External reviews are not included in the AWS star rating for the product.
As a DevOps engineer, my main use case for Debian is that it is my daily driver.
I use Debian in my daily work most of the time for tasks such as installing daemons and servers like Nginx, hosting databases, and creating other workloads.
In addition to my main use case for Debian, I also perform system hardening.
The best features Debian offers are stability and the documentation.
Debian's stability helps me in my daily work because my work relies on stability; I'm trying to deploy production workloads, and Debian offers that stability for me. In addition to the documentation, I can find any part under Debian documentation versus other Linux distros, so it gives me comfort to go through all options.
Debian has positively impacted my organization because it is one of the oldest Linux or GNU/Linux distros, which I believe has the biggest community compared to other Linux distros, so we have a lot of brains.
I believe Debian can be improved by adding more containerization features out of the box, and it should make some updates when it comes to the UI.
In addition to the needed improvements, I think if Debian had a memory-based distribution, similar to Alpine, that would be great, as we could get benefits in terms of memory or embedded systems.
I think Debian needs improvements, especially with GCP, in terms of cloud deployment and integration.
I have been working in my current field for more than nine years.
Debian is stable.
Scalability is good since Debian is totally open source.
Customer support is good.
Neutral
Before switching to Debian, I used Red Hat-based distributions because I am a Red Hat Certified System Administrator and Red Hat Certified System Engineer, and some projects required technical support and licensing for security concerns.
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is quite favorable; since Debian is totally free, it is one of my first options.
I have purchased Debian a lot of times through the AWS marketplace before.
I have seen a return on investment; specifically, the cost is around zero because there is no need for a license, and since my whole team uses Debian, we are fine with the number of employees needed.
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is quite favorable; since Debian is totally free, it is one of my first options.
Before choosing Debian, I evaluated other options such as Ubuntu and Red Hat-based distributions.
My advice for others looking into using Debian is to read the documentation and take advantage of the big community to ask questions.
Currently, my company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer, but we are looking for this.
I gave this product a rating of nine out of ten.
On the personal side, I use Debian desktop, which is a lightweight way for me to get work done and do software development. On the professional side, we have Debian servers that host web applications and execute droplets on servers that containerize applications.
We use Debian in our professional environment to host an N8N droplet for automations, specifically work automations. We have a container on a Debian server for a couple of our web applications. We have a web application that helps us manage our support inquiries and a web application that helps our clients engage with their patients. Some of those are Debian, and some of those are Ubuntu.
I have also used Debian via WSL, Windows Subsystem for Linux, which is another personal use case for software engineering via VS Code.
We use Debian deployments primarily on cloud providers such as AWS and Google Cloud. I mostly use AWS for our Debian deployments, but we also use DigitalOcean.
Debian offers the best features in that it is open source, simple, and battle-tested, with a good release cycle. I appreciate their waterfall methodology; if it is not broken, do not fix it. Debian operates a very important place in the market, particularly around web-related services that need to be resilient and long-lasting. I believe Debian is fantastic.
Debian's release cycle is a philosophy that makes sense for organizations that have a very nimble and quick release cycle, while other distros that are more waterfall-like test things every few years and ship new releases every few years. There are pros and cons to both approaches.
I believe security on Debian is top-notch due to its long history and the many individuals and organizations that rely on it, meaning there are many eyes on it. Reliability and security are fantastic; I have never had any issues with either. I would say package management could be a little easier to use, install, reinstall, and roll back packages. It seems there should be a more deterministic way to do that. It does seem that you are running a lot of random install scripts to install things or relying on another two or three package management services, so there could be better software installation methods.
Maybe apt, the package management tool, could have some efficiencies added to allow one to roll back more easily and keep a log. Debian does have some logs that show recent changes, but it is still a little hard to roll back or know what changes were made when; the interface is not as clean as it could be.
The installer experience with Debian is not great, but it is not terrible now. With AI, it is pretty easy to follow the basic steps to get it going. Most people setting up Linux are often using a distro based on Debian rather than vanilla Debian.
Debian is stable.
Debian's scalability is great; I have had no issues with scalability, reliability, or stability.
I rely on forums and online research for customer support and do not know if Debian has official customer support.
Neutral
There is not really another option besides Windows, which is not a good option. We have never used it because it is complicated and not as reliable on the server side. Even on desktop, Debian is very complicated to install and set up, but if you can get past that learning curve and set up a simple system that does just what you want, you unlock all sorts of capabilities that you just cannot get from other desktop operating systems like Windows or Mac.
The installer experience with Debian is not great, but it is not terrible now. With AI, it is pretty easy to follow the basic steps to get it going. Most people setting up Linux are often using a distro based on Debian rather than vanilla Debian.
My advice for others looking into using Debian depends on their purpose. It is different advice for using Debian on the desktop versus for a server. If you are using it over AWS or something, there is not much advice needed since cloud providers have their own interfaces. For running a Debian server, there is a lot of advice online that I am not qualified to give. For the desktop, be prepared for a lot of tweaking and configuration since you are starting with a blank slate and building from there. Many features that come on Windows and Mac are not necessary and can bloat the experience.
I found this interview to be a little less applicable for Debian, so you might want to have different review prompts or templates depending on the type of technology you are reviewing or interviewing for. My overall rating for Debian is nine out of ten.
My main use case for Debian at work and personally is for software that is only supported by Linux, and I primarily use Debian for anything Linux related because it's the most supported option. It's very easy to set up, and very easy to install software on it. We use it for testing scripts, Linux scripts, or bash scripting, and for integrations that are not supported by Windows. Cybersecurity solutions like pen testing tools all rely on it. Sometimes we use Kali Linux, but we use Debian particularly because it's available on AWS, while Kali Linux is not available there. When we want to create a Linux-based virtual machine, especially on the cloud like AWS, we always go for Debian.
I have used Debian extensively to automate tasks on the cloud like Terraform, where I would use one Debian virtual machine as a command and control center for managing other Debian-based Linux machines. Additionally, I integrate it with Ansible for further automation.
The best features Debian offers include compatibility and the wide range of software available on it, along with flexibility. The commands and most tutorials or documentation online for anything you need are always mainly built for Debian. It's much easier to find resources for Debian compared to other Linux distributions.
Debian's compatibility and flexibility have significantly helped me in my work. For example, if I want to install any prerequisites for software on Debian, it's very easy to use the default commands for installing software such as APT-get, and I always find the package I want to install compatible and available in any of Debian's libraries or repos. When I try the same on Kali Linux or CentOS, I almost always struggle to find the packages easily, but for Debian, I always find what I need.
Debian has positively impacted my organization by making it much easier for the technical team. If we had forced our team to use Kali Linux or any other Linux-based distributions, they would struggle more to complete projects that rely on Linux. Debian is the most straightforward and compatible option, which greatly simplifies our engineers' tasks.
This ease of use with Debian has translated into results for our team by saving time and reducing errors. For example, when deploying a Linux-based application or software for one of our customers, since it's most likely compatible with Debian, the team can concentrate on implementing the product and installing it without working around limitations or compatibility issues.
I wish the company responsible for Debian would send communications about updates and new features to keep people informed and to give Debian the recognition and praise that it deserves.
I have been using Debian on and off depending on the projects I work on and for personal use in lab testing and internal applications for my company since I was studying in university and throughout my experience over the past five years.
In my experience, Debian is very stable.
The scalability of Debian for our organization depends on our requirements. We don't spin up new Debian instances arbitrarily. We deploy machines for lab testing or specific projects as needed, some being temporary for testing purposes.
We rely on community resources for support, such as documentation, forums, and asking questions online. It's very easy to find reliable tutorials and guides. However, we've never reached out for official support or dealt with Debian's vendor tickets, as we manage everything ourselves by utilizing open-source resources.
Neutral
I used to rely heavily on Windows before switching to Debian. With Windows, you need a license and must ensure that all the software you try to install supports Windows. A lot of software relies on Linux, which made the transition to Debian easier.
I have seen a return on investment using Debian. We were able to save a substantial amount by using Linux instead of Windows and spending a lot of money on Windows licenses.
Regarding pricing, setup cost, and licensing, we have a certain amount of credit on AWS, and as long as I remain within the limit of that credit, I can create machines as much as I want without exceeding the monthly limit.
Before choosing Debian, we evaluated other options like Ubuntu, Kali Linux, and CentOS, but many of them have additional costs such as support licensing, even though they are still cheaper than Windows. Debian stood out as the most compatible option, being the most stable with frequent updates and reliable backward support, making it the best choice for us.
Other vendors should consider preparing AWS market-ready instances that are based on Debian. Offering ready-to-spin virtual machines that are packaged with their software would be beneficial.
My advice to others looking into using Debian is to assess their current pain points if they are using Windows or another Linux distribution and check if Debian resolves those issues. It's more compatible with solutions they may already have deployed on other operating systems, and I'm confident they'll find it to be a better and more cost-effective choice.
My additional thoughts about Debian are that the best part is the community, the resources available online, and how easy it makes it for technical users. I truly appreciate that I've never struggled to achieve or implement something on Debian. If I don't know how, I can always search online and find someone who has already done it, along with tutorials or documentation available online. I would rate my overall experience with Debian highly based on its stability, compatibility, and strong community support.