Debian – Migrating from Ubuntu to Debian

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I'm a long term Ubuntu user who is considering migrating from Ubuntu to Debian (mainly because of Unity and the fact that my school has a Debian mirror). I haven't installed Debian on a system before. But again, I am fairly comfortable with reading manuals and working with the command line. Here is my installation plan (after spending some time reading the Debian wiki):

  • Download the Live CD image and use dd to make a Live USB (I think this is the easiest way?)
  • Install Debian
  • Configure repos using debgen
  • Post-install

It is the post install part I am most confused about. I'd like to know some specific things:

  • Is there an alternative package to ubuntu-restricted-extras on Debian?
  • What the best way to get around with the font smoothing problem in Debian?
  • How much functionality can I expect from Ubuntu Tweak on Debian?

Any other tips are also welcome.

I found a solution to the font rendering problem here

Best Answer

Speaking as a long time Debian user I say take the plunge. You're familiar with Ubuntu, so there will be a lot you're already comfortable with. Don't expect to get 100% feature parity on day one though.

Some specific answers:

  • ubuntu-restricted-extras looks like it's basically Flash and gstreamer plugins. For flash, just install flashplugin-nonfree or get it right from Adobe and plop it into Firefox. For the gstreamer plugins there are unofficial sources available (although I don't know exactly where) for multimedia packages.
  • There's a post here about font smoothing on Debian. I've never tried it, but the author claims it works well.
  • Ubuntu Tweak is all stuff that Debian folks generally prefer to do manually. You'll learn a lot, and have fun doing it.

And a final note, don't bother using debgen. Just use the Debian mirror for the country you're in (e.g., the U.S. is ftp.us.debian.org). After install your school's mirror to /etc/apt/sources.list.

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