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Debian 13 trixie released with Linux kernel 6.12

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Last updated: 11 Aug 2025 at 10:56 am UTC

Debian 13 trixie has been released following years of working, bringing lots of new software updates for the popular Linux distribution. Your choice of desktop environment with GNOME 48, KDE Plasma 6.3, LXDE 13, LXQt 2.1.0, and Xfce 4.20. Each with their own set of major changes and new features since the last releases available in Debian.

Quite an important release since it moves to use a 64-bit time_t ABI, supporting dates beyond 2038. It also gained HTTP Boot support, hardening against ROP and COP/JOP attacks on amd64 and arm64, and they're making real progress towards reproducible builds of packages. Additionally, this release adds official support for Debian on riscv64 allowing you to run it on RISC-V hardware.

Debian 13 is supported fully until August 9th, 2028 - after that it moves to a separate LTS team until June 30th, 2030.

See more in the release announcement and release notes.

Are you a Debian user? What's your favourite new feature in Debian 13? Let us know in the comments.

It also powers many other Linux distributions like Ubuntu and so also Linux Mint, Pop!_OS, Zorin and others.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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15 comments Subscribe

hardpenguin a day ago
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Happy Debian 13 everyone!
logge a day ago
Great news! And yes, at home I am using Debian for the server that "just needs to run" and that is exposed to the net. On other servers and clients I am mostly on Arch. At work I use Debian on the raspis (many of them) mostly as Raspbian OS. I just love their stability and usability.
tfk a day ago
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Yup. Nice Debian, good Debian.
Eike a day ago
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I'm using Debian since 1998. I used to run testing, unstable, mixes, ... Nowadays, with kids and all, I even wait for the first point release, so, 13.1 will be it for me. (And I even had bad luck with 12.1 two years ago, running into a bug needing sorting out some packages manually. I think it was https://bugs-devel.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1034993 .)
ShabbyX 24 hours ago
What's your favourite new feature in Debian 13?

New nvidia drivers (crying)
Eike 23 hours ago
  • Supporter Plus
New nvidia drivers (crying)

At your own risk, but I often had good experiences even with the experimental version. It seems the driver is so disconnected from the rest of the system that it usually doesn't break.

https://packages.debian.org/de/experimental/nvidia-driver

Did I mention "At your own risk"? ;)
dpanter 22 hours ago
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I'm happy they managed to get the release out before Debians birthday on saturday.

My fellow Debian gamers may want to consider Siduction for a fresh sid-based distro. emoji
Anza 22 hours ago
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I actually switched my mothers computer to Debian. Ubuntu started advertising their paid subscription and whole thing got too confusing for somebody who just wants to use the computer for simple stuff.

Also I have Debian in a laptop. Too bad I forgot the encryption password, so might as well upgrade to 13 if I can figure out use case for the laptop.
Shmerl 20 hours ago
Congrats to the Debian team and all Debian users! Waiting for Debian Sid and testing repos to unfreeze now

FYI, you can get OpenRGB now: https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/openrgb


Last edited by Shmerl on 11 Aug 2025 at 4:34 pm UTC
Philadelphus 18 hours ago
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Nice! I'll have to see about updating soon. I guess it's been about ten years now, since I switched from Linux Mint Debian Edition in 2015 if I remember correctly. emoji

What's your favourite new feature in Debian 13?
Not having to worry about Y2K38, I guess…? emoji I dunno, I read the release notes and nothing particularly stood out as important to me personally. RISC-V support is neat, I suppose. Could be interesting to see where that goes.
Cloversheen 14 hours ago
@dpanther what is the difference with siduction compared to just running sid?

If only Debian stable came with optional backports of the Plasma desktop, then I would marry it and love it forever. emoji


Last edited by Cloversheen on 11 Aug 2025 at 10:29 pm UTC
g000h 13 hours ago
I've been using Debian 13 Trixie (i.e. testing) for the past year, before the recent shift to the stable branch. You get lots of rolling-distribution 'need to have the latest software' afficionados moaning that Debian isn't up-to-date enough for them. Rather it is more the case that they don't comprehend that they can run Debian Testing or Debian Unstable, and get more up-to-date stuff (than the stable branch) without having to wait for it.

On that note, I generally find that for Steam gaming, the stable branch of Debian (kernel, graphics driver) works fine and there is no need for more recent software to enjoy modern games.
autopr3z 4 hours ago
The flickering in flatpak and Steam is finally gone... HDR is working... the dream of KDE/Wayland/Nvidia may finally be coming true :,-)
llorton 3 hours ago
I installed Trixie when it was in beta and had no issue with it.
I recently bought an AMD 9060XT GPU and I am please to report that it worked out of the box. There was no need to set up anything, I could directly start to play game on Steam or GoG.
dpanter 2 hours ago
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@Cloversheen

Siduction is Debian sid + extra goodness. Siduction has in repo stuff like mesa-git, day1 kernel builds with more desktop oriented options than stock sid, even rc kernels. When sid was slacking a while back, the crew rolled their own firmware packages from git. At various points in time we've had nice things in repos like Nvidia beta drivers and corectrl - note that times change and not many in the team use Nvidia these days (pro hint: use cuda repo) and of course corectrl is more or less dead now. Also lots of nice to have stuff for tinkerers, like the awesome chroot-helper tool included in the live iso and a comprehensive manual.

Siduction is imho the ultimate Debian distro (for gamers especially) and has a friendly community.

Note: you are expected to know your way around Linux and Debian, this is not a distro for rookies.
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