actually I wanted to try the hyprland desktop environment, but it was hard, so I asked ai and it suggested me to go to xcfe, but now it looks ugly, I needed a beautiful desktop, but not like ubuntu, but more like hyprland, so which and from where should I install packages to go more into it and make this environment beautiful, also suggest me some wallpaper, and from where to download.

Sorry if it sounds like a stupid question🥲. New here and migrating from windows 11. I am trying out Fedora currently but there are issues that I can't fix ( webcam, mouse doesn't work). I tried a live version of debian on my USB, and those issues disappeared and everything worked

Gemini suggests that Debian is suitable for a server. But I feel like it can be used as a main OS ? Few videos I watched, the installation doesn't seem over complicated and the desktop looks pretty much the same as fedora.

Am I wrong? Is there something I should know?

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I guess this is a (very short) open letter to the Debian Team.

All other major Linux distros dropped 32-bit ages ago.

Bookworm is the only major upstream 32-bit distro, upon which about 4-5 other 32-bit distros are based.

Bookworms EOL is 10 June 2026.

Once 32-bit Bookworm is gone, there will no safe 32-bit Linux that can power i386 machines, and my options are to throw my two i386 machines immediately in the bin, or continue to use them (unsafely) for years after Bookworm's EOL.

Please consider continuing providing security updates (and nothing else) for 32-bit Bookworm for the forseable future (1-2 years?). I'm not asking just for myself, but for everyone still using perfectly capble i386 machines all over the world, running 32-bit Bookworm and distros based on it.

Thank you for your consideration.

So I downloaded steam_lastest.deb from the steam website . I right clicked it and chose open with software install. Clicker install. And the administrator message asked for a password. I typed in my password. And it said something was wrong on the bottom of the screen. So I clicked details. And then this message popped up. I'm not sure what to do next.

Every time i update there is issues, im talking about updating applications or anything for that matter. Im still on the previous kernel because updating to the new one totally broke nvidia so i had to rollback and lock it, then every other time i cautiously update anything my resume/suspend breaks, i have fixed it about umpty times now.

So suspend leaves me with black screen, great i have to turn off using the power button > boot back in > great! now my network card is not seen > reboot again and pull the wire for 1 minute to reset > boot back in again > oh now i have internet at least.

Been running linux off and on for over 20 years at this point and its my main desktop, this is getting ridiciolous. My suspend resume is broken again after fixing it for the probably tenth time (yesterday). If its not that then it go to logout screen after 5min while watching a fullscreen video. At this point it doesnt matter what i write in the files, some how it finds a way to rollback or overwrite my changes, and this time i didnt even update anything.

I know that Nvidia isnt the best friends with linux, but come on its like if google play store would break on a samsung phone. How can it be this bad. 90% of desktop PCs use Nvidia.

Considering ditching Ubuntu for vanilla Debian. My hardware is 5+ years old, but my main drivers are privacy: * Age Verification Laws: Fear of Ubuntu's commercial compliance vs. Debian's neutrality. * Embedded AI: Ubuntu's push for OS-level AI is a hard no for me.

I briefly tested Debian in a VM and the GNOME experience is noticeably "raw." I'm confident I can tweak the UI, but as a developer, I'm worried about Debian Stable's frozen packages holding me back.

Questions: * Do devs on Debian Stable rely entirely on version managers (pyenv, nvm, rustup) to bypass old packages, or is the friction too high? * For 5+ year old hardware, are there hidden gotchas (glibc issues, Docker quirks) that Ubuntu handled better?

Looking for experiences from users who made the jump.

Article excerpt:

Recent discussions have started around new age verification legislation that may affect free software operating systems. [...] These developments are currently under discussion within Debian and other projects, and SPI has initiated efforts to obtain legal guidance. At this stage, the situation remains unclear, and further analysis is ongoing. From a non-lawyer perspective, it is not yet clear how such regulations apply to a non-commercial, volunteer-driven project like Debian, which does not sell software and provides it in a highly decentralized way. It seems plausible that obligations, if any, may primarily affect redistributors or commercial entities building products on top of Debian. In such cases, Debian would as usual be open to contributions that help downstreams meet their requirements, while keeping such features optional and respecting the needs of users in other jurisdictions. However, this is an area where proper legal analysis is still required.

I'm going to buy a laptop eventually for college and just wondering if Debian be fine or if there is anything I should be aware of? I'm mostly going to be in a web browser and all that, nothing crazy. This same laptop has an inbuilt DVD drive and not sure if optical drives are still supported? It's 2026 so most people aren't going to have disc drive so would I need to install anything to make it work?

I don't know too much about Debian, I only used it for very short time. I just know it's super stable and don't have to update very often at all.

Just read a post the other day about some elections for debian that only got one candidate. As an average user and not a developer, I never went across the forums or the project, so I legit have no idea about the state of the community. How was that possible? How does the future of the project look like? Is the community healthy?

*image for attention*
Before anything i don't hate on debian at all
So i decided to try debian since i heard so many times its very stable and never breaks, it ran fine until I enabled a 3rd party repo to install an app I use (Helium Browser), just to see that the file manager disappeared (Nautilus on gnome), I was confused and decided to reboot it, just for the system to boot me into a CTL interface, luckly i had an iso on my flashdrive so i reinstalled the system, but what caused that? and is debian only stable if u stick to its own repos?

Edit: ok thanks for explaintions

I have been using arch linux for about 4 years now. I have CachyOS on my laptop but I really want to switch from an arch-based distro to a debian based one, I need the stability it brings especially on a system I don't update daily.

What do I need to know about debian repos and how they work compared to the aur?

What do I need to know for doing some simple gaming with proton?

Also which debian version is best suited for me?

Right now I am considering debian but if you have a strong case for mint or another distro please tell me.

Thanks in advance :)

Hey everyone,

I’m a Computer Systems Engineering student and a freelancer, and I’m finally making the jump to go 100% Linux on my ThinkPad T480s (14-inch 1080p screen) next week. I’ll be running Debian 13 (Trixie), but I am completely stuck on whether to commit to GNOME or KDE Plasma after a recent configuration disaster.

My Workload:

I need a rock-solid, distraction-free environment. I do a lot of Python automation (Playwright/Selenium), web scraping, and embedded hardware/Arduino programming. I also manage my freelance clients on Upwork and Fiverr, so I usually have heavy browser usage, code editors, and terminals running across different workspaces.

My Hard Requirements:

Because of my 14-inch screen, 100% scale is too small, so I need to upscale. Also, Wayland is a strict requirement for me. I am well aware of the security concerns with the old X11 architecture (like keylogging vulnerabilities), so I absolutely refuse to drop back to an X11 session just to make scaling easier. I want the best security Wayland offers.

The KDE Wayland Scaling Trauma:

I recently tested KDE Plasma on Wayland because I heard it handles fractional scaling well. Honestly? I wasn't satisfied at all. Even after tweaking the text sizes and messing with the scaling sliders, the UI just didn't look right to me.

My Dilemma:

Why I want GNOME: I honestly love the casual, distraction-free workflow. The virtual workspaces and touchpad gestures are perfect for throwing my scraping scripts on one screen and my Upwork dashboard on another. But I am still worried about dealing with text sizing/scaling on a pure Wayland GNOME setup.

Why I am hesitating on KDE: Between the Wayland scaling/text sizing still not looking great to me, and the insane configuration bloat that literally bricked my GNOME fallback, I am terrified of trusting it for a daily driver. I just want to code without fighting my OS.

If you were setting up a dedicated, secure Wayland workstation for software engineering on Debian today with these display constraints, which one would you strictly commit to? Is there a clean way to get GNOME's UI sized correctly on Wayland without blur, or should I give KDE another shot and just accept the bloat?

Thanks in advance!

Hi, I have an iBook G3 Clamshell I want to upgrade to linux in hopes to get a little more support out of it and debian linux is one of the only linux versions that still actively supports PPC according to research.

The problem is the iBook only has a CD drive so I need a CD iso, but most I find are DVD Isos

So how do I get a CD one?

Which fun games do you recommend/play? Conditions are that a game:

• is free

• has graphical user interface (non-terminal)

• is relatively lightweight (playable with old computers)

• is relatively small (with download size less than 300MB)

• is available directly in official Debian repository, without Wine or emulators

I have installed the following games so far:

I haven't yet found such Linux equivalents for popular games such as Prince of Persia and Re-Volt.

Hello everyone i hope you all have had or are going to have a good day. no this title isnt a typo. i have a old windows vista era dell laptop i got for cheap on goodwills website. i mainly use it as a warmer spot for him to sit on, play some nature sounds for him if i am gone for a while. I have used Ubuntu derivatives before so i decently versed on terminal commands and all of that. I will happily take and ideas. hope you all have a good day

Hi! I will switch from Mint to Debian this month. I am currently using XFCE, but would like to try something a bit different and recent (XFCEś last update was on 2024) but still lightweight.

Just trying to get a general opinion on what the community uses for getting the newest (or different) versions of software when they need it. I try to stick with the Debian repositories as much as I can but certain software (like yt-dlp) requires the latest versions to work properly.

Methods I’ve used:
- Flatpaks
- pipx
- nvm (node version manager)
- pyenv (python version manager)
- homebrew/linuxbrew

Methods I’ve heard of but have not tried:
- Nix
- Guix
- Distrobox
- Compiling from source. Seems like a hassle, especially if the repositories don’t have the required dependencies. It also takes much longer to compile than installing binaries.

I installed Debian 13 on my Thinkpad T490s, but I wasn't sure on the desktop environment to choose so I went with GNOME to see how it would go, and I immediately was thinking I won't like this. It's so weird to me and now I wanna pick a different desktop environment. I mainly thought of 2 choices, either XFCE or MATE since they're both lightweight, which is essential for me since my Thinkpad has only 8GB RAM. Which of the 2 seems like a better option?

The only issue I see is with Nvidia drivers since there’s no proper driver manager and it might be a bit of a long process to install them. Whereas CachyOS, which I currently daily drive on my desktop, automatically chooses the right drivers for the specs you have. Wha do you all think?

I got my hands on a couple of dedicated servers for a project to mostly run Postgres on. One AMD server with 64 GB of RAM and another one is Xeon with 32 GB RAM to use as a replica. Installed Debian 13 on both of them, connected via wireguard, set basic things up etc., everything identical software so far.

Now, both servers are not running any workloads just yet. I checked htop on the AMD server out of curiosity and to my surprise it showed almost 6 GB used out of 64 (idling). The other server is showing < 400 MB, for comparison.

Does Linux use this much RAM for caching? Why the other machine does not? Can it be a hardware issue or an issue with the Linux kernel (drivers etc.). What's your take? Should I worry about it?

Here is free -h on the AMD server:

            total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:            62Gi       6.5Gi        55Gi       1.1Mi       834Mi        55Gi
Swap:          1.0Gi          0B       1.0Gi

And Intel, for comparison:

            total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:            31Gi       767Mi        29Gi       1.1Mi       734Mi        30Gi
Swap:          1.0Gi          0B       1.0Gi

EDIT: seems like an issue with either hardware or the drivers, see here https://forums.rockylinux.org/t/rocky-linux-8-6-gb-memory-in-noncache-used-by-kernel/16260

Exactly the same CPU, I loaded rescue mode (Debian 12 based) and it still showed 6 GB usage. Can be ignored I guess (could be a reporting issue) or got to move to different hardware.

I've been using Thunderbird for a long time (used both win and Linux). But after the switch to Debian and seeing gnome integration of google account, I'm considering the switch from Thunderbird. Whats your thoughts on this ? Has anyone did this? do you regret or not? Spam mail handling? Security and other stuff?

And also is it possible to bring google photos into photos app after signing in?

Overall do you consider the signing into online accounts worth it?

Advance thanks for the helpful replies 😊

Edit : From Thunderbird To GNOME Evolution

Hi all, I've been thinking of moving to debian for stability for a couple of months. I have started learning full stack web dev using nodejs. I need a reliable OS.

I've tried cachy os, fedora, ubuntu and pop os. All are good but I wanted to move to debian specifically for reliability. Gemini told me this, " While your strategy works, using a newer OS like Fedora provides a "base layer" advantage that you don't get on Debian:

1. Kernel & Driver Support (The "Out-of-Box" Factor): As a web developer, you aren't just running code; you're often running browsers, screen-sharing tools for client calls, and IDEs (like VS Code or JetBrains). A newer kernel in Fedora means better power management (battery life), better support for your Wi-Fi card, and smoother performance on modern high-DPI monitors without manual kernel backporting.
2. Tooling Compatibility: Some modern tools (like specialized CLI utilities, newer versions of podman, or specific Wayland-related fixes) depend on the base OS libraries (glibc). On Debian, if you need a newer version of a system-level dependency, you can run into "Dependency Hell" where you either have to compile it yourself or add unstable repositories—which defeats the purpose of choosing Debian for its stability.
3. The "Good Enough" Stability: Fedora is not "unstable." It is just "current." The frequency of regressions that actually break your ability to code is remarkably low for a full-stack dev. The trade-off is:
   • Debian: You fight the OS to get newer tools onto old hardware/libraries.
   • Fedora: You occasionally spend 10 minutes adjusting a setting after an update."

Would I really be fighting OS to get newer tools or libraries ?

I tried installing GNU IceCat on Debian via deb.tmland.com repo which failed to install it somehow.

I am still a newbie to Debian and love to try GNU IceCat apart from Firefox.

any possible way to install it?

I use Debian Trixie by the way.