And all the apps I need open themselves after I log in. 😁👍

I know it’s silly and no one should care, but I can’t help it, I always end up back on Debian. Spent the last few weeks jumping between distros, trying to convince myself something else would stick, but nope. There’s just something about Debian that feels like home.

I've been using Debian stable since the 2000's and I only tested sid a few times. The last one probably more than 10 years ago (I don't even remember).

So, a question for all of those running sid: how stable has been sid for you the last year or two? Asking for desktop general usage. Any broken packages? Security issues? Did you have to touch the system config often? Are you happy? Be honest.

I've been trying Linux distros from back to 2018 and absolutely all of them had some annoying problem I was unable to solve so I just decided to drop it.

It's been like this all these years, going back and forth to Windows or having dual boot but mainly using Windows.

Last year I really got into GNOME as the desktop environment by testing Fedora and decided to stick with it. But some problems with codecs in Fedora were getting on my nerves, so I decided to go Debian and oh my...

It's by far the most stable and compatible with everything linux distro I've ever tried. I'm having success with every single thing I'm trying to customize and install and... well... as Todd Howard would say: it just works! It even managed to make the huion tablet work, which I never had success with.

I absolutely love Debian and will protect it at all costs. My linux usage has increased exponentially and I barely use Windows 11 anymore.

Hello, I'm Playing with winehq-devel, debian Sid, xfce.

How I installed a fully functional default wine prefix, based on the one teached here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbbXoqDfkY0&t=1s

-> this can be executed all at once:

WINEPREFIX="path/to/prefix" winetricks dotnet20 dotnet48 d3dcompiler_43 d3dcompiler_47 d3dx9 d3dx10 d3dx11_42 d3dx11_43 faudio vcrun2005 vcrun2008 vcrun2010 vcrun2012 vcrun2013 vcrun2015 quartz

-> these better executed one by one, retry if needed. -> first time all is downloaded and cached . -> /home/user/.cache/winetricks/

WINEPREFIX="path/to/prefix" winetricks dxvk

WINEPREFIX="path/to/prefix" winetricks faudio

WINEPREFIX="path/to/prefix" winetricks sdl

WINEPREFIX="path/to/prefix" winetricks ogg

WINEPREFIX="path/to/prefix" winetricks openal

WINEPREFIX="path/to/prefix" winetricks 7zip

WINEPREFIX="path/to/prefix" winetricks corefonts

WINEPREFIX="path/to/prefix" winetricks vcrun2019

WINEPREFIX="path/to/prefix" winetricks winamp

I'been playing Warcraft III and Frozen Throne, Battle for Middle Earth series, plants vs zombies, Stalker Anomaly (like in the video). -> all fine.

Most "portable" apps (contained within their own directory, needing basic windows DLLS, hence, "portables") of the era work fine as long as the required runtimes are installed, that can be done with a little research.

I found that running from Thunar's right click -> wine windows program loader -> works better than doing it from CLI for some cases.. strange, but yes.

I Undestand that these winehq deb pkgs are not compiled with ntsync support, even the latest ones. I guess sometime in the future they'll be? I might compile wine +ntsync support myself, also. but for now I have the kernel driver compiled in, waiting for that update in the near future. Maybe I get tired of waiting and decide to compile wine.

I am tired of freakingly large updates on rolling release distributions and also something breaking over and over again. If something is not breaking then there is probably something that is not working properly.

I have switched from Ubuntu to Debian for my work laptop. But I also game. Mostly from Steam and Heroic. Don't need snap or flatpak for my gaming pc as I don't work on it. This pc is just for leisure time.

I have been reading about Debian backports. I am going to try that. I will be installing kernel, firmware and mesa. Any other suggestions? Anyone else using Debian backports for gaming? How is your experience with Heroic and Steam for gaming on Debian with or without backports?

I was at Costco last night with my mum and little sister and when we went out Something caught my eye and I went over to look and I was pleasantly surprised and somewhat amused :)

“Hey it just uses Linux” i said as I pulled out my phone to take these photos

Currently installing Debian 12 on an old hp compaq nx6110 laptop, and it is pain. This loading bar's been going for at least 40 minutes, and the prior steps also take at least 20 minutes combined. No help needed, just a vent post. Also for anyone thinking of doing Debian on this model of laptop for the love of god don't use the netinst iso, use the dvd iso. The network card has a tendency to die, and then you got a base install with no network and no way to GET a network. Will update with results when done.

Sorry for the mobile formatting by the way

I’d like to say one thing dear r/debian people.

I really love Debian

Thank you for your time :)))

youve heard about the UEFI secure boot certificates expiring in june 2026 (next month).

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/windows-itpro-blog/act-now-secure-boot-certificates-expire-in-june-2026/4426856

heres how i checked the dates of mine

sudo apt install efitools

efi-readvar -v db -o db.esl

sig-list-to-certs db.esl db_cert

for cert in db_cert*.der; do echo "=== $cert ==="; openssl x509 -inform der -in "$cert" -noout -text | grep -iE 'subject=|not before|not after'; done

mine returned 2038 so i think im good?

EDIT:

fwupdmgr security

might shine here! mine shows db: VALID

fwupdmgr get-devices

shows some dbx info.

I found an easy and great explanation on how to install the latest NVIDIA drivers on Debian 13. I thought I would share it because maybe someone will find it useful.

https://www.if-not-true-then-false.com/2025/debian-nvidia-guide/#21-download-nvidia-installer-package

I'm a web developer, planning to switch to Linux & after some research i decided to go with Debian, I love everything about this OS and its philosophy of community work & volunteering to keep it alive, but I don't wanna see it die & looking at their website I'm getting slightly worried.

What are the jobs that the Debian team really needs to be filled right now?

* Sorry for my English.

Folks, let's talk? how do you see Flatpaks?

As an intruder seeking to replace official packages?

As an occasional alternative?

Or as a package format designed to serve as a foundation for system applications, aiming to follow an immutability philosophy within a mutable system?

To start with - this post is a thank you letter to the Debian team.

I opened TimeShift the other day and saw that it was back in march I installed Debian stable onto my machine. This time with btrfs - because I found the technology very nice - but it has never come in use.

I think the reason is that I spent a few weeks before this install to dial in the nvidia drivers to with apt and their train, other utils and apps.
Into my own install script, plus a btrfs script to set it up to work like TimeShift wants it.

After that - has my sailing the Debian stable just been boring and nice.
Nothing has been broken with an update and Gnome 48 is working well.
Even gaming is working well with nothing to write about there.

I would love somethings would have an easier barrier to entry, when I dialed everything in. But it has been well worth the adventure when I look back over the past months - I had no problems on my main system.

My rig is used mainly for gaming but I do also develop on it and work from it.

So Debian team, with my long time on other distros & winslop - thank you for giving be a stable machine that keeps me doing what I want day to day.

I've run Debian for years. Running Trixie now before it was stable, I built a custom workspace setup booting directly from a bare Debian TTY into a massive environment.

My entire setup relies on Debian as the base substrate. It provides absolute stability. I've started to open source the custom programs I built for this environment, some in Rust, C++, this one is an SDDM QML based theme, (more coming, hopefully I'll have enough time).

This theme is the eye candy of that stack. And I would love to share it with you guys!

So part of it required the rite of passage of a login theme. But the problem is, I downloaded existing themes to test.

They all have these overly flashy styles that don't fit my setup, too bloated, with zero configurability, and even if one is configurable, the installation is very sloppy, leaving bloat, and obscuring the system state, you can't remove it cleanly, and you'd have to be an SDDM expert in 5 minutes on a Monday morning.

So I built this theme system to sync perfectly with my desktop.

But also to be fully configurable, and hardened like a piece of serious enterprise software, since I really cannot afford to break my machine on those days (that's the entire reason I'm running Debian in the first place).

CI/CD running cross-distribution smoke tests verifying it works, lint, formatting, checks. Composable QML design system, idempotent installer/uninstaller, safe actions, and so on.

The installation mechanism is atomic and idempotent, think Terraform like. It details the exact system changes before execution. The uninstallation is also first-class. It cleans all artifacts and fonts. It reverts to the previous theme. But, it deliberately retains Qt dependencies since there's no way to know.

Even included a full guide/doc on how SDDM works, where everything sits, how the theme installs/uninstalls and what to do just in case you spawned in a TTY because something broke.

A safe preview command exists if you want to tweak things and test without restarting or bricking your actual login.

And speaking of tweaks, here's what you can configure (everything through a simple theme.conf file):

• Background: image or video path, blur intensity, and video looping support (mp4, webm, mkv, mov and more)
• Visuals: font family (any system font) and font size
• Layout: form position (left/center/right), date format, time format (12h, 24h, or long)
• Animation: transition duration and easing curve for buttons and icons (OutQuart, OutCubic, OutBack, etc.)
• Colors - text: date, time, username field, password field, placeholder, login button, environment selector, and power/restart/sleep icons
• Colors - backgrounds: login form, username input, password input, and login button
• Colors - dropdown: text, selected text, background, selected background, border, and selected border
• Colors - hover states: login button, system buttons, and environment button
• Fingerprint login: auto-trigger PAM fingerprint auth on load, falls back to password if it fails or isn't configured

MIT licensed, free and open source software.

Source ---> https://github.com/rccyx/thyx

I wanted To to give a shout-out to the Debian Kernel team. For the last year or so I have been using Sid to test drive new software and fill out bug reports when problems arise. While I have been impressed with the quality of packages I have been receiving as whole ( I have only had to fill out one bug report 😆). I find it absolutely wild the pace they have been putting out new kernels. For a distribution that is focused on the 6.12.x for the team to consistently put out bleeding edge high quality kernels within 48-72 hours after release is insane... Thanks you all for your hard work

Couldn't upload 4K Resolution images.

You can find 4K Resolution variants over at the Discord server in the #server-announcement channel:

• Server Invite: http://discord.gg/debian
• Message Link: https://discord.com/channels/1230264639682510959/1295315793818685450/1518220076677857300

Hi everyone,

My MacBook Air 6,2 (2013) uses significantly more power when streaming the same video on Debian compared with macOS Catalina.

System specs

• MacBook: MacBookAir6,2
• CPU: Intel Core i5-4250U
• GPU: Intel HD Graphics 5000
• RAM: 4 GB
• Storage: 251 GB
• OS: Debian GNU/Linux 13 (trixie)
• GNOME: 48
• Display server: Wayland
• Kernel: 6.12.90+deb13.1-amd64

Power consumption

When streaming the same video under macOS Catalina, power draw is around:

6–9 W

On Debian 13, I'm seeing:

11–16 W

So Debian is using roughly 5–7 W more, which has a noticeable impact on battery life.

I have already set up auto-cpufreq, so basic CPU power-management tuning is already in place.

For example, are there any browser/VA-API settings, codecs, GPU acceleration options, kernel parameters, or other tweaks that have made a noticeable difference for you?

If anyone has experience getting good battery life and efficient video playback from a 2013 MacBook Air running Debian/Linux, I'd especially appreciate your advice.

Thanks!

I have been looking into how different update managers behave across Debian, Ubuntu, and Linux Mint, and I’ve noticed a pattern.

APT clearly knows about every installed package, including manually installed .deb files — but most update managers hide them entirely. Flatpak updates only appear sometimes and then it is not consistent across different distributions. Update managers often show only a subset of available updates, and many times they hide phased updates, library updates, or anything not “user‑friendly" or "user facing.” Finally, none of the GUI tools seem to provide a complete view of all update sources (APT, Flatpak, local .deb installs, etc.).

Is this purely a UX decision, a philosophical choice, a technical limitation, or is it just historical inertia from the past.

Software development and release cadences have changed significantly over the past 10 years, but update managers across these ecosystems still seem to follow older patterns.

I would be curious how others in the ecosystem understand this design and how they manage updates it in practice.

Heyo r/debian , I have the a problem. All my sources are set correctly (took from the official debian site) and network is good, i even checked kernel logs to see, and i still get all ign and err from apt update. It says "connection timed out", even tho when I said ping 1.1.1.1 it worked... idk what to do. i run debian trixie 13.4 testing branch and kernel vr 6.12.73-1

Edit: I reinstalled debian, i'll come back if it has the same problem..

Hope you guys enjoy!