debian - if it works, stick with it. arch - whatever is latest, i must have it.

First reason to use Arch: to say “I use Arch…BTW”

I love Debian , it is like a 90's Camry. It's old but will start every time.

for server - debian stable for desktop - debian testing want to have arch feeling? - debian unstable

Arch: Where not reading a forum post about an update is user error.

By the way I use arch.

Glad I found this. I appreciate that you're outlining the main differences so clearly w/o obsessing. Useful information.

I love both of them, Happy New Year Chris.

Your rambling is so much appreciated and reassuring, Great video Chris. May you have a great rest of your day.

Vanilla Arch + KDE all the way.. the first time i used arch i fell in love with it. no matter what i do i always keep coming back to pacman

Sir, you have contributed so much with your videos that i feel compelled to share my experience with linux. I just love linux and i made a lot of distro hopping. I have 42 years, learned English at the MS Dos help and i can say that i used to crash every distro except mint. Mint cinamon just works fine from the box.i have tried manjaro, arch, debian, neon, kubuntu and even fedora and opensuse. They all seam to have trouble in some pcs with amd... All but not mint. It jus works. I am trying to stay more with mint and use it more deeply and it seams that is working, some pcs have crashed with a new kernel update and i easily uninstalled it in the GUI without any shell command. So, thats why i am staying in mint. It is intuitive. Thanks a lot for every video!

Debian Stable has a major point release every 3 months actually (We are currently on 10.2), this is where push updates to your major packages like LibreOffice, cups ect. However Debian always stays on the LTS kernel(4.19) unless you update it yourself, however they do push the security patches for the kernel.

Arch / Manjaro has been pretty good to me have been running it over two years at least. Haven't had any issues at all running on AMD CPU/Gpu. Setup.

My start with Linux was manjaro, and I loved it although it's easier to break, I somehow loved to find out what the problem is and fix it. I learned how Linux worked with manjaro, and now I can use my vanilla arch as good as possible

Thank you so much for this video 😄 Great content. Much helpful 💞

If the need is latest drivers and packages choose Arch. Or better Manjaro - Arch with caution.

Mate you are a machine, I have been watching you since your first video, You have gained quite a bit of success and I wish you more for future, Good work buddy keep the content coming. Happy new year!

Debian based distros are my way to go. I have been a Linux user for less than a year, so my experience may not be the same, but I prefer Debian over Arch since I don't need the latest stuff, since I'm running on pretty old hardware, so having something older and stable is pretty good for me. I also don't like stuff like Ubuntu and prefer more basic/lightweight distros, like antiX. Also, as you mentioned, Debian is harder to break.

I use both, I dual boot Debian 10 and Arch. Best of both worlds and what I am doing at the time determines which operating system I use. Happy New Year Chris!!! Stay safe.

Thanks Chris! As newbie I've went for Mint one and your video tutorials just wonderful to use like for me. I will try of course some other Dist. later but for the moment I am looking for proper video on how to set up Full Bitcoin Node on Mint and there is not such videos like yours - step by step. I've manage to install VPN on my Mint but how to proceed property with Node did not even start yet. You know better than me how important for the future of Bitcoin to have full nodes as more in place as possible. Please create such tutorial for all the newbies to follow! You are the best teacher out there! ;)

Debian is a beast that can't be ignored. That AUR though...... ;)

Debian KDE will bring me into the new year, probably into 2021 too. I'm tired of changing, especially since there's really no need to. Happy New Year everyone :D

I love arch. I installed it but I didn't really understand it, so I came back to Ubuntu. Then I found you on KZfaq and found you archfi script which helped me out to install working arch. As I choose what to installed I was some things missing, so I started installing everything and began to understand the pacman and yay as my aur helper. Then I saw your previous video, how to make it stable and began to configure it with btrfs and timeshift. Took a while, because I had to trial and error the structure of subvolumes, but everything is working just fine now. And nowadays I use awesome wm with your material config, which I customize and I'm beginning to understand the configuration of it and I really love wm. As my PC is Lowe end I get higher fps in games, less apps opening time, faster is response and so on. Love ya man! You made my PC life so much better!

Cool ramble man. I'm just switching from Windows and your channel is so cool. Thanks.

I'll be a Mint/Debian guy for life, probably. I just like my OS to "work" without me worrying about an update borking my system. I'm not a tinkerer, I just like the security and stability of Linux. I love how Mint-Cinnamon works more than any other distro.

Because of the privacy issues of windows, I went with debian

i love your channel man i have switch to linux watching your video the last month thank you for your awesomeness

I see you have a stream deck there in the background. How did you get it to work on Linux. I've been struggling finding a way to get mine working in my Mint 19 install.

Debian has rolling releases too, just use the 'unstable' branch. It's still a really stable OS, just the package versions are unstable.

I like Debian based distros, for example, Zorin, Kali, Tails, Ubuntu Studio, however, I am very inclined to Arch-based distros, given the fact that they are very customizable, very snappy and the KDE desktop on Manjaro distro is just AWESOME!

Hi Chris! Thank you for this great content! I really been learning a lot about linux with you. I have a question, when you talk about Arch Linux and its capability of compiling packages for installing software, dows that mean that I can do that with windows installers? Like compiling and installing windows programs for example, for audio production?

Hi Chris, i really like your KZfaq work. Can you please make some videos for Linux Security, Data Protection and some best practices when it comes to Linux or Windows

I'm always rather puzzled about the differences in maintenance tools and available software packages across different Linux distributions. I have VM's with everything from CentOS, Manjaro, Zorin, Fedora, PCLinuxOS, Mint, to Peppermint - just to familiarize myself with them, but recently have wished that more desktop oriented distributions support ARM versions - to run on my Raspberry Pi's. (Sorry but Raspbian is just too dummied-down to not be annoying, although it does have all the Pi specific packages available that other distributions (most annoyingly) don't). Thanks for the overview Chris!

A bit late but, debian bookworm really hits the mark. Coming from starting with arch as my first distro, debian+bookworm is... basically just arch*. Maybe my perspective is warped because I only use xmonad, but literally every two weeks, I'd update, and something would break and have to spend 3-10 minutes in a tty or spending even more time finding alternatives for previously, completely fine software. At a certain point you realize, that you're really just updating for updating's sake. Sure the aur is nice but... ... ... not really nessecary*

Thanks Chris I choose to run Debian stable on a 2007 white macbook that was my Mom's.before she past. Your video helped me make that choice. Thanks again keep up the great work!

Arch (Sysd free),Debian Unstable and Gentoo when I'm feeling masochistic. Happy New Year Chris :-)

It feels like you are forgetting the rpm family: RHEL, it's deratives and (open)SuSE. RHEL and it's "clone" CentOS are the most commonly used Linux server OSs in the business environment.

I see that screensaver, sick !

Great video as usual Chris we are lucky in this community to have access to your research, passion and knowledge. I am 4 years down the Linux rabbit hole (work, study, art, and gaming). I use Kali 2020, Manjaro and PoP OS on different systems and by far the most boring (even though it is a sexy distro) due to never-failing or having anything for me to complain about and working straight out of the box including all my drivers and graphics cards is PoP OS. From my experience, Manjaro (and I assume arch?) is the best if you need those apps to run on Linux that "apparently" run on Linux ...but only if run on a distro that largely is meh. However, I have broken poor Manjaro so many times that I don't quite trust my self around it.. it's me Manjaro, not you ( maybe I should try Vanilla Arch?) . Kali is for pentesting obviously and not a recommended even by Offensive Security as a daily driver though I have used 2020 on hardware and on multiple VMs without an issue and it is rock solid stable from my side of the fence although I haven't tried anything outside pentesting really ie video editing. Anyway, that's my two cents.

** This is the best comparison video of Arch and Debian on KZfaq! It's a catch 22. Debian is a pita to install bleeding edge, but it's possible. The plus is that it doesn't break after you put in all the work! ))

*Chris, ❤ the T-shirt were can I get me one from ☺ 👍👍*

I'm actually a huge fan of starting with the latest Ubuntu server install (currently using 20.04 daily), manually installing gnome, gdm3, gnome-tweaks (just for dash to panel) and a few other things. I have an old MBP that idles at 600 to 700 MB of RAM used, looks pretty nice, and runs great.

woot that star trek panel on the screen in the background is dope man!

Interesting, I was brought to this video after so many years. I recently put Debian 11 on my system along with ArcoLinux which I've been using Arch since Feb 2020. But the latest release of Debian (Bullseye) is FANTASTIC! I love it! I'm in Debian now almost as much as Arch. 50/50 split almost.

me seeing people make fun of debian: bruh you simple tons i use micro core linux with just the kernel and busybox

I installed Arch about six years ago and it was a pain to do. I had to spend about two evenings just working in the terminal just to get a KDE (or any) desktop running. It broke after two months of updates and I could not recover it even after several hours of googling. Maybe it has changed, but for now I am sticking with Debian. I would rather have a distro that works all the time than risk clicking the 'bleeding edge' update icon. Don't get me wrong, Debian is not for noobs either. Go with Pop OS or Mint if your one of them.

Swapped over to arch this week. Broke installation 3 times but now I have everything running, set up timeshift no issues since.

What do you think about arch/arch based vs fedora? I use both myself on different pc's. Btw happy new year to you Chris and your family! x :)

I'm running Manjaro Gnome on both my laptop (old HP EliteBook 8440p recoverd from work) and my desktop and I'm super happy. I've tried the KDE also but it kept crashing all the time.

Wait, you guys don't code your own os's

Chris, you got me onto Debian 10 Non-free and I ain't leaving =)

Bummer, I just discovered and missed your stream today. :O I have a question that I hope you can answer.. Maybe Friday then. Anyways, this was my question in case it might give you ideas for content: I just purchased a RPi4 but without a case. Do you have any suggestions for a 3.5 inch display/case combo?

i find some arch distros very beginner friendly as well. i got into linux a few months ago. the first distro i tried was manjaro. got set up and started to play steam games in less than an hour. then i switched to garuda to try ricing for the first time. i'm sure the likes of mint and pop os etc are nice for noobs but arch definitely can be too.

Debian + KDE plasma

I tried Debian from kubunto, lubunto to mint. Never like it always broke it trying things I should not be doing on debian. Moved to Red Hat, which is now Fedora and stay there for a long time. Now Im trying Arch, you last video inspire me to take my last Windows system and change it to Arch as a test ground. Loving it so far.

Thank you. In the end, you nailed it. I've worked at many large scale corp's where the users consistently said things like "yeah, we are at windows 7 because this company is so backwards". To which I've had to correct them, no, you are because as a company with the overarching goal of running a business and remaining profitable our infrastructure rides a few layers behind "current" for many reasons. The least of which is we aren't here to be beta / bug testers for Microsoft or anyone else. Ride the bleeding edge, you'll get cut. Duh.... Debian is my first dip in and I'm loving it. I'll no doubt fire up an Arch client in the coming year and begin to play. Everything has it's place. Great presentation and some great points for both distributions. Good stuff.

I prefer manjaro now. I installed ubuntu a few days back and it felt kind of sluggish. Honestly, after using linux for the past 2 years, any distribution can be used with a little amount of configuration.

Linux Mint Cinnamon on Laptop, Manjaro XFCE on Desktop. I like both. but i had worst experience with ubuntu and MX.

Clears up a lot tyvm

wondering about security with linux, should i follow your sever security videos to secure my debian and arch distro? i have learned a lot from your videos and appreciate you!

Debian based, mainly Linux Mint for me. I wan't it to work, and it does.

arch - for people who are single and have all the time in the world. debian - for people that have other things to do in their lives

What do you mean by the package manager being dated? do you know that the package manager != packages in the repos?

Been on Linux about 2 weeks on manjaro for my first time, installed it and it just works. Even my touch screen works have not had any crashes or any weird glitches yet.

So you recommend Debian for business use. Why not Red Hat?

I've recently switched back to Linux Mint from Manjaro 18 Cinnamon. I love Manjaro, it is awesome but every time at some point their updates crash my machine and it's just not worth the hassle anymore to keep fixing stuff. I've updated with terminal and GUI and both have rendered my install useless at some point or another. This has been the case on two separate machines now as well so Mint it is where everything just works. Manjaro has become the new Windows for me in the sense that it works great until it's time to update. With that said, I haven't used windows in over 15 years as far as my daily but I have used it on very short occasions over the years.

I am having problem making ubuntu(using 19.10) detect windows 10(new to Linux) I don't know how to fix it, tried googling a fix but they didn't work. Anyone know a solution.

When I was doing sysadmin work and taking care of around 8 servers, debian was a godsend. Rock solid, meaning my life was not eaten up with issues. Agreed it was dated software, but then again I usually had to work with dated hardware. For my workstation, I would run testing and be kept up to date on what was coming up. Also, I could experiment to see if there was a solution in testing to whatever problem I had. I rarely wandered into sid's world. If I did more development, then maybe I would. These days, a lot of my machines (lots of pi's) still run some flavor of debian, however I have a Pinebook Pro with Manjaro and learning much about Arch as time goes by. At the moment, my view is sort of mixed, some things work pretty good, some things don't. In any case, I definitely agree with your evaluation, it's not for beginners. Oh yeah, one problem with Arch is support in the world of ARM. It seems pretty minor when put next to debian's support for ARM. So far, I've been stymied in Arch in a few places while it seems that debian could at least put up something to address what I'm trying to solve.

1:35 Linux **

I gotta admit that I'm only a sort of occasional linux user. I run Windows 10 on my desktop which is the one I use by far the most. And my laptop (an HP Celeron based one with 4 GB of RAM) is running Linux. And because of this the amount of knowledge required to run something like Arch is sort of out of my scope. I could of course go with Manjaro to sort of get the easier setup. But I still get the rolling release and the stability issues that this comes with. So I went with a Linux Mint. And so far it has served me very well. I do know that I could probably get a more tailored system with a pure Debian. But I do prefer getting the sort of Plug'n'Play experience of Mint because that basically means I can just use the system whenever I want to and I don't have to tinker. My desktop is where I do the tinkering...

I love and use both of them. Always use the tool that fits your task.

I've been running Mint as of now, but was thinking of trying Manjaro because I want to see what the AUR is all about. I've been hesitant to try it though because I know it's easy to break if you don't know what you are doing. The universal advice I hear everyone say is to 1. not update every update except security updates, and 2. take constant backups in case you break it. My biggest question is how should you handle non security updates? I wouldn't know where to start with picking and choosing what to update and when.

So far I have to say debian based (Mx 19) has been more stable then any Ubuntu based linux I have tried in my 2 years running linux from windows.

As a newbie myself, just 3 days old Linux user, I recommend Manjaro to all beginners. Pop OS failed to recognise my old hardware whereas Manjaro just worked out of the box and I even reverted back to some old drivers by building, recompiling them. I was thinking of switching to vanilla Arch for pure experience in the future but I guess I’m already loving my OS and I’ll stick with it.

I use the Debian testing version of SparkyLinux which is a semi-rolling release and so far is rock solid stable. This version of Debian has newer packages which have been very stable up to this point. I also use the XFCE 4.14 desktop in this version of Sparky - as far as desktop enviroments go this is rock solid stable and fully functional. This combo makes for an outstanding and very stable distro - highly recommended.

I concur. We are talking about the middle layers (kernel being low, graphics being presentation). I tried debian and derivatives off and on for years. tried manjaro for a month. At the moment, manjaro still has my attention. You can hop into the more alpha streams of debian and be more cutting edge but most people dont. As I see it: debian - google it and it's out there with doco (maybe old but doco). More vendors will supply a deb or rpm or instruction. choose your level of risk/reward. manjaro/arch - go to package manager and it's usually in there (and with doco). Community takes the best out there and puts it into aur or package. your level of risk/reward is slightly greater but is better aligned.

Debian, and i managed to break the updates XP

What makes Debian less user friendly than Ubuntu? I asked this to Debian community and they say Debian is just as easy as Ubuntu but it needs more post install configuration.

I am currently running Debian. I install lxqt just for the app suite and then I install awesome wm and pull down my dotfiles from gitlab and my system is pretty much good to go. I used to hop between kubuntu and neon, that's why I pick lxqt as many programs are the same/really similar

You recommend to update Arch once a week but what if a security issue is solved the next day? How do you even know?

Debian vs arch?? Hmm.. what about fedora vs arch?

Debian KDE or KDE Neon, what do you recommend?

Great video 💐

I always enjoyed Arch but i changed to Artix recently. Sounds like a good bet, the only downside of Artix is the lack of available GUIs and it comes with a bunch of software pre-installed compared to Arch. I used Debian for years until i installed Debian 10. Apparently it's not possible to install virtualbox.

I got my Arch finally and i love it.

We can never get enough of your rambling. Just keep it to 10 minutes :-)

My first OS is Arch with vanilla Gnome-Shell. The second one is Debian with Mate, Realtime Kernel and Jack sound server. The first for everyday use, the second is for music production, when thing must be stable and reliable in general.

I like MX Linux because when you move the panel to the left or right, the whisker menu orients itself to the bottom rather than the top. Also, it has the best implementation of XFCE in my opinion

You should give gentoo a try!

Debian is my choice for my server and runs and never hiccups!

Hello, I use librazik for music utilisation it's based on debian but I realize that I have old version of software.. I would like play fornite game on linux . What are your advice ?

I'm in confusion what to install because every video i saw, people are saying arch is faster. but my problem is whatever websites i went into for downloading apps, there are only three options windows, mac and linux. and if i click into linux option there is only .deb file no other packages, i found this on many softwares. i want to install arch, but i think there aren't many software available like debian distros. please someone help me

Most users will find all their needs met on Debian without ever having to worry about manual intervention. In the near future containerised apps will fill the gap that AUR used to address. Arch is fun but its more of a hobby OS.

If I had to choose between these two, without other options I would definitely choose Debian.

That wall behind you has that weird illusion where I see flickering white dots at all the intersections of the black lines XD.

Happy new year. You can have a vanilla Debian install is simply easy especially if you are used to terminal. Also you can have rolling Debian with testing or more advanced one with Sid. I made a video but never posted it. Not a good radio voice and worse TV face.

Linux mint, still loving it.

went from ubuntu to debian testing to manjaro then finally to arch and i'm happy with arch

I just fell in love with linux a few months ago. Since then ive installed and removed at least 8 distros. Mint twice. Im trying MX XFCE right now and i gotta say i really like it. It's super easy to install and MX has some pretty cool tools already preinstalled. There's a great selection of software and it's pretty fast. That being said, i would love to try an Arch install just because i can't get enough of learning about this linux thing lol. My only thing with MX is the kernel id s 4.9 something and i know Arch's is much newer. However MX really flows nice with no problems whatsoever. Let's just say i am now an expert and flashing usb's, making resizing and editing partitions, and editing efi partitions now. 🤣 Thanks for all the videos Chris. Im on your discord now as well.

I'm a convert from Debian based distros to Manjaro and will never switch back. The ease of install of everything and time saved setting up the PC from scratch is a breeze once you know how the package manager works and especially everything that's available in the AUR. AUR in my opinion was a game changer for me due to everything being available in one place that I use.