I used Ubuntu in my college for some light programming and felt really happy about it.
I am more interested in switching to Debian 12 than Ubuntu, since the former is really stable. Also, I came to know installing Debian is easier since it supports non free firmware.
Go ahead.
How do I know if my device actually works with all the foss drivers? Is there a list of hardware supported?
Also, I am planning to use Ventoy for the boot drive. My device has UEFI, so is there any extra steps I need to follow to install the distro properly?
From the ventoy website:
x86 Legacy BIOS, IA32 UEFI, x86_64 UEFI, ARM64 UEFI and MIPS64EL UEFI are supported in the same way.
How do I know if my device actually works with all the foss drivers? Is there a list of hardware supported?
It would be nigh impossible to list all the hardware Bookworm is able to support. What are you looking to run it on? Anything obscure?
I think my laptop is 7 or 8 years old. I have an HP printer which I use. Will my printer work ?
HP actively supports their printers in Linux. Debian 12 is not listed though, only 11.
https://developers.hp.com/hp-linux-imaging-and-printing
Edit: Added the bit about Debian 12
From my experience with Linux - your hardware will almost certainly work just fine without a problem.
It’ll be your Windows software that you’re going to have potential problems with. This is likely way less hassle than it was 10-20 years ago - wine has been continuously improved, DirectX 12 was open sourced, and a lot of software is run in web browsers these days anwyay, but depending what you’re trying to do, it can still be a challenge.
I’ve been running Deb 12 on my laptop for a year and a half and it’s good. The one issue I have had is directly related to being on brand new hardware that wasn’t supported yet by the kernel. Before that I ran 9, 10 and 11 with zero issues on laptops and desktops.
Just be aware that “stable” in the linux world means “old.” All of the software in the Debian repos will be much more out of date than some other distros like Pop!_OS, Fedora, or even Ubuntu. If you upgrade to newer hardware, or want to use newer software, Debian may not support it without jumping through some major hoops.
LOL. It’s not hard at all. Run “unstable”. Unstable doesn’t mean it’s going to crash, it means it gets updated. There are zero major hoops, and Debian is usually more rock solid than its offshoots, and aside from release freeze windows is at least as up to date as those you mentioned. I mean, use whatever you want, most major distributions are going to be fine, but you don’t need to pointlessly spread FUD.
From the software part, I think this is only an issue if you’re a developer. If you want something like the most recent LibreOffice, you can just install it via Flatpak. A bigger issue arises if you need something like a more recent Python or GCC.
From the hardware part, you should of course always check beforehand with a live distro if your hardware is supported. Debian 12 however is very recent and should support most recent hardware and it will keep supporting it unless you upgrade e.g. your GPU.
