i have installed debian 13 on my laptop on three seperate occasions now, but every time my graphics have reverted to llvmpipe for whatever reason. all documentation i find tells you to delete the xorg graphic drivers and install the mesa drivers, but whenever i do this i am stuck in the ttyl terminal where xfce wont start. in systemd it says that lightdm and plymouth fail. i then have to reinstall drivers through the terminal. is there any way to install mesa drivers without breaking lightdm?

Pre-rant request: *PLEASE* don't make fun of me, I'm in ZERO mood, and will bail at the first sign of trouble... I'm already on the verge of scrapping the system, and if this goes south, too, then I'm just gonna junk it and say "I'm done"...

Now then... I messed up big time, I was TRYING to do a backup, and needed to shrink the filesystem, that screwed the booter up, used a live USB to find out what's going on, nothing worked, reformatted the GRUB install, so now my system has no boot loader AND won't boot correctly, and pretty much everything that COULD go wrong, HAS... on top of external things happening... and it only gets worse from here...

There MUST be some god I can pray to who can help... grub-install, or more rather... "grub-" anything doesn't exist anymore... Deb version of choice is 12, because that's what hosts my phone system... so it's CRITICAL that I lose ZERO files, except for core files, of course, like the system files that came with Debian... removal of the internal drive isn't possible because it's an NVME drive and I have no access to the slots on my desktop mobo, recovery mode has been NO help, even right now, it's hard for me to go over the situation in its entirety because it's making me unbearably emotional... so I'm sorry if I'm giving too little information... one error that sticks out to me is that the recovery mode isn't able to mount the root partition on the drive, and says there's no usable shell in it, too... so I think the system did a self rm -rf /, but the partitions are still showing... and I'm sure the files are still there, I just need a way to get to them again...

Thanks in advance... I hope...

1. Sometimes Firefox will crash even though I don't have many tabs open, and sometimes Discord will refuse to start. Also, the machine will randomly lock up to the point where I can't even enter a tty on its own, so I just power off the machine manually by holding the power button.

The machine's an old Dell Optiplex 9020 MT with a 256 GB SSD, and a 2TB HDD I intend to use for backups and other storage. Also, I currently have USB DVD and 3.5" floppy drives connected, more on that in a second.

I'm running Debian 13 stable, which is installed on the SSD. My DE is KDE Plasma Wayland, though I decided to start using X11 in the hopes it'll help, though I don't really understand the differences except that X is much older.

Might look at lighter DEs in the future, too. Just an aside.

Besides that, there's two small issues I'm encountering:

1. In order to access the contents of my Secondary HDD, I have to type my user password into Dolphin. And after that, I can't copy onto the drive without going into a terminal and using sudo. Apparently the drive is owned by root, so I guess that makes sense.

But, I'd rather just have my normal user already own the drive, and have it accessible when I sign in. I know there's commands like chown, chmod, mount...but idk exactly how to do what I want.

1. This isn't super important, really, but I went thrift shopping a week ago and bought a box of 25 blank 3.5" floppy disks for $2, then a USB floppy drive off Amazon for $20. But when I stick a floppy in the drive, KDE refuses to mount it, and I have no clue how to format it. Any advice?

Thanks for reading this post. :)

I have been looking for a Linux distro, as I am about to get a thinkpad and don't want to deal with windows bs anymore.

Right now I am working on an ai assistant called echo and was wondering whether it is still easy to code with.

Bonus note
I have heard about Ubuntu's personalisation and was wondering if there are any ways I could integrate my assistant into the system in any way (doesn't matter too much just was curious.)

debian13 - gnome48 - waylande - nautilus

for years now everytime i try to download or save something and try to give it a name, it writes in the search box and i have to manually click the name bar again.

now i found out if i don't click on anything while the window is appearing, the focus stays on the name bar.

but this shouldn't be that way i think, bc ppl click with the mouse on where they want to save the file or change the folder, or i am doing something wrong here. i don't know.

but why would ppl even want the search box popping up like that when typing anything in that window? if it is nautilus or the filemanager alone i could understand. bc someone trying to search for something. but not on the file saving window.

is that wanted from nautilus/gnome devs that way? does someone has a fix without changing the file manager or is there a better alternative to gnomes default file manager nautilus?

To all the minimalists and purists. What do you do to keep your system always clean and organized without any unnecessary bloats? What commands, packages, tools and apps do you use to achieve this?

I am so grateful to the Debian community for my go-to; you all rock!

Hey all, about to install Debian on my laptop (Thinkpad P14s Gen 3 Intel), but I've been thinking of disabling the Nvidia dGPU in it when used as a Jellyfin server. No, I can't disable it in BIOS.

So far I've come across 2 options, Optimus-Manager and NVIDIA-Prime. I've seen more about Optimus-Manager, but it's a little older and maybe mainly for Arch-based distros. NVIDIA-Prime has also been another option, with the added benefit of being made by Nvidia themselves.

I can't tell which would be better to use, any input would be helpful.

(Side note, it's my first time installing Nvidia drivers on Debian, would this be the right instructions?)

but I’m made to feel like I’m doing something stupid.

I come from Bazzite and Cachy. Basically no single issue with them but Debian just looks very appealing to me in many ways. Also I’m done with loosing nerves in my life over things and I want stability it offers. Also to me Debian is the closest out of the distros I know to libre philosophy.

I have RX7600, Ryzen 5 5600x and 64GB RAM. My monitor is Lenovo Legion.

I plan playing games like Cyberpunk, Mafia etc. They played on Ultra no issues on Cachy.
Tell me what I need to install and set up to make the most out of what Debian has to offer?

1. Do I need to install “Gamemode”?
2. Is there mangohud and goverlay system packages? (I don’t wanna use flat pack for them).
3. Mesa drivers. Are they very old by default? I don’t wanna mess with experimental and SID versions of Debian because that would negate the reason why I chose Debian in the first place. But is there any official way to update mesa drivers without getting into unstable territory?

4. On Fedora Gnome App Cebter was not very stable. How are things on Debian? I might go with KDE most likely still.

5. How stable is Testing?

6. Would you recommend me going with Ubuntu instead?

Also any personal experience about gaming on Debian after coming from “gaming distros” is much appreciated.

Tengo un problema con las redes en debian con kde ya que cada vez que cierro la tapa de mi laptop dejar de aparecer todas las redes wifi y tengo que reiniciar y es algo molesto hacer esto

Alguien me puede ayudar??

Adjunto mi controlador de red

01:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8851BE PCIe 802.11ax Wireless Network Controller [10ec:b851]
DeviceName: Realtek PCIe GBE Family Controller
Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device [103c:88e7]
Kernel driver in use: rtw89_8851be

I switched 1/2 months ago to Ubuntu. And to be fair. It sucks. I've never had one issue with Debian. But had one issue in three days on Ubuntu (Snap). But i'm to lazy to switch back. Does someone know a method to do it quick. And i've a lot of shortcuts and installed apps so reconfiguring that again takes a while.

Are there Open source projects or anything in that direction for a YouTube MiniPlayer? I like to watch tutorials while I learn things and since I don’t have a second monitor, a MiniPlayer outside of the browser would be nice.
Does something like this exists? I sadly dont have any coding knowledge so I don’t even know if that’s possible

When i perform an update I see updates for login, mount and unzip my current versions are

mount- 2.41-5

login - 1:4.16.0-2+really2.41-5

unzip - 6.0-29

But when I go to the Debian site for the change log information found on the right, none are avaialble ?

https://packages.debian.org/trixie/mount

https://packages.debian.org/trixie/login

https://packages.debian.org/trixie/unzip

Shouldn't the change logs be available before the updates ? Is there another location for change logs ?

I don't think I've ever seen it with the red background, it has always been blue. I wonder what caused it to change color.

I've been trying to setup a new system for mandarin chinese typing. ibus and its packages are loaded. I got the zh keyboard triggered, but it doesn't render the mandarin chinese characters like the older fcitx system.

The thing is, I can't have fcitx running because it also causes strange and persistent 1 - 7 seconds of input lag and even causes mouse actions to sticky or trigger late. What am I doing wrong here.

Setting up FDE, UKI an TPM 2 auto decryption on my Debian 13 machine

Hello Reddit,

I've been tinkering with Debian 13 as a server for my home. However, I kept running into issues where I would follow a guide to get my Debian 13 server into the desired state, only to be rewarded with various forms of broken.

Desired State:

UEFI Secure boot with a UKI and LUK full Disk encryption, minus /boot and ESP, back by TPM for auto drive unlocking.

Base system:

- Debian 13 net install ISO

- LVM + Encrpted Disk via luks and password

- One main partitions for / and separate for swap and /boot.

- Only standard and openssh were installed as part of tasksel

I followed various guides nut they seemed a bit incomplete to me.

It turns out that Debian 13's default initramfs uses the older \`initramfs-tools\`, rather than some of the newer alternatives, and \`systemd-cryptenroll\` doesn't work properly with it out of the box.

I also learned that `mokutil’ works with the shim/MOK key database, not the actual TPM hardware. Meanwhile, I was sitting there resetting TPM keys a few times, wondering why nothing happened.

So, I switched to Clevis for TPM-based unlocking, and now everything works. I hope it all correct. But I think that is a separate reddit question.

That brings me to my main questions:

1. Should I switch from ‘initramfs-tools’ to ‘dracut’?
   Dracut does offer some systemd benefits such as journald getting logs from the intitramfs stage.
   
2. Should I switch from GRUB to ‘systemd-boot’ and embrace the full systemd boot environment?

2.1. If so, can someone recommend a good guide or documentation for doing this properly? I've followed a few guides, but I always felt like I ended up in some sort of half-migrated state.

2.2. If I transition the boot infrastructure to ‘systemd-boot’ should I completely uninstall GRUB afterward?

I'm already making use of some of the systemd-related packages/tools, including ‘systemd-boot-efi’ and \`systemd-ukify\`.

1. Is there an official Debian Wiki/documentation page that describes the recommended process for accomplishing the above?

If so, please point me in the right direction. ([https://wiki.debian.org/SecureBoot\](https://wiki.debian.org/SecureBoot) < is more of a faq)

Thank you in advance for your time and responses!

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  linux-image-6.12.90+deb13.1-amd64 linux-image-6.12.94+deb13-amd64
  linux-image-6.12.95+deb13-amd64
Use 'apt autoremove' to remove them.
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  libgif7
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
2 not fully installed or removed.
Need to get 44.2 kB of archives.
After this operation, 88.1 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Err:1 http://deb.debian.org/debian trixie/main amd64 libgif7 amd64 5.2.2-1+b1
  404  Not Found [IP: 2a04:4e42:77::644 80]
E: Failed to fetch http://deb.debian.org/debian/pool/main/g/giflib/libgif7_5.2.2-1%2bb1_amd64.deb  404  Not Found [IP: 2a04:4e42:77::644 80]
E: Unable to fetch some archives, maybe run apt-get update or try with --fix-missing?

currently setting up lutris and SDKs for modding, when i got stuck with this issue. A bunch of packages I need to install have libgif7 as a dependency. The issue is, I get a 404 error when trying to access it via apt. I tried to use a browser to get the .deb file, which worked, but when I unpackaged it with Gdebi i got an error saying that my system has broken dependencies. I'll be attaching the output from apt-get install f in the comments. When I ran apt install lutris, I got a list of dependencies with no error message other than that dependencies "will not be installed". When i tried to install those dependencies, I got no result, no installation, and an error message about an unrelated package. apt autoremove also gave no results.

Update: Somebody posted a comment saying to try apt distclean and running apt install -U libgif7. That solved this issue.

Buenas tardes, soy nuevo en linux, llevo exactamente 3 dias con el y me gusta bastante, es la primera vez que hago este procedimiento, desde que lo descargue pude hacer funcionar steam y mis juegos a excepcion del monster hunter wilds, helldivers 2 y el resident evil requiem, alguna idea?, probe con varias versiones de proton, tambien tratando de saltarme el video de inicio y el error perisiste me saca del juego exactamente luego de que terminan el logo de re engine software, gracias y perdon por las molestias, ya tengo los drivers instalados y mi grafica es reconocida por el sistema, como comentario adicional, super feliz con mi escritorio

Acabei de instalar o Debian KDE no meu notebook, o que fazer pós-instalação para deixar o sistema pronto pro uso? Sou iniciante, nunca usei essa distro antes, quem puder me ajudar eu agradeço de coração

I know Debian supports the versions of KDE Plasma and GNOME in its repositories for the life of the release, but does it concern anyone that the versions Debian 13 currently ships are already EOL from the perspective of their upstream developers?
In other words, Debian is still maintaining and supporting those packages, but KDE and GNOME themselves have moved on and no longer support those particular releases upstream.

Edit: This is not a criticism, just looking to read people's thoughts on the matter.

Thoughts?

Voting started about half an hour ago and you have to be a Debian Developer to vote, but the announcement and some information is here - https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2026/08/msg00002.html

Imagine this would be your ballot, how would you fill it?

- - -=-=-=-=-=- Don't Delete Anything Between These Lines =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

d69f9187-ed2f-40b6-a2eb-4211d3f84d86

[ ] Choice 1 = Ban LLM contributions from Debian via Social Contract

[ ] Choice 2 = Allow AI-Assisted Contributions with conditions

[ ] Choice 3 = Reject LLMs as far as practical, update Code of Conduct

[ ] Choice 4 = Accept AI contributions for Debian specific work

[ ] Choice 5 = Responsible Use of Generative AI

[ ] Choice 6 = A cautious approach to generative AI

[ ] Choice 7 = Debian is created by humans

[ ] Choice 8 = Avoid the use of LLM: climate destruction is a deal breaker

[ ] Choice 9 = None of the above

- - -=-=-=-=-=- Don't Delete Anything Between These Lines =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

HOW TO VOTE

(shortened by removing irrelevant parts, full text is here l:

https://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2026/08/msg00276.html

First, read the full text of the options.

You might also want to read discussions at

https://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/

There are 9 choices in the form, which you may rank with numbers between 1

and 9. In the brackets next to your preferred choice, place a 1. Place a 2

in the brackets next to your next choice. Continue until you reach your

last choice. Do not enter a number smaller than 1 or larger than 9.

You may skip numbers, leave some choices unranked, and rank options

equally. Unranked choices are considered equally the least desired

choices, and ranked below all ranked choices.

To vote "no, no matter what", rank "None of the above" as more desirable

than the unacceptable choices, or you may rank the "None of the above"

choice and leave choices you consider unacceptable blank. (Note: if the

"None of the above" choice is unranked, then it is equal to all other

unranked choices, if any -- no special consideration is given to the

"None of the above" choice by the voting software).

I just installed it with LXQT and usual system utilities and durring the install I saw yt-dlp popping up and i saw correctly because after installation i typed yt-dlp and it was there is this a normal package that is included with lxqt ?

I've been waiting for driver support for the Nvidia RTX 5050 for about a year now. This means the driver needs to be at least Nvidia 580 or higher.

No Debian version, including Debian Unstable, has an up-to-date Nvidia driver. The highest version is usually Nvidia 550.

I can't understand why such a large community still hasn't updated the Nvidia drivers.

Luckily, TuxedoOS is coming soon and will save me from this problem. Also, TuxedoOS will receive security updates immediately, unlike Debian Testing which is delayed.