Nvidia, I think? That's what people say but has never been my experience.

Probably because it got popular as the easy Linux distro back in the 2000s and that label is sticking.

I remember that I attempted to install Debian on my laptop in 2009. It was ugly. I installed Ubuntu 8.04 and it was a totally different and much nicer experience. Because of that I've been on Ubuntu until they started pushing snaps very aggressively. I live booted Debian 11 and realized that its UI was exactly the same. I don't know when it happened during that dozen of years but there wasn't anymore a reason to stick to Ubuntu. I installed Debian 11 and got a faster machine with less background processes. I'm on Debian 13 now. I've been told that KDE is much better than what I attempted to use in 2014 so maybe I could give it a try, but it's unclear to me what I have to gain.

For me, it was kubuntu. Back in late 2005 or early 2006. The reason? They were always pretty good at shipping the latest KDE. I had grown tired of hoping someone would compile a new version for my preferred distro.

So kubuntu it was, and has been ever since. I'm currently looking into whether I should change to something else - as I've started growing tired of Ubuntu/Kubuntu after some 20 odd years.

I'm of the belief that the more popular an OS is, the more maintainers it will have (and thus less bugs). The only thing about Ubuntu that I hated was its choice of windowing manager. That's why there are so many variants like KUbuntu, XUbuntu, etc. Are there other reasons to not like Ubuntu other than the windowing manager?

Ubuntu offered a slightly prettier installation experience.

Sure, no matter which distro you were installing you still had to provide a hostname, a domain name, some IP info (maybe), and an opinion on partitioning - there's only so many ways to ask the user these questions - but the ubuntu installer was prettier.

Around the time it was gaining popularity, almost every 'reviewer' (blogger) seemed to waste about 85% of their distro reviews talking about the installer - as though this was somehow important. The big sell of Debian, and Debian-derivatives, is that you install once, and then it's just in-place upgrades forever. The distro-hoppers, Microsoft evacuees, content-creators, etc - didn't really get that.

Anyway, once Ubuntu was installed it was much the same to operate as a Debian box. Obviously there were some surprising differences. Unity. Mir. One Cloud. Wubi. Upstart. Bazaar.

Come on - at least make one substantive criticism in your post putting down Ubuntu.

I came to Ubuntu because Wine worked on it with no effort. Yes, this was a long time ago. I have certainly cursed some of their changes since then, but I don’t want to spend my time doing yet another sysadmin job, so the less I change the better.

Or it took >15 minutes to generate PGP 2.x private keys due to entropy generation and prime calculations/tests.

I build using excess solar from my house. The build host is a small arm64 SBC that doesn’t require cooling in my passively cooled garage.

The resources behind your post likely have a larger carbon footprint.

Turn the shed light off overnight and you’re at net zero

> People don't usually understand that apt allows you to configure multiple sources across versions simultaneously, so you can e.g. run stable, but also selectively install from backports or unstable.

Which is just as well, because that's not generally a good idea unless you really know what you're doing:

https://wiki.debian.org/DontBreakDebian#Don.27t_make_a_Frank...

Granted, the kernel is probably the best thing to do it with, on account of their aggressive stance on compatibility and the narrowness of impact (no .so files in play).

Yes, when that was a thing I just compiled the wireguard module myself to feed it to the virtual router. It was only needed for a short interval and was thereafter handled by dkms, i.e. no problem.