I’ve completed one month with Debian stable. It sounds dramatic, but it’s actually been a positive experience.
Switching from a rolling release like openSUSE Tumbleweed was quite a change, but I’ve really come to like the stable foundation Debian offers.
Some software is a few versions older—which isn’t a big deal—but there are also things that aren’t (or aren’t yet) available in the Debian repositories.
But for that, there’s Flatpak, which I trust more than random third-party repositories.
Right now, my only issue is that my custom-built AMD PC occasionally and very rarely freezes. I’m on the case, though, and I actually suspect it’s a third-party program that doesn’t come from the Debian repo.
On the bright side of committing to Debian for a year, I’ve now got a solid backup strategy in place with Déjà Dup, Timeshift, and Dotdrop. Thanks to that, reinstalling the system is a breeze – especially helpful since I tend to tinker more than a lot!
Since I’ve still got 11 months with Debian ahead of me, one of my current projects is learning how to create .deb packages. The Debian documentation is excellent—but also quite complex!
But my first attempt with rofi 2.0 was a success—so maybe in 11 months, I’ll have my own repo! ;)
All in all: A positive experience in the first month and a happy outlook for the next 11 months with Debian. Beyond the technical aspects, there’s also the good feeling of being on the right side.
Lately, I've been doing a lot of distro hopping: openSUSE, Debian, openSUSE, Debian, Fedora, openSUSE, and Debian again.
At least it's relatively limited. But Arch and nixOS also keep tempting me.
However, I believe that I need to get to know one distro really well. So in 2026, I will only use Debian Stable on my two main computers (PC and laptop).
No more distro hopping until 2027.
Of course, anything goes on my hobby Thinkpad. So that you can check up on me, the header of this page counts (Javascript must be enabled).
Last weekend, I had a very brief distro-hopping moment.
For 10 minutes, openSUSE was back on my computer. I was surprised myself that I immediately reinstalled Debian 13.
I had assumed that not having a ‘brand new’ system would bother me too much.
But on the contrary: Debian's simplicity and stability brought me back very quickly. It also turns out that I have quite a lot of up-to-date software after all.
Basically, I only use 10 to 15 apps regularly. For some, it doesn't matter that they lag behind in a few features; for others, there's always Flathub.
I use Librewolf as my browser anyway, and it has its own repo.
I get a more up-to-date kernel or firmware via backports.
So I can highly recommend Debian... Simple, refreshingly old-fashioned and stable.
After experiencing some issues with openSUSE tumbleweed and only being able to install Niri with a minor fix, I realized that rolling releases are not for me. At present, Niri is still not fixed in openSUSE (as of September 13, 2025, 28 days ago), and the current release has not yet appeared in openSUSE.
My solution to this problem doesn't make any sense at all, but it makes me very happy at the moment: Debian 13 and GNOME.
Right now, I'm looking for stability, and what could be better than Debian? Plus, we've hit the sweet spot with Debian 13 just coming out. So don't ask me in six months if I'm still this happy.
What's so great about Debian? It runs without any problems, whether on my desktop or my Framework 12. All codecs are included, and all my apps are there too (otherwise there's Flathub)...
But why Gnome and no more Tiling Window Manager? I can't say exactly, and I'm not completely done with keyboard shortcuts yet. But you can also configure a lot of stuff in GNOME
Linux actually runs on everything, but especially with laptops one or two things have to be adjusted... This also applies to my Tuxedo Pulse 14 Gen3 (and maybe also the Gen4) and Debian 12.