> And can I convert an Ubuntu into a Debian by reinstalling it while keeping my home directory?
You can do that with any distribution, unless you expect your configs to line up exactly.
If you don't keep your /home on a separate partition, back it up. Install Debian, making sure to separate /home and root into different partitions this time. Go through your ~/.configs, find the ones you've changed (most of this will probably be browser shit) and put copies aside. Then take all of the configs out of your home directory backup (including the originals of your changed configs) and put those aside in a different place, deleting them from the backup of your home directory. Backup the virgin ~/.configs from your new install (do not delete them from the new home directory.) Then copy your old home directory files (sans configs) over your new ones using rsync. Compare your manually changed files to the virgin files from the install - has the format changed, will they still work? Are they located in the same directory in Debian as in your previous distro? If it looks fine, copy them in. See if they work. If they don't, look up why not. They probably will.
If you keep your home on a different partition, then install as if you don't, and let Debian create a home in the same partition as the new OS. Do the same config dance as above (annihilating your old configs other than the customized ones), and switch your /home to be mounted from your old home partition.
Or at least this is what I do. On your desktop, you probably want to install testing, on your servers stable.
I just pin to a specific code name (version) instead of a state (such as testing), e.g. right now I'm using bookworm which happens to be testing, and I'll still be using it for a while once it's been declared stable. If I feel like I'd want to upgrade some packages that are available in the next testing, or I can't install some specific package from unstable because it requires an update for a big library (often libc6), I update to the next testing.
I think it's better to avoid pinning to testing since it gets a lot of updates right after a stable promotion (after the package unfreeze), which you probably don't want.
I think anyone who suggests daily driving Debian testing should also mention the fact that packages can disappear from testing for weeks/months at a time (and reappear later). It's recommended to configure `unstable` in your sources as well but set up apt pinning so that those packages are only pulled in if they're missing in testing. See: https://wiki.debian.org/DebianTesting "Best practices for Testing users"
In practice this means adding something like this to /etc/apt/preferences (along with adding entries for `unstable` in /etc/apt/sources.list)
# use `n=` when referencing codename (i.e. buster/bullseye/...)
Package: *
Pin: release n=bookworm
Pin-Priority: 550
# use `a=` when referencing archive (i.e. stable/testing/unstable)
Package: *
Pin: release a=unstable
Pin-Priority: 520
That way apt will pull in any packages missing in testing from unstable, and once the package is reintroduced to testing, will prefer that version rather than continue to track unstable.
Maybe I've been lucky but I've been running testing on my non-server desktops and laptops for 13 years now and have only rendered my system unbootable once (required having to boot up a live CD to reinstall an older working version of some bad libpcre update that had been rolled out).
For a long while I ran testing and had zero issues.
Warning: if you're used to PPA life in Ubuntu Debian doesn't offer an equivalent that I'm aware of. EDIT sibling comments indicate home brew might solve this.
The problem with Debian is you can't usually pick "a thing" from another channel, you mostly have to fully commit. Testing is great until it isn't and anecdotally sid/unstable never fixed that for me - I just had to learn to build the occasional package from source
Ultimately I'm a lot happier having gone on that journey but it can feel very arduous the first few times apt doesn't have a recent enough version of something available
Right now I run testing as my gaming Linux, and I like that the packages are not old. But there's also a KDE bug that occurs daily, and it's a bit annoying.
Personally - I think the step away from systemd is a fairly huge mistake.
I understand that legacy users and orgs may have vested interests in sticking with older init systems, but personally I think systemd solves a challenging problem space in a very easy to use manner.
I much prefer writing a systemd unit file than having to wade into sysvinit or runit.
Politics aside - I just find systemd far easier to work with.
In what case do you need to opt for a different init system than systemd? Genuinely curious, as I've been using debian with systemd for almost a decade now and haven't run into any issues regarding it.
Asking why/why not to use systemd is covering very old territory here at HN and not the point of my earlier comment - I was riffing on someone using the term ''a bit dirty'' in regards to a Linux distro.
I understand the point of your comment, and that why/why not is mostly a philosophical/political/whatever question.
But really, the “I use both as needed” is the statement which pokes my interest. When do you need something else than systemd? What is the actual work which doesn't run with that particular init system?
I'm honestly unsure if you were just joking or if there's really something more to it.^^'
Another reading of that comment would be that they use Debian (with Systemd) when needed, and personally prefer Devuan for philosophical/personal reasons.
It's still pretty easy to replace systemd in Debian with sysvinit (we do it at moderate scale). Devuan works very well though, basically there's little difference between Devuan and Debian without systemd (all the packages are identical, except where a package has decided to require systemd in which case the Devuan version will just have the dependency removed).
Long term though there's a query over support for anything other than systemd in Debian, hence the move towards Devuan.
Where Debian is a reputable distribution with a clear goal, the Devuan crew is solving a non-issue by means of almost religious levels of resistance toward systemd.
If you want technological merit, chose Debian. If you want to join the conservatives of Linux, you should go for Devuan.
Even during Debian's systemd adoption wars I'd never seen any argument calling into question Devuan as ''disreputable''. After all, it was a group of experienced Debian folks that made a systemd-less version of Debian that compares almost exactly with Debian's status and capabilities. I hope in your case you have not been forced to use Devuan.
I'd heard many times over the years that Roger Leigh was given a great deal of support by other Debian people, let alone across the Linux community. Maybe I misremembered.
You're using language and innuendo instead of argument to imply that the maintainers and users of Devuan are irrational. The objections to systemd were almost completely about the technical merits, with a side order of being annoyed that Red Hat was again being allowed to dictate the standard Linux stack by inserting another impenetrable monolith.
I know it's weird for me to object to your comment without implying that you're insane. It's alright to feel like using systemd after a tangle of init scripts was a breath of fresh air. I understand that point of view. I don't understand the invective against people who put their money where their mouths were.
