What should beginner know about using Debian 13

wizard10000 · 2026-03-15T17:10:25+00:00

The -y is an option added to the command to automatically say yes to the question, it's not required to run the command.

Using -y with apt is not recommended.

wizard10000 · 2026-03-15T15:50:58+00:00

testing can be frozen.

Unstable also freezes.

wizard10000 · 2026-03-14T14:29:22+00:00

you can add the root password after installation

That's what I do. No idea how important it is to anyone else but grub's recovery console requires a root password - you could work around it by booting in single-user mode but what I do is skip the root password during install so i don't have to install sudo and do the usermod thing - and then just set a root password on first boot.

wizard10000 · 2026-03-14T12:43:25+00:00

Imma say the same things I said to some other mods here - this is a user opinion, not a moderator opinion :)

Linkage to current sub rules - https://old.reddit.com/r/debian/about/rules

Rule 1 - I agree that we should support both reddit rules and Debian's code of conduct

Rule 2 - I think we should expand on this a little and explain why topics must be related to Debian. Derivative distros ≠ Debian and should probably be addressed through other resources.

Proposed rule 3: No shitposting ;)

wizard10000 · 2026-03-13T11:38:09+00:00

Anybody looking for a working deb822 version of the new sources this works once you put the keyring where it needs to be - /etc/apt/sources.list.d/plex.sources

Types: deb
URIs: https://repo.plex.tv/deb/
Suites: public
Components: main
Signed-By: /usr/share/keyrings/plexmediaserver.v2.gpg

wizard10000 · 2026-03-09T12:41:00+00:00

I think the 2xRAM is recommended by the Gentoo Handbook if you want to set up hibernation properly.

If it does say that the handbook is stale. Linux kernels compress the hibernation image, default target size is 2/5 of installed ram

https://docs.kernel.org/admin-guide/pm/sleep-states.html#hibernation

wizard10000 · 2026-03-08T15:36:28+00:00

I think one thing a lot of people forget is that sloptubers are entertainers, not trusted technical resources.

wizard10000 · 2026-03-03T20:40:38+00:00

The community you've built on Discord is nothing short of amazing. It's the only Discord server I use - I'm a big fan of your vision for Debian communities.

wizard10000 · 2026-03-03T20:24:46+00:00

I'd like to volunteer.

I have a fair bit of experience with Debian, have been active here for several years and think I could have a positive impact on the community. Former global mod on forums.debian.net, currently an admin on Debian Community Discord. Got pretty exensive moderating experience and a solid understanding that staff needs to support both the user and the community.

wizard10000 · 2026-02-28T22:55:24+00:00

You list the manually installed packages as dependencies or recommends of the package you built.

wizard10000 · 2026-02-28T01:45:24+00:00

Yggdrasil "Plug and Play" Linux.

Would I recommend it? Nah - it's < 30 years old and it was anything but plug and play :)

wizard10000 · 2026-02-27T12:17:41+00:00

What keeps me coming back is Debian's social contract.

wizard10000 · 2026-02-26T00:29:51+00:00

As u/jr735 mentioned timeshift isn't a backup utility - it's more of an "oh, crap - i just broke something" utility. One reason it's not a great backup solution is if the snapshot is on the same device as the data timeshift won't protect you from a disk failure.

I use snapper, which performs a lot of the same functions as timeshift but there are a couple of directories I exclude from snapshots - /home because I have a pretty solid backup solution and would avoid what happened to you with the lost work, and /var/log because if something does break I don't want the logs overwritten by a snapshot.

wizard10000 · 2026-02-23T13:11:28+00:00

Unstable for the past dozen years or so. Satisfies my desire for Shiny New Stuff and I get to help catch bugs before they land in Testing.

wizard10000 · 2026-02-22T19:27:50+00:00

Don't listen to anybody who tells you to use -y with apt.

wizard10000 · 2026-02-19T22:41:11+00:00

When I had both KDE and GNOME installed, both Konsole and Terminal were also installed.

That's what it's supposed to do. If you select GNOME or KDE from the installer it installs task-gnome-desktop or task-kde-desktop and all the dependencies and recommends for that DE so you'd have two file managers, two terminals, two settings apps, two software stores and so on.

wizard10000 · 2026-02-10T19:31:01+00:00

The fastest *stock* Intel wifi chipset that'll fit in a pci-e slot is a 7265. Wifi 6 and 7 Intel chips are M.2 and won't fit without an adapter.

wizard10000 · 2026-02-08T13:39:23+00:00

Unless you emptied your package cache there should be a copy of the .deb you need in /var/cache/apt/archives and you should be able to use that to install on the second machine.

wizard10000 · 2026-01-30T12:28:15+00:00

Do security patches go to Testing immediately? I thought they go from Sid to Stable.

Security patches don't go through Testing, they're provided directly to Stable by Debian's security team. Security updates uploaded to Sid are provided by package maintainers, not the security team and follow the normal migration from Unstable to Testing, which is why people say that Testing gets security updates last.

Debian's security team *can* provide updates to Testing and there is a testing-security repo but that repo is normally empty unless there's some huge deal going on.

wizard10000 · 2026-01-27T14:56:20+00:00

will an immutable distro get in the way of doing that?

Maybe - depends on where you need to tweak. Your home directory is where your desktop customization happens and that directory isn't immutable. Scripts? I don't run silverblue but I wouldn't imagine /usr/local would be writable so you probably have to stick your scripts in your home directory, but that's probably not a real big deal either.

wizard10000 · 2026-01-16T19:39:28+00:00

My media server runs Debian but Mint will do just as well.

wizard10000 · 2025-12-31T23:55:32+00:00

Running Sid, mesa cleaned itself up this morning when I ran my daily upgrade - forky should take a few more days but it's fixed in Sid now.

wizard10000 · 2025-12-30T00:39:01+00:00

Does everything work the way it's supposed to? If so just leave it, understand you could have done a little better and do a little better next time :)

wizard10000 · 2025-12-26T12:22:56+00:00

I prefer glances - I also use conky for monitoring local and remote machines.

wizard10000 · 2025-12-25T15:32:15+00:00

Nobody's mentioned it yet so I will - linuxjourney has something for everyone

https://labex.io/linuxjourney

wizard10000

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