I’m a big fan of a minimal Debian system with Flatpaks.
Technically, Fedora Silverblue would be perfect for me, but I had way more issues with it than with Debian, despite it being immutable and atomic.

Debian on Servers. Not-Debian on not-servers.

It’s doesn’t have to be complicated.

I’ve been using Debian for 20 years now, since Debian 3.1 “Sarge”.

My first distro was Knoppix, and it was incredible that I could run a Linux desktop from a CD without installing it. Back then I had something like 96 MB of RAM and my computer was an already ancient Pentium II. And yet it worked fine. This opened my mind about what a computer can actually achieve so I asked around forums in my country and met a guy who had the installation media for Debian. I only had dial-up so downloading DVDs was impossible.

Installed it and used it non stop since then. I’m running Debian Testing with the Unstable and Stable repositories pinned at a lower priority.

It’s hard to describe but the first time I used Linux it just felt like home. I have used DOS 6.x and Windows since 3.1 but it didn’t feel like I was in control of the computer; in retrospect it felt something like an amusement park instead of the engineering marvel it really was. We take it for granted now and don’t completely realize that we have actual super computers in our pockets!

Debian was the epitome of this, for the first time I could understand and control the entirety of the software and best of all: it is a community effort. Smart people all around the world donate their time and skills to create something to improve humanity. What’s not to love and appreciate?

Debian-head here, daily driving it for the last 5 years. I distrohopped a lot before but Debian made me stay, mainly because of its stability and the fact that it’s community driven.
It’s getting harder everyday making your needs fit your ethics, but this is one of the few cases and it makes me feel good with my choices.

What flag is this, by the way?

I appreciate their philosophy. I’ve been a Linux user since the early 2000s and have cycled through 30-40 distros at least. I’m not a highly technical user. I would consider myself a solid intermediate. For a daily use system I prefer arch, but my servers run Debian. Most of the people writing install guides for the software I deploy seem to use Debian so I run into less issues this way. It can be hard to follow a guide for Gentoo when you’re using Hanna Montana Linux, know what I’m saying? Same thing with Debian. It’s just a solid choice with the bonus of having a better, more ethical philosophy, and the benefit of being widely adopted and supported by people who can help when you get stuck. I don’t even mind gnome on my servers since it works well with a single screen and it’s super rare that I actually need the server GUI anyway.

I love Debian because it just works, its administration is completely open, and there’s a lot of software support.

Debian since 1998 checking in

I use it because it’s just always been there it’s the foundation for so many other distros and can be customized the way I want it to be. All the packages are for the most part vanilla other than fixing them to follow the Debian rules. The Debian rules are great since once you learn them. You knows where to find anything on a Debian system.

I have been using Debian - it’s the only distro I’ve used in my 3 years of Linux as a daily driver, and I started using it in VMs instead of Ubuntu a while before that.

I also like stability and Debian’s community-oriented nature.

I am currently on Testing for my desktop, but plan to either go stable or do a reinstall when Trixie hits stable - I’m tired of rolling release and my programs changing frequently. I have really enjoyed Debian 12 + Flatpaks on my Thinkpad, so I think I will do that when summer rolls around.

I’ve been using Debian since 2000 (potato).

I’ve occasionally had to use other distros for work (Red Hat or Ubuntu, typically), or to verify/troubleshoot bugs reports in upstream packages.

But my preference is Debian all the way, for servers or workstations.

It’s stable, and it has a great community. Also ideologically speaking, it has the Debian Social Contract and Debian Free Software Guidelines.

I’m using Debian too. I switched to linux because of privacy reasons and my second thought was that it would be nice if it’s completely developed by an open community without a bigger corporation behind it.

Works great so far. See no reason to change distros.

Stable, fully foss and commonly used.

I use it because of the lack of BS.

Secondly, it’s stable.

The most reliable Linux OS out there, software and community. If there’s still people and computers in 50 years, Debian will still be around.

I’ve been using it on my server for 6 or 8 years, and on my desktop and laptop for maybe a year. I’m not sure when I switched.

I like the stability, I generally don’t need bleeding edge software. And as someone else mentioned, it’s one of the packages distributors always offer.