CheckMag | Hot take: Vanilla Debian distro is mid

Debian is a powerhouse when it comes to serving as the backbone to other distributions, but a recent excursion into the distro revealed not only something that felt like an antiquated system, but one that didn't feel as stable as the rumours surrounding its legendary status foretold. While it would be easy to argue that this was a skill issue, which is certainly true in part, the overall experience brought into question why vanilla Debian didn't present the best that this platform has to offer, especially when other Linux forks like Fedora and openSUSE go all out on their flagship offerings.

A large factor at play in the lack of a flagship offering is likely that Debian is entirely community-driven and developed, and does not have the same resources as the foundations at the heart of the aforementioned distributions. Also, it would be unfair to say that stability in the case of Debian is solely related to performance; in fact, it is more that Debian is a blank slate and does not change. However, this presents the first issue. With how much hardware and package management is changing on Linux, think Snap and Flatpak, is it beneficial to require users and developers to trudge through dependencies and backport kernels just to get by?

Furthermore, this lack of direction feeds into a larger issue in the Linux ecosystem. There is a running joke whenever a new distro comes out about it being something that no one wants or is going to use, and Vanilla Debian's refusal to establish a modern standard is a partial contributor to that fragmentation. By sitting on the fence, not changing, or refusing to build a vision for what it can be, developers ultimately fall victim to their own ambition when a little direction from the upstream source could have gone a long way. As it stands, Debian as a tool remains S-tier, but as a vanilla distro, it's a solid C-minus.