Q4OS Forum

Luc11

Member

Registered: 2026-08-20

Posts: 11

How is Q4OS different from Debian?

How is Q4OS different from pure Debian?

I asked the bot and the answer was too vague. It would be nice to hear it from the horse's mouth. I couldn't find it in your FAQs.

hchiper

Member

From: Belgium

Registered: 2020-07-28

Posts: 835

Re: How is Q4OS different from Debian?

You can find information on Q4OS home page https://www.q4os.org/

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Q4OS machine: Samsung R519 - Pentium T4200 2.0 GHz - 4 GB RAM - 500 GB SSD

q4osteam

Q4OS Team

Registered: 2015-12-06

Posts: 6,378

Website

Re: How is Q4OS different from Debian?

Please read https://www.q4os.org/dqa015.html. You’ll find hints about what Q4OS offers beyond plain Debian.

Luc11

Member

Registered: 2026-08-20

Posts: 11

Re: How is Q4OS different from Debian?

So supports Trinity and has a Windows installer. Everything else applies to Debian just as well. (?)

q4osteam

Q4OS Team

Registered: 2015-12-06

Posts: 6,378

Website

Re: How is Q4OS different from Debian?

There is also Lookswitcher,and themes, Updater, Desktop Profiler, Qsi installers, S4-snapshot, Dual desktop, support forum and some more Q4OS exclusive tools what Debian doesn't feature. Also testing live medai based on Debian14.

Last edited by q4osteam (2026-08-31 19:55)

bin

Member

From: U.K.

Registered: 2016-01-28

Posts: 1,604

Re: How is Q4OS different from Debian?

One of the most important differences - which has been underplayed a bit - is this forum.
Go to just about any other forum and you will find that "the devs do not read forum posts - you need to raise a bug" or something similar is a fairly common phrase. Certainly you'll find it on the Mint forums a lot    Not a criticism, just a fact of life.
However with Q4OS the dev team are involved directly with the forum. They can differentiate between Q4OS bugs, Debian bugs and upstream Trinity Desktop bugs.
If it's Q4OS then fixes follow quickly.

If you go down the TDE route then you'll find that one of the members @seb3773 has done some amazing development work with a number of bits for TDE. For example https://www.q4os.org/forum/viewtopic.php?id=6218

Midas

Member

Registered: 2017-12-15

Posts: 271

Re: How is Q4OS different from Debian?

One of the most important differences - which has been underplayed a bit - is this forum.

I wholeheartedly agree -- as good as any piece of software may be, it's the community supporting it that makes the real difference, IMHO. 

Taige

Member

Registered: 2025-08-19

Posts: 74

Re: How is Q4OS different from Debian?

Personally, two aspects that I immediately noticed are the ease of use on very old computers and the simplicity of the initial configuration.