to run (because with every release Mint abandons commonly used programs even though comparable alternatives didn't exist yet). But my experience with Mint 20 and 21 was an absolute disaster, tried LMDE5 for two weeks then it was adios. Back to Debian and I'm running 11 with minimal issues. First time through it didn't add me to the sudoers list which was a pain, second time through it did that automatically. And I'm having trouble with flatpaks not installing properly, no icons or listing in my Applications list so I can't just click click and send a launcher to the desktop. Easy workaround, but still - should have been automatic. My NVIDIA 1650 and Intel AX wifi are killing it! Yes, I did have to do some geek magic to get the NVIDIA driver to properly install and not disappear after a kernel upgrade. As I've gotten older I've gravitated more to the non-free iso because when I do need to reinstall (because I broke something or I've upgraded my SSD/Hard drive etc) I don't want to have to run 100' of Cat7 cable to my router, and I don't want to spend weeks getting all the drivers and things installed I need to be up and running that day. The only thing that's not working in the current version is Skype. Can't see my mic or webcam. Purists might throw eggs at me but I'm in love with Debian non-free, and it's going to be my daily driver until I croak (which might not be for 30 years but still).

On the subject of boot CDs, my mobo doesn't support UEFI boot from optical media, which is what finally made me switch to using flash drives

This is a great video 🙂
How have others learnt more about using Debian?

Debian is great, but I would like it to have some configuration tool or options during installation to easily install all the GPU drivers, including non-free ones, propertiary multimedia codecs and all the stuff to provide various file formats support after installation. That's why most people prefer Linux Mint, because they don't have to install such basic components manually, adding repos etc. That would make Debian more popular for new Linux users.

debian 11 is awesome man very stable.

If you are not completely new to Debian it's actually best to not install any Desktop environment (task) on the installer, and install later on more specific packages. I only keep the last option checked there, the "standard system utilities". That's about 120 packages total, compared to 1500+ if you choose a D.E. However if you do that and you are on a laptop with no ethernet connection, be prepared to setup your wifi without network-manager cause it's not included by default. You will have to use `ip link set <device> up` and then connect with wpa_supplicant.

BTW Debian is the VW Bug (the old volkswagon) of Linux distros.

I use the non free versions of Debian for years. However it was a few years before I knew this existed.