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What to expect from Debian/Trixie

michael-prokop.at

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Re: What to expect from Debian/Trixie

#161

Post by archargelod »

josephscott wrote: post #5

"The temporary-files directory /tmp is now stored in a tmpfs" - https://www.debian.org/releases/trixie/release-notes/issues.... I am not a fan of that as a default. I'd rather default to cheaper disk space than more limited and expensive memory.

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?

Re: What to expect from Debian/Trixie

#162

Post by CopyOnWrite »

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.

Re: What to expect from Debian/Trixie

#163

Post by CopyOnWrite »

bondant wrote: post #160

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.

Running Trixie/Gnome on a machine with 4GB (3.6GB usable) w/o any trouble.

Gnome runs better than ever, the problem is in my experience usually the web browser when it comes to RAM usage. Install ZRAM and the machine should be perfectly usable, if your usage patterns are similar to mine.

(Only thing which annoys me is that I cannot find an excuse to buy a better computer, because everything simply works on the machine...)

Re: What to expect from Debian/Trixie

#164

Post by kassner »

ducktective wrote: post #15

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?

If you just want to put a binary in a .deb, for internal usage, check out https://vincent.bernat.ch/en/blog/2019-pragmatic-debian-pack.... I went through it in the last year, worked fine to build for bookworm.

Re: What to expect from Debian/Trixie

#165

Post by traceroute66 »

I'm very fond of Debian, fantastic OS.

But what I really wish is they would some have more automation options suitable for the modern cloud world, e.g. something similar to Butane/Ignition as used on CoreOS.

I know there's cloud-init but that's hacky, verbose and opinionated compared to something like Butane/Ignition.

I also know there's ansible etc. in Debian distro but that's kind of yesterday's solution.

Re: What to expect from Debian/Trixie

#166

Post by dijit »

pavon wrote: post #135
dijit wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

fighting your distro in practice is a total nightmare.

I've not had any problems with swapping out systemd-* with other packages, including -coredump, -cron, -oomd, -resolved or -timesyncd. Even journald was fairly painless to swap out. Unlike systemd itself, the distros' approach them not so much as a core part of the userland, but as lightweight basic implementations that meet many user's needs, but which are in no way a replacement for more fully-functional implementa…

it’s not possible to swap out journald.

Re: What to expect from Debian/Trixie

#167

Post by traceroute66 »

tok1 wrote: post #81
willemlaurentz wrote: post #37

Warning for those running Debian and Dovecot under stable. In this new stable release, an update to Dovecot will break your configuration: https://willem.com/blog/2025-06-04_breaking-changes/

Not only that: Dovecot 2.4 will also remove the functionalities of dsync, replicator and director [1]. This is frustrating and a big loss as these enabled e.g. very simple and reliable two-node (active-active) redundant setups, which will not be possible anymore with 2.4. I use it for years to achieve HA for personal mail servers and will now have to look for alternatives -- until then will stick with Debian Bookworm…

> I use it for years to achieve HA for personal mail servers and will now have to look for alternatives

Yeah, Dovecot seem to be going hardline commercial. Basically the open-source version will be maintained as a single server solution. Looks like if you want supported HA etc. you'll have to pay the big bucks.

There is a video up on YouTube[1] where their Sales Director is speaking at a conference and he said (rough transcript):

"there will be an open source version, but that open source version will be maintained for single server use only. we are actually taking out anything any actually kinda' involves multiple servers, dsync replication and err some other stuff. so dovecot will be a fully-featured single node server"

Have you looked at Stalwart[2] as an alternative ?

[1] https://youtu.be/s-JYrjCKshA?t=912 [2] https://stalw.art/

Re: What to expect from Debian/Trixie

#168

Post by dsr_ »

A few months prior to every Stable release, people start raving about how awesome running Testing is, how it has up-to-date packages and fixes their kernel issues and solves world hunger and capitalism.

This is because Testing has done a soft freeze, then a hard freeze, then is prepped to become the new Stable. During that process, nothing new can be added to Testing.

Then, one day, Stable is released and the floodgates on Testing re-open. The people who specified "Trixie" are fine: they are now running Stable. The people who specified "testing" in their apt sources, or are installing Testing based on the wonderful reports of just a month ago, are in for a terrible experience. And... anyone who installed Stable as "stable" instead of "bookworm" is now getting upgraded shortly after release day, instead of at their convenience.

This happens every cycle.

Never recommend that anyone new to Debian should install Testing, even if it's about to become Stable. Unless you are working on throwaway systems, always specify a codename for release, not "stable" or "testing" or "unstable".

Re: What to expect from Debian/Trixie

#169

Post by homebrewer »

spookie wrote: post #149
homebrewer wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oracle Linux (gasp). They employ some of the main developers of btrfs, "their" distribution is just a RHEL rebuild with some patches (including btrfs), and it is very quick at delivering updates (they're usually several hours behind RHEL, while the next best — AlmaLinux — takes a day or two. Other rebuilds, very much including the somehow heavily hyped Rocky, are much slower). I don't think there are many alternative…

Well openSUSE Leap 16.0 will be launched in October 1st, it will be supported for some time. At least 7 years.

I don't think they promise more than three years? (Not a criticism in the slightest, I don't demand anything from unpaid volunteers.)

"RHEL" is supported for 10, and if Oracle screws us over (I can believe in that possibility), ELevate lets you migrate sideways to any supported alternative.

It really depends on the use case.

Re: What to expect from Debian/Trixie

#170

Post by bondant »

CopyOnWrite wrote: post #163
bondant wrote: post #160

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.

Running Trixie/Gnome on a machine with 4GB (3.6GB usable) w/o any trouble. Gnome runs better than ever, the problem is in my experience usually the web browser when it comes to RAM usage. Install ZRAM and the machine should be perfectly usable, if your usage patterns are similar to mine. (Only thing which annoys me is that I cannot find an excuse to buy a better computer, because everything simply works on the machin…

Thanks for the feedback!
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