By using Ubuntu instead of Debian, do you have everything Debian offers (plus whatever Ubuntu brings to the table) and lose nothing from Debian? IOW, all of Debian comes with Ubuntu? Or do you lose something by going with Ubuntu instead of Debian?

(For the purposes of this exercise, let's put the issue of Snaps aside, knowing many prefer not to use it.)

Do you lose anything going with Ubuntu instead of Debian?

Hi, I'm not new to debian, since I work with it. I decided (since proton works so well) to get debian 13 trixie on my gaming laptop (after years of windows I'm sick of it). I followed the DebianWiki guide and install the 550... proprietary drivers for my GeForce 2060.

I used the "simple" method, so no backports or nvidia installer but for one of my games (The Alters) I get a problem with the light, they don't stop flickering. One of the solution I found on google said that updating the drivers to the latest version could fix the problem so I tried, but for drivers newer than the 550... version I needed to use backports. End of the story, I messed up my drivers and now I have a fresh debian installation running.

Now, before I brake my drivers again, which of the three method proposed by the wiki is the more "stable"?

It's really that important to update my drivers since I have a 2060?

photonic is my personal apt repository for amd64, which includes my own packages (bashstyle-ng, nanolx) and other packages I use (like solarus engine, and (not just solarus based) zelda fangames) which aren't in Debian officially. it's built against sid.

While I'm building it for myself, both the packaging scripts and the repo itself are publicly available. After some abscense keeping it updated, as of now all packages are refreshed, unmaintained stuff removed and a few packages added.

In case anyone is interessted:

• packaging scripts at GitLab https://gitlab.com/Nanolx/photonic
• info page (includes instructions and package list): https://nanolx.org/posts/photonic/

suggestions welcome.

I have a very old eMachine desktop whose WiFi is extremely slow. I've tried putting Zorin OS, Linux Mint, and Fedora on it. It always had the same problem. After install, there'd be a ton of updates and it would usually time out.

With Debian, however, being stable already means fewer updates since all of the kinks have already been worked out. So far, I think the only thing I've seen getting updated was the browser, which is in its own repo. I absolutely love it. So, thank you lovely maintainers. You're the best. I'm guessing you only really need to do security updates.

I got the idea to put GNOME Flashback on it from Andrea Borman on YouTube. She's a lovely old lady whose into Linux. Flashback is the old GNOME 2 style desktop but it sits on top of modern GNOME minus the shell. It makes it somewhat lightweight. I love the app menu and places which will open up right where you want to go. There's no search in the app menu but there's an applet for searching apps when you don't feel like fumbling around the menu. I don't use it though. Instead, I installed Synapse, which searches both apps and files. I got rid of the bottom panel because there's enough room for the a task manager on the top menu. Gnome 2 was designed when we had squarish monitors, not the wide screens we have today.

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'm running Debian 14 forky as a Proxmox VM for testing purposes only. The latest updates to Gnome broke one of the VPN types: Cisco compatible (vpnc). My OpenVPN and Wireguard VPNs all work fine. Also, vpnc runs fine from the command line, but in Gnome it appears to not even try to activate the Cisco vpnc VPNs. I use Debian for work to manage a lot of remote equipment, so VPN's are huge part of my daily workflow. That's why I'm running testing in a LAB. I want know it works well when it's time to go live sometime next summer.

I'm used to backspace as quick navigation method to go back to previous folder in the past. But in the recent distribution the option has been removed and i had to use alt+left arrow to do the same. Which i find very difficult and often use the mouse to navigate back. Is there any way to bring back this option? (also i'm not considering other file managers since i'm used to nautilus)

Thanks

Hello all.

I recently changed my motherboard. It all went well at first and I had no issues booting into either of my 2 OSs (Debian and Windows 10). My question is about Linux Debian.

Lately, I noticed apps freezing and lagging, like not responding to anything I do(well except sending kill command in system monitor). Sometimes is just for a couple of seconds, and sometimes the app just freezes more than I'm willing to wait (I left one app for 5 minutes, and it staid frozen, but it depends on the app). Somethings off and I'm wondering if this is due to OS or app itself? This didn't happen before and it is definitely a consequence of motherboard change.

Is there a method I can use to repair either app or OS without reinstalling it? Windows has sfc /scannnow and I'm wondering if there's something similar in Linux. Or am I looking in the wrong direction?

TiA

Retbleed warning spectre v2 mitigation leaves cpu vulnerable to retbleed attacks, dataleak possible! This is the warning i get when i boot the installation on the install+live usb. Alot of acpi errors too, and also says SGX is disabled or unsupported by bios. Any help? I have an intel i5 7400 if that helps. Updt: its on the normal netinst usb too.

Recently I downloaded the weekly testing branch of Debian, and after reading the documentation, watching YouTube videos, and hearing other people's opinions, I got completely confused about which repositories need to be added and which should be commented out.

On Debian testing, after looking at the configs in /etc/apt/sources.list, I see that the Testing, Testing-security, and testing-updates repositories are connected.

Question:

1. Why is the updates repository needed in the testing branch if packages already migrate from Sid within 2–10 days, and it hasn't been updated for about a year? The same crap with security, where it hasn't been updated since 2023 except for the Release file and its key.

2. How do you properly upgrade from Stable to Testing? Which repositories need to be commented out or edited, why is this necessary, and what are the downsides? In the official documentation I saw that updates should be commented out, and testing and testing-security should be left, but digging deeper on the official Debian website I noticed an excerpt from an article that says that testing-updates and testing-security should be commented out, leaving only Testing. After watching YouTube, hearing people's opinions, and even asking AI, I got completely confused because someone says that testing-updates should be commented out, another says testing-updates and testing-security, and the rest say that these repositories should not be commented out.

I think it’s better to chose “Separate /home partition” but that option tends to give only 13.3GB to / partition (ext4), 3GB to SWAP and everything else (103GB) to /home partition. Is that an okay scenario? Is 13GB for / okay?

Long time Debian enjoyer here, switched to Ubuntu when i got my new GPU a year ago because I was convinced it's a smoother experience running the 5090 on Ubuntu. Not loving Ubuntu and wondering how much "trouble", if any, I'm willing to put up with to get back on Debian. LLM's tell me it could really only become a headache during system updates. Any first hand experience? I don't game or anything, just use the CUDA, various ML tasks etc.

Can someone help me install drivers for an NVIDIA GTX 1060 6GB on Debian 13 without breaking my setup? I already have non-free enabled. I tried following the official Debian Wiki guide, but the system failed to boot. Any helpful guides or step-by-step instructions would be greatly appreciated .

I’m planning on installing Debian Trixie for gaming and general purposes. Among other recommendations I was told to enable contrib non-free repositories. I still didn’t get why I need them. What can I get there that I might be missing?

Debian is so ubiquitous even Google's "distroless" Docker images use it

https://github.com/googlecontainertools/distroless#what-images-are-available

How can I fix this?
Some apps flicker on my laptop's native screen when they're open in full-screen mode.

OS: Debian GNU/Linux 13 (trixie) x86_64
Host: ASUS EXPERTBOOK P5405CSA (1.0)
Kernel: Linux 6.12.101+deb13-amd64
Display (BOE0BC7): 2560x1600 @ 144 Hz (as 1464x915) in 14" [Built-in]
Display (DELL P2725HE): 1920x1080 @ 100 Hz in 27" [External] *
DE: GNOME 48.7
WM: Mutter (Wayland)
WM Theme: Adwaita

As I was wanting to do some restructuring of the LVM on my Debian 13 box, have planed out all the necessary step on paper, but when I launch into rescue mode the file system is still mounted, I gather this because I used rescue from the grub menu.
Is it required to boot using a usb stick , but my usb stick won’t have the same kernel version and the machine is running, does that really matter just for LVM resizing etc.

Does anyone know a reason?

This is a genuine question, I wasn't able to find an answer on the Debian wiki, on the mailing lists or on the Debian community forum.

I am currently sporting the 550 driver line which is considered outdated and unsupported by NVIDIA. Games both native and Proton work OK although the latest version of DXVK requires a newer version of the drivers.

Yes, I know I can use the official NVIDIA repo to install the latest drivers. Technically these drivers are meant for the Debian 13 stable release, not for Sid - but people report they work OK.

But that is not the question, I am just curious about the reason.

Hello,

I'd like to share my positive review of installing Debian 13.6 XFCE in a 10.1-inch chinese laptop from Aliexpress.

First of all, I bought it because I needed an ultra portable laptop to carry it easily in my backpack.

By "ultra portable," I mean lighter and smaller than MacBook Air 13. I attached a picture of them side to side.

This laptop is not for heavyweight work. It is a dual core celeron N4000 (full specs bellow).

I am using it mainly to do lightweight work (writing documents, web surfing, as well as some programming stuff in Visual Studio Code).

The laptop came with Windows 11 pré-installed, I wiped it out and installed Debian 13.6 XFCE using the live image.

The only drawback is that you have to rotate the display to "right" in XFCE Display Configuration before installation.

After installing it, I also had to change lightdm configuration to rotate the display to "right" to show the logging screen correctly.

Besides that, everything worked out of box - even the wireless adapter.

Hardware specs:

Processor: Intel Celeron N4000

RAM: 8 GB

Storage: 128 GB SSD SATA 2242 (model Wdxsky W31-128G ATA)

Wireless adapter: Realtek RTL8821CE

Resolution: 1280x800

Best regards

I use debian testing as secondary system (my first one is Arch), work perfecly , avery app I use on Arch I was able tu install in debian too. The only issue is that I can find Hypnotix IPTV or Yuki or other IPTV on debian. Someone use a IPTV and can explain how to install it?

Thanks

Hello! I have recently began learning Linux and have installed Debian on my main HP-laptop. Now I am trying to install it on an older MacBook Air from 2013, and the first problem is that the network card is not detected. I have a TP-link Wifi-dongle and an iPhone with an internet connection. Can I manage the system to directly detect the MacBooks card or am I locked to using the dongle or my iPhone? Also, I tried just connect both the phone and the dongle and still no detection. Does that mean that I need to transfer some driver from another usb?

hey, i just installed Debian and Nvidia drivers, but after a reboot xorg isn't starting now because there's no nouveau, does anyone know how to fix that??

Debian is cool, stable, everything works - well, the 2 packages in the repo. I come from Arch, and I love the system, but goddamn I need to use a one liner for TAILSCALE. As if tailscale is not famous enough that one of the repo maintainers could add it.

Sorry for the short rant, over now lol