Ubuntu was at its best when it was just Debian with more-sensible defaults for a desktop. Every step away from that, or to try to push boundaries, has just made it worse :-/
So I'm not imagining things. I saw few cases on servers and many on desktop where I was like "I swear that worked fine in any of our Debian instances" (we got around 500 servers/VMs running it).
My recent favourite was how Ubuntu will auto-update packages but... not uninstall old kernel versions so any long running system will inevitably run out of space in /boot at some point and just not boot at one point (till user picks older kernel from the menu).
This includes Debian-specific guides (installation, administration, reference, and more, see: <https://www.debian.org/doc/>), as well as FAQs, HOWTOs, RFCs (divided amongst several packages based on relevance, status, and to minimise size), numerous extensive guides to other Debian packages and systems, and more.
Then there's DWWW, the Debian World Wide Web documentation interface:
This provides localhost (or broader depending on how you configure your webserver) access to all Debian documentation, including not only the additional docs above, but the /usr/share/doc/ tree (which provides information on all installed packages), as well as manpages and info documents. You point your browser at https://localhost/dwww/ and are presented with both a tree and search across the collection.
It's a relatively simple concept, but one that's greatly assisted by the cohesion and coordination provided by the rest of the Debian system.
Oh, and the Debian Reference is also translated into French, German, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, and Chinese, and is available in HTML, plain text, and PDF formats.
1. Useful for someone who can invest a lot of time, starting from the basics, to reach the level of Debian Guru...
2. A bit too much focus on Midnight Commander if you ask me. I also find it excessive to review flex and yacc - when the reader is not even told in what case they would need this information. This isn't a compilers course, don't bother with these two.
3. If this was completed in 2021, what's new in the 2023 version?
I recently switched to using debian for my personal computers. It is fantastic. Rock solid. Ubuntu without the silly stuff like default apps as snaps.
Ubuntu was at its best when it was just Debian with more-sensible defaults for a desktop. Every step away from that, or to try to push boundaries, has just made it worse :-/
So I'm not imagining things. I saw few cases on servers and many on desktop where I was like "I swear that worked fine in any of our Debian instances" (we got around 500 servers/VMs running it).
My recent favourite was how Ubuntu will auto-update packages but... not uninstall old kernel versions so any long running system will inevitably run out of space in /boot at some point and just not boot at one point (till user picks older kernel from the menu).
stable or testing?
I like stable. You can use backports if you need newer versions of specific packages.
Also available as a Debian package:
Debian's integrated documentation is amongst the hidden strengths of the distribution.
There's an entire collection of documentation references which are packaged and installable under Debian's APT package manager:
<https://packages.debian.org/stable/doc/>
This includes Debian-specific guides (installation, administration, reference, and more, see: <https://www.debian.org/doc/>), as well as FAQs, HOWTOs, RFCs (divided amongst several packages based on relevance, status, and to minimise size), numerous extensive guides to other Debian packages and systems, and more.
Then there's DWWW, the Debian World Wide Web documentation interface:
<https://packages.debian.org/bullseye/dwww>
This provides localhost (or broader depending on how you configure your webserver) access to all Debian documentation, including not only the additional docs above, but the /usr/share/doc/ tree (which provides information on all installed packages), as well as manpages and info documents. You point your browser at https://localhost/dwww/ and are presented with both a tree and search across the collection.
It's a relatively simple concept, but one that's greatly assisted by the cohesion and coordination provided by the rest of the Debian system.
Oh, and the Debian Reference is also translated into French, German, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, and Chinese, and is available in HTML, plain text, and PDF formats.
English PDF for offline / e-book reading: <https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/debian-reference/debian-r...>
This is beautiful, I've been using Debian for a long time and learned a few useful tidbits in a minute of clicking around.
1. Useful for someone who can invest a lot of time, starting from the basics, to reach the level of Debian Guru...
2. A bit too much focus on Midnight Commander if you ask me. I also find it excessive to review flex and yacc - when the reader is not even told in what case they would need this information. This isn't a compilers course, don't bother with these two.
3. If this was completed in 2021, what's new in the 2023 version?
2021 was when Debian 11 bullseye. There will be a new version with the release of Debian 12 bookworm. Probably sometime this year or early next year.