[HN Gopher] Debian 13 "Trixie"
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Debian 13 "Trixie"
        
       Author : ducktective
       Score  : 869 points
       Date   : 2025-08-09 18:18 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.debian.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.debian.org)
        
       | gorgoiler wrote:
       | Congratulations!
       | 
       | Debian has been the stable footing of my Free computing life for
       | three decades. Everything about their approach -- from showing me
       | Condorcet, organising stable chaos, moving forward by measured
       | consensus, and basing everything on hard wrought principles --
       | has had an effect on me in some way, from technical to social and
       | back again.
       | 
       | I love this project and the immeasurable impact it has had on the
       | world through their releases and culture.
       | 
       | With all my love, g'o xx
        
       | Paianni wrote:
       | The Devuan version may end up being the last that GNOME will run
       | on...
        
         | UncleSlacky wrote:
         | You say that like it's a bad thing.
        
           | Paianni wrote:
           | I don't like GNOME's engineering or license, but as far as
           | the UI and design are concerned I don't think anyone has
           | topped it (minus the hot corner I guess).
        
             | kasabali wrote:
             | Meh, it looks pretty in screenshots but it's a huge waste
             | of screen space in the end.
        
               | Paianni wrote:
               | I suppose 'power-users' can put up with 'small-button'
               | GUIs but I do think a general purpose GUI needs to be
               | easy to use for people who aren't used to controlling
               | mice and keyboards all the time.
        
       | superkuh wrote:
       | Biggest change for me is /tmp behavior. In Debian 13 /tmp become
       | RAM-disk by default (instead of files on the file system) and
       | uses up to 50% of available ram. But as expected of Debian the
       | release notes included an easy fix to restore normal /tmp
       | behavior for people and applications that place many small or
       | large files there.
       | 
       | https://www.debian.org/releases/trixie/release-notes/issues....
       | 
       | >"You can return to /tmp being a regular directory by running
       | systemctl mask tmp.mount as root and rebooting."
       | 
       | I kind of wish the distros had decided on a new /tmpfs (or
       | /tmp/tmpfs, etc) directory for applications to opt-in to using
       | ram-disk rather than replacing /tmp and having to opt-out.
        
         | bbarnett wrote:
         | Also watch out for surprise file deletes in /tmp and /var/tmp
         | at 10 and 30 days.
         | 
         | This too can be turned off.
        
           | KORraN wrote:
           | Isn't this the feature of /tmp? I set my default download
           | location in Firefox to /tmp exactly for this reason, so that
           | all the junk gets automatically removed after some time.
           | Also, whenever I need a temporary Python script or test a
           | package, I create a venv under /tmp.
        
             | superkuh wrote:
             | On boot has been the standard for a long time and is still
             | the most common. I am personally surprised to hear that now
             | Debian and some distros do it via various automated ways at
             | time intervals.
        
               | saint_yossarian wrote:
               | It's a systemd thing, see `man systemd-tmpfiles`.
        
               | kasabali wrote:
               | It was available as an option before that: https://manpag
               | es.ubuntu.com/manpages/xenial/man5/rcS.5.html
        
           | sgarland wrote:
           | I can't fathom why anyone would be surprised that a directory
           | named "tmp" is ephemeral.
        
             | CogitoCogito wrote:
             | Then I think you just don't have much imagination. I have
             | recovered files in /tmp after turning off a machine by
             | booting it back up in single-user mode and accessing the
             | data before it would be cleared in during bootup. Given
             | that "turning off a machine" can also mean "the machine
             | lost power", I can definitely see why people would be
             | surprised by this change.
        
         | bryanlarsen wrote:
         | Infinite scroll length on terminals can chew through /tmp, and
         | systems misbehave strangely when they're out of /tmp.
        
           | spauldo wrote:
           | What terminal emulators default to infinite backscrolling?
           | Genuinely curious here. I've used xterm with a scroll buffer
           | of 512 lines for three decades now and outside of large
           | builds I can't imagine wanting more than that.
        
         | bayindirh wrote:
         | This was discussed a ton in debian-devel. First, the tmpfs
         | doesn't take much space already, and /tmp became a folder where
         | persistence should not be expected over the years.
         | 
         | The problem with /tmp was many people and apps used it as an
         | inter-user communication medium and expected persistency there,
         | so it created both security problems and wasted disk space over
         | time.
         | 
         | Since not many packaged apps used the /tmp like that and used
         | the folder the way it should be used, the change was made.
         | 
         | I'm running Debian testing on one of my systems, and the change
         | created no ill effects whatsoever. Not eating SSD write cycles
         | can be considered a plus, even.
         | 
         | However, as I also noted in the relevant thread, the approach
         | might have a couple of downsides in some scenarios.
         | 
         | If you have the time and the desire, discussion starts at
         | https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2024/05/msg00014.html
        
       | 3eb7988a1663 wrote:
       | Maybe title should note that it has now been released? There has
       | been many updates about Trixie in the past few months in
       | preparation for today.
        
         | cocoto wrote:
         | I think the title has been trimmed from the word "realeased".
         | Might be another case of HN auto title edit botching the
         | original title.
        
       | hiprob wrote:
       | I can't believe we've come to such a high number, and a
       | particularly lucky one at that
       | 
       | Alas it's still not suitable as a daily driver for the average
       | home user and probably never will be. It is unfortunate that
       | Ubuntu has to reign supreme in that regard.
        
         | cocoto wrote:
         | The installation is slightly easier (but still hard because of
         | USB install) and the website has a more appealing design.
         | Except from that what is better in Ubuntu for the average
         | casual user? Proprietary blobs are now included in the default
         | installer since version 12.
        
         | amtamt wrote:
         | Two kids in 4 to 16 range, and two adults in 30 to 46 age
         | ranges have been using Debian on daily basis for almost a
         | decade now. At least three of them are pretty "average home
         | user". There has been forced use of windows (since school and
         | employers wanted), but for home use Debian has always been
         | better due to less maintenance needs and no distractions.
        
         | accrual wrote:
         | > Alas it's still not suitable as a daily driver for the
         | average home user
         | 
         | I think that's fine for Debian. Maybe even a good thing.
         | 
         | Debian supplies a rock solid base for many general purpose
         | tasks. Ubuntu and other distros are free to package that up in
         | a user friendly way, but as a technical user I want to be able
         | to go upstream and get a basic Linux system without extra
         | stuff.
        
         | josteink wrote:
         | Don't feed the troll, etc... But I just had to bite on this
         | bit:
         | 
         | > Alas it's still not suitable as a daily driver for the
         | average home user and probably never will be. It is unfortunate
         | that Ubuntu has to reign supreme in that regard.
         | 
         | It's true that Ubuntu used to be the OOB ready version of
         | Debian, which "just worked", while base Debian took look of
         | fiddling to even have wifi working.
         | 
         | These day though I find the opposite to be true: Ubuntu does
         | lots of weird things I don't want, and I have to "fiddle" to
         | disable all that. A base Debian install however (ISO with
         | firmware bundled), just works.
         | 
         | For me, Ubuntu is officially off my list of distros I bother
         | spending my time on.
        
         | prmoustache wrote:
         | You can install debian and ubuntu with same DE and you'd be
         | hard pressed to find a difference apart from the theme unless
         | you are a power user who knows what snap is.
         | 
         | In fact, Ubuntu has never been an especially user friendly
         | distro. At the beginning it was just a debian that was
         | installed with debian's experimental installer before they
         | decided to use it in stable. Nothing more, nothing less.
         | 
         | If you wanted to find a distro that was making efforts towards
         | beginners looking for Gui config tools, you had to look at Suse
         | and Mandrake (now Mandriva).
         | 
         | The only specific thing Ubuntu did for beginners is sending CDs
         | for free at a time when not everybody had fast internet
         | connections and would look for paper magazine to come with
         | CD/DVD. And they have stopped doing that a loooooong time ago.
        
           | simion314 wrote:
           | >The only specific thing Ubuntu did for beginners is sending
           | CDs for free
           | 
           | Assuming you are not malicious I will kindly help with your
           | bad memory, Ubuntu had always very good proprietary driver
           | support, this made laptops actually work and helped
           | beginners. I also remember they had a graphical installer
           | compared to Debian and for sure this was beginners friendly.
           | Maybe some other distro offered easy way to install and come
           | with proprietary drivers setup but I can't remember a deb
           | based distro doing that.
           | 
           | Anyway you were wrong, the CDs were not the only thing made
           | Ubuntu appeal for beginners, there were Linux magazines with
           | CDs each month and they were not super expensive , my first
           | linux was a Kubuntu 6.10 from a magazine and I am still
           | running Kubuntu today though i ran Debian, Sidux, Arch,
           | Mandriva, SUSE in the past when I had time to try different
           | distros, compile custom kernels etc.
        
             | prmoustache wrote:
             | the graphical installer was debian's new experimental
             | installer. They just decided to release a stable distro
             | before debian with it.
             | 
             | Proprietary driver installation was the sole reason of
             | existence of Linux Mint which was a fork of ubuntu, so your
             | memory is incorrect.
        
               | simion314 wrote:
               | >Proprietary driver installation was the sole reason of
               | existence of Linux Mint which was a fork of ubuntu, so
               | your memory is incorrect.
               | 
               | I think your memory is incorrect, you might be thinking
               | of video codecs and maybe Flash not proprietary drivers,
               | since Ubuntu already had support for easy install of
               | drivers before Mint.
        
         | foresto wrote:
         | > Alas it's still not suitable as a daily driver for the
         | average home user and probably never will be.
         | 
         | Why not?
         | 
         | My family members need little more than a web browser, media
         | player, and office suite. Debian Stable is very suitable here;
         | arguably more so than other distros, which tend to require
         | maintenance more often.
        
       | josteink wrote:
       | I've upgraded all my servers and laptops to Debian 13.
       | 
       | Lucky 13 and all... And not a single issue so far. Very happy!
       | 
       | Thanks to the Debian team for putting out yet another high
       | quality, reliable release :)
        
       | bbarnett wrote:
       | You can still use sysvinit, I've already tested servers and
       | desktop builds.
       | 
       | From my build box:                 chroot $MOUNTPOINT/ /bin/bash
       | -c "http_proxy=$aptproxy apt-get -y --purge --allow remove-
       | essential install sysvinit-core sysvinit-utils systemd-sysv-
       | systemd-"
       | 
       | There is a weird depends you cannot get around without
       | simultaneously removing and installing in parallel. A Debian bug
       | highlighted the above, with a "-" for systemd-sysv- systemd- as a
       | fix, along with allow remove essential.
       | 
       | After this fix, sysvinit builds with debootstrap were almost
       | identical as to bookworm. This includes for desktops.
       | 
       | As per with bookworm through buster, you'll still need something
       | like this too:                 $ cat
       | /etc/apt/preferences.d/systemd            # this is the only
       | systemd package that is required, so we up its priority first...
       | Package: libsystemd0       Pin: release trixie       Pin-
       | Priority: 700            # exclude the rest       Package:
       | systemd       Pin: release *       Pin-Priority: -1
       | Package: *systemd*       Pin: release *       Pin-Priority: -1
       | Package: systemd:i386       Pin: release *       Pin-Priority: -1
       | Package: systemd:amd64       Pin: release *       Pin-Priority:
       | -1
        
         | egorfine wrote:
         | Wait, sysvinit on debian 13 truly practically works?? as in,
         | one can remove systemd and have a working server OS with sysv
         | init??
        
           | bbarnett wrote:
           | Yes.
           | 
           | I run a full desktop too, without it. Multiple variants.
           | 
           | I don't use gnome's Desktop Environment though (although I do
           | run gtk/gnome software), so cannot comment on that.
        
           | UncleSlacky wrote:
           | Yes, MX Linux will be doing this (as a separate ISO, until
           | now they're been able to provide a single ISO that lets you
           | choose between systemd and sysvinit at every boot):
           | 
           | https://mxlinux.org/blog/changes-coming-with-mx-25/
        
         | foresto wrote:
         | Thank you for sharing this. I'm inclined to adopt it in my lxc
         | containers, at least.
        
         | RVuRnvbM2e wrote:
         | Why would you want to do this?
        
           | dijit wrote:
           | choice.
        
           | zahlman wrote:
           | To avoid systemd, presumably. Although one could also just
           | switch to Devuan at that point.
        
         | dur-randir wrote:
         | I've been living with sysvinit up until Debian 11. Then it
         | became unusable with lxc containers :(, so I had to bite the
         | bullet. But for the basic system it indeed works.
        
       | accrual wrote:
       | > i386 is no longer supported as a regular architecture: there is
       | no official kernel and no Debian installer for i386 systems. The
       | i386 architecture is now only intended to be used on a 64-bit
       | (amd64) CPU. Users running i386 systems should not upgrade to
       | trixie. Instead, Debian recommends either reinstalling them as
       | amd64, where possible, or retiring the hardware.
       | 
       | Impressive that i386 support made it all the way to August 2025.
       | I have Debian 10 Buster running on a Pentium 3 which only EOL'd
       | last year in June 2024. It's still useful on that hardware and
       | I'm grateful support continued as long as it did!
       | 
       | OpenBSD still supports i386 for those looking for a modern OS on
       | old 32-bit hardware.
        
         | zozbot234 wrote:
         | Hopefully i386 (or perhaps a new i386-like port with added
         | support for 64-bit time values) can move to the unofficial
         | Debian Ports infrastructure for Debian 14 (forky) or Debian 15
         | (duke). Debian Ports has a m68k port, so supporting one for
         | i386 shouldn't be a huge problem.
        
           | 3eb7988a1663 wrote:
           | To what end? Outside of sheer nostalgia if you are running
           | ancient hardware, you probably have a bespoke application
           | which requires that environment. Either you cannot change for
           | hard technical, compliance, or just fear of the unknown.
           | Firewall it from the internet and continue to run whatever
           | release last worked.
           | 
           | I am not happy about unnecessary ewaste, but an i386 almost
           | certainly has and order of magnitude less horsepower than a
           | raspberry pi or N100.
        
             | michaelt wrote:
             | My Linux machine is very modern, but I still need i386
             | architecture support installed, because Steam requires
             | 32-bit support. And Steam requires 32-bit support so people
             | can play 15-year-old games.
             | 
             | (Admittedly, the 32-bit support Ubuntu ships is less than a
             | full OS and you can't install Ubuntu on a 32-bit machine
             | these days)
        
               | progval wrote:
               | So you have an amd64 CPU and Debian's "i386" packages
               | will keep working on it. As per the release notes:
               | 
               | > The i386 architecture is now only intended to be used
               | on a 64-bit (amd64) CPU.
        
               | herewulf wrote:
               | Maybe it's one of those games that runs too fast if the
               | CPU isn't clocked at 33 MHz. ;)
               | 
               | It would probably take a few days to start Steam on one
               | of those considering its load times on current hardware.
        
               | boomboomsubban wrote:
               | I don't think this is the case anymore, see https://gitla
               | b.winehq.org/wine/wine/-/releases/wine-9.0#wow6... though
               | it's not the default everywhere.
        
               | duskwuff wrote:
               | Debian is doing basically the same thing Ubuntu is with
               | regards to i386. Packages are still being built for the
               | architecture, but i386 systems aren't supported, and
               | there's no 32-bit kernel package.
               | 
               | e.g. notice that i386 is still listed at the bottom of
               | https://packages.debian.org/trixie/bash
        
             | KennyBlanken wrote:
             | According to Passmark the Pentinum 4 1.3Ghz is 55 times
             | slower than a Raspberry Pi 5, so I'd guess it's at least
             | two orders of magnitude. The original Pi is 16 times faster
             | than a P4 1.3Ghz...
             | 
             | You can recycle e-waste (and yes, I know SOME e-waste ends
             | up in China/India/etc. Not all does.)
             | 
             | The e-waste is of substantially less concern than the
             | _massive_ difference in carbon footprint from power
             | consumption.
        
               | bobmcnamara wrote:
               | > The original Pi is 16 times faster than a P4 1.3Ghz...
               | 
               | It isn't. Had both.
               | 
               | ~700MHz mostly in-order ARM 11 without SIMD. Worked with
               | these a lot.
               | 
               | ..vs..
               | 
               | 1.3GHz out-of-order with SIMD
        
             | shasheene wrote:
             | Debian's tagline is the "universal operating system". It's
             | a distribution with active ports on a very large number of
             | architectures [1], even incredibly obscure ones.
             | 
             | The goal of universal compatibility that separates the
             | Debian project from commercial software and even other
             | open-source projects.
             | 
             | The legacy x86 architecture is still far more popular than
             | some that platforms that Debian advertises as having
             | official support for and there has been x86 based
             | processors manufactured for niche applications until
             | recently, eg, AMD Geode and others.
             | 
             | I find it really unfortunate Debian Project is removing
             | official support for new x86 installations. The silver
             | lining is it seems like they'll be an unofficial port and
             | it's likely niche distributions like MX Linux and AntiX
             | will maintain their own builds.
             | 
             | It would be ideal if open-source can develop stronger
             | mechanims to keep support for the large numbers of these
             | relatively niche architectures (eg, through increased usage
             | of emulation over real hardware).
             | 
             | [1] https://wiki.debian.org/SupportedArchitectures
        
           | munchlax wrote:
           | It still exists but without any official iso or installer.
           | 
           | If that's all there's to it, you can still use debootstrap,
           | compile a kernel, and point the root parameter to your shiny
           | new install.
           | 
           | If the official i386 arch was built with instructions that
           | your hardware doesn't support, tough cookies.
        
             | tremon wrote:
             | _If the official i386 arch was built with instructions that
             | your hardware doesn 't support, tough cookies_
             | 
             | While theoretically possible, that would only happen on
             | processors older than 30 years. Debian's i386 architecture
             | still uses -march=i686 as its baseline compiler target,
             | which is the venerable Pentium Pro:
             | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P6_(microarchitecture)
        
               | avhon1 wrote:
               | I have AMD Geode hardware circa 2007 (18 years old) that
               | only has partial support for i686. Requires a true
               | 3/4/586 kernel.
        
               | tremon wrote:
               | Not sure why you are downvoted, I guess people don't
               | believe this is true. To confirm: The AMD Geode LX was a
               | <5W 32-bit x86 processor which did not support SSE
               | instructions, and is therefore not fully i686 compatible.
               | According to Wikipedia, it was produced until 2019:
               | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amd_geode#AMD_Geode
               | 
               | It was used in the OLPC XO-1. The Cisco ASA line of
               | firewalls also used Geode processors at least at some
               | point in its lifetime.
        
           | tremon wrote:
           | The i386 architecture hasn't been dropped, it is still
           | available in the archives to support 32-bit applications. The
           | major change is that there no longer is a 32-bit kernel in
           | the archive (the package linux-image-686 is no more). But
           | most packages are still available in their i386 versions:
           | $ curl -s
           | http://deb.debian.org/debian/dists/trixie/main/binary-
           | amd64/Packages.gz | zgrep ^Package: | wc -l       68737
           | $ curl -s http://deb.debian.org/debian/dists/trixie/main/bina
           | ry-i386/Packages.gz | zgrep ^Package: | wc -l       66958
        
           | pabs3 wrote:
           | In case anyone wants to do that, here is the doc for new
           | ports:
           | 
           | https://wiki.debian.org/PortsDocs/New
        
             | zozbot234 wrote:
             | Much of that information has to do with creating a new
             | hardware port from scratch. The i386 support just needs to
             | be "demoted" to the Debian ports infrastructure once it's
             | officially scheduled to get dropped from the main Debian
             | repository (which could well happen starting either in
             | Debian forky or duke), and this can probably be done with
             | some special handling.
             | 
             | (Answering the "to what end?" question, a lot of 32bit-only
             | hardware is still available and dirt cheap in the second-
             | hand market (e.g. early "netbooks"), much of it quite well-
             | built and enjoyable to use. While such hardware can no
             | longer realistically browse the "modern" web, it can still
             | find a lot of use for more lightweight tasks, including
             | acting as a "thin client" for more powerful machines.)
        
         | NewJazz wrote:
         | Well, isn't there an additional year or so of support for old
         | stable? So beyond 2025.
        
           | abhinavk wrote:
           | Buster is supported until June 2028.
        
             | NewJazz wrote:
             | Thanks, I assume some of that is sort of extended,
             | asterisked support though?
        
               | pabs3 wrote:
               | Games are unsupported, and a bunch of other packages:
               | 
               | https://wiki.debian.org/LTS/Bullseye https://wiki.debian.
               | org/LTS/Using#Check_for_unsupported_pack...
        
             | bbarnett wrote:
             | Not by Debian it isn't.
             | 
             | https://www.debian.org/releases/
             | 
             | Buster has not been supported by Debian for many years.
             | 
             | Buster LTS was EOL last summer. Note that LTS is supported
             | by volunteers via a non-profit, not Debian (though they do
             | a good job).
             | 
             | ELTS is paid support, again not by Debian.
             | 
             | Do look at Debian's wiki for more info on support
             | timeframes, and what LTS and ELTS means.
        
               | pabs3 wrote:
               | Freexian is for-profit, and all the LTS/ELTS contributors
               | are Debian maintainers, and LTS is part of Debian, while
               | ELTS is publicly available too, but in an external
               | archive.
               | 
               | https://wiki.debian.org/LTS
               | https://wiki.debian.org/LTS/Team
               | https://wiki.debian.org/LTS/Extended
               | https://wiki.debian.org/LTS/Funding
        
               | bbarnett wrote:
               | Ah, they advertised non-profit at one point, but I see
               | that's changed. That may have been "we seek no profit"
               | not "non-profit entity". Thanks for the info on this
               | point.
               | 
               | Back to LTS:
               | 
               |  _Debian LTS is not handled by the Debian Security and
               | Release teams, but by a separate group of volunteers and
               | companies interested in making it a success._
               | 
               | To the point, Freexian is 100% not Debian, not "part" of
               | Debian, it merely uses Debian's infra gratis for LTS.
               | This does not detract from the good work they do, but we
               | must also not confuse a private company, and its goals,
               | with Debian and its goals.
               | 
               | LTS tries its best, but only supports what it can. Not
               | its fault. Thus they do give preference to packages which
               | are more widely used, and which they have received
               | donations for.
               | 
               | So wildly popular things such as apache2, mariadb, and so
               | on are very much going to be handled. Some rare package
               | which has 400 users worldwide? Not so much.
               | 
               | LTS will very much take patches and any help, but that
               | still ties in to the number of users. If a packages has
               | 400 users worldwide, and most have moved on to the next
               | release? Well, I hope you see my point.
               | 
               | (I've moved customers off of LTS for using rare packages,
               | whilst reassuring them that LAMP servers are very much
               | supported due to this. Popularity counts here, due to
               | efforts of volunteers and externals.)
               | 
               | --
               | 
               | ELTS only supports a further subset of packages. It's not
               | "full" support. I think one would be exceptionally unwise
               | to use it, for say a desktop. That is, unless they were
               | paying for support and had obtained a list of all
               | packages supported.
               | 
               | --
               | 
               | https://www.freexian.com/lts/extended/docs/debian-10-supp
               | ort...
               | 
               | "Note that when you request a quote, we send you back a
               | list of packages that are not supported or that have
               | limitations in their support so that you can take an
               | informed decision."
               | 
               | Yes, I know that page has a git repo and so on for some
               | support information.
               | 
               | But my points are; not the full distro is supported, you
               | have to track this yourself, you need to be diligent, and
               | even so you need to be sure you're not running rarer
               | packages.
               | 
               | Once again, I do want to reiterate, these are both
               | excellent programs. They do a good job, they're
               | dedicated, but we _must_ be aware of the limitations
               | here.
               | 
               | An example being the differences between security support
               | for main, non-free, contrib in stable Debian:
               | 
               | https://www.debian.org/security/faq#contrib
               | 
               | As you can see, there is no actual guaranteed security
               | support for contrib and non-free. The reasons are
               | logical, however, users need to be aware of the nuance
               | here.
               | 
               | Just as they need to be aware of the nuance of LTS and
               | ELTS.
               | 
               | For example, all of my server installs have non-free,
               | non-free-firmware and contrib blocked via pinning in
               | preferences.d, with only specific absolutely required
               | packages then allowed back in.
               | 
               | (For example I may allow command line apps, but not
               | anything network connected, and only with a once over of
               | functionality and SUID bits and other such things)
               | 
               | --
               | 
               | Really, I see LTS as a crutch that normal users should
               | never use. I suggest we collectively not encourage
               | Desktop users (for example) to use LTS.
        
               | pabs3 wrote:
               | The LTS/Freexian people are all Debian
               | members/contributors, so I would not say "Freexian is
               | 100% not Debian" is correct. Basically, some Debian folks
               | got together and started a company to get funding to do
               | an LTS, and also offer other paid services.
               | 
               | At least for bullseye, the LTS team supposedly support
               | all packages, except for games and a few other packages.
               | Its trivial to find out which packages aren't supported
               | too, just run a command, no need to email anyone.
               | 
               | https://wiki.debian.org/LTS/Bullseye https://wiki.debian.
               | org/LTS/Using#Check_for_unsupported_pack...
               | https://salsa.debian.org/debian/debian-security-
               | support/-/bl...
               | 
               | Agreed on the rest, although do note LTS contributors are
               | paid, the security team probably aren't (although some
               | are).
               | 
               | I think in practice, when contrib/non-free stuff has
               | security updates from upstreams, Debian does get updates
               | in stable/LTS. For example the Intel microcode, or WiFi
               | firmware.
               | 
               | I too feel like Debian having LTS is a waste of time,
               | people should be able to upgrade to the next stable
               | within the one year of regular security support for
               | oldstable.
               | 
               | BTW, Ubuntu security support has a similar issue; main is
               | supported, universe is not.
        
               | abhinavk wrote:
               | I was meaning to write Bookworm. Bookworm is the last to
               | support i386 kernel and is supported until June 2028.
        
         | badsectoracula wrote:
         | AFAICT this refers to Debian support, the Linux kernel does
         | support 32bit CPUs though only since the original Pentium
         | (excluding some clones).
        
         | esaym wrote:
         | Are you confusing "386" with 32bit? 686 is the normal 32bit
         | arch. 386 is something from the 1980's right?
        
           | NewJazz wrote:
           | AIUI Debian kept the i386 name for the arch even as their 32
           | bit requirements evolved.
        
           | bowsamic wrote:
           | i386 is the most common term used for 32 bit x86
           | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IA-32
        
           | accrual wrote:
           | When distros mention i386 support they often actually refer
           | to i586 or i686, yes.
           | 
           | True i386 support would mean compatible with the original
           | Intel 386 processor from 1985. The 486 added a few additional
           | instructions in 1989 but things really changed with the
           | Pentium in 1993 - that gave us i586 which is the bare minimum
           | for most modern software today. Much software can still run
           | on regular Pentiums today if compiled for it, but SSE2
           | optimizations requires at least a Pentium 4 or Core CPUs
           | instead.
           | 
           | I play with retro PCs often and found OpenBSD's i386 target
           | stopped supporting real 386 CPUs after the 4.1 release, and
           | dropped support for i486 somewhat recently in 6.8. It now
           | requires at least a Pentium class CPU, i586, though the arch
           | is still referred to as i386 likely because it's a common
           | proxy for "32-bit".
        
             | chungy wrote:
             | Debian 3.0 was the last version that ran on the 80386
             | processor proper, but even as the CPU requirements for the
             | "i386" architecture moved up to the 486, then Pentium, then
             | Pentium II, the name stuck around. Partly from inertia,
             | partly to not break the entire existing mirror
             | infrastructure.
        
             | zozbot234 wrote:
             | The Linux kernel also requires at least i486 now. AIUI that
             | decision had to do with smoothing out multicore/SMP support
             | - which is a bit silly because no real 80386 systems in
             | common use are even SMP, let alone multicore. But anyway.
        
             | astrobe_ wrote:
             | Yes, 386 and 486 stayed relevant throughout the 90s because
             | the price tag for new shiny processors is always higher,
             | and it was not uncommon for customers to favor more or
             | faster RAM/Disk space/graphic card/sound card (that was a
             | thing back then) over better-looking CPU benchmarks.
        
           | spauldo wrote:
           | Linux ran fine on 386 chips - that was actually what it was
           | originally developed on. But Intel added a bunch of
           | functionality in the 486, Pentium, and Pentium Pro chips. At
           | some point the powers that be didn't see any value in
           | continuing to support pre-P6 chips anymore.
           | 
           | It was a bit of a strange decision since there were
           | undoubtedly more 386, 486, and Pentium users than some of the
           | platforms Linux continued to support, but that's the choice
           | they made. But they weren't alone. Even NetBSD requires a
           | 486DX or better.
        
         | winrid wrote:
         | Man, I thought I was behind using a P3 in like 2007 lol. You
         | can get something 100x faster for $1 :D
        
           | avhon1 wrote:
           | Debian (and many other distributors of compiled binaries)
           | uses "i386" to refer to all 32-bit x86 processors, including
           | the Pentium 3.
        
           | accrual wrote:
           | Hahah yeah, it's just a for fun/hobby PC. It's pretty beefy
           | for what it is - 1.3GHz, 512MB RAM, 512GB SSD on a SATA card,
           | fast AGP card. I can run a Debian desktop at 1080p on here.
        
         | spauldo wrote:
         | OpenBSD requires at least a Pentium these days.
        
           | accrual wrote:
           | Yep! I did some testing and found 6.8 was the final version
           | to support 486 CPUs. The reason is the OpenBSD project
           | switched to clang for the compiler in 6.9, and in the process
           | became dependent on Pentium instructions.
           | 
           | However, that doesn't stop one from installing a Pentium
           | Overdrive in an old Socket 3 board and running the latest
           | release. ;)
        
       | potato-peeler wrote:
       | > The overall disk usage for trixie is 403,854,660 kB (403 GB)
       | 
       | What does this mean? If all 69k+ packages are installed, it will
       | take up this much space?
        
         | toenail wrote:
         | As this also lists lines of code, it sounds more like sources
         | plus packages. Think space that a full mirror (src + generic +
         | arch specific packages) would need.
        
           | tremon wrote:
           | Indeed, this is the amount of space that a Debian mirror
           | would need to host all Trixie packages. So it's the
           | compressed packages total size, not the space it would take
           | to have all packages installed simultaneously (which also
           | happens to be impossible, because of package
           | conflicts/alternatives and Debian supporting 7+ different
           | architectures).
        
         | ethan_smith wrote:
         | The 403GB figure represents the total size of all source
         | packages in the Debian archive, not the disk space required for
         | a typical installation which is usually under 10GB for a
         | desktop system.
        
       | ACS_Solver wrote:
       | Writing this from my Debian system, it's a great distro that has
       | been excellent to me as a daily driver. I switched to Debian 6
       | after Ubuntu went way downhill and haven't had cause to regret
       | it.
       | 
       | I like Debian's measured pragmatism with ideology, how it's a
       | distro of free software by default but it also makes it easy to
       | install non-free software or firmware blobs. I like Debian's
       | package guidelines, I like dpkg, I like the Debian documentation
       | even if Arch remains the best on that front. I like the
       | stable/testing package streams, which make it easy to choose old
       | but rock-stable vs just a bit old and almost as stable.
       | 
       | And one of the best parts is, I've never had a Debian system
       | break without it being my fault in some way. Every case I've had
       | of Debian being outright unbootable or having other serious
       | problems, it's been due to me trying to add things from third-
       | party repositories, or messing up the configuration or something
       | else, but not a fault of the Debian system itself.
        
         | zvmaz wrote:
         | > after Ubuntu went way downhill and haven't had cause to
         | regret it.
         | 
         | In what way Ubuntu went downhill?
        
           | happymellon wrote:
           | Snaps? Proprietary package managers are never great.
        
             | mmcnl wrote:
             | I don't really understand why this is such a big problem.
             | You don't have to use snaps.
        
               | yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
               | You really have to work to avoid them; ex. `apt install
               | firefox` will install the snap
        
               | bayindirh wrote:
               | You're right. You don't have to use snaps. Ubuntu
               | migrates packages slowly in behalf of you.
               | 
               | Using apt to install some packages installs snap plumbing
               | and downloads the package as a snap automatically. You
               | don't have to install it manually.
               | 
               | There's no malicious intent though, it's made to "impose
               | a positive pressure on the snap team to produce better
               | work and keep their quality high" (paraphrased, but this
               | was the official answer).
        
               | hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
               | And one of these migrations broke my workflow
               | substantially enough that a dist-upgrade turned into a
               | complete system reformat to Debian and cost hours that I
               | couldn't afford.
               | 
               | Debian has been a safe haven since.
        
               | ants_everywhere wrote:
               | Installing the inferior snap packages when you apt get is
               | one of the worst cases of a Linux distro refusing to
               | respect the user's intent that I've experienced.
        
               | LeoPanthera wrote:
               | You sort of do. It's really hard to avoid them, because
               | they've modified "apt" to install snaps by default
               | without asking.
        
               | npteljes wrote:
               | Defaults matter a lot, and snaps are the default in
               | Ubuntu.
               | 
               | The topic is not whether snaps are avoidable or not, but
               | the Ubuntu is going downhill. And snaps are purported to
               | be part of that downhill, which would be Ubuntu's NIH
               | syndrome. As far as I know, Ubuntu's only successful
               | development is Ubuntu itself - the other projects have
               | all failed over the years, and snap, while ongoing, is
               | not winning any popularity contests either.
        
               | Santosh83 wrote:
               | Snaps per se are no better or worse than flatpak.
               | Canonical's mistake, IMO, was to make _their_ store the
               | only place snaps can be hosted. That is the
               | "proprietary" bit everyone keeps talking about.
               | 
               | But in practice even for flatpak the only realistic place
               | you can publish your flatpak if you want any traction at
               | all would be flathub, so both formats have only one store
               | right now. But flatpak allows a custom store while for
               | some strange reason Canonical decided not to allow snap
               | that freedom.
        
               | bayindirh wrote:
               | Another problem is, Canonical promised to release server
               | components and enable alternative stores, and just
               | _forgot_ that they made that pledge.
               | 
               | Also, rugpulling users and migrating things to snaps
               | without asking their users in order to "create a positive
               | pressure on snap team to keep their quality high" didn't
               | sit well with the users.
               | 
               | > But in practice even for flatpak the only realistic
               | place you can publish your flatpak if you want any
               | traction at all would be flathub
               | 
               | But, for any size of fleet from homelab to an enterprise
               | client farm, I can host my local flathub and install my
               | personal special-purpose flatpaks without paying anyone
               | and thinking whether my packages will be there next
               | morning.
               | 
               | Freedom matters, esp. it that's the norm in that
               | ecosystem.
               | 
               | I was neutral-ish about Ubuntu, but I flat out avoid them
               | now, and migrate any remaining Ubuntu server to Debian in
               | shortest way possible.
               | 
               | I'm using Debian for the last 20 years or so, BTW.
        
               | npteljes wrote:
               | Yes, same. I started with Ubuntu back in the day, because
               | the server I inherited ran Ubuntu, and it was just
               | natural after that for me to run it on the desktop as
               | well. I grew to dislike their NIH over the years, tried
               | distro hopping, and settled on Debian.
        
               | npteljes wrote:
               | Yes, I agree. Snaps or Flatpak, not much of a practical,
               | technological difference. What sets them apart is the way
               | the distribution is handled, including the open source
               | availability of the backend, which enabled for example
               | Red Hat and Elementary to run their own stores.
        
               | type0 wrote:
               | If you are making your own distro, creating your own
               | flatpak store is trivial, that's all what matters. Linux
               | Mint doesn't use snap exactly because Canonical forces
               | everyone to use their snap store.
        
               | dismalaf wrote:
               | Canonical doesn't force anyone to use anything. Snap is
               | open source, just modify it to use a different store if
               | you want. Mint literally forked a zombie DE, but changing
               | a few lines of code in snap is an issue...
        
               | fsflover wrote:
               | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44849691
        
               | npteljes wrote:
               | Defaults matter a lot, snap is not open source (client
               | is, backend isn't), you cannot "just modify it (Ubuntu)"
               | to use a different store, because Ubuntu installs snaps
               | even with apt. Mint is not part of the discussion.
        
               | dismalaf wrote:
               | > Mint is not part of the discussion.
               | 
               | Read the parent comment I responded to
        
               | sofixa wrote:
               | > which would be Ubuntu's NIH syndrome
               | 
               | Red Hat do the same. They reinvented the wheel on
               | multiple occasions (systemd and it's whole ecosystem like
               | systemd-resolved and timed and the whole kitchen sink;
               | podman, buildah, dnf, etc etc.)
               | 
               | They just have more success on getting their NIH babies
               | accepted as the standard by everyone else. Canonical just
               | fail at that (often for good reasons, Unity was downright
               | crap for some time) and abandon stuff, which doesn't help
               | their future causes.
        
               | jeltz wrote:
               | Canonical did their own NIH init daemon called Upstart
               | which failed due to the fundamental design and the
               | implementation being plain bad. Redhat builds better
               | software which is why their NIH gets more adoption.
        
               | curt15 wrote:
               | ChromeOS still uses upstart.
        
               | teddyh wrote:
               | Upstart came before systemd; much of the reason for
               | systemd's creation was fixing what was considered
               | fundamental design mistakes in Upstart: <http://0pointer.
               | net/blog/projects/systemd#:~:text=On%20Upsta...> (under
               | the heading "On Upstart").
        
               | homebrewer wrote:
               | > systemd
               | 
               | https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1149530#p1149
               | 530
               | 
               | > like systemd-resolved and timed
               | 
               | They're not forced on anybody, they're not required by
               | systemd, and many distributions use more feature-rich
               | alternatives (including, afaik, RHEL -- last time I
               | looked at it, they used dnsmasq and chrony). They're also
               | often shipped as separate optional packages:
               | $ apt search 'systemd-timesyncd|systemd-resolved'
               | systemd-resolved/testing,now 257.7-1 amd64       systemd-
               | timesyncd/testing 257.7-1 amd64
               | 
               | > podman, buildah
               | 
               | Still not anywhere near as popular as Docker. Although
               | technically they're far better than Docker, and if anyone
               | is using them, it's for that reason.
               | 
               | > dnf
               | 
               | Only used by RHEL and its upstream Fedora?
               | 
               | ---
               | 
               | All of this makes very little sense.
        
               | yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
               | >> podman, buildah
               | 
               | > Still not anywhere near as popular as Docker. Although
               | technically they're far better than Docker, and if anyone
               | is using them, it's for that reason.
               | 
               | NIH packages are generally expected to be less popular,
               | yes. They have some technical merit, though in my opinion
               | that's mostly trade-offs rather than one being strictly
               | better than the other. I would be surprised if everybody
               | using them is using them because of technical merit as
               | opposed to it being pushed by the distro.
        
               | ACS_Solver wrote:
               | Red Hat builds really good stuff. NIH is sometimes right
               | because nobody invented the stuff at all. Standard Unix
               | tools are great but they don't solve everything, so we've
               | ended up with most distros having "the Debian way" or
               | "the Red Hat way", the main difference of course being
               | deb/apt/dpkg vs rpm/yum/dnf. When building an embedded
               | system with Yocto, the basic choices are also Debian or
               | Red Hat style, though you can of course do anything.
               | 
               | Special mention goes to NetworkManager, which has become
               | the de facto standard way to configure networking because
               | it's good. And with nmcli I can even remember how to
               | connect to wifi from single user mode.
        
               | npteljes wrote:
               | >They just have more success on getting their NIH babies
               | accepted as the standard by everyone else.
               | 
               | This depends on the phrasing. We could also say that Red
               | Hat produces actually useful software, in contrast with
               | Canonical, whose developments don't seem to provide value
               | over existing solutions.
               | 
               | We could also say that Canonical tries really hard to do
               | exactly what Red Hat does, but in a slightly different
               | space, and not very successfully.
        
               | the_why_of_y wrote:
               | A major difference is that Canonical projects have
               | copyright assignment policies, while Red Hat projects
               | don't - this probably explains a lot of the difference in
               | adoption dynamics.
        
               | tasuki wrote:
               | I'm with my neighbor comments. How do you use Ubuntu
               | without snaps? The base Ubuntu install already comes with
               | several snaps. Installing random things through apt leads
               | to snaps. I personally do not know how to avoid snaps on
               | Ubuntu.
        
               | justinclift wrote:
               | I made this snap "alternative" to solve this exact
               | problem: https://github.com/justinclift
               | 
               | Packaged as: https://github.com/justinclift/snapd-
               | empty/releases/download...
               | 
               | It's just an empty package that _tells_ the system snap
               | is installed, to stop the broken dependency chains you
               | otherwise get from force uninstalling snap.
               | 
               | It's been working fine on a handful of Ubuntu 24.04
               | systems I've been handed and can't change the OS of, for
               | about half a year now.
        
               | mkesper wrote:
               | You migrate to Debian. Everything else is a bandaid that
               | can be rug pulled any time Canonical feels like doing so.
        
               | L3viathan wrote:
               | You uninstall all snaps, uninstall snapd, and block it
               | from being installed via APT.
               | 
               | Then you add e.g. the mozilla PPA such that its firefox
               | package gets installed instead.
        
               | superb_dev wrote:
               | If you use Ubuntu, yes you do. It's why I ditched Ubuntu
        
               | wkat4242 wrote:
               | Yes you do. Some packages aren't available anymore in apt
        
             | Santosh83 wrote:
             | As I understand it, snap the package format is _not_
             | proprietary. Its as open source as say flatpak. What is
             | proprietary is Canonical official snap store, and they
             | patch their version of snap to _only_ use that store. It 'd
             | be the same as flatpak being tied to only flathub.
             | 
             | Of course that goes against the spirit of FOSS, but there's
             | a bit more nuance there than simply saying "snaps are
             | proprietary".
        
               | bayindirh wrote:
               | Did they release the server components for hosting your
               | own snap repositories, yet?
               | 
               | I can't seem to find it. Any pointers would be helpful,
               | so at least I can know the latest state of this thing.
        
               | curt15 wrote:
               | Snapd still hardcodes Canonical's snap store signing key
               | and provides no mechanism to add your own keys. Any other
               | snap repos will be treated as second class citizens.
        
               | dismalaf wrote:
               | No, but it's trivial to implement since Snap is open
               | source so you know exactly what sort of payload it wants.
        
               | tannhaeuser wrote:
               | Snaps don't just suck from an ideological but also
               | practical perspective, as described for Thunderbird.
               | Firefox on Ubuntu has also serious permission issues with
               | webcam support OOTB even experts are struggling with
               | (involving AppArmor, pipewire, snap, and FF device
               | config). and has become unusable for things like browser-
               | only MS Teams on mainstream notebooks.
               | 
               | Containers, popular as they may be on servers, can only
               | add breakage and overhead to desktops, especially for an
               | established and already much better organized system like
               | Debian's apt. There just haven't been any new desktop
               | apps for way over a decade that would warrant yet another
               | level of indirection.
        
               | bombela wrote:
               | In addition, applications under snap are much slower to
               | start. That's just not acceptable.
        
               | BearOso wrote:
               | I've tried making snap packages, but I discovered they're
               | very tightly tied to Ubuntu's base packages. They're not
               | portable at all. In essence they're effectively just a
               | secondary Ubuntu-specific package format for user-level
               | applications.
               | 
               | For example, with flatpak you select a base runtime for
               | your package that contains mostly system-agnostic
               | libraries. With snap, you specify an Ubuntu version as a
               | base runtime and additional dependencies that are Ubuntu
               | packages.
        
               | bloomca wrote:
               | My understanding is that the base layer (similar to what
               | FlatPak provides) is shared and downloaded by the snap
               | manager so it is portable as long as you want to download
               | it.
               | 
               | The end result should be similar to FlatPak where you
               | have practically no dependencies as it should package
               | almost everything.
        
               | happymellon wrote:
               | > If I try to manipulate what you are talking about, I
               | can attempt to frame something as open source which
               | isn't.
               | 
               | I didn't say "the snap format".
               | 
               | The server isn't, and the client is hostile to using an
               | alternative server. Snaps are a solution, and picking out
               | one piece is deceptive.
        
           | yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
           | Snaps, and ads in the motd
        
             | bayindirh wrote:
             | Plus reduced support duration to increase adoption of
             | Ubuntu Pro. Changing some packages ever slightly so they
             | behave a little differently.
             | 
             | Switch to sudo-rs, uu-coreutils (rust based stuff), etc.,
             | etc.
             | 
             | It's not a Debian derivative anymore. It's something else.
             | 
             | Was not my cup of tea before, it's even more not my cup of
             | tea now.
        
               | john01dav wrote:
               | Switching to rust-based system software is very different
               | from the clearly profit seeking (or control seeking which
               | is just long term profit seeking) changes like ads and
               | snap (with massive friction to not using snap).
        
               | bayindirh wrote:
               | Yes, but I prefer glibc + GNU Coreutils based systems in
               | my installations. They're additional nails on top of the
               | (fatal) ones like snap, Ubuntu Pro and MOTD ads.
        
           | Eduard wrote:
           | all the weird proprietary Canonical stuff they try to put
           | into vanilla Debian and have it replace common stuff.
           | 
           | snap, lxd (not lxc!), mir, upstart, ufw.
           | 
           | It's neverending, and it's always failing.
        
             | rahen wrote:
             | LXD was forked as Incus, and it's an absolute delight.
             | 
             | Seamless LXC and virtual machine management with
             | clustering, a clean API, YAML templates and a built-in load
             | balancer, it's like Kubernetes for stateful workloads.
        
               | JFingleton wrote:
               | Incus is fantastic. I think Proxmox is where everyone is
               | migrating to after the VMWare/Broadcom fiasco, but people
               | should seriously consider Incus as well.
        
           | nextos wrote:
           | IMHO, it also became too complex, with too many things
           | installed by default and too much upstream patching.
           | 
           | This made it more fragile. It was really nice in the late
           | 2000s, but gradually became worse.
        
           | kev009 wrote:
           | The alternative question to ask is: in what way has it gone
           | uphill versus just using Debian?
           | 
           | In the early days it had a differing and usually better
           | aligned release schedule for the critical graphics stack.
           | 
           | As a function of time, you are increasingly likely to get rug
           | pulled once Shuttleworth decides to collect his next ransom.
        
             | homebrewer wrote:
             | > in what way has it gone uphill versus just using Debian?
             | 
             | Their lawyers' willingness to risk shipping pre-built zfs
             | kernel modules (that are always in sync with the kernel).
             | Pretty important if you're into that sort of thing, it's
             | easier to remove cruft once post-install than to keep an
             | eye on DKMS for years (making sure that it hasn't
             | disassembled itself and continues working).
        
           | doublepg23 wrote:
           | I forget the exact context but I recall an Ubuntu dev stating
           | they have more users of the Firefox snap alone than trendy
           | distros have entire users.
           | 
           | I think it's worth keeping that in mind with all the hate
           | Ubuntu gets. Most users are just silently getting their work
           | done on an LTS they update every two years.
        
             | bayindirh wrote:
             | Well, I don't know which trendy distro the dev is
             | referring, but Debian is complete opposite of Trendy. It's
             | a bedrock distro silently running almost everywhere in some
             | form or shape.
             | 
             | Most of the Linux-based (enterprise and/or embedded)
             | appliances are built upon Debian, for example.
             | 
             | P.S.: The total number of Debian installations and their
             | derivatives are unknown BTW. Debian installations and infra
             | _do not collect_ such information. You can install
             | "popularity-contest", but the question defaults to "no"
             | during installation, so most people do not send in package
             | selection lists, unlike Canonical's tracking of snap
             | installations.
        
             | Arrowmaster wrote:
             | They have also had more malware on the snap store than all
             | other distros have had in their official repos combined.
        
           | ACS_Solver wrote:
           | For me, it was a combination of Ubuntu breaking upstream and
           | introducing its own unnecessary systems.
           | 
           | I had a few issues caused by Ubuntu that weren't upstream.
           | One was Tracker somehow eating up lots of CPU power and
           | slowing the system down. Another was with input methods, I
           | need to type in a pretty rare language and that was just
           | broken on Ubuntu one day. Not upstream.
           | 
           | The bigger problem was Ubuntu adding stuff before it was
           | ready. The Unity desktop, which is now fine, was initially
           | missing lots of basic features and wasn't a good experience.
           | Then there was the short-lived but pretty disastrous attempt
           | to replace Xorg with Mir.
           | 
           | My non-tech parents are still on Ubuntu, have been for some
           | twenty years, and it's mostly fine there. I wouldn't
           | recommend it if you know your way around a Linux system but
           | for non-tech, Ubuntu works well. Still, just a few months ago
           | I was astonished by another Ubuntu change. My mom's most
           | important program is Thunderbird, with her long-running email
           | archive. The Thunderbird profile has effortlessly moved
           | across several PCs as it's just a copy of the folder.
           | Suddenly, Ubuntu migrated to the snap version of Thunderbird,
           | so after a software update she found herself with a new
           | version and an empty profile. Because of course the new
           | profile is somewhere under ~/snap and the update didn't in
           | any way try to link to the old profile.
           | 
           | Then there were stupid things like Amazon search results in
           | the Unity dash search when looking for your files or
           | programs. Nah. Ubuntu isn't terrible by any means but for a
           | number of years now, I'd recommend Linux Mint as the friendly
           | Debian derivative.
        
           | 28304283409234 wrote:
           | Oh....snap.
        
           | ocdtrekkie wrote:
           | _Minutes_ to start Firefox on one of my machines.
        
           | spauldo wrote:
           | I'm an old-school user so I'm not exactly Ubuntu's target
           | audience, but for Ubuntu was bad about a lot of the older,
           | lesser-used bits of Linux.
           | 
           | The two things I can remember were problems with NFS out of
           | the box (outside having to install nfs-common, which I'm fine
           | with) and apt-cache not displaying descriptions of packages.
           | There were lots of other, minor annoyances that affected
           | people like me but wouldn't affect someone who got into Linux
           | desktops after, say, 2010. My memory sucks though so those
           | are the two I remember. Yes, there were bug reports filed and
           | yes, they sat in the tracker for years with no attention from
           | Ubuntu.
           | 
           | I wound up back on Debian once I got old enough that I didn't
           | care about being behind the times a couple years.
        
           | tmtvl wrote:
           | Amazon ads in the Unity application menu (what was it called,
           | 'lenses' or something?).
        
         | ThatMedicIsASpy wrote:
         | I've been always a Fedora person, still am. But my PC moved to
         | Proxmox (debian) in 2023. Now a Fedora Atomic sits in a VM
         | running flatpaks and podman containers :D
        
         | madars wrote:
         | >I've never had a Debian system break without it being my fault
         | in some way.
         | 
         | Debian is great but I can't say this is a shared experience. In
         | particular, I've been bitten by Debian's heavy patching of
         | kernel in Debian stable (specifically, backport regressions in
         | the fast-moving DRM subsystem leading to hard-to-debug
         | crashes), despite Debian releases technically having the "same"
         | kernel for a duration of a release. In contrast, Ubuntu just
         | uses newer kernels and -hwe avoids a lot of patch friction. So
         | I still use Debian VMs but Ubuntu on bare metal. I haven't
         | tried kernel from debian-backports repos though.
        
           | bayindirh wrote:
           | Which GPU, display server and compositor stack are you using?
        
             | madars wrote:
             | Integrated Intel GPU and no graphical system, just KMS VT
             | (text console). That's what made it so frustrating - only
             | displaying a console should not result in kernel panics
             | under CPU load! Admittedly, the experience was anecdotal
             | and years ago and I heard Debian is doing less of a RHEL-
             | style "frankenkernel" now.
        
               | bayindirh wrote:
               | Intel's integrated GPU driver team, actually all driver
               | teams, had a period of frequent screw-ups a while back
               | (five years ago? Time flies). They also borked e1000e
               | driver in the same period.
               | 
               | On the other hand, I had and still have many Debian
               | installations, some with Intel integrated graphics. None
               | of them created any problems for a very, very long time.
               | To be honest, I don't remember even any of my Intel iGPU
               | systems crashed.
               | 
               | ...and I use Debian for almost two decades, and I have
               | seen tons of GPU problems. I used to write my Xorg.conf
               | files without using man, heh. :)
               | 
               | Maybe you can give Debian another chance.
        
               | ACS_Solver wrote:
               | drm/i915 was a pretty miserable experience for me on one
               | machine. The Intel drivers for that chipset around the
               | 5.3 kernel era weren't good, I recall lots of bug reports
               | at the time. Below is one of the several issues that I
               | was affected by
               | 
               | https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/drm/i915/kernel/-/issues/6
               | 73
        
           | brirec wrote:
           | These days all of my "Debian" bare metal systems are
           | technically running Proxmox, which I think is a relatively
           | happy medium as far as the base Debian system goes -- the
           | Proxmox kernel is basically the Ubuntu kernel, but otherwise
           | it's a pretty standard Debian system.
           | 
           | I've thought about (ab)using a Proxmox repository on an
           | otherwise stock Debian system before just for the kernel...
        
             | guerby wrote:
             | Same at $work all physical servers run proxmox VE (by
             | policy), 90% of VMs are debian (cloudinit genericcloud),
             | the rest misc linux and various windows.
        
           | kasabali wrote:
           | > Debian's heavy patching of kernel in Debian stable
           | 
           | Needs citation.
           | 
           | Debian stable uses upstream LTS kernels and I'm not aware of
           | any heavy patching they do on top of that.
           | 
           | Upstream -stable trees are very relaxed in patches they
           | accept and unfortunately they don't get serious testing
           | before being released either (you can see there's a new
           | release in every -stable tree like every week), so that's
           | probably what you've been bit by.
        
             | raggi wrote:
             | LTS has had major breaking changes in various areas in
             | recent times too, virtio was badly broken at one point this
             | year, as was a commonly used netlink interface. Hat tip to
             | the Arch kernel contributors who helped track this down and
             | chase upstream, as we had mutually affected users. The
             | debian and ubuntu bug trackers were a wasteland of silence
             | and user contributions throughout the situation, and
             | frustratingly continued to be so as AWS, GCP and others
             | copied their kernel patch trees and blindly shipped the
             | same problems to users and refused to respond to bugs and
             | emails.
             | 
             | You're right stability comes from testing, not enough
             | testing happens around Linux period, regardless of which
             | branch is being discussed.
             | 
             | It's not easy testing kernels, but the bar is pretty low.
        
               | bbarnett wrote:
               | Bear in mind, LTS and ELTS are not Debian maintained.
               | 
               | The wiki has more info on this.
        
               | aragilar wrote:
               | I think they mean the LTS kernels, not Debian's LTS.
        
               | bbarnett wrote:
               | Yes, seems so, thanks.
        
               | kasabali wrote:
               | Yep, I mean _longterm_ trees from
               | https://www.kernel.org/, to be clear.
        
               | pabs3 wrote:
               | The folks behind Debian LTS and Freexian ELTS are all
               | Debian members/contributors, and the Debian LTS changes
               | end up in the Debian archive, while the Freexian ELTS
               | ones are publicly available, just in an external archive.
               | 
               | https://wiki.debian.org/LTS
               | https://wiki.debian.org/LTS/Team
               | https://wiki.debian.org/LTS/Funding
               | https://wiki.debian.org/LTS/Extended
        
               | bbarnett wrote:
               | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44853371
        
               | WD-42 wrote:
               | One of the unsung praises of Arch is that it's turned
               | thousands of users into testers. Before someone says
               | "that shouldn't be the user's responsibility" I'm going
               | to say I'm not so sure. We're all in this together. I'd
               | rather deal with a bug or two on my desktop at home if it
               | means it gets fixed before appearing in a distro that
               | gets used for servers at work and causes issues there
               | where the consequences are much higher.
        
               | porridgeraisin wrote:
               | I have a similar experience. My not-so-tech-savvy brother
               | also has the same laptop setup I do (arch+XFCE). He knows
               | to yay -Syyu and it's usually never a problem. The recent
               | upgrade there was the vlc package split problem so I told
               | him to hold on upgrading and that I'd come and do it.
               | While I needed to sit and filter and install the optional
               | dependencies myself for my upgrade, a week later it was
               | already figured out (based on user feedback I assume) and
               | the usual yay -Syyu installed just the right optional
               | dependencies.
        
               | specproc wrote:
               | I don't consider myself particularly adept with linux.
               | I've only been running it daily on the desktop for the
               | last few years and, aside from mucking around with TWMs,
               | I've not done much poking about with the internals.
               | 
               | Despite the reputations, I've had far fewer issues on
               | Arch-based desktop distros than back when I was rolling
               | Ubuntu and Debian.
               | 
               | That said, Debian on a server every time.
        
               | porridgeraisin wrote:
               | Yeah same. I think the release cycle actually doesn't
               | matter at all. The reason for it is that the majority of
               | breakage are caused by components/extensions of gnome and
               | kde and non-DE-yet-complex software in distros with a lot
               | of those present out of the box, like manjaro, breaking
               | backwards compatibility every other week.
               | 
               | When people switch to arch they typically set things up
               | from scratch, end up choosing simple tools and avoid most
               | of the unstable stuff distros push onto you.
        
               | zozbot234 wrote:
               | > One of the unsung praises of Arch is that it's turned
               | thousands of users into testers.
               | 
               | You can do that well enough with Debian's "testing" and
               | "unstable" release channels. Aside from the few months
               | leading up to a new "stable" release, which usually isn't
               | a big deal (and fixing regressions in "stable" should
               | then be a higher priority anyway). Just don't install it
               | on systems that you actually depend on to keep working.
               | But running it on your desktop at home that you only use
               | to play and experiment with is just fine.
        
             | yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
             | AFAICT, the patches are here:
             | https://salsa.debian.org/kernel-
             | team/linux/-/tree/debian/lat...
             | 
             | Whether that qualifies as "heavy" or not is of course a
             | matter of opinion, but it's not nothing.
        
               | kasabali wrote:
               | IMO, considering the size and scale of the kernel
               | (millions of lines of code, variety of architectures
               | supported, # of subsystems and ridiculous amount of
               | device drivers ), these patches might as well be counted
               | as nothing. I'd say they're basically shipping a pristine
               | kernel :D
        
             | jama211 wrote:
             | Classic Linux user response. Jeez...
        
           | seba_dos1 wrote:
           | The upstream kernel already backports enough regressions on
           | its own to its stable releases, Debian's kernel team does not
           | help them too much with that.
        
         | djfobbz wrote:
         | Yeah, I ditched Ubuntu Server after too many upgrade headaches.
         | I manage 75+ VPS instances for app hosting, and it's nerve-
         | wracking doing maintenance updates knowing there's a chance one
         | won't boot after. That's easily an extra 1-2 hours per VPS just
         | to get it back. Switched to Debian back in the 8.x days in 2015
         | and it's been smooth sailing. Never had it break unless I was
         | the one who messed it up.
        
           | 9cb14c1ec0 wrote:
           | Me too. All the server software (postgres, caddy, bun, etc)
           | I'm using runs just fine on Debian, and I never have had
           | updates break something on my Debian servers.
        
         | foresto wrote:
         | > I like dpkg, I like the Debian documentation even if Arch
         | remains the best on that front.
         | 
         | That's curious, because when I was learning to make Debian
         | packages, I found the official documentation to be far better
         | than I had seen from any other distro. The Policy Manual in
         | particular is very detailed, continually improving, and even
         | documents incremental changes from each version to the next.
         | (That last bit makes it easy for package maintainers to keep up
         | with current best practices.)
         | 
         | Does Arch have something better in this department?
         | 
         | Are you perhaps comparing the Arch wiki to Debian's wiki? On
         | that front I would agree with you.
        
         | rbanffy wrote:
         | The only thing I can say against Debian is that it tends to
         | start new server software immediately after install, before I
         | have a chance to configure it properly. Defaults are sane for
         | most packages, but, still, it scares me a little. In that I
         | like the Red Hat approach of installing and leaving it off
         | until I decide to turn it on.
        
           | JackeJR wrote:
           | Just have sane firewall rules and you are good. E.g. if I
           | install openssh-server and it auto starts, it doesn't make it
           | out of my machine because my nftables does not allow inbound
           | on port 22. It's just knowing the default behaviour and
           | adjusting your practices for it.
        
             | teo_zero wrote:
             | Aren't firewall rules part of the "configuration" the OP
             | talked about?
        
               | mjochim wrote:
               | No, because you can install and configure the firewall
               | before you install package X. (without knowing anything
               | about X, your firewall defaults can just prevent X from
               | doing anything)
               | 
               | But you can't (easily) configure package X itself before
               | you install it; and after you install it, it runs
               | immediately so you only get to configure it after the
               | first run.
        
             | johnisgood wrote:
             | That is a workaround for a ridiculous issue.
        
             | rbanffy wrote:
             | A sane firewall won't protect you from privilege escalation
             | from a local attacker. While unlikely, this is one more
             | breach that could be exploited.
        
               | bayindirh wrote:
               | Debian bundles AppArmor profiles for most services. This
               | will prevent an attacker from accessing outside the
               | perimeter drawn by the AppArmor profile.
        
           | Linux-Fan wrote:
           | It is a well-known issue with probably less well-known
           | solutions, cf.
           | <https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/723675/debian-
           | ubunt...>                 echo exit 101 > /usr/sbin/policy-
           | rc.d       chmod +x /usr/sbin/policy-rc.d
           | 
           | I think this is the recommended way to avoid autostarting
           | services on Debian.
        
             | rbanffy wrote:
             | Good pointer. I remember learning it, and then forgetting
             | it. Probably more than once.
             | 
             | Still should be the default behavior.
        
         | heresie-dabord wrote:
         | Debian is my foundation. I keep servers on Old Stable and test
         | new release features on an ephemeral system.
         | 
         | I learned nftables with Bookworm and labwc with Trixie.
         | 
         | labwc supports Wayland with Openbox configuration.
        
           | jraph wrote:
           | Why do you remain on old stable instead of stable?
        
         | umvi wrote:
         | Do you usually update in place or do a fresh install whenever a
         | new major version comes out?
        
           | madphilosopher wrote:
           | I always update in place. And I follow all the upgrade
           | procedure advice in the release notes.
        
         | vwwvwvwv wrote:
         | https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/ntqc4lod82qxnajuubvu3/ww.jpg?...
        
         | jlarocco wrote:
         | > And one of the best parts is, I've never had a Debian system
         | break without it being my fault in some way. Every case I've
         | had of Debian being outright unbootable or having other serious
         | problems, it's been due to me trying to add things from third-
         | party repositories, or messing up the configuration or
         | something else, but not a fault of the Debian system itself.
         | 
         | You're not trying hard enough ;-)
         | 
         | I have Debian on an old MacBook Pro and had it on an even older
         | iMac, and I've had a few problems over the years. Always with
         | proprietary drivers - WiFi, graphics, webcams, etc. - Apple
         | really don't want people using free software on their hardware.
         | There's always been a fix, but there have been a few stressful
         | moments and hoops to jump through.
         | 
         | But it's definitely my favorite distro, and I run it everywhere
         | I can. Pretty much always "just works" anywhere but Apple.
        
           | MrDarcy wrote:
           | I'm not trying hard enough. Feel the same as you and GP for
           | two decades and counting.
        
         | Galanwe wrote:
         | You don't mention say what you like specifically about Debian,
         | most of what you wrote could be said for a lot of
         | distributions.
         | 
         | So here is what I _don't_ like about Debian :-)
         | 
         | - I don't like Debian package tooling (dpkg, debootstrap, de
         | build...). Actually I hate everything about the experience of
         | Debian packaging. Every time I package for Debian, I end up
         | with a messed up setup of chroots and have to make triple sure
         | nothing leaked from my environment.
         | 
         | - Debian has a habit of repackaging everything at their own
         | sauce, disregarding upstream philosophy. Debian packages will
         | have their own microcosm of configuration directories,
         | defaults, paths, etc. orthogonal to what a pristine
         | installation look like.
         | 
         | - Debian has the annoying habit of default starting installed
         | services. So you always have to dance around your configuration
         | management to disable services, install them, configure them,
         | then restart them.
        
         | exe34 wrote:
         | I think this is all true, but the "being my fault" part has
         | gotten better for me with nixos. Broke it? just reboot into the
         | previous version and get configuration.nix back from git. I had
         | to reinstall exactly once in 2016 shortly after the first
         | install, but I don't know what I did wrong. the third time I
         | installed nixos was last week when I bought a new computer that
         | came with Windows.
        
         | throwaway81523 wrote:
         | You weren't around for when they broke the OpenSSL random
         | number generator for no good reason. That was back in 2008 and
         | it created vulnerabilities that persist to this day.
         | https://16years.secvuln.info/
         | 
         | I still use Debian but it's hard to forget stuff like that even
         | after all these years.
        
           | dotancohen wrote:
           | Though I agree with you, if that's the bar you're setting
           | then Debian comes out far ahead of any other OS that I've
           | ever used - Linux based or not. I can recall dozens of worse
           | Windows bugs, most of which did not even affect me because I
           | was not using Windows at the time. Mac has its share too.
        
           | jraph wrote:
           | What do you expect Debian to do today about this 17 years old
           | incident?
        
         | StopDisinfo910 wrote:
         | > I like Debian's measured pragmatism with ideology
         | 
         | There is plenty that could be said of Debian but as far as I'm
         | concerned that's not part of it.
         | 
         | Debian patches software for purely ideological reasons because
         | they think they are not free enough. That's not pragmatism.
         | That's the reverse of pragmatism. It certainly is a real drag
         | on the teams developing the software they try to ship.
        
         | KronisLV wrote:
         | > And one of the best parts is, I've never had a Debian system
         | break without it being my fault in some way.
         | 
         | https://blog.kronis.dev/blog/debian-updates-are-broken
         | 
         | https://blog.kronis.dev/blog/debian-and-grub-are-broken
         | 
         | Then again, I've had most software occasionally break, I'm
         | thankful that Debian exists.
        
         | gradschool wrote:
         | > I've never had a Debian system break without it being my
         | fault in some way.
         | 
         | My experience has been contrary to that. I'm a Linux user of
         | 25+ years with various distros but about half of that time with
         | Debian as my main desktop. I broke up with Debian about ten
         | years ago thinking we could still be friends, but every time
         | I've tried to put it on a new box it since then something weird
         | has happened, most recently about a month ago on a completely
         | new Intel N150, when it gave me some stick about video modes.
         | Today my laptop got hosed by an attempted upgrade from bookworm
         | to trixie, as in tons of error messages and then no more docker
         | and no more virtualbox. No harm done because Debian taught me
         | long ago to store a copy of the whole root filesystem on
         | external media before an upgrade, but now the clock is ticking
         | until I have to migrate off it or get stuck with something too
         | old to be compatible with anything.
        
       | master_crab wrote:
       | _Debian 13 trixie includes numerous updated software packages
       | (over 63% of all packages from the previous release)_
       | 
       | I'm not familiar with the metric definition they use, but I'd be
       | worried if close to 100% of the packages they included in
       | bookworm hadn't been updated in the roughly 2 years between
       | releases.
       | 
       | I use Debian for most of my servers, so I'm sure there is a valid
       | explanation of that phrase.
        
         | baobun wrote:
         | > I'd be worried if close to 100% of the packages they included
         | in bookworm hadn't been updated in the roughly 2 years between
         | releases.
         | 
         | Code doesn't "go bad" and not everything is affected by
         | ecosystem churn and CVEs.
         | 
         | An established package not having updates for 2y is not in and
         | of itself problematic.
        
         | bbarnett wrote:
         | I don't know why you think it would be different. Are you
         | concerned about security updates? That's not part of the
         | metric, as far as I can see.
         | 
         | And even if it was?
         | 
         | If you look at the number of packages in Debian, only a small
         | portion have CVEs. There are nearly 30k package sources, and an
         | output of 60k binary packages.
         | 
         | Yet we only get a few security updates weekly.
         | 
         | Another example? Both trixie and bookworm use the same firefox
         | ESR (extended release) version. Both will get updated when
         | firefox forces everyone to the next ESR.
         | 
         | Beyond that, some packages are docs. Some are 'glue' packages,
         | eg scripts to manage Debian. These may not change between
         | releases.
         | 
         | Lastly, Debian actually maintains an enormous number of
         | upstream orphaned packages. In those cases, the version number
         | is the same (sometimes), but with security updates slapped on
         | if required.
         | 
         | From my perspective, outside of timely and quick security
         | updates, I have zero desire for a lot of churn. Why would I?
         | Churn means work. Churn means changed stability.
         | 
         | We get plenty of fun and churn from kernel, and driver related
         | changes (X, Wayland, audio/nic, etc), and desktop apps. And of
         | course from anything running forward, with scissors, like
         | network connected joy.
        
         | duskwuff wrote:
         | It's not uncommon for small software packages to go years
         | between updates - either because they're a simple utility
         | that's feature-complete and rarely needs bug fixes, or because
         | they're data files (e.g. packages of icons or fonts) which
         | might not need to change at all.
        
         | AstroBen wrote:
         | Debian stable is just that - unchanging between major Debian
         | versions. They do however push security updates when necessary,
         | so you're not missing out on those
        
           | hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
           | Any chance you know how they manage that? Surely not every
           | package in the repos is supported for the entire 2 year
           | cycle, so if a vuln comes out after a major refactor, it's
           | surely not easy to backport the patch.
        
             | AstroBen wrote:
             | Theres some information here they've put out:
             | https://www.debian.org/security/faq
             | 
             | And yeah it must be an incredible amount of work to stay on
             | top of all this
        
             | pabs3 wrote:
             | They auto-import CVE feeds into the security tracker, file
             | bugs for Debian maintainers to fix the issues, curate the
             | tracking data, coordinate with upstreams and other distros
             | to get fixes and so on. Some more on the team web page.
             | 
             | https://security-tracker.debian.org/ https://security-
             | team.debian.org/
        
         | aragilar wrote:
         | If upstream makes no releases in that time, then there'll be no
         | upgrades.
        
       | binwiederhier wrote:
       | Thank you to all the Debian volunteers that make Debian and all
       | its derivatives possible. It's remarkable how many people and
       | businesses have been enabled by your work. Thank you!
       | 
       | On a personal note, Trixie is very exciting for me because my
       | side project, ntfy [1], was packaged [2] and is now included in
       | Trixie. I only learned about the fact that it was included very
       | late in cycle when the package maintainer asked for license
       | clarifications. As a result the Debian-ized version of ntfy
       | doesn't contain a web app (which is a reaaal bummer), and has a
       | few things "patched out" (which is fine). I approached the
       | maintainer and just recently added build tags [3] to make it
       | easier to remove Stripe, Firebase and WebPush, so that the next
       | Debian-ized version will not have to contain (so many) awkward
       | patches.
       | 
       | As an "upstream maintainer", I must say it isn't obvious at all
       | why the web app wasn't included. It was clearly removed on
       | purpose [4], but I don't really know what to do to get it into
       | the next Debian release. Doing an "apt install ntfy" is going to
       | be quite disappointing for most if the web app doesn't work. Any
       | help or guidance is very welcome!
       | 
       | [1] https://github.com/binwiederhier/ntfy
       | 
       | [2] https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/ntfy
       | 
       | [3] https://github.com/binwiederhier/ntfy/pull/1420
       | 
       | [4]
       | https://salsa.debian.org/ahmadkhalifa/ntfy/-/blob/debian/lat...
        
         | heywire wrote:
         | Just wanted to say thanks for ntfy! I use it daily to notify me
         | on events from my home Meshtastic node.
        
         | tremon wrote:
         | The maintainer has a short explanation here:
         | https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1098866#10
         | 
         | > The webapp is a nodejs app that requires packages that are
         | not currently in debian.
         | 
         | Since vendoring dependencies inside packages is frowned upon in
         | Debian, the maintainer would have needed to add those packages
         | themselves and maintain them. My guess is that they didn't want
         | to take on that effort.
        
           | winter_blue wrote:
           | _> but several features in ntfy won 't be available through
           | debian packaging due to missing golang and nodejs packages_
           | 
           | Woah. Shouldn't Node and Golang be in Debian's official repos
           | by now?
        
             | baobun wrote:
             | Yes but not all packages written in those languages are.
        
             | jonp888 wrote:
             | Nodejs itself is, but when you install a node project
             | manually, you type npm install and wait while it downloads
             | the 500 different packages it depends on.
             | 
             | Debian follows the same philosophy as for other more
             | traditional languages and expects that all these
             | dependencies are packaged as individual Debian packages.
        
         | baobun wrote:
         | On the web part:
         | 
         | Debian sources need to be sufficient to build. So for npm
         | projects, you usually have a debian-specific package.json where
         | each npm dependency (transitively, including devDependencies
         | needed for build) needs to either be replaced with its
         | equivalent debian package (which may also need to be ported),
         | vendored (usually less ideal, especially for third-party code),
         | or removed. Oh, and enjoy aligning versions for all of that.
         | That's doable but non-trivial work with such a sizable
         | lockfile. If I would guess the maintainer couldn't justify the
         | extra effort and taking on combing through all those packages.
         | 
         | I also think in either case the Debian way would probably be to
         | split it out as a complementary ntfy-web package.
        
         | esseph wrote:
         | It might be a better idea to release this as a container (if it
         | isn't already) to take care of the dependencies.
        
           | yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
           | https://docs.ntfy.sh/install/#docker
           | 
           | > The ntfy image is available for amd64, armv6, armv7 and
           | arm64. It should be pretty straight forward to use.
        
         | leansensei wrote:
         | Thank you for ntfy, it's such a useful piece of software!
        
         | scbrg wrote:
         | ntfy is a very useful tool. Thank you very much for making it
         | and also for maintaining the ntfy.sh service for those of us
         | too lazy to self host.
        
         | StopDisinfo910 wrote:
         | > As a result the Debian-ized version of ntfy doesn't contain a
         | web app (which is a reaaal bummer), and has a few things
         | "patched out" (which is fine).
         | 
         | My advise to you is to deny all support from people using the
         | Debian version of your software and automatically close all bug
         | tickets from Debian saying you don't support externally patched
         | software.
         | 
         | You would be far from the first to do so and it's a completely
         | rational and sane decision. You don't have to engage with the
         | insanity that Debian own policies force on its maintainers and
         | users.
        
           | jraph wrote:
           | I agree that maintainers should not be expected to support
           | patched versions of their software, but as a user I like the
           | Debian policies you call insane. I would actually pick Debian
           | exactly because they are cautious with the dependencies.
        
       | Venn1 wrote:
       | I have been tracking Trixie on my Resolve workstation for the
       | past couple of months. The only hiccup was that the latest kernel
       | did not support the ondemand governor, so I had to build a custom
       | kernel to fix that.
        
       | sheerun wrote:
       | Debian was often the only linux os that worked on old
       | "spacestations" of mine. Great sentiment
        
         | sheerun wrote:
         | And I mean Debian 12, not some old version, much more
         | impressive
        
           | spauldo wrote:
           | Do you mean SparcStations?
        
       | gcarvalho wrote:
       | Looking forward to upgrade over the weekend.
       | 
       | Have had my RPi on Debian since Debian 9, with smooth upgrades
       | every time.
        
       | imoverclocked wrote:
       | I have used Debian starting sometime around slink. I still type
       | "apt-get ..." and it still works reasonably well. There have
       | definitely been hiccups in upgrades over the last 25+ years but
       | the amount of time/effort dealing with those is almost nothing in
       | comparison to other linux and non-OSS systems I've dealt with
       | over the same span of time. My only regret is not contributing
       | more to the community.
       | 
       | The thing I like most about Debian is that you need to know at
       | least a little about what is going on to use it. For me, it does
       | a good job of following "as simple as possible and no simpler."
        
         | Nursie wrote:
         | Which one was slink?
         | 
         | My first Debian install was in 1996. I had no real idea what I
         | was doing, but it was amazing to me that I could remote-display
         | windows from machines across campus, and it was alien compared
         | to the windows 3.x/95 I was used to at that point. There was no
         | apt at that point, or none that I was aware of, and adding new
         | stuff was painful.
         | 
         | I started using debian preferentially as my workstation/desktop
         | OS in about 2005, and was installing it on embedded systems
         | (linksys nslu2) to make micro servers by ... etch I think it
         | was.
         | 
         | By 2008 I was at IBM and they allowed a choice of windows or
         | redhat on your laptop, and if you were adventurous there was
         | experimental support for Ubuntu which _might_ work on Debian. I
         | made it work and discovered that among 330k people there were
         | 22 of us running it!
         | 
         | Always loved it, it always just made more sense than other
         | distros somehow. My daily driver is a Mac now, but I still have
         | a few Debian machines around.
        
       | markus_zhang wrote:
       | When can we have Bandit or Bluey?
        
         | Balinares wrote:
         | Presumably not before Debian runs out of Toy Story characters.
        
           | seba_dos1 wrote:
           | ...and since there's Toy Story 5 scheduled for 2026, the pool
           | of yet unused characters will become larger again soon.
        
       | juujian wrote:
       | I have been using Debian Trixie for a few months in testing now,
       | I can attest that its a great, stable operating system.
       | Definitely better than Ubuntu in terms of user experience.
        
         | lucb1e wrote:
         | The only complaint on a fresh install is that Cinnamon seems to
         | use a ton of CPU when there's a little moving thingy anywhere
         | on the screen (a browser tab that has a loading icon in the tab
         | list is sufficient). This is most noticeable when you have a VM
         | without graphics acceleration (don't ask why in the world my
         | job requires that). Graphics without acceleration is always
         | heavy, but this is an extra process doing whatever on top of
         | the actual load
         | 
         | Then my private laptop has had a bunch of graphic issues after
         | upgrading to 13 (it manifests differently in a lot of
         | applications and it changes when you pick a different desktop
         | theme, not even sure how to describe it). The new pipewire
         | (pulseaudio replacement, idk why that needed replacing) does
         | not work properly when the CPU is busy (so I currently play
         | games without game sounds or music in the background). The
         | latter then also sometimes (1 in 5 times maybe?) crashes when
         | resuming from suspend, but instead of dying, spams systemd
         | which diligently stores it all in a shitty binary file (that
         | you can't selectively prune), runs completely out of disk
         | space, and breaks various things on the rest of the system
         | until you restart the pipewire process and purge any and all
         | logs (remember, no selective pruning)... Tried various things I
         | found in web searches and threw an LLM at it as well, but no
         | dice. I assume these issues are from it not being a fresh
         | install, so no blame/complaint here really, just annoying and I
         | haven't had these issues when doing previous upgrades. Not yet
         | sure how to resolve, perhaps I'll end up doing a completely new
         | install and seeing what configs I can port until issues start
         | showing up
         | 
         | Surely these things are not a Debian-specific issue, but I
         | haven't noticed something like that with either 11 or 12
         | 
         | Edit: oh yeah, and the /tmp(fs) counter is at 1 so far. I
         | wonder how many times I'll have run out of RAM by Debian 14, by
         | forgetting I can't just dump temporary files into /tmp anymore
         | without estimating the size correctly beforehand
        
           | esperent wrote:
           | I've been testing Cinnamon on my Ubuntu machine recently. I
           | was close to deciding to switch from Gnome but I keep running
           | into an issue whenever I have long running tasks in Blender.
           | 
           | In Gnome, Blender becomes unresponsive but everything else is
           | still usuable. In Cinnamon, the entire system becomes
           | unresponsive.
        
       | bbarnett wrote:
       | For those worrying about the NIC change with systemd, this comes
       | from the release doc:
       | 
       | https://www.debian.org/releases/trixie/release-notes/issues....
       | # example:       udevadm test-builtin net_setup_link
       | /sys/class/net/eno4 2>/dev/null
       | ID_NET_LINK_FILE=/usr/lib/systemd/network/99-default.link
       | ID_NET_LINK_FILE_DROPINS=       ID_NET_NAME=eno4  <-- note the
       | NIC name that will happen after reboot
       | 
       | Here's a one-liner, excluding a bond interface and lo. Gives a
       | nice list of pre and post change.                 for x in $(cat
       | /etc/network/interfaces | grep auto | cut -d ' ' -f 2 | grep -Ev
       | 'lo|bond0'); do echo -n $x:; udevadm test-builtin net_setup_link
       | /sys/class/net/$x 2>/dev/null | grep NET_NAME| cut -d = -f 2;
       | done
       | 
       | The doc's logic is that after you've upgraded to trixie, and
       | before reboot, you're running enough of systemd to see what it
       | will name interfaces after reboot.
       | 
       |  _So far_ I have not had an interface change due to upgrade, so I
       | cannot say that the above does detect it.
        
         | foresto wrote:
         | Do you happen to know if this change can affect people who have
         | disabled systemd's Predictable* Network Interface Names before
         | upgrading to Trixie?
         | 
         | *haha
        
           | champtar wrote:
           | You can easily keep the current naming behavior with the
           | 'net.naming_scheme=' kargs
        
             | foresto wrote:
             | I already have systems that use net.ifnames=0. My question
             | is about whether this new behavior can affect them.
        
               | champtar wrote:
               | It'll not, the new behavior is just a new naming scheme,
               | and you just choose not to use any, which is totally fine
               | if you have a single NIC.
        
         | champtar wrote:
         | Hopefully the last breaking change.
         | 
         | enoX should always stay stable, as it's the BIOS (in some ACPI
         | table) telling that this device/port has this ID.
         | 
         | ensX means the NIC in PCIe slot X, but in your PCIe tree you
         | can have PCIe bridges, so technically you could have multiple
         | NIC in the same slot (what the BIOS declare as a slot), so
         | there was a lot of breaking NIC naming changes over the years
         | in systemd to figure out the right heuristics that are safe,
         | enabling/disabling slot naming if there is a PCIe bridge, but
         | just in some cases.
         | 
         | Also for historical reasons the PCIe slot number was read
         | indirectly leading to some conflicts in some cases (this was
         | fixed in systemd 257)
        
           | dur-randir wrote:
           | >Hopefully the last breaking change.
           | 
           | Every year's cope with systemd.
        
       | bayindirh wrote:
       | Debian's signature feature (upgrade from stable to stable under
       | 15 minutes) shines here too.
       | 
       | My first system migrated in less than 10 minutes, incl. package
       | downloads and reboot. It's not a beast either. N100 mini PC
       | connected to a ~50mbps network.
        
         | mr_sturd wrote:
         | What was the process for this? Does it involve manually
         | modifying the sources.lists files, or is there a single command
         | to instigate the upgrade?
        
           | bayindirh wrote:
           | There are two main ways:
           | 
           | If your sources file references the release name
           | (e.g.:bookworm), you change them to trixie, then "apt update
           | && apt dist-upgrade".
           | 
           | or,
           | 
           | If your sources file directly reference distro-suites (e.g.:
           | stable), you just "apt update && apt dist-upgrade" since
           | stable is now pointing to trixie.
           | 
           | In the first reboot, you run "apt autopurge" to remove
           | packages which are not needed anymore.
           | 
           | ...and you're done.
        
       | Pet_Ant wrote:
       | It can be a little hard to navigate to so the .torrent links for
       | x86-64 are
       | 
       | Minimal: https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/amd64/bt-
       | cd/deb...
       | 
       | Full: https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/amd64/bt-
       | dvd/de...
        
         | duskwuff wrote:
         | Note that you probably don't need the DVD ("full") image. Most
         | users should use the "minimal" netinstall CD and download
         | packages at install time.
        
           | synack wrote:
           | Agreed, but for laptops it's nice to keep a copy of the DVD
           | iso on disk and in your apt sources so that you can install
           | stuff offline.
        
           | Pet_Ant wrote:
           | I downloaded both because I intend to seed, but yes, if you
           | have a fast internet connection then minimal is perfect...
           | but if you are on a crappy third-world connection where it
           | might take all day to get the image, it's nice to have it all
           | in place when you are ready to install.
        
         | wltr wrote:
         | It baffles me I keep searching for these files every time I
         | want to download Debian. And it's been like that for over a
         | decade at least.
        
           | pabs3 wrote:
           | They are linked from the "Other downloads" page linked from
           | the front page.
        
             | wltr wrote:
             | Yeah, I think I remember that, but each time I'm puzzled
             | and not sure. It feels like they hid that deliberately.
             | While Arch is the opposite, it's so easy to get the torrent
             | file.
        
       | yonatan8070 wrote:
       | A total of seven architectures are officially supported for
       | "trixie":                    "trixie"          64-bit PC (amd64),
       | 64-bit ARM (arm64),          ARM EABI (armel),          ARMv7
       | (EABI hard-float ABI, armhf),          64-bit little-endian
       | PowerPC (ppc64el),          64-bit little-endian RISC-V
       | (riscv64),          IBM System z (s390x)
       | 
       | It's good to see RISC-V becoming a first-class citizen, despite
       | the general lack of hardware using it at the moment.
       | 
       | I do wonder, where are PowerPC and IBM System z being used these
       | days? Are there modern Linux systems being deployed with
       | something other than amd64, arm64, and (soon?) riscv64?
        
         | kev009 wrote:
         | Both Power and z are many billion dollar businesses each.
         | Banking and other high finance is the stronghold for both. IBM
         | still seems proud of z, Power seems merely tolerated these days
         | which is a shame because it is a nice ISA and the systems are
         | very nice too.
        
         | Palomides wrote:
         | IBM puts a lot of work and money into making sure open source
         | stuff runs properly on those two, even if they aren't that
         | popular
         | 
         | them being kept by major distros is therefore not as "natural"
         | as other architectures
        
           | pabs3 wrote:
           | For Debian s390x (IBM Z), they only employ two people to work
           | on the port, which isn't really enough. I think ppc64el has
           | even less people.
        
         | ndiddy wrote:
         | Mainframes are still holding on in use cases where a single
         | server having continuous uptime is vital. They're designed to
         | have uptime measured in decades, so even components like the
         | processors and main memory have hot spares available and can be
         | hot-swapped without interrupting the OS or running services.
         | They also have continually running system monitoring and
         | diagnostics at the hardware level (not running as an OS
         | service) that will alert both the owner and IBM if they detect
         | some sort of hardware fault. IBM has supported Linux as a
         | first-class OS option for their mainframes since the early
         | 2000s.
         | 
         | From a developer perspective, s390x is also the last active
         | big-endian architecture (I guess there's SPARC as well, but
         | that's on life support and Oracle doesn't care about anyone
         | running anything but Solaris on it), so it's useful for picking
         | up endianness bugs.
         | 
         | Another interesting thing is that the only two 32-bit
         | architectures left supported are armel and armhf. Debian has
         | already announced that this will be the last release that
         | supports armel (https://www.debian.org/releases/trixie/release-
         | notes/issues....), so I guess it'll be a matter of time before
         | they drop 32-bit support altogether.
        
         | snvzz wrote:
         | Very important to note the lack of x86 (32bit x86) support.
         | 
         | The end of an era.
        
         | Nursie wrote:
         | > I do wonder, where are PowerPC and IBM System z being used
         | these days?
         | 
         | IBM.
         | 
         | And they own redhat, so I imagine they put a lot of time and
         | money into making the kernel work.
         | 
         | Why Debian in particular, not sure.
        
       | Narishma wrote:
       | > Users running i386 systems should not upgrade to trixie.
       | Instead, Debian recommends either reinstalling them as amd64,
       | where possible, or retiring the hardware.
       | 
       | What I did is switch to NetBSD.
        
         | yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
         | In the abstract I'm a big fan of supporting me old machines
         | forever, but I have to ask out of curiosity - what hardware is
         | practical to run these days and only has a 32-bit processor?
        
           | jabl wrote:
           | I tried to repurpose an old laptop I had lying around as a
           | "lie on the couch and surf the web or watch youtube" machine.
           | It was one of the last 32-bit only cpus (pentium m), so I
           | installed Debian bookworm (12) on it. Unfortunately it turned
           | out it couldn't even play youtube videos at 144p without
           | stuttering. So I E-wasted the machine.
           | 
           | I suppose as some kind of headless home server it could still
           | have been useful. OTOH for something that runs 24/7 a RPi
           | would use a fraction of the electricity and still be a lot
           | more powerful.
           | 
           | So yes, beyond nostalgia and some embedded/industrial
           | usecases, it's hard to see a use for a 32-bit only PC these
           | days.
        
           | Linux-Fan wrote:
           | I have a few old PCs (towers) here which don't support amd64
           | mostly Pentium 4-based.
           | 
           | They all still have DVD reader drives and are nice for
           | ripping CDs. Despite the fact that the drives are nearing 20
           | years of age (machines are from ~2005) they still perform
           | better than most "new" external drives. Of course one could
           | also move the drives to a newer machine but many of them use
           | the IDE connector which is not commonly found on modern
           | systems. Also, modern cases typically don't account for
           | (multiple) 5.25" drives.
           | 
           | The other use case is to flash microcontrollers. When
           | fiddeling around with electronics there is always a risk of a
           | short circuit or other error that could in worst case kill
           | the attached PC's mainboard. I feel much safer attaching my
           | self-built electronics to an old machine than to my amd64
           | workstation.
           | 
           | Due to their age, I think the old machines may not live much
           | longer -- I fear not even 10 more years, some of my old
           | 32-bit laptops have already failed. Hence even for me it does
           | not make sense to try keeping up the software support. Maybe
           | I switch them to a BSD or other Linux distribution if they
           | live long enough but for now the machines run OK with Debian
           | Bookworm (newly oldstable), too.
        
           | Narishma wrote:
           | In my case I have a couple of first gen 32-bit Atom netbooks
           | that I use regularly for the same things I've always used
           | them for. The hardware still work just fine so I see no
           | reason to replace them.
        
       | krylon wrote:
       | As an owner of two i386 systems (both netbooks built around
       | Intel's Atom N270), that run Debian, I am a little sad. I
       | understand the reasoning, and I won't deny it is a very niche
       | platform by now. But I had hoped Debian, with a history of
       | supporting a wide range of platforms, would keep i386 going for a
       | while longer.
       | 
       | Fortunately, bookworm will continue to receive updates for almost
       | 3 years, so I am not in a hurry to look for a new OS for these
       | relics. OpenBSD looks like the natural successor, but I am not
       | sure if the wifi chips are supported. (And who knows how long
       | these netbooks will continue to work, they were built in 2008 and
       | 2009, so they've had a long life already.)
       | 
       | EDIT: Hooray, thanks to everyone who made this possible, is what
       | I meant to say.
        
         | dschuessler wrote:
         | Out of curiosity, what do you use these netbooks for?
        
           | krylon wrote:
           | One sits in my bathroom so I can browse random Wikipedia
           | articles while I'm, uh, busy. The other one sits on my
           | nightstand and plays audiobooks/podcasts when I'm going to
           | sleep.
           | 
           | So nothing critical. But something they are still good at,
           | and being very small makes them a natural fit for these use
           | cases.
        
             | thiht wrote:
             | Curious, why not use your phone for both these use cases?
             | Seems like it would be even more convenient
        
               | CogitoCogito wrote:
               | I can't speak for the other poster, but I like the idea a
               | lot. Having tools with specific purposes means I can
               | avoid using my phone for everything. No matter what games
               | I play to remove notifications/interruptions/etc. it's
               | always a distraction and easy to be distracted from
               | whatever I originally intended to use the phone for.
        
               | krylon wrote:
               | I do use the phone for audible, but I started both uses
               | before I had a smart phone (I was very late to the game),
               | and I am a creature of habit. Plus the netbook has a
               | bigger display, more storage, and a real keyboard (again,
               | creature of habit).
        
         | homebrewer wrote:
         | Alpine supports i686, I see no current deprecation plans. This
         | may change in the next three years though, who knows.
        
         | anthk wrote:
         | OpenBSD runs perfectly fine. Atom netbook, n270, 1GB of RAM,
         | cwm+git dillo (plus DPI plugins), mpv+yt-dlp.
         | 
         | My ~/.config/mpv/config:                   #inicio
         | ytdl-format=bestvideo[height<=?480][fps<=?30]+bestaudio/best
         | vo=gl              audio-pitch-correction=no
         | quiet=yes              pause=no              vd-lavc-
         | skiploopfilter=all              demuxer-cache-wait=yes
         | demuxer-max-bytes=4MiB              #fin
         | 
         | My ~/yt-dlp.conf                   #inicio de fichero
         | --format=bestvideo[height<=?480][fps<=?30]+bestaudio/best
         | #fin de fichero
         | 
         | For the rest, I use streamlink from virtualenv (I do the same
         | with yt-dlp) with a wrapper at $HOME/bin:
         | 
         | yt-dlp wrapper                   #!/bin/sh               .
         | $HOME/src/yt-dlp/bin/activate                  $HOME/src/yt-
         | dlp/bin/yt-dlp "$@"
         | 
         | streamlink wrapper                   #!/bin/sh
         | . $HOME/src/streamlink/bin/activate
         | $HOME/src/streamlink/bin/yt-dlp "$@"
         | 
         | To install streamlink                      mkdir -p
         | ~/src/streamlink                 cd ~/src/streamlink
         | virtualenv .                 . bin/activate
         | pip3 install -U streamlink
         | 
         | The same with yt-dlp:                     mkdir -p ~/src/yt-dlp
         | cd ~/src/yt-dlp                 virtualenv .                .
         | bin/activate                pip3 install -U yt-dlp
         | 
         | On the rest, I use mutt+msmtp+mbsync, slrn, sfeed, lynx/links,
         | mocp, mupdf for PDF/CBZ/EPUB, nsxiv for images, tut for
         | Mastodon and Emacs just for Telegram (I installed tdlib from
         | OpenBSD packages and then I installed Telega from MELPA).
         | 
         | Overall it's a really fast machine. CWM+XTerm+Tmux it's my main
         | environment. I have some SSH connection open to somewhere else
         | at the 3rd tag (virtual desktop), and the 2nd one for Dillo.
        
           | krylon wrote:
           | Thank you very much!
        
         | UncleSlacky wrote:
         | antiX will be creating a Trixie-based 32-bit ISO. There's also
         | Void, Alpine and Slackware (at least).
        
       | kachapopopow wrote:
       | Plasma 6.3 - I can finally ditch kde neon.
        
         | ACS_Solver wrote:
         | Not if you want to remain on new Plasma, you can expect Debian
         | to lag several minor versions behind.
         | 
         | I've found it pretty easy though to use some KDE components
         | built from source on top of the standard Debian packages. Build
         | with kdesrc-build, then have those binaries linked to from your
         | ~/bin and you're set. It might get difficult if you want to
         | rebuild some key components like plasmashell itself but I've
         | been using locally built versions of Kate and Konsole without
         | issue.
        
           | foresto wrote:
           | > you can expect Debian to lag several minor versions behind.
           | 
           | Not necessarily forever, though. Bookworm got minor Plasma
           | updates, so I wouldn't be surprised if Trixie does as well.
        
             | jpetso wrote:
             | Bookworm stayed on Plasma 5.27.5 when Plasma shipped bugfix
             | releases up to 5.27.12. Debian may have cherry-picked a
             | handful of patches from there, but that's a lot of bugfixes
             | missed on a release that was already super old.
             | 
             | Even at this point, Plasma 6.4 has been out for almost two
             | months and 6.3 will not get any more updates ever. While
             | everyone else is upgrading, Debian is going to be stuck on
             | an already unsupported version for another two years or
             | however much.
             | 
             | Debian is great for what it is, but you better hope you
             | don't run into issues with your desktop environment because
             | they will not be addressed.
        
               | spauldo wrote:
               | There are options if you're willing to put in the work
               | and run the risk of breaking things.
               | 
               | You can always not install QT or KDE packages and compile
               | your desktop from source. It's a major pain in the ass
               | but I did it for years. A side benefit is you can
               | participate in testing and interact with KDE developers
               | directly.
               | 
               | Another option is to go all FrankenUNIX and add neon
               | sources to your apt cache. I've done similar but I don't
               | recommend it.
               | 
               | Or you can just run unstable. Lots of people do. I did
               | for a long time, and as long as you're willing to fix the
               | package system occasionally it's not a bad experience.
               | Certainly better than the two previous options.
        
       | charcircuit wrote:
       | So what is the actual difference. These release notes are not
       | very clear. They just give version bumps. How can people get
       | excited when you give them nothing to get excited about?
        
       | aborsy wrote:
       | The difference between Debian and Ubuntu is decreasing with each
       | release recently. I was pleasantly surprised that Debian
       | recognized all hardware components in my laptop released one year
       | ago out of the box.
       | 
       | Hardware support is good and UI is great! It feels snappier than
       | Ubuntu, may be due to lack of snap and fewer services and
       | applications installed by default.
        
       | sohrob wrote:
       | I love Debian and have a tremendous amount of respect for the
       | people who work on the project. I no longer use Debian, but I
       | think it's vitally important to have an anchor Linux distribution
       | which isn't overly reliant on a for-profit entity and is truly
       | community driven.
        
         | Santosh83 wrote:
         | Arch isn't truly community driven?
        
       | perdomon wrote:
       | How soon can I update my raspberry pi 5 from Bookworm to Trixie?
       | Does PiOS have to initiate that first?
        
         | treve wrote:
         | Raspberry Pi OS is a derivative and not straight up debian.
         | It's not a released yet. A beta exists and looks like this one
         | will support an in-place update
        
         | kwk1 wrote:
         | The images are a bit out of date, but check out
         | https://raspi.debian.net/
        
       | pss314 wrote:
       | A new APT sources format "debian.sources" is announced with
       | trixie. The now older "sources.list" format is still supported,
       | but is likely to be deprecated in a future Debian release.
       | 
       | See below:                 APT is moving to a different format
       | for configuring where it downloads packages from. The files
       | /etc/apt/sources.list and *.list files in
       | /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ are replaced by files still in that
       | directory but with names ending in .sources, using the new, more
       | readable (deb822 style) format. For details see sources.list(5).
       | Examples of APT configurations in these notes will be given in
       | the new deb822 format.            If your system is using
       | multiple sources files then you will need to ensure they stay
       | consistent.
       | 
       | - https://wiki.debian.org/SourcesList#APT_sources_format
       | 
       | - https://www.debian.org/releases/trixie/release-notes/upgradi...
       | 
       | "apt modernize-sources" command can be used to simulate and
       | replace ".list" files with the new ".sources" format.
       | Modernizing will replace .list files with the new .sources
       | format, add Signed-By values where they can be determined
       | automatically, and save the old files into .list.bak files.
       | This command supports the 'signed-by' and 'trusted' options. If
       | you have specified other options inside [] brackets, please
       | transfer them manually to the output files; see sources.list(5)
       | for a mapping.
        
         | __david__ wrote:
         | > apt modernize-sources
         | 
         | Oh nifty, I hand converted all mine a couple years back. It
         | would have been nice to have that then (or know about it?). I
         | do really like the new deb822 format, having the gpg key inline
         | is nice. I do hope that once this is out there the folks with
         | custom public apt repos will start giving out .sources files
         | directly. Should be more straightforward than all the apt-key
         | junk one used to have to do (especially when a key rotated).
        
           | sgarland wrote:
           | Same. It took me a little bit to get used to it; my initial
           | snap judgment was "this will be more annoying to create via
           | scripting," but then Ansible added deb822_repository [0] in
           | 2.15 (shortly before Bookworm was released), and then it was
           | no longer a concern.
           | 
           | [0]: https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/collections/ansi
           | ble/...
        
         | duskwuff wrote:
         | Ooh, that's nice. Especially nice that it lets you specify both
         | Suites: and Components: in the same stanza, so you don't have
         | to repeat the rest of the line to add -updates and -backports
         | suites.
        
         | sgarland wrote:
         | DEB822 was available from at least Buster [0]. I think Bullseye
         | was the first release I used it in.
         | 
         | [0]:
         | https://manpages.debian.org/buster/apt/sources.list.5.en.htm...
        
         | chupasaurus wrote:
         | It was announced in 2015 with apt 1.1 which was a major change
         | of configuration, different things from it are being enforced
         | each release since.
        
       | lucb1e wrote:
       | > "trixie" includes numerous updated software packages (over 63%
       | of all packages from the previous release)
       | 
       | Wow, I'm amazed a third of packages haven't seen an update in,
       | ehm _checks_
       | 
       | > After 2 years, 1 month, and 30 days of development, the Debian
       | project is proud to present its new stable version
       | 
       | I'm a fan of old software myself, in the sense that I find it
       | cool to see F-Droid having a (usually tiny) package that is over
       | 10 years old but it does exactly what I want with no bugs and it
       | works perfectly on Android 10. I wonder if those 30% more
       | commonly fall in the "it's fine as it is" category or in the "no
       | maintainers available" category
        
       | luismedel wrote:
       | Kudos to the team.
       | 
       | My first contact with Linux was with Debian 2.1. Exactly with
       | this distro CDs https://archive.org/details/linux-
       | actual-06-2/LinuxActual_01...
       | 
       | To be honest, it was a miserable experience to install it on your
       | main computer without anything else available to look for help in
       | case of problems. It was also hard to really try it due to lack
       | of drivers for current (at that moment) ADSL modems.
       | 
       | But here I am a crapload of years later, still loving it :-)
        
       | dismalaf wrote:
       | I've kind of been using Debian 13 for awhile now (I'm on
       | Unstable) and for me what's impressive is how polished a default
       | Debian installation is these days. With Gnome, you literally can
       | run it as is, no config needed. It just works.
       | 
       | That being said, I like Flatpak, so I installed it (was super
       | easy and Flathub provides instructions), and I added a few Gnome
       | Shell extensions (a Dock so my wife can find apps when she
       | occasionally uses my laptop).
       | 
       | Debian gives you a feeling of ownership of your computer in a way
       | the corporate distros don't, but is still pretty user friendly
       | (unlike Arch).
       | 
       | I'd definitely install Debian Stable on a grandparents' computer.
        
       | natebc wrote:
       | Lots of debian love in this thread and it's great to see. If
       | you're so inclined I encourage you to donate to Debian. We're all
       | better off the more support goes to an ecosystem and operation
       | like Debian.
       | 
       | https://www.debian.org/donations
       | 
       | Not affiliated, just a happy user for a long, long time.
        
         | pabs3 wrote:
         | Lots of other ways for individuals, companies and other
         | organisations to help too:
         | 
         | https://www.debian.org/intro/help
        
       | fhdnfjf wrote:
       | I'm too impatient to use a non-rolling release distro like Debian
       | as my main OS, that, by my standards, already starts a new distro
       | version with some outdated packages. I admire Debian though and
       | it is my favorite server OS.
        
         | JonChesterfield wrote:
         | Testing is a rolling release. Unstable is a more exciting
         | rolling release.
        
       | theandrewbailey wrote:
       | > The overall disk usage for trixie is 403,854,660 kB (403 GB)
       | 
       | That's too big. I'm going to need a smaller distro.
        
         | JonChesterfield wrote:
         | You're unlikely to install everything in it.
        
         | hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
         | I'm sure it's small compared to some alternatives.
        
         | Biganon wrote:
         | You're probably being sarcastic, but in the eventuality you
         | aren't, this is if you install every single package.
        
           | LtdJorge wrote:
           | No, it's actually the disk usage of hosting a full mirror,
           | other users commented on that
        
       | keernan wrote:
       | Apparently Trixie needs a larger boot petition than prior
       | versions and therefore I have to do new installs on three of my
       | homelab machines - and probably my proxmox machine too. What a
       | headache.
        
         | o11c wrote:
         | That sounds concerning, especially since Debian had hard-coded
         | (!) a tiny /boot partition for encrypted disks for a long time.
         | This already caused problems quite frequently (you have to
         | manually delete them quite frequently, and which inhibits your
         | ability to revert after a kernel regression - which, hm, I have
         | noted to have been relatively common for Debian 12 "Bookworm"
         | compared to usual ... hopefully Trixie is better, but if it
         | makes the kernel-management problem harder that's a bad sign)
        
       | shmerl wrote:
       | Congrats to the Debian team!
        
       | nodesocket wrote:
       | I just upgraded a mini pc with no real issues. Main steps were:
       | 1.) sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get --yes upgrade && sudo
       | apt-get --yes autoremove --purge       2.) Update all entries of
       | bookworm to trixie in /etc/apt/sources.list.       3.) sudo apt
       | full-upgrade       4.) sudo reboot       5.) sudo apt modernize-
       | sources
        
       | int_19h wrote:
       | I see that systemd is still doing this thing where they are
       | trying to strong-arm all Linux distros into arbitrary stuff that
       | someone decided is the only right way to do something:
       | 
       | > 5.2.2. systemd message: System is tainted: unmerged-bin systemd
       | upstream, since version 256, considers systems having separate
       | /usr/bin and /usr/sbin directories noteworthy. At startup systemd
       | emits a message to record this fact: System is tainted: unmerged-
       | bin. It is recommended to ignore this message. Merging these
       | directories manually is unsupported and will break future
       | upgrades. Further details can be found in bug #1085370.
       | 
       | No option to disable this either, per discussion in
       | https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1085370
        
         | jcgl wrote:
         | You may not like it, but "arbitrary" isn't a fair description;
         | there's reasoning behind it that is over 10 years old:
         | 
         | http://0pointer.net/blog/projects/stateless.html
         | 
         | https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/TheCaseFor...
         | 
         | That said, my knee-jerk is also that this is about strong-
         | arming distros. Which leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I'd be
         | interested to hear other viewpoints though.
        
           | int_19h wrote:
           | Note that this is about a different thing - Debian has also
           | merged its /bin into /usr/bin, but now systemd also wants
           | /usr/bin and /usr/sbin to be merged.
        
         | Arnavion wrote:
         | >No option to disable this either, per discussion in
         | https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1085370
         | 
         | The discussion in that bug is that the Debian maintainer (and
         | upstream dev) is open to an upstream patch to add such an
         | option.
        
           | kasabali wrote:
           | > Debian maintainer (and upstream dev) is open to an upstream
           | patch to add such an option
           | 
           | Wild interpretation right here.
           | 
           | There are only 2 realistic choices: Leave it as is or patch
           | out the warning message in the Debian package
           | 
           | Debian maintainer is clearly deflecting the responsibility
           | here because everyone knows _very_ well that upstream wouldn
           | 't accept such a patch.
           | 
           | As it's already explained in the bug report, since Debian has
           | no plan to do that migration in the near future,
           | aforementioned warning isn't only useless and annoying, it's
           | also potentially harmful, thus the correct action would be to
           | remove it downstream like they did it in xscreensaver
           | (https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=819703#84)
           | 
           | But then they'd face the wrath of Lennart, so the only choice
           | left is ignoring the report.
        
         | spookie wrote:
         | Lovely.
        
         | TacticalCoder wrote:
         | Debian choosing systemd (not that it's a new decision) is the
         | reason I'll be switching my Proxmox to FreeBSD/bhyve (FreeBSD
         | has great ZFS support btw).
         | 
         | Once I get the hypervisor systemd-free (no systemd on FreeBSD),
         | I can then install a minimal distro in a VM mean to do
         | containerization (like, say, the Talos Linux distro for K8s,
         | that only has a few executables and they're all immutable) and
         | then I can run containers that, by design, have something that
         | is precisely _not_ systemd as PID1.
         | 
         | So life is good: there's a systemd-free world at the end of the
         | tunnel.
        
           | zahlman wrote:
           | > Debian choosing systemd (not that it's a new decision) is
           | the reason I'll be switching my Proxmox to FreeBSD/bhyve
           | 
           | Did you consider Devuan? Or is this just taking one annoyance
           | as motivation to fix others at the same time?
        
         | creatonez wrote:
         | Why do you think this is an attempt at a persuasion tactic?
         | Taint flags in this context just means something that might be
         | relevant to debugging. Which this condition might be, if people
         | in the future are unfamiliar with a potentially anachronistic
         | split between /usr/bin and /usr/sbin. The debug message isn't
         | there to judge the morality of your configuration. It's
         | actively improving your ability to continue to support both
         | ways, by properly indicating what style of system it is for
         | troubleshooting purposes.
        
           | kasabali wrote:
           | > Why do you think this is an attempt at a persuasion tactic
           | 
           | Because they said so:
           | 
           | > As part of that we sometimes adopt schemes that were
           | previously used by only one of the distributions and push it
           | to a level where it's the default of systemd, trying to
           | gently push everybody towards the same set of basic
           | configuration [1]
           | 
           | 1. https://0pointer.de/blog/projects/the-biggest-myths.html
        
       | ilvez wrote:
       | Nice, more chaos to unstable again. Sincerely happy because of
       | the release and new stable, but also selfishly happy because now
       | unstable starts moving again.
        
       | starkparker wrote:
       | Maybe a niche concern, but SDL2 is still in Trixie. The
       | sdl2-compat layer (translating SDL2 APIs to SDL3) is in testing,
       | where SDL2 also exists side-by-side with it and is intended to be
       | used to test and verify that SDL2 apps that use it are actually
       | compatible.
       | 
       | Night-and-day decision-making process compared to Fedora and
       | Arch, which both replaced SDL2 with sdl2-compat, broke a bunch of
       | SDL2 apps because sdl2-compat isn't actually SDL2-compatible yet,
       | and sent everyone to yell at the SDL team about it.
        
       | anthk wrote:
       | I used to like Debian when configuring ALSA/OSS, XFree86 and such
       | was a source of nightmares. Thus, debconf as a middle layer
       | mechanism to handle several distinct architectures, setups and
       | hardware was a neccesity. Ditto with Yast2 on SuSE. By
       | 2004-2005... not much.
       | 
       | Even a bare Slackware with KDE and KDEi (and even XFCE) can do
       | tons of work by itself by just adding an user and accepting the
       | default group belonging array by pressing 'up' at the prompt.
       | 
       | Heck, even OpenBSD, minus the volume automount, which can be
       | handled in a breeze with toadd or tray-app in seconds; and if you
       | are smart you can figure DBUS/FDo mount points and integrate then
       | with XFCE/Plasma/Gnome without too much issues (hotplugd can
       | handle device umounting if you set up doas.conf accordinly).
       | 
       | The rest? MESA and X.org will handle most of the graphics stuff.
       | Video and audio drivers are autodetected on almost every GNU and
       | *BSD. Printers are often wireless bound so any assistant with
       | look it up fast and attach it to CUPS.
       | 
       | Still, I can't handle DPKG/APT's slowness, even if there are
       | libre distros as Trisquel with it. If they rebased their distro
       | as a simpler Parabola LTS release with either Mate or LXDE
       | setups, the user experience would be almost the same, but
       | installing packages would happen at a much faster pace.
        
         | rs_rs_rs_rs_rs wrote:
         | dpkg/apt in Debian fells slower even compared with dpkg/apt in
         | Ubuntu, not sure why that's the case
        
       | endorphine wrote:
       | If you're upgrading, see
       | https://www.debian.org/releases/trixie/release-notes/upgradi....
        
       | LoveMortuus wrote:
       | I'm very sad to see them drop support for 32-bit, since that is
       | the computer on which I have been using Debian for the past 10
       | years...
       | 
       | Does anyone have any suggestions for a 32-bit distro that's still
       | being updated?
        
         | jama211 wrote:
         | Linux mint technically still does, perhaps because they're
         | lagging behind Debian. AntiX does but that has its own
         | tradeoffs. With full potential respect for your situation, if
         | you're not able to obtain 64 bit hardware, there's nothing that
         | wrong with not upgrading your OS for now
        
           | 2b3a51 wrote:
           | Bookworm will get updates for another year if I have read the
           | Debian Wiki correctly so perhaps there is no need for
           | immediate action as Bookworm becomes oldstable?
           | 
           | In addition to Mint and AntiX there is also Slackware (I use
           | xfce rather than KDE) but adding software outside the (large)
           | base install is not an 'apt-get thing' process.
           | 
           | Salix Linux, based on Slackware, does have package
           | repositories with a reasonable selection of applications.
           | Salix is based on the stable Slackware 15.0 so has nicely
           | aged packages.
           | 
           | Void Linux also has an xfce4 based live i686 iso you can look
           | at and decide to install from.
        
       | morserer wrote:
       | They only mentioned it briefly, and not by number, but this
       | release includes 95%+ bit-for-bit reproducibility on AMD64,
       | ARM64, and RISC-V across more than 30,000 packages (92% mean
       | across all architectures).
       | 
       | Congratulations to the team--phenomenal work!
       | 
       | https://reproduce.debian.net/
        
         | guerby wrote:
         | Is there a tool on a given debian trixie system to know what
         | installed packages are not currently reproducible?
         | 
         | Alternative to parsing the reproduce web site :)
        
           | morserer wrote:
           | Yes! From the site: sudo apt install debian-repro-status;
           | debian-repro-status
        
       | andersa wrote:
       | I've been using the Debian trixie branch for about a year now on
       | my local server, never once had a real issue with anything. Very
       | impressive.
        
       | jjgreen wrote:
       | I've been on Debian forever and love it to bits. But in an act
       | which can only be described as batshit insanity, they have chosen
       | to patch Python's pip3 in a manner which breaks the --prefix
       | option. On Debian                 pip3 install <whatever>
       | --prefix=/usr/local
       | 
       | will install into /usr/local/local, so one has to use the prefix
       | /usr. The same command on, say, OpenSuSE will install into /usr
       | and break your system. Barking mad.
       | 
       | https://sources.debian.org/src/python3.7/3.7.3-2+deb10u3/deb...
        
         | zahlman wrote:
         | > python3.7
         | 
         | Certainly a terrible UX, but the motivation is clear: they're
         | trying to get PEP 668 protections for older versions.
         | 
         | Virtual environments work a lot better anyway, honestly. (With
         | a properly crafted `pyvenv.cfg`, it should be possible to
         | convince Python that your /usr/local is a virtual environment,
         | but I can't be sure offhand if there are any serious negative
         | consequences of that.)
        
       | Aldipower wrote:
       | Looking forward to 13! Debian 12 in combination with Pipewire is
       | my go to daily use professional audio workstation for 2 years.
       | Coming from Windows, there are no more forced updates anymore
       | preventing me from doing my job. This is a releave. It works so
       | good! Linux for professional audio is really an option now! Most
       | high-end converters are connected via MADI or ADAT anyway, so
       | there is no driver problem existent. Drivers are a consumer grade
       | discussion..
        
       | teleforce wrote:
       | > The overall disk usage for trixie is 403,854,660 kB (403 GB),
       | and is made up of 1,463,291,186 lines of code.
       | 
       | This makes Debian Trixie about 32 times larger than Windows XP
       | with approximately 45 millions lines of code, arguably the best
       | Windows OS ever.
       | 
       | Debian Trixie is released about 24 years after Windows XP.
        
         | 3836293648 wrote:
         | Sure, but XP came with minimal amounts of bundled software,
         | that's every package in the debian repo.
        
       | torium wrote:
       | Ooo la la, GnuCash 5.10. I'm still on 4.4.
       | 
       | Can't find release notes though, help?
       | 
       | I've found the docs, but they're huge. I'll looking specifically
       | for a list of differences between 4.4 and 5.10. (Or at least the
       | biggest differences)
        
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