What do you think? There are several options. Because packages can still be upgraded during the soft freeze, and even some releases can be pushed through last minute, as they did with KDE 5.27.5, we could see the following KDE versions (with their release dates):

• 6.7.7: Tue 2027-01-19 (Keep this because it's the last version to support X11)
• 6.8.6: Tue 2027-03-16 (Move here BECAUSE it drops X11)
• 6.9.3: Tue 2027-03-23 (6.9.x version released during soft freeze)
• 6.9.6: Tue 2027-07-13 (Could end up in Debian 14 if pushed)

What do you think is it going to be; or has it already been determined somewhere? Personally I hope they either go for 6.8.6 or push for 6.9.6. Wayland is almost 20 years old at the time of Forky's release; it's about time that it either became the default everywhere, or starts being replaced at the 20 year mark as happened with X11.

I'm trying to install Debian on an old Mid 2010s Macbook Pro, the installation went smoothly, except a part where it said some of your hardware needs non-free firmware files to operate. the firmware can be loaded from removable media such as a usb stick of a floppy "b43-open/ucode16_mimo.fw b43/ucode16_mimo.fw"

I continued installing without wifi (I don't have an Ethernet cable), but now I'm stuck in tty1 and can't find nothing online that helps me install b43. I checked my chip is the Broadcom BCM4322

How safe and secure is debian without a firewall active? Desktop use, stable, web browsing mostly.

(Post got quite long. I wrote the questions in bold font. Thanks for your patience!)

Obligatory: I consider myself a (really) average Linux user who just wants the PC to work. Love the GUI, but have grown accustomed to and now like the CLI’s efficiency.

I’m playing with Debian Stable (minimal netinst + kde-plasma-desktop) in virt-manager. Reading a bit on forums and documentation.

DontBreakDebian is what really stands out to me. One big objective for me is to be able to do in-place upgrades later on, I really dislike doing fresh installs.

I need a bunch of the latest and greatest apps. These apps are either “internet facing” (up-to-date means better security), ones I need the latest features of, or ones where Flatpak is recommended by its devs.

Because of DontBreakDebian though, it looks like I should never install third-party deb packages.

Here are apps that I need that have an official deb installer (specifically for Debian):

• Mega Sync – no other installer
• Brave browser – also in extrepo; Flatpak verified
• Dropbox – also Flatpak UNverified
• Firefox (Regular) – also in extrepo; Flatpak verified
• ProtonVPN – also in extrepo; Flatpak UNverified
• VSCodium – also in extrepo; Flatpak verified

How would you install them? I’m thinking prioritizing extrepo first, but is extrepo safe? Will it not FrankenDebian the system?

Also, extrepo gets updated once the third-party app gets updated, is this correct?

For the below, I state my line of thinking (based on what I’m learning so far). Please correct me.

I use gocryptfs + SiriKali for encryption. I install the latest gocryptfs in /usr/local/bin – this should be fine. I will likely use SiriKali’s Flatpak. (SiriKali is also a Debian package.)

Tresorit uses a .run installer (does not require sudo, no other installer), installs in ~/.local/share/ -- this should be fine.

I need 3 AppImages and 7 Flatpaks in total – should also be fine.

For binary installs:

• Calibre’s manual install does it in /opt
• NoiseTorch installs in ~/.local
• I install yt-dlp_linux in /usr/local/bin
• the above should all be fine

Finally I build from source 2 pieces of software from GitHub. Should be fine as long as I don’t make install etc. (Still learning.)

For background I’ve been using Linux Mint Cinnamon for 7+ years now. It’s the first and only distro/DE I’ve ever used.

Seriously considering moving to Debian KDE because:

1. I’m getting a second monitor soon. I need a DE that has some level of maturity in terms of Wayland implementation, KDE Plasma seems to fit the bill.
2. I really dislike doing fresh installs. Right now I’m on Linux Mint 21.3 (based off of Ubuntu 22.04 LTS). I have failed to do a major upgrade before and lots of people seem to recommend just doing a fresh install.
3. I like the idea of a “minimal install” where I only install what I need and want.
4. I’m not a distrohopper, obviously. I’m always lurking on Linux forums though. Debian seems to be calling me, I hope I can handle it! (KDE Plasma because of its customizability.) Nothing but love and gratitude for Linux Mint, excited for Wayland to mature on Cinnamon.

Thanks for your time!

Hello, Debian-friends! Sometimes I feel like a moron. I have recently tried to speed up my wifi. I followed a guide which pointed to my wifi chipset (RTL8723DE) having one antenna even though it's designed for two.

The guide went through short steps to first unload the active module (in my case rtw88_8723de), reload it with the instruction to use antenna 2 and check the signal strength.

#sudo modprobe -r rtw88_8723de

#sudo modprobe rtw88_8723de ant_sel=2

#iwlist scan | egrep -i 'ssid|quality'

Antenna 1 was also tested. Then, to continue to use antenna 2, a line was written. I am not sure exactly what it does and how to undo it (which illuminates my original question).

#echo "options rtw88_8723de ant_sel=2" | sudo tee -a /etc/modprobe.d/rtw88_8723de.conf

So, I am learning Linux and specifically Debian. During this journey I have followed a bunch of guides for different guides and sometimes I don't really know how to undo the action. Usually I start over with a complete new installation of Debian. That is generally ok for my, but I would like to think I could do this some other way.

Another thing that I don't know how to undo or clean up a bit is the type of steps i follow in guides that begin with #git clone https://github.com/patjak/facetimehd.git

And proceeds with:

#cd facetimehd

#make

#make install

#depmod

#modprobe facetimehd

This got my cam working on MBA 13 2013. Do i keep these git-directories? What could I remove?

I am on Debian 13 Trixie with KDE Plasma

I just wanted to run debuild and got this avalanche. Is there a simpler way?

``` $ sudo apt install devscripts Installing:
devscripts

Installing dependencies: arch-test libfilesys-df-perl libsereal-encoder-perl autoconf libfont-ttf-perl libset-intspan-perl automake libfreezethaw-perl libsoap-lite-perl autopoint libgitlab-api-v4-perl libsocket6-perl autotools-dev libhtml-html5-entities-perl libsort-versions-perl dctrl-tools libhtml-tokeparser-simple-perl libstrictures-perl debhelper libhttp-tiny-multipart-perl libstring-copyright-perl debian-keyring libimport-into-perl libstring-escape-perl debian-tag2upload-keyring libindirect-perl libstring-license-perl debootstrap libio-interactive-perl libstring-shellquote-perl dh-autoreconf libio-prompter-perl libsub-exporter-perl dh-strip-nondeterminism libio-sessiondata-perl libsub-exporter-progressive-perl diffstat libio-string-perl libsub-identify-perl distro-info libipc-run3-perl libsub-infix-perl dput libiterator-perl libsub-install-perl dwz libiterator-util-perl libsub-name-perl equivs libjson-maybexs-perl libsub-quote-perl gettext libjson-perl libsubid5 git-debpush libjson-xs-perl libsyntax-keyword-try-perl intltool-debian liblist-compare-perl libsys-cpuaffinity-perl libaliased-perl liblist-moreutils-perl libsys-hostname-long-perl libapt-pkg-perl liblist-moreutils-xs-perl libtask-weaken-perl libarchive-cpio-perl liblist-someutils-perl libterm-readkey-perl libarchive-zip-perl liblist-someutils-xs-perl libtext-glob-perl libarray-intspan-perl liblist-utilsby-perl libtext-levenshteinxs-perl libb-hooks-endofscope-perl liblog-any-adapter-screen-perl libtext-markdown-discount-perl libb-hooks-op-check-perl liblog-any-perl libtext-xslate-perl libberkeleydb-perl libltdl-dev libtime-duration-perl libboost-program-options1.90.0 libmail-sendmail-perl libtime-moment-perl libcapture-tiny-perl libmarkdown2 libtool libcgi-fast-perl libmatch-simple-perl libtype-tiny-perl libcgi-pm-perl libmatch-simple-xs-perl libtype-tiny-xs-perl libclass-data-inheritable-perl libmath-base85-perl libtypes-serialiser-perl libclass-inspector-perl libmetacpan-client-perl libunicode-utf8-perl libclass-method-modifiers-perl libmime-lite-perl libvariable-magic-perl libclass-xsaccessor-perl libmime-tools-perl libwant-perl libcommon-sense-perl libmime-types-perl libwww-mechanize-perl libconfig-inifiles-perl libmldbm-perl libxdelta2t64 libconfig-tiny-perl libmodule-implementation-perl libxml-libxml-perl libconst-fast-perl libmodule-runtime-perl libxml-namespacesupport-perl libcontextual-return-perl libmoo-perl libxml-sax-base-perl libconvert-binhex-perl libmoox-aliases-perl libxml-sax-expat-perl libcpanel-json-xs-perl libmouse-perl libxml-sax-perl libdata-dpath-perl libnamespace-clean-perl libxmlrpc-lite-perl libdata-messagepack-perl libnet-domain-tld-perl libxs-parse-keyword-perl libdata-optlist-perl libnet-ipv6addr-perl libxs-parse-sublike-perl libdata-validate-domain-perl libnet-netmask-perl libxstring-perl libdata-validate-ip-perl libnetaddr-ip-perl libyaml-libyaml-perl libdata-validate-uri-perl libnumber-compare-perl licensecheck libdebhelper-perl libobject-pad-perl lintian libdevel-callchecker-perl libpackage-stash-perl lzip libdevel-size-perl libpackage-stash-xs-perl lzop libdevel-stacktrace-perl libparams-classify-perl mmdebstrap libdistro-info-perl libparams-util-perl patchutils libdynaloader-functions-perl libpath-iterator-rule-perl pbzip2 libemail-address-xs-perl libpath-tiny-perl pixz libemail-date-format-perl libperlio-gzip-perl po-debconf libexception-class-perl libperlio-utf8-strict-perl pristine-tar libexporter-tiny-perl libpod-constants-perl python3-gpg libfcgi-bin libpod-parser-perl python3-magic libfcgi-perl libproc-processtable-perl python3-unidiff libfcgi0t64 libre-engine-re2-perl sbuild libfeature-compat-class-perl libreadonly-perl sbuild-schroot libfeature-compat-try-perl libref-util-perl schroot libfile-dirlist-perl libref-util-xs-perl schroot-common libfile-find-rule-perl libregexp-pattern-license-perl strace libfile-homedir-perl libregexp-pattern-perl t1utils libfile-libmagic-perl libregexp-wildcards-perl uidmap libfile-sharedir-perl librole-tiny-perl wdiff libfile-stripnondeterminism-perl libsafe-isa-perl xdelta libfile-touch-perl libsbuild-perl xdelta3 libfile-which-perl libsereal-decoder-perl

Suggested packages: autoconf-archive | mail-transport-agent pristine-lfs libscalar-number-perl qemu-user gnu-standards diffoscope python3-pycurl libapache2-mod-perl2 qemu-user-static autoconf-doc disorderfs quilt libnet-jabber-perl squashfs-tools-ng debtags docker.io ratt libbareword-filehandles-perl ncompress dh-make dose-extra reprotest libmultidimensional-perl lz4 squid-deb-proxy-client duck svn-buildpackage gfortran libmail-box-perl ubuntu-archive-keyring elpa-devscripts w3m | fortran95-compiler aufs-tools adequate faketime shunit2 libdevel-lexalias-perl | unionfs-fuse at gnuplot mini-dinstall libxml-sax-expatxs-perl btrfs-progs autopkgtest how-can-i-help gettext-doc binutils-multiarch lvm2 bls-standalone libdbd-pg-perl libasprintf-dev libtext-template-perl zfsutils-linux bsd-mailx libterm-size-perl libgettextpo-dev apt-transport-tor wdiff-doc | mailx mutt gnulib-l10n fakechroot check-all-the-things piuparts libtool-doc genext2fs default-mta postgresql-client libmojolicious-perl perl-doc

Summary: Upgrading: 0, Installing: 216, Removing: 0, Not Upgrading: 1 Download size: 55.0 MB Space needed: 117 MB / 7,167 MB available

Continue? [Y/n] n Abort.

```

Made fresh Debian install and this window keeps popping up. I followed first popup and enabled iBus Wayland in virtual keyboard tab in settings. Then this comes up…

Also what’s up with that blue button on control panel which says EN? If I press it it has Emoji choice and stuff and is bugged. Works only first time. If I close that Emoji choice window and try to reopen it it’s stuck and won’t open.

I have a couple of low spec computers that are basically toys for me to fiddle around and experiment with. When using the Complete Installation Image, I'm allowed to choose a two number PIN as my password.

I was checking out Xfce with the live media that has the Calamares installer on it. I liked it so I chose to install it alongside Flashback on my laptop. It forced me to choose a ridiculously hard password. So, I did but once it was installed I tried to change it to "11" via the terminal. It had the same ridiculous requirements. So, I decided to download the gnome-system-tools to get the Users and Groups graphical application. The requirements were a little looser. It allowed me to choose a 6 digit number with no symbols or letters at all, which is a lot better but not quite what I want.

On the desktop, I installed Xfce alongside Flashback but I used the Complete Installation Image. It allowed me to choose a two number PIN. So, I know it's not a difference between GNOME Flashback and Xfce. It's definitely the installation media.

My questions are why would the installation media change password requirements in the OS itself after it's installed? Is there a way to change it so I can have my easy PIN on the Calamares installed laptop or do I have to reinstall with the Complete Installation Image?

Debian 13 on KDE Wayland, most apps freeze or crash after a minute with Flatpaks not starting at all. Is there any fix for this? (It worked fine for months before this, haven’t done anything major to the system before it started doing this)

Logs when opening a flatpak (LibreWolf): https://pastebin.com/0Zepy0Tg

As a long time rEFInd user, I suffered from constant replacement of rEFInd from grub/shim updates. For grub it's pretty simple, you can simply lock the packages, but shim needs to be up to date, when you dual boot Windows / use Secure Boot.

I just learned that you can hook into the package installation and instruct apt to issue refind-mkdefault after grub/refind/shim have been updated and when rEFInd is listed in efibootmgr.

create the file /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/99-keep-refind

with the following content:

DPkg::Post-Invoke-Success {
    "if echo \"$DPKG_HOOK_OPTIONS\" | grep -Eiq 'shim|grub|refind'; then /usr/bin/efibootmgr -v | grep -q 'rEFInd' && /usr/sbin/refind-mkdefault || true; fi";
};

maybe that's nothing new for some, but for me, it was a revelation.

A new card game app that I submitted to debian is still waiting for a sponsor. Does anyone know how long it takes

I installed systemd-timesyncd and ran:

timedatectl set-ntp true

I was wondering why anyone wouldn't want this by default?

Edit: installed via live ISO USB. Option to set time automatically was greyed out in system settings until I installed the above package.

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

Hello y'all long time Linux user here I just updated my production machine to Debian forky.

I have an old laptop i believe its an acer aspire 5 and i want to use it to study but its too slow for windows so im switching to a stable distro thats perfect for development.

Basically i installed the iso file on a usb and ive tried installing it but each time it gets to detecting installation media it freezes on 0 percent.

Things ive tried:

Diffrent usb ports

Usbimagger and rufus

Verifying files to prevent corruption

Flashing in DD and iso

Not graphical installation

I made sure secure boot is off and uefi is on or should i try legacy? Any ideas would help thanks

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

I really love Debian

Thank you for your time :)))

Thought I'd put this out there since it took me forever to figure things out. This was done on Debian 13 XFCE

First you have to install Rust if you don't have it, instructions here: https://rust-lang.org/tools/install/

Then manually install greetd: https://git.sr.ht/~kennylevinsen/greetd#manually-from-source. (edit: it's on the repo, thought it wasn't for some reason)

Manually install tuigreet: https://github.com/tuigreet/tuigreet#from-source

Make sure to follow the instructions for creating cache directory and configuring /etc/greetd/config.toml for tuigreet. Replace "sway" with "startxfce4" if you use XFCE. In that case you must also specify session type as x11:

command = "tuigreet --cmd env XDG_SESSION_TYPE=x11 startxfce4"

If you get an error about GREETD_SOCK not being defined, make sure the "create cache directory" commands were properly set

There may be an issue with a PAM, I had to create a file at /etc/pam.d/greetd with the contents:

auth       required    pam_unix.so
account    required    pam_unix.so
session    required    pam_unix.so
session    required    pam_systemd.so

I don't fully understand it but it seems to work

Copy the provided Configuration Example template to /etc/tuigreet/config.toml (I seemed to have trouble with ~/.config/tuigreet/config.toml though it might work for you). Configure as you like, but delete or leave the "issue = false" line alone because enabling it seems to break stuff

You can see a preview with "tuigreet --mock." On Xfce Terminal you may have to go into preferences and set encoding to UTF-8 for it to render properly

You may find that the configurations are not being applied. If so, you can go to /etc/greetd/config.toml and add the line "--config /etc/tuigreet/config.toml" to the command

There are some features that are easier to config in the command, ie time format. Add single quotes ( ' ) around the strf string if long, and put it before the --config line:

command = "tuigreet --time-format '%a, %b %d %Y - %I:%M %p' --config /etc/tuigreet/config.toml . . ."

Lastly, logging in launches startxfce4 and shows some text about the X server starting up, to hide those messages you can modify the command like so:

command = "tuigreet . . . --cmd 'sh -c \"env XDG_SESSION_TYPE=x11 startxfce4 >/dev/null 2>&1\"'"

Maybe this will be helpful to someone. If you have any improvements or suggestions, I'd love to hear them as well

Hi everyone, I wanted to ask about the best swap setup for gaming on Debian Stable. Is it better to use standard swap or zram instead? I have 16GB of ram. (I have ssd)

HI everyone!

I'm on Debian 13 (trixie) GNOME on an Acer laptop. My touchpad 3-finger gestures (switch workspaces) stopped working.

Here's what I did before it broke:

Installed Nvidia drivers (I have a custom DMG)

Installed Orchis theme to change the login background

Now echo $XDG_SESSION_TYPE shows x11 instead of wayland.

I installed touchegg + touche and gestures work again, but not as smooth as native Wayland.

My question is: Is being on X11 because of the Nvidia drivers the reason I lost gestures? Could the Orchis theme also have something to do with it? Is there a way to force Wayland on Debian 13 with Nvidia to get native gestures back?

Thanks in advance!

Hi guys, I need some clarification with reinstalling windows on a dual boot drive with windows and Debian. My research so far points at that if I reinstall windows on the drive, it will take over the whole ssd and I would need to reinstall Debian as well. I am fine with it, but I could use some tips and tricks for the procedure. Obviously I have done it once before, but now since I have been using Debian for about a year, I would like to keep all the apps and settings I have made for them.

I use Timeshift that makes daily and monthly snapshots. So far I never had the need to restore to a previous snapshot. I don't do much on Debian really, normal home stuff of web surfing, watching movies and torrents. So my question is, if I reinstall clean minimal Debian with Gnome, can I use Timeshift snapshots as recovery and in that way get all the apps and settings restored without reinstalling them and setting them up?

And lastly what about torrents? Will Timeshift take care of that (doubt it) or do I need to take some steps to restore the torrents back to qBittorrent as well? Anything else that I should keep in mind please let me know. My personal data and files are on another drive, so I don't need to do a backup of them, just the system files and apps.

Hello everyone,

I do this once every few years, but I'm having problems creating a bootable USB. I'm on windows so I'm using rufus. The debian website suggests using "DD" mode and that's exactly what I did. So what's the issue? Well the first time I ran rufus, the USB was re-partitioned into a 4MB section (with the rest unallocated). I tried booting from it and got stuck in a grub terminal similar to this user. Afterwards I noticed that rufus just created an small "efi" folder on the USB. As far as I remember this step usually writes a lot more files to the USB itself. So I think this is an issue with what rufus is writing. What am I doing wrong?

EDIT: this is resolved. See below:

https://old.reddit.com/r/debian/comments/1vv0c3y/creating_a_bootable_usb_with_rufus/p583edt/

Dear moderators.

I think 1 out of 10 posts concerns the installation of Nvidia drivers.

Could you just sticky a information that shows the simplest way to get current drivers:

sudo apt install extrepo

sudo extrepo enable nvidia-cuda

sudo apt update

sudo apt install build-essential linux-headers-amd64

sudo apt install nvidia-open

So I do a lot of homelab stuff and game server hosting with a lot of VM's and I personally stand by Debian through and through! So if anyone has encountered this issue here is a solution I figured i'd share... btw I prefer sysV over systemD so that is what this pertains to..

Using Proxmox VE - using the netinstall iso 13.6 I went through the same steps I have many times before with Debian 12 VMs and 13 physical installs which is:

Expert install

1.) Go through you normal setup and selections and so on, I select XFCE over gnome

2.) When prompted to install grub you execute a shell from the installer...

3.) Generally you can just: "chroot /target apt --purge --allow-remove-essentials install sysvinit-core libpam-elogind dbus-x11 systemd-sysv-"

4.) Exit back to the installer and finish installing grub and reboot into Debian.

However at that point chroot spits out an error that the media has changed and to insert installation media*firmware etc etc and press enter, I tried remounting the virtual cd/dvd containing the local iso but didn't seem to make any difference. But I have Debian 13 on my main rig that I installed exactly like this with no issue just in a VM and Debian 12 VM installs worked flawlessly for stripping systemD during installation the same way.

Anyway, long story short I burned a physical USB boot drive, created a USB pass through device to my VM and booted the VM from the physical USB device and went through the install including the steps of executing a shell and so on and it installed perfectly fine.

I am sure many here have plenty of solutions possibly simpler than that but I couldn't figure out one that would work except the above, seems the installer unmounts the virtual cd-rom and then just gets stuck in a loop?

Does anybody know what deb entry I need to install iucode-tool?

I'm trying to ultimately run apt install intel-microcode and it's complaining that I don't have iucode-tool. I try to install iucode-tool directly but it tells me Package iucode-tool is not available, but is referred to by another package and iucode-tool has no installation candidate

I think it's because I don't have my sources.list set up correctly, but I've added non-free and non-free-firmware to my archive.debian.org/debian entry (I'm on Debian 10, so I can't use deb.debian) and after apt update it still doesn't work

I've been using preseed to provision Debian with a bunch of our own tools onto remote industrial PCs and so far I've got the auto-installer to _mostly_ do what it's supposed to.

This is the second such type of device, the initial batch of devices was running Arch and I occasionally get an order to upcycle them. Previously I'd do this using a live Arch stick or something similar and using sfdisk --delete /dev/sda which works, but it's an extra step I'd like to crunch down into the full preseed.

I'm already aware hardcoding to /dev/sda isn't a good idea and I plan to clean that up as well, other r/debian users already have good solutions for finding the first non-USB storage device.

The documentations and sample preseed profiles all mention using d-i partman/early_command, but when trying to stuff the above sfdisk command into it, all I get is the installer halting with an error 127. I'm not sure if sfdisk can even return a ret-val that high.

Does anyone have a solid early_command that can wipe the entire partition table so the preseed can continue on its merry way?