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Discussion on: Getting Cozy With Debian Buster

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adnan360 profile image
Adnan Shameem • Edited

Weirdly usermod lives in /usr/sbin but that's not in $PATH by default, so I added export PATH="$PATH:/usr/sbin/" to .bashrc for both root and my non-admin account.

I faced the same issue recently on a Devuan install. I think you can do this too:

su
sudo usermod -aG sudo ben

Then you won't need to change $PATH and stuff.

Great article to read. As far as I know you can't go wrong with Debian. It can be what you want it to be.

Personally however, I did not have a good experience with upgrading a point release distro, ever. So I usually choose rolling release distros for my work machines. Rolling releases are getting better now and they are quite reliable. If I were to use Debian, I would go with Devuan (because SystemD is too much of a bloat for me) and go with testing repos. That would give me a rolling release type of a setup with latest packages and reasonable stability.

Outside of Debian, I would choose Void Linux. It is so much faster that I couldn't believe when I first installed it on my system. It runs blazingly fast with runit init system, instead of SystemD. I was a skeptic at first to use a new init system, but it was surprisingly easy and felt like how an init system should work. Everything is a file, like unix philosophy says and so light. I even ran GNOME3 from a EXT4 (without journal) filesystem from a USB flashdrive, which I could not do with Arch with that responsiveness.

But whatever works for you is the best distro to go with.

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deciduously profile image
Ben Lovy

Ah, thanks! on My Debian install /usr/sbin wasn't in root's $PATH either, but it's possible I missed something.

I hadn't heard of Devuan, thanks for the suggestion. Good to note about point release updates, I've really only ever used rolling release so I'm sort of waiting to see how that goes in April.

I was also curious about SystemD, because I've used OpenRC for years, but it doesn't bother me. Sure, it does a lot more, but I've found it highly easy to use - I guess it's a personal preference thing. I have pretty standard needs.

I do already use Void Linux on my laptop, and love it, but have had trouble getting some of my development tools like dotnet installed. I'm not quite ready to use it exclusively, but in generally think very highly of it.

Thanks for your thoughts!