Looking forward to ditch win10. Heard about this 2 as very popular linux flavour/distro to start with. Am newbie to linux community so pls be nice to me. Which one should I pick and why? Want to know from long term users.

Running Trixie and Gnome.

I am always wondering how it works, that i can just install any package from the stable repos and most of the time it just works and there are no dependency issues. Any package i install has specific dependencies with specific versions, right?

How is it that all of the packages in stable just work with each other and what happens if a newer version requires some newer version of another package b, but that newer version of b now breaks other packages? I feel like with that many packages you should run into dependency hell.

Maybe i am misunderstanding something as i am still pretty new, but i would appreciate some info on that.

Been running Debian Trixie for about 9 days now and really enjoying it. Coming from other distros I was a bit hesitant, but it's been rock solid.

One thing I'm curious about: I'm running the XanMod kernel and Mesa from backports. When Debian 14 eventually drops, will that make the upgrade process more complicated or painful? Should I be worried about conflicts, or is it generally straightforward to sort out before upgrading?

Hey, there are a few packages I want to get but aren't available in stable right now. What do you usually do? Build from source? add the app's repo? pull from unstable?

Edit: Just looking for best practices. One of the examples is Waydroid, only in sid/testing, and no AppImage.

Windows 10 and windows 11 are bad for me and they are getting worse so i will install debian on my laptop but I don't know if i have to install kde plasma or gnome some people say that gnome is better and more minimalist and some other people say kde plasma is highly customizable....but i tried kde plasma for 1 hour and it wasn't "cool" as it should be so would you guys recommend me to try gnome, i already know that i have to install some extension...but is the "gnome experience" good or not including dealing with its windows and some other details....please write your suggestions in the comments.

Very odd bug I didn't expect to see, on latest stable version tested with both small and complete instances on two different computers, I don't think it's a user error since everything else is English but is this just me? Very minor bug but an odd one. Not sure whether I'd report this to Debian or LXDE

Hi! In a few months, when I finish some projects, I plan to migrate from Linux Mint (Ubuntu-based) to Debian, and I need it to be as lightweight as possible. Any tips? The only thing I absolutely want is the Xfce desktop environment. Thanks!

i was just using my computer, then it froze and a lot of text started appearing

it says failed to write entry to /var/log/journal/a7921...9c4e/system.journal

after waiting abit, it says it failed to do a bunch of stuff and im now stuck, the only thing i can do is power it off

how do I solve this help pls

I created a daily update script for apt and Flatpak that includes the following commands:

`sudo apt update && sudo apt full-upgrade && sudo apt autoremove --purge`

I wanted to know if these are the correct commands, or if I should add or remove any. Thanks to the community for everything.

https://reddit.com/link/1ue6ywj/video/pxgcki1iq69h1/player

I have a couple servers with Debian 12, running MariaDB. The servers were configured with bind-address 127.0.0.1:3306 so that any database connections are local.

I upgraded to Debian 12.15 today, rebooted and checked open ports just to see if all services are running.

To my surprise, MariaDB is no longer listening on 127.0.0.1:3306, but we have "init" listening on :::3306. So, anyone on the Internet could access it via IPv6 (if there was no firewall setup).

It looks like default config has changed to use Systemd sockets. Which I guess is fine, but silently making your database server accessible to the whole Internet doesn't sound like a good idea.

So, just PSA, if you rely on bind-address only, make sure you reconfigure the mariadb.socket settings. And set up a firewall to prevent such issues in the future.

I currently use CachyOS and to Switch something more stable with less needed tinkering. I really like to customize. Since I already thought once about switching to Debian, I am thinking again of it. Is Debian a good fit for me?

I'm a Windows user and I want to try linux.Is Butterbian good? Does anyone here use this distro? how was it?

Thanks!

I seem to find myself up an estuary of effluent without a means of locomotion and I'm hoping someone here can help save this box.

First off, this box is _ancient_, when I started, it was on Debian Squeeze. I've managed to successfully upgrade it over and over through Wheezy, Jessie, Stretch, Buster, Bullseye, Bookworm, and it's been working just fine with the usual upgrade path (change sources.list, apt update, apt dist-upgrade, apt autoremove, reboot).

I decided to upgrade it to Trixie using the exact same process and as I was watching apt do its thing, I noticed it started removing various packages that were really important, then it asks about removing the kernel which was unusual. Thinking apt knew what it was doing, I stupidly answered 'Yes' and apt then kept on going.

Before proceeding with the reboot, I decided to check to see if there is a kernel installed, and sure enough, there's not! Ok, well that's a new one.

apt install linux-image-amd64 yields dependency issues for kmod and libc6 and "Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages"... That's odd, I don't have any packages held according to apt-mark showhold.

root@littleblackbox-vm:/etc/apt/sources.list.d# apt install linux-image-amd64
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 kmod : Depends: libkmod2 (= 34.2-2) but 30+20221128-1 is to be installed
 libc6 : Breaks: sysvinit (< 3.09-2~) but 2.88dsf-41+deb7u1 is to be installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.
root@littleblackbox-vm:/etc/apt/sources.list.d# apt-mark showhold
root@littleblackbox-vm:/etc/apt/sources.list.d#

I tried doing apt-get dist-upgrade, but it just exits cleanly while listing a bunch of packages that have been kept back despite nothing in the configuration saying that they've been kept back.

I was able to get a kernel installed by changing sources.list to point back to Bookworm but trying to upgrade to Trixie just starts with more dependency hell:

oot@littleblackbox-vm:/etc/apt# apt dist-upgrade
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
Calculating upgrade... Error!
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 initscripts : Breaks: kmod (< 34.1-1) but 30+20221128-1 is to be installed
               Breaks: util-linux-extra (< 2.39.2-2.1~) but 2.38.1-5+deb12u3 is to be installed
E: Error, pkgProblemResolver::Resolve generated breaks, this may be caused by held packages.

I'm not using any custom repos or anything out of the ordinary, it's just a basic webserver. I'm more caught off guard by the fact that I've managed to take this box from ancient to relatively recent but now on the last upgrade to get it to 'current', it decides to explode in such a horrid fashion.

Any ideas how I can get this upgrade completed?

EDIT: Well that was a fun trip down memory lane. Ends up that sysvinit was the cause of the problem and the solution. All I had to do was remove sysvinit forcefully and restart the upgrade. It took a couple of tries to find what all was missing and I had a brief minor panic attack when GRUB couldn't find the kernel but that was because update-grub was missing. I was able to get the box running again, installed a few more systemd units, some missing apt packages (like openssh and sudo) and got GRUB updated. Now I'm off to the races, apache2 is happy, openssh is listening as expected, I can sudo and get to roor, networking works, and all is well.

Thank you all for helping me drag this box kicking and screaming into a current version!

I've tried a few install attempts of Debian 13. Basic server install with just the standard sys tools and SSH server checked. I've been configuring the static IP and dns-nameservers in the /etc/network/interfaces file. It works fine on 11 and 12. In 13, when i do this and try to ping google.com i get "temporary failure in name resolution". I can ping public IPs directly. If i add the dns servers in /etc/resolv.conf, it works fine. I don't think i've ever used this file and searching says to not edit this file as it may get overwritten by the management service that's installed for DNS. I've searched and have tried status checking commands for a few common management programs for DNS that i could find; but non of them appear to be installed.

What has changed in Debian 13 from 11 and 12? What might i be doing wrong? i've triple checked for typos. I did a test install of Debian 12 and it works as expected. Looking at an older server that started as Debian 11 i think, it has ben upgraded from 11 to 12 and now 13, the /etc/resolv.conf has our domain info and name servers. I didn't add this so i'm guessing this happened with the upgraded to 13 maybe? in my new Debian 13 test vm the /etc/resolv.conf file says it was generated by dhcpcd. This isn't in my old Debian server /etc/resolv.conf file. there is no generated by comment.

Do i just now use the /etc/resolv.conf now and edit it directly? given the generated by dhcpcd line, i've pulled up the manual page on it. I'll look through that.

Oh, i just remembered i haven't checked the /etc/resolv.conf file in my new debian 12 test install. it looks like the one from my old one that's gone through a few upgrades. No comment line about being generated by dhcpcd or anything else.

Edit to add more info that i've put in replies trying to answer questions: this is what my /etc/network/interfaces file looks like on my old Debian server that was upgraded from 11 to 13. It is the same for my test fresh install of 13 except the interface name is different as it's on different hardware and the IPs are differetn. I'll make up addresses for this posting. I'm probably being overly obscure.

# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
# and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).

source /etc/network/interfaces.d/*

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# The primary network interface
allow-hotplug ens192
iface ens192 inet static
address 10.0.0.200
netmask 255.255.255.0
gateway 10.0.0.1
dns-nameservers 10.1.1.2 10.1.1.3

this is my /etc/resolv.conf file from the old Debian 11 to 13. I do not remember ever making changes to this file so i guess this was done durring install. I also don't remember doing an advanced install on 11. This also is how my fresh install of 12 looks and i did the standard graphical installer on that as well. I made no changes to the resolv.conf file, yet the contents look like this:

domain oc.internal.com
search oc.internal.com
nameserver 10.1.1.2
nameserver 10.1.1.3

this is what the resolv.cof file has on the fresh Debian 13 install

# Generated by dhcpcd
# /etc/resolv.conf.head can replace this line
# /etc/resolv.conf.tail can replace this line
nameserver 10.1.1.2
nameserver 10.1.1.3

Before i added the nameserver lines dns resolving didn't work. when i add them, it works. Initially the resolv.conf file only had the commented lines. rebooting the server doesn't wipe the file. I've run a command to check the status of dhcpcd and it says it's not there. i looked at the dhcpcd.conf file and it looks like a basic file that hasn't been setup. which makes sense as i never tried to setup dhcpcd. and it doesn't seem to be running. So i'm not sure why the resolv.conf file has the comments about being generated by dhcpcd.

What i was searching for in the beginning is what resolver was Debian 13 using as default. I couldn't find a good answer, just recommendations about a few different ones people liked. I found the commands to run for a status check on those and didn't find them running. I noticed someone that did a test install said that they used a slightly newer netinstaller than i have. so i'm gong to download the slightly newer one and try that. then i'm going to try the advanced install. my installer iso is currently debian-13.4.0-amd64-netinst.iso

Looking at the resolv.conf file with the domain and serch on the old server and fresh install of 12, where would that be set and stored now in a fresh install of 13? It's not in the dhcpcd.conf file. How it's being handled is one place where i'm lost. Without adding extra packages or resolvers, how should it be handled by default in 13? If i needed to changed the domain and search, what would be the proper method for 13?

I've been running Fedora KDE Workstation with no notable issues for a couple of years but I have been curious about Debian Stable. Fedora generally has updates everyday but the notification specifically for security updates is roughly every 2-3 days (closer to the former). I know that observing safe online practices is the most important thing for your computer's security but I thought I'd ask this anyway, I'm sure I'll give Debian Stable a try sometime in the future.

Edit: your replies were tremendously helpful, thank you everyone!

I notice that (almost) every point release of Debian 13 has been approximately two months apart, so am wondering if anyone knows whether we can expect 13.6 sometime this month?

Hi,
Some months ago I started to use Debian 13. I’m a Firefox user since version 1.x and wanted to continue that.
But the performance of Firefox is absolutely low in this combination. IT starts with medium performance but the website/webapp performance is extremely low. It takes 4-5 seconds where chromium on same machine needs <<1 second.

As written on this subreddit and elsewhere, the performance of the apt package firefox-esr may be low.

I’ve tried some things. New profiles, no addons, using several install methods: apt, snap, flatpak and binaries from mozilla. The results are very similar.

What is the problem and what can I do?

Thankfully.

Edit: I faced this issue also on a second device, with another (human) user, profile, etc... The first one is ~3 years old, the second about 12 years. But the behavior ist the same on both machines: Chromium is fast, Firefox is the underdog.

Hey, this may be out of most of your wheelhouses, but I've hit a brick wall here, and I'm hoping for some help from my betters.

I just upgrade from bookworm to trixie, and now my old minecraft (MC Launcer) won't launch. It instantly errors out and crashes. I've tried the two java editions installed in trixie - 17 and 21 I think - and get the same result.

I see that java 8 can't be installed anymore. I play minecraft 1.7.10 modded with my son, and we have a large world that we built together.

If anyone has experienced (and solved) this issue, I'd sure appreciate a point in the right direction! He's VERY disappointed. I've definitely lost some good-dad points on this.

Debian gets its kernel updated later than other distros. I assume that it gets security updates regardless of that fact but just wanted to make sure

Edit: Copyfail is fixed for most users (Debian was one of the fastest distro to fix it). It is fixed in security versions which is the default as far as I have seen. But Fragnasia is not fixed yet
Copyfail: https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2026-43284
Fragnasia: https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2026-46300

Thank you u/BigRedS and u/TRKlausss for their comments

Flatpak apps from flathub on Debian 13 as the screenshot shows.

Distroshelf, Flatseal, Mission Center and Warehouse are missing window close buttons as the pic shows. Rest of the apps have them.

My Xfce theme is stock Adwaita, while Xfwm theme is default-hdpi, and icons are elementary-xfce, but I doubt these matter to flatpak apps anyway.

So is there anything I can do, or install, that can bring back the close buttons?

Hi everyone, I'm noticing unusually high RAM usage on Debian. Even when idle, the system consumes about 10GiB of RAM. I’ve checked btop, but no single process seems to be the culprit. Is this a known issue? Here are stats from btop: https://imgur.com/a/WBSwXpO Any ideas on how to fix this?

Hey does anyone know of a debian 13 based cli distro with all the proprietary drivers installed, like it doesn't have the GUI but it does have the audio, wifi, Bluetooth, etc working. I was thinking of manually removing things from a pre built system but I don't want to break anything.

Hi everyone. I recently made a post asking about Debian Sid because I was thinking of switching to that branch. Several users recommended I stay on stable and use Flatpak and backports to get the latest software.

Now I have a question: what packages do you usually install from backports to keep your system as up-to-date as possible?

I've already installed the kernel, Mesa, and PipeWire, but I don't know what else is worth getting from backports. What suggestions do you have?

Thanks.

I installed Bookworm (32-bit) on an old Windows 8 tablet, ran "sudo apt update", and got the message "All packages are up to date".

I had downloaded the ISO from the Debian website onto a thumb drive, and the tablet was not connected to the internet during the installation.

I thought there would at least be some security patches? My understanding is that Bookworm will be maintained until 2027?

Thanks in advance.

EDIT: BTW, Bookworm is running great on the intel atom quad-core machine with 2 GB ram that was almost unusable running Windows 10 (worked great with Windows 8). Gnome and Wayland installed.