I am a little biased because I’ve been using Debian professionally for many years now but we don’t deserve Debian. It is fantastically stable and reliable and makes an excellent platform for running your services off of. If you are at all interested in offering some time and energy to the open source community, consider adopting a Debian package!
but seriously, modern FOSS distros (yes, debian is modern, damnit!) are amazingly good. you have an exceptionally high probablility of switching and staying switched.
Side note: anyone got recommendations for business software? I’ve started browsing the FOSS community here for ideas but I’m not sure what QuickBooks alternatives exist
The best accounting software will be the one your accountant uses.
When clients are on the same platform that I use internally everything just matches up and it’s beautiful and elegant and amazing.
When clients are using something else it just doesn’t fit our workflows and it’s just more of a fuck around, which of course the client gets charged for.
A quick Google shows Quickbooks to be cloud-based accounting software.
For FOSS accounting, GnuCash exists so you could try that (it can also run on Windows and macOS).
However, it’s unlikely to have feature parity so if you like the added convenience that Quickbooks offers, see if you can use Quickbooks in a browser. Being cloud-based, they would probably build a browser version before building a Linux desktop app.
If they don’t and you need to run a Windows desktop app on Linux, you can probably do this using Bottles (which uses Wine and Proton under the hood, the tech that enables the Steam Deck).
I mean yeah, but specifically I’d like something built for Linux that’s good for just basic spreadsheet stuff. I’m an electrician so I mostly just need to track jobs and accounts.
Most of (what we call) Linux OSes are formally GNU/Linux. GnuCash is as close as it gets to “made for Linux”. If you don’t want an accounting-specific application, but just generic spreadsheets, check out LibreOffice.
I highly recommend GnuCash for accounting though: a fellow board member cleaned up an org’s accounting by putting it all in GnuCash, where it was a bunch of error-prone Excel sheets before. That really made it easier to keep track and to do it right.
I should be more clear: specifically I was rebuilding a Docker image based on Debian and needed Node.js for one build step, then Ruby for another as well as the final image.
In the Dockerfile there were a ton of weird commands for simply installing Node.js and Ruby whereas on Alpine Linux I could simply install the needed versions from apk. I understand it’s preferable to build these from scratch but in the case of Node.js I was looking to simply compile a bunch of assets then throw away the layer.
I could’ve spent a bunch of time figuring it out for Debian but I wanted a smaller image in the end anyway too.
This is what I specifically hate about building Docker images based on Debian. Half your Dockerfile ends up mucking about with third-party repositories, verifying keys, etc.
That’s how I feel about arch, it’s not “stable” but the few issues I’ve had they typically have it fixed with an update within hours.
I do have to clarify when I switched to arch from windows my entire computer was brand new and practically no other distro booted or if it installed it dumped me to a black screen.
After running my server on archlinux with the stable kernel for 7 years I did install Debian on my new server. Zfs just required an older lts kernel than I could get on arch without a ton of hassle. I didn’t need it on my Mac mini with an external hard drive plugged in. From my experience it’s not very different to maintain compared to arch but it’s nice having built in automation instead of writing my own.
Man it’s weird using a system of what I can guess is a bunch of bash scripts on Debian to set things up compared to just using the tools built into and written for systemd.
“stable” in this case means that it doesn’t change often. Debian stable is called that because no major version changes are performed during the entire cycle of a release.
It doesn’t mean “stable” as in “never crashes”, although Debian is good at that too.
Arch is definitely not “stable” using that definition!
Yeah, I know the definition. I knew someone would quote it verbatim, someone always does. I quoted it because it’s not the word I would use. I like scheduled or versioned releases better but someone always disagrees with me. As far as I’ve seen it’s a major/minor version release cycle anyway.
I am a little biased because I’ve been using Debian professionally for many years now but we don’t deserve Debian. It is fantastically stable and reliable and makes an excellent platform for running your services off of. If you are at all interested in offering some time and energy to the open source community, consider adopting a Debian package!
I’m thinking about a Linux laptop with FOSS software for my business actually, Lemmy’s relentless horde of pro-Linux propaganda has won me over
(OK I’ve always liked FOSS I’ve just never taken the jump)
ONE OF US! ONE OF US!
but seriously, modern FOSS distros (yes, debian is modern, damnit!) are amazingly good. you have an exceptionally high probablility of switching and staying switched.
I’m looking forward to it!
Side note: anyone got recommendations for business software? I’ve started browsing the FOSS community here for ideas but I’m not sure what QuickBooks alternatives exist
I’m an accountant.
The best accounting software will be the one your accountant uses.
When clients are on the same platform that I use internally everything just matches up and it’s beautiful and elegant and amazing.
When clients are using something else it just doesn’t fit our workflows and it’s just more of a fuck around, which of course the client gets charged for.
A quick Google shows Quickbooks to be cloud-based accounting software. For FOSS accounting, GnuCash exists so you could try that (it can also run on Windows and macOS). However, it’s unlikely to have feature parity so if you like the added convenience that Quickbooks offers, see if you can use Quickbooks in a browser. Being cloud-based, they would probably build a browser version before building a Linux desktop app. If they don’t and you need to run a Windows desktop app on Linux, you can probably do this using Bottles (which uses Wine and Proton under the hood, the tech that enables the Steam Deck).
I mean yeah, but specifically I’d like something built for Linux that’s good for just basic spreadsheet stuff. I’m an electrician so I mostly just need to track jobs and accounts.
Take a look at Apache OFBiz, Akounting, Frappe Books, and LedgerSMB.
Most of (what we call) Linux OSes are formally GNU/Linux. GnuCash is as close as it gets to “made for Linux”. If you don’t want an accounting-specific application, but just generic spreadsheets, check out LibreOffice.
I highly recommend GnuCash for accounting though: a fellow board member cleaned up an org’s accounting by putting it all in GnuCash, where it was a bunch of error-prone Excel sheets before. That really made it easier to keep track and to do it right.
Huh, they’ve even got active development on an Android app. https://github.com/GnuCash-Pocket/gnucash-android?tab=readme-ov-file
Yeah I installed the android app just for fun.(I don’t do accounting lol)
I had to step away from it because packages are just too old.
Have you considered using
testinginstead ofstableor Siduction?I should be more clear: specifically I was rebuilding a Docker image based on Debian and needed Node.js for one build step, then Ruby for another as well as the final image.
In the
Dockerfilethere were a ton of weird commands for simply installing Node.js and Ruby whereas on Alpine Linux I could simply install the needed versions fromapk. I understand it’s preferable to build these from scratch but in the case of Node.js I was looking to simply compile a bunch of assets then throw away the layer.I could’ve spent a bunch of time figuring it out for Debian but I wanted a smaller image in the end anyway too.
They are. You can get .debs through other sources quite often, though.
This is what I specifically hate about building Docker images based on Debian. Half your
Dockerfileends up mucking about with third-party repositories, verifying keys, etc.That’s how I feel about arch, it’s not “stable” but the few issues I’ve had they typically have it fixed with an update within hours.
I do have to clarify when I switched to arch from windows my entire computer was brand new and practically no other distro booted or if it installed it dumped me to a black screen.
After running my server on archlinux with the stable kernel for 7 years I did install Debian on my new server. Zfs just required an older lts kernel than I could get on arch without a ton of hassle. I didn’t need it on my Mac mini with an external hard drive plugged in. From my experience it’s not very different to maintain compared to arch but it’s nice having built in automation instead of writing my own.
Man it’s weird using a system of what I can guess is a bunch of bash scripts on Debian to set things up compared to just using the tools built into and written for systemd.
“stable” in this case means that it doesn’t change often. Debian stable is called that because no major version changes are performed during the entire cycle of a release.
It doesn’t mean “stable” as in “never crashes”, although Debian is good at that too.
Arch is definitely not “stable” using that definition!
Yeah, I know the definition. I knew someone would quote it verbatim, someone always does. I quoted it because it’s not the word I would use. I like scheduled or versioned releases better but someone always disagrees with me. As far as I’ve seen it’s a major/minor version release cycle anyway.