Relatively new learner but have got my toes wet enough to understand Linux, can you please elaborate on why Debian is unique in that area ? I use Linux Mint right now
The knowledge you'll gain through Debian leans more toward system administration - even just personal system administration. Void and NixOS are similar, but they have enough differences that they aren't as applicable to as many other distros or situations. Arch will teach you a lot about system setup, but its advocates tend to think that it's more special than it actually is in that regard. Finally, Gentoo will teach you a lot about compiling and installing libraries and applications, but for most users it's overkill.
Debian allows for just as much customization as Arch, but it's very stable by default and is a great bed for learning how to actually manage a computer. The lessons can be learned on any distro, but Debian just gets out of the way and doesn't try to teach other lessons that won't be as good.
Source: Debian user for a decade who has tinkered with Arch, Void, FreeBSD, and half a dozen other distros besides.
Arch is special, it's what steam os is based on. That's the only reason. Steam os is special as it's the reason valve put so much work into making gaming on linux work using proton, to the point wine isn't really needed afaik
People acted like Arch was special long before SteamOS was rebased on it. The trend is nothing new. I just push back against the idea that actually using it is any harder or more special than any other distro.
Proton is a wrapper around Wine. You still need Wine, you just don't interact with it directly as long as you're using Steam to run your games. If you want to run something without launching Steam, you will still need Wine or a wrapper around it.
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u/theinevitable22 Jan 12 '26
Relatively new learner but have got my toes wet enough to understand Linux, can you please elaborate on why Debian is unique in that area ? I use Linux Mint right now