New Server: Debian 11 vs Debian 12

[Ze'ev Schurmann]

I got my hands on a nice i5 machine that had loads of SATA ports and USB3 ports on board, as well as a bunch of USB 2 that I can use as over flow.

It was in a horrible case, but I remembered I had been holding onto the metal of a nice case for many years so I dug it out the store room. I currently have 8GB RAM but am working on getting some bigger sticks.

Question is, do I go for trusty old Debian 11, or is Debian 12 a better choice now? I have found some GPUs are not supported yet in Debian 12 (thank you Nvidia). But I do also find Debian 12 with Plasma has a lower resource footprint than Debian 11 with Plasma. I know, as I have two laptops, one with 12 and one with 11, and each has all the exact same software installed and setup.

I also have a spare 64GB SSD lying around. I was thinking (and I know everyone is going to freak, but I don't care if it dies) to set it up with one massive SWAP partition.

I have a 1TB Hybrid Drive, which I know how to tweak to get the best boot up spead out of it, and I have piles and piles and piles of drives ranging from 1TB - 4TB, with plenty of external cases for the drives that don't fit. I prefer to use smaller drives, as I tried getting a bigger drive once and it crashed. Loosing 12TB of media was not a happy event. I didn't care that it was under warranty... it took me years to collect all that. I would rather loose a small bit at time. Plus I am now keeping certain media on two or more drives.

So, now that my over share is over, what do you all think? Debian 11 or Debian 12?

[TheDreadPirate]

If you are using the an older Intel iGPU, it doesn't really matter. If 11 has all the packages you need and don't care about the shorter support window, use whichever. If you have an Nvidia GPU or newer Intel iGPU or Arc GPU then 12 is probably better. I think with 12 they ask during install about installing non-free driver packages.

[bitmap]

So...I know you asked a specific question, but you're worried about footprint, why are you running a server with a UI at all? Why not run it sans UI or entirely headless?

To answer your question: I would look at the support profile of each and choose whichever one will receive support. I run Ubuntu and they have a pretty clear pattern for support of both LTS and non-LTS versions. Unsupported versions come with security risks and lack of updated features, which means you won't get bugfixes, support for new hardware, new software, and possibly even new features for existing software if it's not compatible. Running anything on a 64 GB SSD with a UI present sounds like a recipe for disaster, so again, I might consider familiarizing yourself with the terminal a bit more and getting comfortable without a UI (or maybe you already are, but choose to run with a UI?). If you're planning on upgrading anything that needs the newer OS, it might be worthwhile planning ahead as well. If not, and Debian 11 serves your needs...I think it's all about preference?

I resisted updating to even Ubuntu 22.04 for the longest time because 20.04 served my needs. Then I started playing with AV1 and bought an A380. Then I went full on 23.04 and I won't look back. It's faster, has a better terminal interface, some cool features, better docker support in some instances, and WAY better support for the hardware I'm running.