Debian 12

My main use case for Debian  includes numerous applications, ranging from running web applications on AWS  EC2  instances using Debian 12 , and Debian 12 being the bedrock of Linux Mint, which I run on a personal Mac that is really old. Because of using Linux Mint, it has brought the laptop back to life and it is quick enough to use in a modern way even though the laptop is over a decade old.

I use Debian 12 for building a web application which runs on EC2  instances, and since Debian 12 is free on AWS , I believe it was made to be optimized for EC2 usage. Debian is one of the biggest and oldest Linux distributions, so it is one that came to mind when I was deciding which machine image to run.

Debian is deployed in my organization through the public cloud. I use Debian through the AWS Marketplace , but it is actually used on EC2 instances in AWS, which you would purchase through the EC2 page of the AWS console.

In my opinion, the best features Debian offers include its stability. The stable branch really is stable because once it is configured, I understand you can run it for a very long period of time without needing to reboot or update any of the components. That is really good when you want an application to be extremely stable and not go down, and you are happy using slightly older components. I also value the fact that Debian is open source, so it is free. That is very useful, and it has a big development community that builds it. I understand there are tens of thousands of software libraries which work with Debian from the apt package manager, APT, and also it is very lightweight, which I find to be good as well because that helps with cost savings.

Debian's lightweight design benefits my organization because it does not come with bloatware, minimizing RAM usage. Because of that, we can choose cheaper EC2 instances. You do not have to have as powerful RAM, which makes things cheaper, and also because it does not come with all this bloatware, it also makes it faster. So it is very efficient.

Debian positively impacts my organization by allowing us to utilize a much more lightweight operating system with Amazon EC2 instances, which greatly reduces costs because we can use EC2 instances with lower RAM. Cost savings are good. Debian is very well known across the industry, so different engineers from different teams know how to use it. Using the APT package manager is a common skill for cloud professionals, which makes it good, especially if you are hiring individuals into the company, because at least you would expect they have some type of background using Debian.

I do not know exact measurements, but I would expect we could save at least 10% of costs with EC2 instances just because our memory and CPU requirements would be lower because Debian is lightweight. So it would save cost to some degree.

I do not really think there are any improvements that need to be made. Debian is a very well-known distribution contributed to by tens of thousands of individuals, developers, and engineers, which makes it well optimized. The stable kernel because it is going to be older and naturally stable does not always support brand new components such as CPUs or specialized GPUs out of the box, which can make it difficult to use there. However, that is not much of a problem because Debian has different branches, including the testing and unstable branches.

I have been using Debian for maybe five years.

Debian is highly scalable because we can run it on AWS EC2 instances, so we could have zero or we could have tens of thousands of instances running it if we wanted to.

My experience with customer support is that I use Debian on AWS, and Amazon's enterprise support is amazing. They get back to you extremely quickly and they are highly experienced. I have not needed help from the Debian community for assistance, but I would imagine that would be brilliant because the user community is massive for Debian.

I previously used Ubuntu . The reason for switching to Debian was that I found it a little more lightweight, and the stable branch is extremely stable, which is something I wanted for this particular web website project that I was working on.

It is very difficult to find an exact metric for return on investment because Debian is really a bedrock from which everything else is built upon. However, I would say that using Debian compared to other distributions which have more bloatware would be cheaper because we can run it on less powerful hardware. In terms of cost savings, we might see a cost of at least 10% reduction compared to distributions with more bloatware.

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that it is free to use because Debian is open source, so there is no cost at all.

I did evaluate other options before choosing Debian, but there is nothing more to add.

I did not realize before starting to use Debian that there are different branches, which allows you to choose how stable or how up to date you want it to be. The stable branch, which is what I use, has features that are heavily tested. The software is older, but it does not break often at all because you have to manually update different components if you want them to do so. However, if you did want to use state-of-the-art components, you could consider the unstable version, which I have not personally used, but if I ever did want to do active development for the newest features, then I would be able to do that.

Debian is deployed in my organization through the public cloud. Using the APT package manager is a common skill for cloud professionals, which makes it good, especially if you are hiring individuals into the company, because at least you would expect they have some type of background using Debian.

I rate Debian a 10 because it is extremely stable, lightweight, fast, and open source, so it is free. The only real downsides are that there might be a learning curve because installing it requires a bit more technical experience than Ubuntu , and the hardware compatibility does not always work out of the box with the newest hardware. However, those things are to be expected if you are trying to configure something which is world-class and also highly stable. So I do not really see them as drawbacks; they are more considerations to be aware of.

My advice to others looking into using Debian is that I recommend using the stable branch if they want to make sure their application would be extremely stable, as it is a good way to go. Because it is so lightweight, it is very efficient to run Debian. There is a slight learning curve to it, which might make it a little harder to use than Ubuntu, but if experienced engineers are deploying it, I do not think that is a reason not to use it. I would recommend going for it.

I use Debian  for programming, maintaining my website, and learning Linux scripting. I also encourage my friends to use open-source operating systems such as Debian , Ubuntu , or any other Linux variant.

I am using Debian on my personal computer and also on my friend's computer. I am not using Debian at work.

I use Debian for all purposes and all of my computer activities, not for any specific feature or particular use case.

Debian's best features are that it is very light and very comfortable for even older computers.

Regarding speed, Debian feels light and comfortable to me, and it has significant community support. If anyone encounters a problem in Debian, they can connect to the Debian community and receive help very quickly. This is the main reason I use Debian, and I love using the terminal.

Since using Debian, I have noticed that whatever I need for my work is already available in Debian. The Debian community is very active, and if any new feature or concern comes up, as soon as they update Debian mirrors or the apt repository, I can install and use it.

Debian should have a reset feature; if something goes wrong, such as when I have installed or modified any root file, there should be a reset feature to restore my initial default settings. Additionally, I think Debian should allow for the removal of all dependencies when a particular requirement is not useful, as sometimes we install many things without knowing what they are.

I have been using Debian for almost twelve years.

Debian is stable for my needs.

It is very easy to scale Debian up or down if needed.

When I have needed help with Debian, I received very quick support from the community.

I used Linux before Debian, and I was using Ubuntu  prior to that, with Windows preceding those.

There is nothing as such for return on investment, but I do not need a new computer to run Debian or a highly configurable computer. I can run Debian on my old computer as well, which is very useful for saving money.

I considered Ubuntu before choosing Debian.

Since I support using open-source applications, my advice to others looking into using Debian is to embrace the freedom to use everything without limitations. I encourage people to use open-source applications and operating systems such as Debian and any Linux variant, so that what they are using remains open-source and useful to all.

Debian is doing a great job, and they should keep it up. Thank you.

I should note that since I mentioned I am using Debian on my personal computer, there were many questions regarding my workplace or my organization, so the questions should be classified based on earlier questions. I would rate this review an eight out of ten.

My main use case for Debian  involves leveraging Amazon EC2  instances and Kubernetes  clusters, EKS, for our day-to-day project work, which helps us to keep track of our projects. Using Amazon Machine Images, we get control over tightening security and providing only limited amounts of root user access via Debian  to a specific number of users so that any mishaps in high environments would not incur faulty changes made by internal users or external hackers. Debian is excellent for ensuring that only a limited amount of privileges can be granted via its shell and everything remains locked if a session is active. This is what Debian secures, and it is one of the leading operating system packages and machine images in the industry.

I manage security controls on Debian by leveraging user privileges through creating new system users. Root level access is provided only to root IAM  users so that only they have full access control. Other users rely only on normal user privileges where they are allowed read-only access for Debian controls.

The best features Debian offers include a very good amount of operating system patching and regular updates on a consistent basis, which makes Debian a better option than other operating system patch versions. Currently, the release fixes and other fixes are much faster and the latest stable versions are also quick compared to other packages and operating system patches like Ubuntu . This makes it a very good critical solution with rapid updates, keeping everything stable among other environments.

There was a time when these quick updates made a difference in my work. A CVE related to one cron timer package was on the higher end of severity. Debian was one of the first machine images which released that patch in the 12.8 release, which helped us solve this issue and move forward with the next updated version as soon as possible.

The key features of Debian that I can precisely mention include the foundation and the fact that it is open source, which helps us run the environment in normal architecture with diverse hardware such as ARM64 and AMD64. The foundations are solid regarding the same and the latest stable versions are updated regularly. The core applications are also very good, particularly the software stack which gets updated from well-known sources such as Python and OpenJDK.

Debian has positively impacted my organization, and I have noticed specific improvements since adopting it. Upon adopting Debian changes, the organization has taken good initiatives so that security patches and releases are managed regularly so that no vulnerability is left open and no external hackers or inexperienced professionals are able to compromise any data security.

There are certain areas where Debian can definitely improve, particularly in restricted access privileges for certain aspects. Certain features should be provided only to specific users, such as normal SSH and secure shell access which should be provided in a limited manner. Cron job inclusion cannot be provided to everyone. These are features which can be added.

I would like to mention that robustness can be improved and IPtables configuration and certain other firewall configuration can be improved rather than relying on third-party packages. This way, Debian can be improved so that network calls can be monitored and reviewed.

There are certain user guides in the open source GitHub  that could be updated over these features which can be a good resource for users so that they can keep track of what they are implementing and what the scope of work needs to be. Because Debian is one of the most important software used around the world and the firmware upgrades are quite good. Hardware support is also updated regularly. Time-to-time updates regarding the packages and security concerns need to be managed, and there can be much more traceable IPtable configurations so that people can understand what happens when a new connection is established on the machine. Everything can be tracked through some kind of notification service so that the root level can also monitor if this amount of traffic is normal or if someone is trying to DDoS the secure shell.

I have been using Debian for around three years with Amazon Machine Images.

Debian is quite stable, and the testing cycles in Debian are quite good.

Debian's scalability is quite good. It handles a good amount of traffic and can easily manage around 50,000 users and 50,000 requests with our application currently.

I have not interacted with Debian's customer support or their support channels yet.

Previously, from the very beginning, our architect mentioned that we would look to Debian as this was one of the better options in the marketplace. We examined this solution based on our architecture discussion, and Debian seemed better than Fedora and Mint. The main reason was that latest updates are already being implemented in Debian rather than Fedora and Mint.

I have seen a return on investment using Debian. The least amount of privileges which we provide and the investment cost which we incurred on another machine images were comparatively lower. We saved around $150 per month regarding the same.

The portion regarding pricing was not being managed by myself. This was handled by another team because we request this from another team and they actually set up this portion for our team so that we can deploy and test our applications.

Before choosing Debian, I evaluated other options such as Fedora and Mint.

Majority of the things in Debian packages are handled using this, and all security packages are scanned on a daily basis so that any vulnerability does not emerge. A system cron job is also added in Debian console so that regular scans and updates are reflected on our Power BI dashboard via that system cron job, allowing the leadership and organization level to get updates regularly on what is happening in the background.

A specific example that shows how Debian made a positive impact is in recent scenarios. In the 12.18 version, Debian actually provided very good faster patching, which helped us resolve that CVE as soon as possible. Timely updates and providing open source helps Debian packages to be updated by the open source community as well and mark down those packages which are critical and high so that everyone gets to know what is happening in the background. Keeping everything open source helps grow the community and also lets others know what is happening as well.

My advice to others looking into using Debian is that they can explore multiple operating system patch and image options, but the shipping mechanism of Debian is much wider and the community can be quite large. The updates are maintained consistently. Debian is quite good, and I hope future releases are much better with new features being added regularly so that it takes and stays relevant and competitive in the market with other operating system patches.

I rate Debian overall at an 8 out of 10 based on performance and the scale with which it works, the release and updates, and a few areas for improvement that I have mentioned previously. I have cut two marks for the improvements needed, but everything else is quite good.