I decided to try it out, installation is easy especially as they have .iso images with the non free firmware included and you can get them with any of 6 different desktop environments. I chose the Xfce version it runs like a top on my laptop. The installer runs you through everything including drive encryption like a breeze. Nice.
Currently running Debian on three machines, everything is going smoothly. One machine is just command line based and nothing more, just standard utils and stuff. My daily driver is dual booting Win7 with Jessie (gnome environment). The third machine is running a "sub-alpha" BunsenLabs setup (Linux distro inspired by CrunchBang). I will say this about Jessie: Regardless of what people say about inits and like to argue, systemd has shown a noticeable difference with my boot times on all three machines.
Yes My boot time is faster too, while not knowing enough about systemd to take a standpoint myself I have read the arguments and counter arguments and all I can say is I hope the linux security specialists do some hardcore auditing to ensure it really does not expose our systems to a new attack surface.
I prefer to use LMDE myself. (Linux Mint Debian Edition) It's more user-friendly and less rough on the edges than Debian, albeit Jessie has made progress in these aspects.
I tried out both Debian 8 Cinnamon live and LMDE latest recently, and neither one of them could properly handle and set a dual monitor setup.. it was ridiculous the garbage that I got on the screen as well as the inability to even set one external monitor. No excuse for all that nowadays IMO..... both disks went into the trash can.
I honestly don't remember what comes standard nowadays, I'm assuming xrandr is included, but I don't remember if the visual frontend is included. Did you try arandr?
As it turns out, I did try both Debian 8 and LMDE again, and I did get things working on the monitors/video. So I may install LMDE soon and play with it for a while. Debian 8 doesn't recognize my wifi, which is rather unbelievable since it's 6 year Intel old hardware that everyone should know by now. So I gave up on Debian. LMDE seems good though... and I like Cinnamon a lot.
Huh. Next time, don't give up so easily. The support is there, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's included in the initial install. I have to install some Broadcom and Realtek packages off of a USB thumb drive before WiFi even works on most of my installs. Which reminds me. I need to look into LMDE again. It's been a while..
In Debian 7, I used the netinstall approach, and had to install the wifi drivers up front before I could even get the installer going, so I'm familiar with it to some extent. Just seems ridiculous that Debian doesn't automatically know the wifi hardware when it's been around this long. I'll mess with it another time most likely. Got LMDE going today, very nice. I'm using the Cinnamon version. Not bad at all..
Debian does know the hardware, but Debian only officially supports free open source drivers. I believe some hardware manufacturers release their own linux drivers which may be licensed in some way that does not meet the Debian standard for free software. These drivers are known as non-free drivers and they are available in the Debian software repositories but finding the correct ones can be a real pain. You could try installing Debian from one of the unofficial Debian .iso images that include non-free firmware.
Just realized Jessie did not come with an update notifier, so if like me you didn't notice that until now, check for updates CL.
Debian 8 "Jessie" LTS Is Now Dead for Good July 9, 2020 https://news.softpedia.com/news/debian-8-jessie-is-now-dead-for-good-530501.shtml
