I've just chanced on this — not a Debian user — and I can't resist adding my two-penn'orth. I have usb speakers. In Red Hat systems I can enable them in 4 mouse clicks. In Debian I'd have to edit a file in /etc/modprobe.d and reboot.

I'm sure if I installed Red Hat I'd find something that takes messing around in Red Hat that I take for granted in Debian.
I also suspect that Ubuntu, to which the OP was comparing Debian, would require you to do the same as Debian does.
I'm not saying Debian is perfect, of course it isn't (I've had my own frustrations with it), but I can't believe that anyone who can follow instructions finds it any less "user friendly" than any other distro.

No it is not. Neither is Synaptic. I do not know about the Software Centre, but Synaptic is definitely on the first DVD and I believe also on CD1.

Hi,

Really? You have to reboot? Can you elaborate?

Evo2.

The hardest thing I found about debian was trying to read the documentation, on an unregistered/unactivated version of windowsxp, couldn't burn a cd &didn't have the slightest idea about installing an OS(including windows) & the timeclock ticking down.
Also my laptop was infected at the time.
All I'm saying is for the first time at anything you have to just read the documentation.
Without Debian I wouldn't know Windows.

"Debby Ann" is a helluvalot more user friendly now than it was before. All the distros are, actually. Last time I had Debian, it was Ver 3.0, and its installer was a total mess, and nowhere near user friendly. (Even at the time, an experimental distro "ELX" had a very easy to use graphical installer that was better than Mandrake's in that it included hyperlinks to documentation.) Regardless, I got it installed after a few tries, though I was really a total "n00b".

I tried a bunch:

Debian
Libranet
Mandrake
Red Hat
ELX
Evil Entity
Linaire
CRUX
Gentoo
Damn Small
and Slackware, which I stuck with upon seeing they all work pretty much the same once you get them installed.

It's gotten a lot easier these days: no more hacking config files to get X working, no more editing to get all the mouse buttons working. Just install and "startx" and you're good to go.

I love Slackware, it is my main distro that runs on most of my work stations. I have one netbook running Wheezy (runs like a top). :)

Have a live DVD that runs Wheezy with GNOME. Looks good (though I definitely prefer Enlightenment which I install on Slack after compiling it) starts up everything and no need for any hacking for X or mouse buttons or network connections.

It's definitely come a helluva long way so far as user friendliness is concerned these days.

debian is a distro for all.
 

Debian is not aimed at a prticular section os users like Ubuntu.Ubuntu is aimed at ease of use.
Debian is universal operarting system.Debian default install does not include open office or vlc or onmscreen keyboard.
We have to install them later.But Debian is very stable.Debian gives basic install.Then,we can install as much software we require easily using 1.Gui programs Synaptic,etc.,
2.command line tools aptitude apt-get dpkg etc.,

Debian may appear difficult.But,it is not that diificult.Once you learnt about sources.list repos pkg mgmt tools,it will be very easy.always,debian forums and linuxquestions are there to help.

Huh? Squeeze Gnome has OO by default and Wheezy Gnome has LO by default.

This thread has been running for almost a month & no response from OP.
In fact this is the first & last post the OP has made.

+1

And the only person creating a stink in this thread is the same 20 post troll who was shit stirring about debian/'buntu two days earlier:
https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...1/#post4888026

That's what I call "bias"...

Long time Slack user myself, and just put Deb on the other HD. This time, the install was just a case of point and click. Not like the last time I tried Debian-3.0 where that installer was a gawdawful mess. This time, point, click, install, pick a mirror and install the soft. NBD. The only other distro that was so easy was an experimental distro out of India called "ELX (Everyone's Linux)". It was based on Mandrake, and its installer was likewise graphical, and hyperlinked to useful tips. Unlike 'Drake, there was no need to hack the X configuration files to get X up and running, or to get all mouse buttons operational.

Slack has also gotten a helluvalot easier to use, even though its installer is still NCurses based. When running Slack-11, and wanting to install a video editor, Lives, meant chasing down lots of dependencies (and Linux From Scratch was an enormous help in that it listed all the dependencies for the GNOME libraries Lives needed). Installing Lives on Slack-13.37 (currently using) was just a "configure, make, make install" operation. No need for chasing dependencies, as the required libs were already installed. This time, I installed Enlightenment, and xwmconfig picked it up right away. No longer necessary to lie by renaming the x-init script to fool xwmconfig it was starting GNOME.

At least these two distros are getting much easier to install and use. As for distros, I wouldn't consider anything other than Slack or Debian.

Slackware and Debian
 

Hell, yes! Although I am currently running Fuduntu on my Thinkpad (I was curious, read some good reviews), I will probably put Slackware-current on it this weekend. Slackware and Debian, ftw. My day job (print industry) keeps me on Mac OSX all day. It's not bad, for a BSD. :D

I am currently using Debian Buster as I don't as I don't feel like running slackware-current and slackware 15.0 is not out. The Debian documentation is not better than OpenBSD so I would not necessarily call that well documented. For instance, Debian does have an unnoficial ISO that includes non-free codecs but for some reason it did not work with my Wifi card. Modern systems should be able to install over Wifi. Anyway, the generic documentation instructions for getting firmware to work during install with the standard ISO by loading it manually did not work. I had to look at documentation instructions for a specific model of laptop that was not even close my own laptop model to get it to work. After trying the latter instructions I got the wifi to work for installation but before that it threw an error at me even though it loaded the firmware properly from a USB stick and I could have mistaken that, if I was a n00b, as a sign to give up instead of press on and it all worked anyway. These are signs of neglect and non-profesionallism in debian that you would never see in OpenBSD.

I started using Linux in 1997 with redhat hurricane or manhattan or whatever was first. Then I installed Debian slink from a vfat partition where I downloaded the bulk of debian with a 56k dipswitch non-winmodem and during setup I had to compile a kernel just to get my soundcard to work and back then you could squeeze out bigger performance by tailor conforming the kernel to just your hardware specs by editing it and compiling it. The default window manager was Window Maker too.

So don't get me wrong Debian has definitely come a long way since Debian Slink but there is still work to be done.

As far as what I said about OpenBSD it is true even though I find OpenBSD developers to be arrogant cultists so don't mistake what I am saying as OpenBSD is a niche OS with a lot of hype around it but it does get documentation right.

Sorry, for the necromancing but sometimes Linux people hype things up a little too much so that they don't represent reality to ex mac and window users. Afterall, it was Linus Torvalds himself who said he does not use Debian but Fedora because he tried Debian and it was too hard to install !