What are the Problems with Using Debian for a Machine Controller?

What are the Problems with Using Debian for a Machine Controller? Lots of people are avoiding Debian and trying to use Mint, MX, Manjaro etc etc with LinuxCNC for various reasons. What are your reasons?

What needs improving, fixing, replacing or removing in Debian?

• Pain the butt to kill screen blanking, sleep or screen saver in some versions.
• Graphical network managers always somehow broken. Won't fix.
• Wired Networks are Unmanaged As of Debian 6.0 "Squeeze" .  wiki.debian.org/NetworkManager#Wired_Networks_are_Unmanaged
• After each reboot there is another network manager icon in the taskbar with XFCE
• Kernels too old for brand new hardware
• Too many unused services are left on that a machine controller just doesn't use
• Desktops can take a long time to load (>1 minute) with AMD CPUs (XFCE, LXDE)

Thank you for posting your fixes for Debian -11 with Mint.

I don't expect the Debian devs to fix or change anything. I'm just generating a list of reasons why people look elsewhere for Linux for use with LCNC.

None of these are an issue with Debian Bullsye and above. XFCE is required for the CNC menu to appear.

• Pain the butt to kill screen blanking, sleep or screen saver in some versions.
• Graphical network managers always somehow broken. Won't fix.
• Wired Networks are Unmanaged As of Debian 6.0 "Squeeze" .   wiki.debian.org/NetworkManager#Wired_Networks_are_Unmanaged
• After each reboot there is another network manager icon in the taskbar with XFCE
• Kernels too old for brand new hardware

All graphical network managers (including wiwfi) work even on xfce.
The only issue that requires an edit to text files is the autologon which differes between xfce and the default debian desktop.

The biggest issue is network latency causing error finishing read  if using  a mesa card and a realtek NIC.
Some of john's tweaks I have never heard of....

"All graphical network managers (including wiwfi) work even on xfce.
The only issue that requires an edit to text files is the autologon which differes between xfce and the default debian desktop."

Thank you. Do you have a link for the fix to this issue? Which desktop is the default Debian desktop? Does it prevent a new network manager icon from appearing after each reboot in XFCE? If it's a simple fix for XFCE why don't the devs fix it?

Why do you suppose that some many people are trying LCNC on other distros?

Debian desktop is gnome.
you can install other desktops with tasksel
You can select the desktop from the logon page (gear at bottom right)
Recent attempts have seen linuxcnc fail to load from the packaged bookworm install on the default desktop as its on Wayland (but it used to work)
There is a Xorg version of gnome that I think solves that issue.

Gnome does not use lightdm as xfce does so autologin is different. ref:
 help.gnome.org/admin/system-admin-guide/...in-automatic.html.en

For me, I've tried it on Arch llnux to avoid the debian network latency issue. Which it did but it was hard work!

Back before PREEMPT_RT was available in Debian or the original LCNC stretch iso, We had to compile the kernel to get it. It was not much more work to build linuxcnc from source. At the time, the 2.7 iso was awful for usability so we used Mint. 
Currently a lot of hardware requires kernel 5.10 or above (eg Bullseye). Mint et al lagged a long way behind with kernels until very recently so it did not have the required Python version for V2.9
With the packaging in Bookworm, I've tried hard to stay with Debian for ease of install (on bookworm)  

Really I think the reason recently so many options have emerged is because there is no ISO for Bullseye which has the drivers people need.
 

I have installed Bookworm and Bullseye using the XFCE ISO's. For example:
cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current-live/amd64/iso-hybrid/

cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current-liv...1.5.0-amd64-lxde.iso

Is this why I might be having problems with desktop load times and the network manager multiplying at each reboot and similar? Are they only "almost working" installers? It sounds like you use a gnome ISO and then change or add other desktops. Is this the way a Debian install should be done to avoid my issues?

Looks like those links are to bullseye so you need to upgrade to Bookworm which is time consuming.

I  install the Bookworm non-free version from here.
cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/no...-including-firmware/

Previously from the weekly builds or more recently from the alpha branch which will become the official bookworm release now its been decided to include the non-free firmware as part of it.

I go with the iso-cd net install so you don't later get caught having to edit sources.list to remove the cd repos. You do need internet access
In the install, you get a chance to choose the desktop(s) you want to install.

The text based (non-graphical) installer uses tasksel to select the desktop. You can use it later to add or remove desktops by:
sudo apt-get install tasksel
sudo tasksel.

I think from now on I'll only install xfce. 

I suspect compatibility with Wayland needs to be addressed with our current builds...