Fair warning: the Trixie update does not allow you to roll back. It is in theory possible but practically it not only fails every single time, but leaves the system in an inconsistent and broken state. (Code for 'soon to be unbootable').
What this means is when you find out stuff breaks, like drivers and application software, and decide the upgrade was a bad idea, you are fucked.
More notably, some of the upgrade is irreversible - like MySQL/MariaDB. The database binary format is upgraded during the upgrade. So if you discover something else broke, and you want to go back, it's going to take some work.
The page about upgrading [0] does have this warning:
Back up your data
Performing a release upgrade is never without risk. The upgrade may fail, leaving the system in a non-functioning state. USERS SHOULD BACKUP ALL DATA before attempting a release upgrade. DebianStability contains more information on these steps.
In all fairness... How would that work? Not even just on Debian; in the general case, I don't see how to avoid that other than full filesystem snapshots or backups of some sort. Even on, say, a NixOS system where rolling back all the software and config (basically, /, /usr, and /etc) to exactly its old config is as easy as rebooting and picking the old generation, databases will still have migrated their on-disk format.
> You can return to /tmp being a regular directory by running systemctl mask tmp.mount as root and rebooting.
>The new filesystem defaults can also be overridden in /etc/fstab, so systems that already define a separate /tmp partition will be unaffected.
Seems like an easy change to revert from the release notes.
As far as the reasoning behind it, it is a performance optimization since most temporary files are small and short lived. That makes them an ideal candidate for being stored in memory and then paged out to disk when they are no longer being actively utilized to free up memory for other purposes.
I'm using OpenSUSE Tumbleweed that has this option enabled by default.
Until about a year ago, whenever I would try to download moderately large files (>4GB) my whole system would grind to a halt and stop responding.
It took me MONTHS to figure out what's the problem.
Turns out that a lot of applications use /tmp for storing files while they're downloading. And a lot of these applications don't cleanup on fail, some don't even move files after success, but extract and copy extracted files to destination, leaving even more stuff in temp.
Yeah, this is not a problem if you have 4X more ram than the size of files you download. Surely, this is a case for most people. Right?
If it's easily reproducible, I guess checking `top` while downloading a large file might have given a clue, since you could have seen that you're running out of memory?
Can anyone experienced with debian package development, point me to some valid, recent and Best Practice™ guides or blog posts explaining how to package stuff for Debian?
I use Debian Stable on almost all the systems I use (one is stuck on 10/Buster due to MoinMoin). I installed Trixie in a container last week, using an LXC container downloaded from linuxcontainers.org [1].
Three things I noted on the basic install :
1) Ping didn't work due to changed security settings (iputils-ping) [2]
2) OpenSSH server was installed as systemd socket
activated and so ignored /etc/ssh/sshd_config*. Maybe this is something specific to the container downloaded.
3) Systemd-resolved uses LLMNR as an name lookup alternative to DNS and pinging a firewalled host failed because the lookup seemed to be LLMNR accessing TCP port 5355. I disabled LLMNR.
Generally, Debian version updates have been succesful with me for a few years now, but I always have a backup, and always read the release notes.
Have been using Trixie on my laptop for a year (?) now, it has been a very positive experience. I had brought a brand new, very recent ThinkPad, not considering that the relevant drivers would not be in Debian Stable yet. Now on Trixie, having a relatively recent version of everything KDE plasma is a blessing. Things have changed so much, for the better, particularly regarding Wayland. The experience with Trixie is already better than it ever was for me with Ubuntu (good riddance!), and I cannot believe that this is supposed to be an unstable release. I broke stuff once, and that was my own fault (forcing update when not all necessary packages were staged yet, learned my lesson on that!).
So hyped for this release, since it will result in nice bugfixes (autorandr, Polybar) and me simplifying my dotfiles. Many thanks to all Debian developers!
I've been running Trixie since I bought my Framework laptop last September, and it has been great. First Linux experience after 20 years of Mac, and everything has been incredibly stable.
Now I need to figure out what happens when my testing suddenly is stable, and how to get on the next testing, I guess.
Upgrade to trixie and enable backports. You'll maybe get the last kernel, MESA, libreoffice, browsers and whatnot without hurting the rest of the system.
I've been running testing/trixie since the end of 2023 or so. (I generally always run testing, but stick with stable for ~6 months after stabilization, in order to avoid lots of package churn in new-testing.)
It's been what I expect from Debian: boring and functional. I've never run into an issue where the system wouldn't boot after an update (I usually update once every 2-4 weeks when on testing), and for the most part everything has worked without the need to fix broken packages or utter magic apt incantations.
Debian has always been very impressive to me. They're certainly not perfect, but what they can do based on volunteers, donations, and sponsors, is amazing.
Pumped for this. I was (and am) massively impressed with Debian 12. I've been an on-again off-again Linux user since around 2003, but this release was the one that finally got me to switch completely. The jank factor actually seems to be less than that of Windows and macOS at this point, which I never thought I'd say.
I’ve been on sid for the last 10 months for my laptop (old T450s) and my secondary desktop, and it is really fun.
There are annoyances but they are not related to Debian itself.
FIRST
I decided it is time to switch to Wayland. Now my favorite run-or-raise app (Kupfer) cannot do run-or-raise. But there is a really nice extension to do run-or-raise on GNOME without the aggressive disruption of the Activities overview: Switcher. The other thing that is difficult on Wayland is text expansion. I have not found a solution for that part.
SECOND
The annoying to infuriating things that GNOME likes doing sometimes. But that is a constant. Nothing new.
The usual: light, stable and functional.
I run older version as my DNS servers and homelad stuff, opensource 3D printer, etc.
Debian just works with no dramas.
I run it in text mode only so boot takes what ~3-5 seconds.
When you su to root, the whole path or a different path is loaded. One has to type su and then su - in order to reach all the regular bin and abin directories. It is flagged, but Debian team won't fix. As a user it is not great.
Secondly, Debian now ships with Raspberrypifirmware package, even on intel installs. When you enable backports to install a newer kernel, this fails due to this package bring there . It ks a major hassle to fix, and without Chatgpt/competitors it is very easy to get lost troubleshooting this.
Does someone know if there's an increase in memory usage for Gnome or if it's about the same? I am wondering if I can update an old computer with only 4GB of memory.
Tried to upgrade from Bookworm to Trixie for my desktops end of April.
Only thing that was broken was the desktop background, everything else worked great w/o any issue and even solved some trouble I had to fix by hand for Bookworm (WiFi sleep mode), so I upgraded all my physical and virtual machines.
Had no issues at all, only thing annoying compared to running stable was the amount of updated packages, which again run trough w/o any hitch and I have to take full responsibility. ;-)
Highly recommended if you want a Linux distribution for a server or a desktop which simply works and keeps working.
43 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 68.9 ms ] threadWhat this means is when you find out stuff breaks, like drivers and application software, and decide the upgrade was a bad idea, you are fucked.
More notably, some of the upgrade is irreversible - like MySQL/MariaDB. The database binary format is upgraded during the upgrade. So if you discover something else broke, and you want to go back, it's going to take some work.
Ask me how I know.
What problems did you have that made you want to roll back the update?
I am not a fan of that as a default. I'd rather default to cheaper disk space than more limited and expensive memory.
That's a very bad default.
>The new filesystem defaults can also be overridden in /etc/fstab, so systems that already define a separate /tmp partition will be unaffected.
Seems like an easy change to revert from the release notes.
As far as the reasoning behind it, it is a performance optimization since most temporary files are small and short lived. That makes them an ideal candidate for being stored in memory and then paged out to disk when they are no longer being actively utilized to free up memory for other purposes.
Until about a year ago, whenever I would try to download moderately large files (>4GB) my whole system would grind to a halt and stop responding.
It took me MONTHS to figure out what's the problem.
Turns out that a lot of applications use /tmp for storing files while they're downloading. And a lot of these applications don't cleanup on fail, some don't even move files after success, but extract and copy extracted files to destination, leaving even more stuff in temp.
Yeah, this is not a problem if you have 4X more ram than the size of files you download. Surely, this is a case for most people. Right?
If it's easily reproducible, I guess checking `top` while downloading a large file might have given a clue, since you could have seen that you're running out of memory?
[1] https://manpages.debian.org/testing/systemd/systemd.net-nami...
There's two tutorials/walkthroughs linked from there:
- how to build an existing Debian package: https://wiki.debian.org/BuildingTutorial
- how to package new software for Debian: https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/debmake-doc/ch05.en.html
I use Debian Stable on almost all the systems I use (one is stuck on 10/Buster due to MoinMoin). I installed Trixie in a container last week, using an LXC container downloaded from linuxcontainers.org [1].
Three things I noted on the basic install :
1) Ping didn't work due to changed security settings (iputils-ping) [2]
2) OpenSSH server was installed as systemd socket activated and so ignored /etc/ssh/sshd_config*. Maybe this is something specific to the container downloaded.
3) Systemd-resolved uses LLMNR as an name lookup alternative to DNS and pinging a firewalled host failed because the lookup seemed to be LLMNR accessing TCP port 5355. I disabled LLMNR.
Generally, Debian version updates have been succesful with me for a few years now, but I always have a backup, and always read the release notes.
[1] https://linuxcontainers.org
[2] https://www.debian.org/releases/trixie/release-notes/issues....
(I love Debian) It's going to take a bit for me to get used to having a current version of Python on the system by default.
sway and/or libinput now supports mouse-pad gestures so you can configure tjree-finger swiping between workspaces.
Very much appreciated.
In this new stable release, an update to Dovecot will break your configuration: https://willem.com/blog/2025-06-04_breaking-changes/
Now I need to figure out what happens when my testing suddenly is stable, and how to get on the next testing, I guess.
It's been what I expect from Debian: boring and functional. I've never run into an issue where the system wouldn't boot after an update (I usually update once every 2-4 weeks when on testing), and for the most part everything has worked without the need to fix broken packages or utter magic apt incantations.
Debian has always been very impressive to me. They're certainly not perfect, but what they can do based on volunteers, donations, and sponsors, is amazing.
I’ve been on sid for the last 10 months for my laptop (old T450s) and my secondary desktop, and it is really fun.
There are annoyances but they are not related to Debian itself.
FIRST
I decided it is time to switch to Wayland. Now my favorite run-or-raise app (Kupfer) cannot do run-or-raise. But there is a really nice extension to do run-or-raise on GNOME without the aggressive disruption of the Activities overview: Switcher. The other thing that is difficult on Wayland is text expansion. I have not found a solution for that part.
SECOND
The annoying to infuriating things that GNOME likes doing sometimes. But that is a constant. Nothing new.
Congrats and thanks to all the Debian people!
Yes, every data center in the world still runs on Intel Xeon because AMD can't get a big enough allocation at TSMC to meet demand.
The reports of Intel's death are greatly exaggerated.
For half a year now, I've run trixie on RISC-V (VisionFive 2 board), with ZFS root, without issue.
It's got the latest Angband (4.2.5). Homestyle SDL ui.
The usual: light, stable and functional. I run older version as my DNS servers and homelad stuff, opensource 3D printer, etc. Debian just works with no dramas. I run it in text mode only so boot takes what ~3-5 seconds.
When you su to root, the whole path or a different path is loaded. One has to type su and then su - in order to reach all the regular bin and abin directories. It is flagged, but Debian team won't fix. As a user it is not great.
Secondly, Debian now ships with Raspberrypifirmware package, even on intel installs. When you enable backports to install a newer kernel, this fails due to this package bring there . It ks a major hassle to fix, and without Chatgpt/competitors it is very easy to get lost troubleshooting this.
Only thing that was broken was the desktop background, everything else worked great w/o any issue and even solved some trouble I had to fix by hand for Bookworm (WiFi sleep mode), so I upgraded all my physical and virtual machines.
Had no issues at all, only thing annoying compared to running stable was the amount of updated packages, which again run trough w/o any hitch and I have to take full responsibility. ;-)
Highly recommended if you want a Linux distribution for a server or a desktop which simply works and keeps working.