Linux distributions (or distros) and their diversity are arguably the biggest issue preventing new potential users from moving onto the platform. If someone is tech savvy enough to want to install Linux themselves and know how to do it they are also tech savvy enough to try to look up what the best distro for them would be which in of itself is already a very peculiar question. When looking at other operating systems you can pick MacOS or Windows and that’s it and in both cases you do not get to pick up what version you want to use, you just get to use the latest one. Sure you could install Windows 7 instead of 11 if you wanted to but why would you, Windows 7 is outdated, it does not receive any security updates anymore and many softwares have started dropping support for it. The question of “what operating system is best for me?” really is a unique to the Linux ecosystem and it is a difficult one to get to grips with.

I have been looking for my “best” distro since highschool and yet I have never made a full swap from Windows to Linux. Given my use case being focused on gaming, Linux isn’t really an option without some unnecessary headaches but every time Windows throws out an update that messes with my set up, I go back to window shopping Linux distros which eventually came in useful when setting up my own server on which this very website runs so at least it wasn’t a complete waste of time.

Yet, despite hours of browsing reddit posts, reading articles, watching youtube videos, filling in countless distro picker questionaires, I ended up with…Debian. For the uninitiated, this is like pondering and trying to perfect your favourite recipe for years and come to the conclusion that plain white rice is what you enjoy most, it’s disappointing. Given that I’m using it for a server, this is slightly less weird than if it had been to use as a daily drive but if I am to ever switch off Windows once gaming on Linux becomes a guarantee and not a gamble, then Debian is still what I’d be going for. The reason is simple: Debian is a stripped down Windows.

When people look for perfect distros for their use case, they are looking for a system that comes with what they need pre-installed. You can argue that this isn’t systematically true especially when you go down to the nitty gritty of whatever “apt vs pacman”, “the systemd issue” or “the snap-pack issue” is but for the majority of new linux users, the mention of these problems and arguments only muddy an already very blurry process. Debian bypasses these issues because it just works. Debian isn’t a flashy distro and it certainly isn’t a “ready-to-use” distro either, installing the OS is only a third of the battle, drivers, software, desktop environments, they all still need a lot of configuration before you can comfortably start using the OS and that’s something that might scare a lot of people away but it also means that Debian comes with no bloat, no useless software and is at its fundamental level rock solid.

It is a weird dichotomy of Linux that beginners tend to be recommended preloaded systems like Ubuntu or PopOS which come with drivers preinstalled even for annoying Nvidia GPUs and with a range of softwares like a web browser, an office suite, Steam etc. Yet, when you look at Windows or Android users the question that comes up most for new users is: “how do I remove the bloat?”. I have always found it odd how people get recommended Linux Mint because (among other things admittedly) of its great app store when people tech savvy enough to consider Linux will probably have looked at disabling Windows’ own app store and download their software through .exes. Similarly, installing drivers is a common thing to do on Windows and whilst it might not be through a pretty installer, the process through command line on Linux isn’t particularly more difficult (and arguably takes less clicks). The added complexity of OSes like Ubuntu and PopOS only makes them slightly easier to set up but in turn if something breaks the user is closer to a Windows style situation where when something breaks it becomes very difficult to figure out why and how to fix it because of how locked up and more complex the system is.

Debian being so basic and solid at its core means that if something breaks the user will have a much easier time figuring out which among the few basic systems Debian has broke. Additionally, Debian being so widely popular and a base for many of the more intricate systems (like Ubuntu and PopOS again) means that there is no shortage of wikis, articles or forum posts covering any issue one might encounter and in a lot of cases advice given to solve an issue on Ubuntu will still work on Debian whereas that same advice might not work for more niche systems like PopOS and whilst remaining a basic OS, Debian still is not as barebones as something like Arch Linux which means that anyone who’s survived Windows Vista will be able to pick up Debian.

Debian isn’t fancy and that might be why it feels so weird to pick it as the “best” distro. The Debian website looks borderline abandoned because of its early 2000s design, its installer is honestly not much better, it fails at marketing itself with a sleek and cool image like Fedora, openSuse and Ubuntu do and yet ultimately it has the potential to do as much as any of these distributions without asking the user to know the intricacies of Linux whilst offering all the documentation, community and tools the more niche and specialised OSes might lack without falling into the trap of being a Linux version of Windows with all the implied problems this brings.

There is no best or perfect Linux distribution, the distant mirage promised by every distro’s website of an OS that does everything you want it to with great performance, no bugs and no unnecessary features fades away once you start using it and the real question is simply “how much work are you willing to put into getting it to work”. If you’d rather have someone build Lego sets for you then maybe Ubuntu or PopOS will work for you, if you want to make the plastic bricks yourself then Arch Linux will let you do that but if like most people you just want to assemble a set of Legos yourself whilst following the documentation then Debian is your holy grail, it certainly was mine.