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Debian 12 “Bookworm”

594 points by Chatting 2 years ago | 230 comments

troad 2 years ago
Congratulations to the Debian team!
An important change appears to be the inclusion of non-free firmware by default in the official install image for the first time, as a result of this vote: https://www.debian.org/vote/2022/vote_003
Intriguing. I feel a little torn on this. One the one hand, I appreciate being able to install Debian from an official image onto a bothersome device. On the other, I can't help but feel we're losing something when even a purist distribution like Debian is forced to concede in the fight against proprietary blobs.
Edit: dropped the word 'kernel' from 'proprietary blobs', as rightly picked up by kind commenters below.
- bayindirh 2 years ago
  I was involved in the discussion, and I'm also torn on that issue, but at least you can disable installation of non-free firmware and install Debian without any non-free software.
  On the other hand, firmware is a convoluted issue. It was always present, but became increasingly visible over the years. While I'm a strong Free Software supporter, firmware is one of the hardest parts to convert, because of the IP it entails and trade secrets it embodies.
  - jacquesm 2 years ago
    That and the simple fact that without it the hardware you've invested in won't work. So this is very much an individual choice, if you don't have such hardware you are fine but shouldn't be voting on whether or not someone who does have hardware that won't work without proprietary blobs has to go out to buy new gear. There are all kinds of considerations that go in to this decision (for instance: environmental impact) and I'm all for compromise when it helps out others.
    At the same time, you have a good point, these decisions are difficult and need to be very carefully weighted. Debian and RedHat are the two distributions that everybody else always ends up following so a major departure from established policy there has potentially huge impact downstream.
    - enriquto 2 years ago
      > the simple fact that without it the hardware you've invested in won't work
      How is that different from the "if you want to run linux don't buy a winmodem" that we said convincingly twenty years ago ? Would you have approved that linux 2.0 added binary blobs to the kernel in order to correctly work with the hardware that you had invested in (some random winmodem) ?
  - arp242 2 years ago
    As I understand it "firmware" is essentially just the same as an EEPROM, except that using volatile memory is cheaper and easier to upgrade. No one seems to have great issues with EEPROMs (FSF doesn't anyway), but uploading that same code to the device when it starts is a huge problem? I never understood this, and especially given the huge practical trade-offs the entire thing seems fighting windmills.
    The Linux-libre people even removed the warning that the CPU is vulnerable to spectre/meltdown if you don't update the microcode. But ... your CPU already comes with that microcode out of the factory, just a different version of it. How is running an older known to be buggy microcode better?
    - jasomill 2 years ago
      Debian distributes firmware stored in volatile RAM because it is either required to use the hardware, or, as is the case for CPU microcode updates, highly recommended for most users.
      As far as I know, Debian does not distribute proprietary EEPROM firmware updates at all, as these are generally not required to use the hardware (and, depending on the device and update in question, may or may not be recommended for most users).
      In other words, the difference is practical, not ideological.
  - blihp 2 years ago
    While I'm glad to see proprietary firmware both included and segregated in its own repo, I'm wondering why RISC-V wasn't added as a supported architecture in Debian 12? It seems like that supporting at least an open ISA would move closer to the possibility of what Debian wants to see happen... so why isn't it as a distro helping to make it happen?
    - seba_dos1 2 years ago
      It's simple - because the port is not ready yet.
      The plan is to have it ready for Debian 13: https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2023/06/msg00...
    - pabs3 2 years ago
      At the end of the day, this was because the hardware ecosystem (and the hardware support in Linux/bootloaders/etc) isn't really "ready" yet, and also there was slow and unclear communications between the porting team, the core Debian teams and one of the hosting providers. Eventually the teams provisionally approved the port, but after that the needed actions weren't done in time for the archive-wide rebuild that happens during the process of an unofficial port becoming official. I'm not on the porting team, but am on the Debian sysadmin team, and tried to speed up the process and make it more transparent. Debian contributors are mostly volunteers, so things take time.
    - teddyh 2 years ago
      https://wiki.debian.org/RISC-V
    - 2 years ago
  - mikae1 2 years ago
    > you can disable installation of non-free firmware and install Debian without any non-free software.
    Including but making it optional was an excellent decision. Those who need will get what they want, those who don't will have the same result as with Bullseye.
- yrro 2 years ago
  Debian was never a purist distribution. If it was then there wouldn't have been a non-free section in the archive in the first place.
  The sad truth is that the Linux distributions recommended by the FSF have approximately zero users.
  - Kwpolska 2 years ago
    Is it sad? Actually working Linux on real hardware is far more important than purity IMO.
    - m463 2 years ago
      Ubuntu is based on debian and is pretty pragmatic in that respect.
      it makes it easy to get working
      ...and it also carefully attempts to lock you in using packages that can't¹ be disabled.
      just saying it is a slippery slope.
      [1] well with effort you can
      https://www.baeldung.com/linux/snap-remove-disable
      https://gist.github.com/jfeilbach/f4d0b19df82e04bea8f10cdd59...
    - Arnavion 2 years ago
      It's sad for the people who don't share YO.
      Eg I intentionally got an old ath9k PCI-E wifi card for my Debian 11 router because it works without proprietary firmware, unlike newer ath10k etc cards.
    - nvy 2 years ago
      >Actually working Linux on real hardware is far more important than purity IMO.
      I agree, but I also think this depends heavily on who you ask. Stallman for example would rather have poorer functionality than compromise his personal (extremist) ethical principles.
      There are a lot of folks who use laptops without wifi because the blobs are non free, so they're using ancient ThinkPads plugged into Ethernet.
      Much depends on your personal computing needs.
    - yrro 2 years ago
      Sad in that I'd love to purge all non-free software from my life, but that has proven to be impossible and increasingly more so as the years go by.
  - mistrial9 2 years ago
    at those great (FSF) heights, the light is bright but the air is thin!
- labawi 2 years ago
  While I don't like proprietary firmware, I'm not sure if the line is drawn at a useful place.
  If you have firmware/software/whatever in a device, which is updateable (as opposed to mask-rom or hard logic), I'd much rather have it transparently managed by an OS I can control, than some EEPROM with often proprietary, inscrutable, I-ask-you-nicely-please-update-your-firmware update mechanism.
  IMO, the difference is:
  - with OS provided firmware (and preferably no writable storage), I can be sure my device is running the same SW as the rest of the world
  - with dozens of EEPROMs in my device, I can never be sure what is running on it.
  Firmware that is legally not redistributable is a non-trivial, though perhaps less bothersome issue. Firmware that requires manufaturer's signature is bothersome but I would still prefer it over inscrutable hidden firmware.
- rollcat 2 years ago
  > On the other, I can't help but feel we're losing something when even a purist distribution like Debian is forced to concede in the fight against proprietary firmware blobs.
  The software needs hardware to run, and the whole point of the software is to make the hardware useful. If you can't use the hardware, what's the point of the software?
  In my book, freedom is a function of usefulness. No amount of redistributable source code has any value to me if I can't run it.
  Enabling the use of hardware I already own is not a compromise, it's a solution. It's what operating systems exist for. Debian is fulfilling its primary function. I'm glad that this necessity was finally recognised.
  - still_grokking 2 years ago
    I disagree. I'm very disappointed that this "necessity" came into existence in the first place.
    By being forced to install non-free BLOBs to be able to use "our" devices we actually admit that we're not the ones who actually control "our" computers. That's admitting full defeat! You're not the owner of "your" devices.
    Given that computers are now kind of "brain extensions" this means you're not in control of a substantial part of yourself.
    This has quite some implications! And I'm not even thinking about such things like future computer devices connected directly to human brains…
    - arp242 2 years ago
      You don't control the hardware in the first place. Can you modify the microchips on your hardware? Can you modify the printed circuits? Can you modify a ROM in hardware? In all those cases the answer is "not really", short of some spectacular reverse engineering effort and specialized hardware and skills that even most technical users don't have (you can modify anything with enough effort). All this focus on firmware seems rather misplaced.
    - rollcat 2 years ago
      Then don't buy hardware that requires non-free firmware.
- GrumpySloth 2 years ago
  I've never had a computer which would work with the official ideologically-pure installer. Always had to use the non-free one. I'm glad this vote turned out the way it did.
  - cesarb 2 years ago
    > I've never had a computer which would work with the official ideologically-pure installer.
    I had more than once, back when I first installed Debian in the late 1900s and early 2000s, and I believe my experience wasn't unique.
    Back then, not requiring any loadable firmware was common; the hardware either didn't require firmware, or came with the full firmware in a ROM chip in the device itself. And that explains the issue: Debian is an old distribution, coming from these times when not having non-free firmware (or even any firmware at all) in the distribution was viable, and often fully usable.
    - NikkiA 2 years ago
      Same, and I used to keep a little cache of 'known working without firmware issues' wlan cards (pcmcia), I probably still have some somewhere; though I don't think I have any pcmcia capable laptops anymore
- progval 2 years ago
  For devices which have firmware, does it matter whether the firmware is loaded by the OS rather than hardcoded inside the device? The former at least gives an opportunity to fix bugs.
  And if I'm not mistaken, this isn't about kernel blobs (which run on the CPU as kernel code), only code that gets loaded on devices (including CPU microcode).
  - roenxi 2 years ago
    There is a little ritual we do here from time to time where someone writes a comment that starts something like "Well, I didn't expect Stallman would be right about [issue now being reported on] but he predicted this years ago".
    If it can go wrong it will, and if software isn't free then its owners will do things that the users really do not like. In this case, if they can fix bugs they can reduce functionality post-hoc. That is consequential. It is better to have freedom or certainty as to what a device does.
    - dezgeg 2 years ago
      How can you ever really be sure that there is no way to change the code running on the hardware, either unintentionally via some exploit, or intentionally via a deliberate backdoor or a debugging interface enabled in production?
      As a practical example, I have never heard anyone considering the freedomness of firmware in eMMC flash memory chips. But the talk "eMMC hacking, or: how I fixed long-dead Galaxy S3 phones" from CCC reveals that actually, Samsung eMMC chips have an undocumented debug interface to read/write the RAM of the firmware running on the ARM core inside the eMMC chip.
  - zajio1am 2 years ago
    There is a difference from legal point. If the firmware is hardcoded in device, you do not need to accept any license contract with IP holder. You do not need to copy it, and your right to run it is implied from ownership of the device. If the firmware is independent part bundled with OS, then anyone who wants to run it or even just distribute the OS must accept the license.
    - iudqnolq 2 years ago
      Are you guessing what sounds logical to you or do you actually know the answer here?
      The legal system sometimes has definitions of copying that aren't that straightforward. I've seen in a copyright context judges talk about a computer loading software into RAM being copying.
      Intel microcode comes with a license: https://bugs.gentoo.org/664134
- vbezhenar 2 years ago
  Firmware is not kernel blob. It's executed on separate device and has nothing to do with Linux. It's about open hardware, not open software. I don't think that it's worth to pursue this direction for Debian.
- hahhahanananana 2 years ago
  > when even a purist distribution like Debian is forced to concede in the fight against proprietary blobs.
  As far as I'm aware, nothing has recently changed in this regard. It's more of a reflection on the mentality of young members, those who tend to treat software as if it's in a vacuum, separate from all the social and moral concerns of the meatspace.
lockhouse 2 years ago
If any of the Debian team is here, congratulations and thank you for putting together such a solid, consistently high quality Linux distro.
krylon 2 years ago
One thing I really appreciate about Debian is that when a new stable release comes around, I can just upgrade and be reasonably sure nothing bad will happen.
It's not exciting, but a fair amount of the time, this is what people expect from their operating system. Support my hardware, give me the software I need, and stay out of my way otherwise. And that is what Debian does very well.
- arcanemachiner 2 years ago
  I heard when Bullseye came out that I should wait a bit as the initial bugs were found. I'm wondering if that was true then or now.
  - krylon 2 years ago
    It depends. I use Debian on a few machines at home, if something were to break, it wouldn't be a huge deal.
    If I had dozens of desktops and/or servers to take care, I would probably take the time and upgrade a few non-critical machines to see how it goes, provided I have the resources for that.
    If in doubt, there's nothing wrong with waiting a month or so to see if others run into trouble. It's what I did when I worked as a Windows admin, and it saved me from major headaches more than once. (Admittedly, updates causing trouble is more common on Windows than on Linux in general and Debian specifically.)
- mikae1 2 years ago
  > One thing I really appreciate about Debian is that when a new stable release comes around, I can just upgrade and be reasonably sure nothing bad will happen.
  That's good feedback and I've heard it from other people. Personally I've never been able to dist-upgrade Rapbian or Ubuntu without breaking the OS.
  - krylon 2 years ago
    It's been a long time since I have used Ubuntu. In the ~2009-2013 era, my desktop ran Ubuntu, and I repeatedly upgraded it from 2008.04 -> 2010.04 -> 2012.04. There were a few issues, but nothing that made the system unusable. But that was over ten years ago, I have no idea how Ubuntu has evolved since.
    Raspbian has been problematic for me. I tried upgrading from Buster to Bullseye, and it went so badly I ended up reinstalling from scratch. (To be fair, the docs were clear that was a likely outcome.)
    OTOH, my ThinkPad x220 has been running Debian since 2016, I installed Jessie back then and upgraded as new stable versions were released. The upgrade to bookworm has finished by now, and it's been entirely unexciting. :-)
- jacooper 2 years ago
  Its baffling that RHEL-based distros still don't support in place upgrades.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 2 years ago
    Strange; I would have assumed that `dnf system-upgrade` would have made it from Fedora to RHEL by now.
    Actually searching turns up https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterp... , which... appears to use a totally different tool? I don't really know what's going on there, but it does looks like they have some sort of support for in-place upgrades now.
    - jacooper 2 years ago
      Its was treated as "avoid of possible", but it loojs like that changed:
      > An in-place upgrade is the recommended and supported way to upgrade your system to the next major version of RHEL.
      As for RHEL-clones, your only choice is to use ELEvate(1), by almalinux, which supports other distros too.
      But overall the process isn't as simple as Debian/Ubuntu, and on clones other than alma, you need to resort to third party tools, with some clones like Rocky saying that in-place upgrades should be avoided.
      https://almalinux.org/elevate/
28304283409234 2 years ago
Never ceases to amaze me. There is all kinds of things wrong with Debian I am sure. But at the end of the day, what that community does is mindblowingly impressive.
Much gratitude from a Slink-and-a-half user, back in the day.
- whatwhaaaaat 2 years ago
  All kinds of things wrong? It’s the base for half the Linux distros. What could you possibly mean?
  - still_grokking 2 years ago
    Half the Linux distris? I've once counted on Distrowatch. When you go by number of distris there it's more like 80% are Debian based.
    If you go also by how much those distris are used it's even like 9x% of the stuff running out there is Debian based.
    There are almost no independent distris. You have Arch, you have SUSE, you have RedHat and a few clones, you have Gentoo. But more or less everything else is Debian based.
    - mongol 2 years ago
      Do I get it right that you mean > 90 percent of distro use is Debian-based? Because that can hardly be the case
    - gwhl 2 years ago
      And Slackware!
  - marpstar 2 years ago
    I think they were referring to the fact that everything has something "wrong" with it, but that those things don't invalidate the value of the greater whole.
    - pietro72ohboy 2 years ago
      Seems to be an extremely charitable interpretation of the parent comment. I also read it as -- "Despite the plethora of issues with Debian, it manages to surprise". Like the second-level commenter, I'm also curious to hear more about these "issues".
denysonique 2 years ago
I see this old-package argument over and over again and I think it is inaccurate, considering that an estimated 95% of Ubuntu users use the LTS version, the below table demonstrates that Debian 12 (stable) packages are newer than those of of Ubuntu 22.04. Both Debian 12 and Ubuntu 22.04 are LTS versions with 5 years of support.
```
    Ubuntu 22.04
        Kernel 5.19 (new installs only, existing installs 5.15)
        systemd 249
        KDE Plasma 5.24
        Gnome 42


    Debian 12
        Kernel 6.1
        systemd 252
        KDE Plasma 5.27
        Gnome 43
```
- kijin 2 years ago
  Debian Stable and Ubuntu LTS tend to alternate with respect to who has newer packages, because Debian ships on odd years and Ubuntu LTS on even years.
  For most purposes, though, I find that I increasingly don't care about 1 or 2 years of difference in the base OS. Most of the toolchain is stable and well established. There are only a small handful of things I want to pin to a specific version (like node.js or Python), but these can usually be installed side by side with default packages. If not, I can always install it in a container. :)
- _joel 2 years ago
  Whilst I'm no longer an Ubuntu user due to their snap debacle, I don't think this is all that fair, they released over a year apart and LTS is LTS for a reason :)
- dima55 2 years ago
  This is true by definition. Ubuntu releases are forked from Debian at the time of their release, so Ubuntu 22.04 is where Debian was in April 2022.
- forty 2 years ago
  I have always used stable on my servers and testing on my laptop but I recently switched to stable on the laptop with kernel from backports (I have fairly recent hardware). I have never been happier :) (to be fair, staging was fairly stable too, but still broke small stuff occasionally, and I feel I'm too old to deal with this ^^)
- suprjami 2 years ago
  I realised this myself recently. I have used Ubuntu LTS for a long time, I don't use the in-between releases. They have about the same release cadence as Debian (2ish years) so I'm usually not losing anything much by moving to Debian.
  Ubuntu probably do the HWE kernel better than stable backports kernel, the HWE kernel has a release schedule.
  There's been more community support for Ubuntu in the form of PPAs but Flatpak has mostly solved that problem for the things I care about.
  As such, I've already switched all my laptops to Debian, and will switch my desktop and work computer when I can be bothered.
  - mappu 2 years ago
    > Ubuntu probably do the HWE kernel better than stable backports kernel, the HWE kernel has a release schedule.
    For a while the Debian kernel packages had -ckt suffix (Canonical Kernel Team), although it doesn't seem to be the case any more.
guerby 2 years ago
And first beta of proxmox 8.0 based on debian 12:
https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Roadmap#Proxmox_VE_8.0_beta1
oftenwrong 2 years ago
The amount of effort put into Debian is truly impressive. I have used it for decades and it has been remarkably stable. Use the stable release with unattended-upgrades and it's almost zero-maintenance.
Also, an estimated 96.3% of packages are built reproducibly for amd64.
https://tests.reproducible-builds.org/debian/bookworm/index_...
lairv 2 years ago
Had to reinstall ubuntu 3 times already since the beginning of this year and thus switched to debian, hopefully I'll be able to settle in for a while
- botanical 2 years ago
  For me Ubuntu has been the most stable distro. I probably won't move, since I want an up-to-date system that stays out of my way
  - Spooky23 2 years ago
    Lol. Enjoy relearning the hot new way to configure DNS every release.
    - suprjami 2 years ago
      Netplan is garbage. I remove all that and use NetworkManager. It's good and just works.
    - jacooper 2 years ago
      Through gnome network settings, the same way it has always been(I think GP meant Desktop).
- profwalkstr 2 years ago
  What happened?
  - lairv 2 years ago
    - Tried 23.04 and found too many bugs (I guess this doesn't count)
    - Some day 22.04 randomly started without GUI and I couldn't get it back either with ubuntu-desktop and startx
    - I installed a Python package without a virtual environment and it somehow interfered with system Python, bootloader broke
    It's possible that those errors were recoverable but I'm not a linux expert and I couldn't repair it after ~2h of stackoverflow
    - jacquesm 2 years ago
      Since I disabled auto-update most of such issues have gone away and what works stays working. I suspect the second was due to an auto-update if you had that enabled and don't get me started on python versioning and the way that can impact a system.
    - zekrioca 2 years ago
      Never go through odd versions (19.xy, 21.xy, 23.xy,…).
    - hsjqllzlfkf 2 years ago
      > installed a Python package without a virtual environment and it somehow interfered with system Python, bootloader broke
      Shouldn't the OS python be protected by root?
    - colanderman 2 years ago
      > I installed a Python package without a virtual environment
      Coincidentally, doing this is now disabled in Debian Bookworm.
unpopularopp 2 years ago
A bit offtopic... are there any distros besides PoPOS that comes with the proprietary Nvidia drivers preinstalled? I tried to use (live image) Debian on an RTX 4070 PC and nothing worked just black screen after GRUB. PoPOS works out of the box but honestly I'd prefer something more simple as Debian.
- yrro 2 years ago
  How does PoPOS accomplish this without violating the license of the kernel and the NVIDIA drivers?
  - dezgeg 2 years ago
    The sad truth is the license of non-GPL Linux kernel modules is very rarely cared about nor enforced. There are ton of embedded devices that don't bother with the NVIDIA shim scheme but ship with straight proprietary .ko:s on the device.
  - chungy 2 years ago
    Since it is a distribution by a hardware vendor that ships NVIDIA GPUs, I'll assume that they got a licensed from NVIDIA to ship their operating system with the proprietary drivers.
    - yrro 2 years ago
      Possibly, but what about the license of Linux? Surely nvidia.ko (being a derived work of both the GPL-licensed Linux kernel and the proprietary NVIDIA kernel object files) is non-distributable? Otherwise why does every other distribution faff around with akmods/DKMS, etc?
- m463 2 years ago
  A lot of times you can fix boot issues like this by adding "nomodeset" to the boot command line
  I always had trouble booting proxmox the first time, because even though it is a server os with no graphics, the installer is graphical. I would get black screen at boot.
  I would just interrupt hte boot use 'e' to edit the command line, add 'nomodeset' and it would boot.
- noisy_boy 2 years ago
  I have been thinking of switching to Debian from Pop!_OS and have a Thinkpad X1 Extreme Gen 2 with Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 - if graphics drivers are an issue, then my wish is dead in water.
  - paines 2 years ago
    Why preinstalled? They are not even preinstalled on PoPOS. If you choose nvidia via powermanagement and they aren't installed, only then they will be downloaded and installed..... If you think of the hazzle because of offloading (intel by default and nvidia by demand) just purge bumblebee(at least that was the issue before boowkworm) and you have mostly the same experience.
  - winrid 2 years ago
    I would play with the livecd for a while first. Even straight ubuntu gave me problems on my gen1 (wifi, sleep, graphics...). I switched it back to win10 and have a Carbon for Linux now.
    - noisy_boy 2 years ago
      Makes sense. I went with the Extreme model because I needed to drive one 4K + two HD monitors from it and was under the impression that Intel XE graphics are not sufficient for it - happy to be corrected on this front (Nvidia has been nothing but trouble on Linux).
fb03 2 years ago
Testing this out in a VM. I want to move away from Ubuntu (honestly, from SNAPs)
- troad 2 years ago
  I'm also considering this, but I'm a little afraid of being stuck in the slow lane when it comes to software updates. I'm aware of Backports, but I'm led to believe it has a somewhat limited selection.
  Perhaps this is a good opportunity to try a combination of Debian, for general system stability, and Nix, for specific tools where I need newer releases? Has anyone tried this combination before? If so, how did you find it?
  - cardanome 2 years ago
    Why not use Linux Mint?
    It is Ubuntu-based but without the bad parts like snap. So you get to keep access to all the Ubuntu packages but also your sanity.
    - leesalminen 2 years ago
      I’ve been maintaining a machine deployed to my mother-in-law’s house for ~4 years with Mint.
      She went from needing tech support every time I was at her house to never overnight.
      I highly recommend Mint for this scenario.
  - Tuna-Fish 2 years ago
    If you want to run a desktop system, I'd recommend Pop! OS. Right now, they seem to be the distro that cares the most about desktop experience.
  - blihp 2 years ago
    You can run a reasonably current Debian install by just switching to the testing repos after you install a stable release. This mostly works pretty well but occasionally[1] you'll have an issue. While you could get absolutely up to the minute software (from a Debian standpoint) using the sid (i.e. unstable) repos, I wouldn't recommend it as breakage is quite common there as they are working through various packing issues and that repo lives up to its name.
    [1] every couple of years in my experience... typically as they're getting closer to a new release and package breaking changes are needed/slip through.
  - aragilar 2 years ago
    Is this a desktop/laptop? You can always run unstable if you think stable is too old (I run unstable on my dev systems, and stable on servers/anything I want to setup and let run). FYI, if you use a Ubuntu LTS release, then unless you always run the latest LTS, the majority of the packages (being in universe) will actually be older than Debian stable (and will always be older then Debian unstable).
    - pja 2 years ago
      I’d suggest testing over unstable as very occasionally broken packages get pushed to unstable. Testing has a week or two delay, which usually catches such problems.
  - vorpalhex 2 years ago
    I run a mix of Debian and Arch/Manjaro.
    Debian is fine right up until you have to build something and find that the dep you need is too old so you have to build that from source, and that dep has a dep that's too old so you have to... basically build hell.
    Arch seems to not have these problems but is a hair buggier on occasion.
    - malkia 2 years ago
      backports?
  - 2 years ago
  - chungy 2 years ago
    Combining Debian with Nix or Guix is a fairly excellent way to go. Stable OS base, selective bleeding-edge apps (or hell, multiple runtime versions that would otherwise conflict). Win-win.
  - realitythreek 2 years ago
    What packages are you concerned about? Do you use flatpaks?
- secondcoming 2 years ago
  I tried the same move but I couldn’t find any reason to permanently move to Debian. The biggest problem is that some of the package versions are quite old. Ubuntu is far better when it comes to software updates. The snap stuff is crap though.
  - denysonique 2 years ago
    I see this old-package argument over and over again and I think it is inaccurate, considering that an estimated 95% of Ubuntu users use the LTS version, the below table demonstrates that Debian 12 (stable) packages are newer than those of of Ubuntu 22.04. Both Debian 12 and Ubuntu 22.04 are LTS versions with 5 years of support.
```
    Ubuntu 22.04
        Kernel 5.19 (new installs only, existing installs 5.15)
        systemd 249
        KDE Plasma 5.24
        Gnome 42


    Debian 12
        Kernel 6.1
        systemd 252
        KDE Plasma 5.27
        Gnome 43
```
  - 2 years ago
  - samtheprogram 2 years ago
    Just use Debian testing. I've essentially been running Bookworm for about year now (that's actually the version name used in my apt conf). Ubuntu is pretty close to Debian testing version-wise.
  - Kwpolska 2 years ago
    Were you trying out Sid, or stable/testing? Stable tends to contain ancient software, but sid should be recent enough.
    - pessimizer 2 years ago
      I suspect that a lot of people who are saying that Debian is behind don't understand Debian.
      for them: Whatever you download is going to be "Debian Stable." Debian Stable is as fresh and up-to-date as it's ever going to be at this moment, but it will not change significantly in the future, because its goal is stability. You throw it on something you want to run for years and not crash.
      If you don't mind your system crashing every once an a while because you like new stuff, you use "Debian Testing." There is no place to download this directly from Debian, although some third-parties (like Canonical with Ubuntu) distribute customized versions of it. The way you get a non-customized version is by installing Debian Stable, changing sources.list to point at Testing (which you can do as "testing" or by its nickname), then dist-upgrading. Debian Testing is being tested to be the next Stable.
      "Debian Unstable" afaict is where individual pieces of software are being tested to go into Testing. Nobody should be running it unless they are contributing to Debian, although there are apt-get masters who know exactly what they're doing who will pull bleeding edge packages from unstable individually.
      About the nicknames: Stable, Testing, and Unstable aren't releases, they're an indication of the current status of a release. Each release has its own goofy name. "Bookworm" has just moved from Testing to Stable. "Bullseye," which until just now was Stable, has now become "Oldstable."
      Also important is the "[yourrelease]-backports" repo, which Stable users can add to take newer packages from Testing that are 99% certain not to mess with the stability of Stable. Stable + backports is a compromise between Stable and Testing for people who want new stuff that doesn't break things.
      I'm sure most people know all of that, but 1) when it comes to things like this people are often afraid to ask because they're afraid they'll look stupid, and 2) the Debian website is very utilitarian and not marketing oriented, so there's no clear entry point for people who don't already know what they're looking for.
drumhead 2 years ago
I've was an inveterate distro hopper, but finally settled on Debian because of its stability. Its not the most user friendly but when you get it up and running "it just works". Debian really is fantastic achievement in software.
- DrJohanson 2 years ago
  [dead]
hosteur 2 years ago
Fantastic! Can’t wait to upgrade my servers and desktop. Debian is an absolute marvel.
encom 2 years ago
But it's /not/ released though. Their own news section mentions that cd images are still being built, which seems like something that should have happened already. There's nothing but 11.7 available for download.
- OfSanguineFire 2 years ago
  The bookworm apt repository is in the final state, so Bookworm is released for those with existing Debian installations who can just do a search/replace of "bullseye" to "bookworm" in their apt.sources file, and run apt dist-upgrade.
  - encom 2 years ago
    Sure, but the announcement mentions and links to Bookworm media downloads which are old 11.7 media. It's confusing, annoying and honestly kind of amateurish. I like Debian, but this is a screw-up. 20:00 in mainland Europe and it's still not out. My work laptop is in a sad state of semi-brokenness (self-inflicted), and I had been looking forward to giving it a fresh start over the weekend. Now I'll have to wait another week.
ThinkBeat 2 years ago
It is amazing how this group of volunteers create the foundation for many more commercial Linux ventures and use by billion-dollar companies.
A lot of end users of different distros do not even know that Debian is the foundation. I will as go as far as to say Debian had solved a lot of the hard issues and then other sprinkle it. (Probably not a popular view)
Anyways thanks to all the Debian team members. Your work ought to be better known.
nntwozz 2 years ago
The gift that keeps on giving, runs perfect on my headless 10-year old gaming-PC turned server in the basement.
- themoonisachees 2 years ago
  I highly recommend installing proxmox and running debian VMs. It's really easy and the returns are great.
  - cf100clunk 2 years ago
    In the parent comment to yours, ''runs perfect'' means runs perfect. No need for an insertion of an additional layer of stuff to just get back to ''runs perfect''.
haunter 2 years ago
Congrats! Been using it on a 2017 Thinkpad X270 with MATE. Everything works perfectly. Honestly might not be the "flashiest" distro but does the job perfectly well. And personally I always recommend it to people new to Linux.
swayvil 2 years ago
Heck yes. Best distro of the best OS on the planet. I look forward to upgrading.
ctippett 2 years ago
Just upgraded my Debian WSL distro and the experience couldn't have been more anti-climatic – I had to double-check lsb_release to make sure I'd actually upgraded, it was that seamless.
jfhr 2 years ago
> The new systemd-resolved package will not be installed automatically on upgrades as it has been split into a separate package. If using the systemd-resolved system service, please install the new package manually after the upgrade, and note that until it has been installed, DNS resolution may no longer work as the service will not be present on the system.
will installing over the internet work without DNS resolution?
- pas 2 years ago
  yes, as the script adds/replaces the sources.list lines, then apt i downloads the packages, only then it starts the installation of them
  - e12e 2 years ago
    But you can't (easily) get the deb package for systemd-resolved after the upgrade has (possibly) broken DNS?
    - pas 2 years ago
      yeah, that's not ideal, or possibly very bad UX, depending on how the update happens. (if the running stub resolver of resolved is not shut down, or at least an effort is made to fix resolve.conf during removal of the old package, then it might cover most of the users. as far as I understand the 11 -> 12 upgrade works without manual intervention, and this is an edge case, as systemd-resolved is not enabled by default on Debian 11.)
janzer 2 years ago
For those wanting to try this out note that the download links in this post are still giving the previous Bullseye (11.7) release at the moment.
jlpcsl 2 years ago
Wow, and it even comes with the very latest KDE Plasma 5.27.5. Quite rare for a stable Debian and makes it more up to date than PopOS. Awesome.
- noisy_boy 2 years ago
  Having used Ubuntu and then Pop!_OS, I have been thinking of going back to the roots and just sticking with Debian. But I also like to get the new stuff (not bleeding edge because I don't want things breaking all the time) and I have heard that stable is, well, old stuff (hence stable). Which makes me wonder how unstable is "unstable" in reality? I have a very strong preference for sticking to .deb packages due to their wide availability so not really looking at cool distros like Arch.
  - pessimizer 2 years ago
    "Unstable" is actually unstable. What you want is "Testing," or if you're a little more conservative, you want Stable + backports: https://backports.debian.org/
    > You are running Debian stable, because you prefer the Debian stable tree. It runs great, there is just one problem: the software is a little bit outdated compared to other distributions. This is where backports come in.
    > Backports are packages taken from the next Debian release (called "testing"), adjusted and recompiled for usage on Debian stable. Because the package is also present in the next Debian release, you can easily upgrade your stable+backports system once the next Debian release comes out. (In a few cases, usually for security updates, backports are also created from the Debian unstable distribution.)
    - yyyk 2 years ago
      "Testing" has the problem where security patches also get delayed, so it ends up less secure than unstable or stable (!). Unstable isn't that bad IMHO, stable+backports also works.
thanatos519 2 years ago
I installed -rc4 on a new work laptop and it's super nice.
I have some gripes about the installer's partitioning tool but I suspect that it would have been fine if I was willing to reboot a couple more times. The laptop was locked down and I needed someone to type the BIOS password every time I wanted to boot off the USB stick.
I wanted 4k blocks all the way down but got stuck with 512b sectors.
guiambros 2 years ago
What a weird announcement. It says "To install Debian 12 bookworm ... you can choose from a variety of installation media types to Download..." and "If you simply want to try Debian 12 bookworm... you can use one of the available live images" as if it were all available, but in fact the Debian 12 images are not ready.
It feels like the blog post was written before images were created, but they forgot to add a comment saying when it'll be available for download and published anyway.
I understand by the comments that the apt repos were already updated, so you could install bullseye 11.7 and upgrade to 12 in the OS, but seems a convoluted way to do it. I guess I won't be trying out 12 this weekend.
- pja 2 years ago
  The CD images should be downloadable towards the end of the day if previous releases are anything to go by.
  This HN post jumped the gun a little with the Debian Wiki page: the final official release happens when https://debian.org/ gets updated to point to the new installation media.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 2 years ago
    We seem to have this conversation for every release; I wish Debian would make it very explicit when exactly a new release is "released", perhaps by sticking a banner at the top of the relevant pages that says something like "Debian 12 'Bookworm' has NOT been formally released but is expected to ship at $TIME/$DATE"
- 2 years ago
juujian 2 years ago
Didn't expect for shiny-server to be mentioned so prominently. I might actually give Debian a shot for my personal machine. The five years of updatea sounds great, the LTS option is the main reason why I went with Ubuntu so far.
tuomosipola 2 years ago
Finally. I migrated from the snap-cursed Ubuntu to Debian. I have been running Bookworm since last summer, and now I can stay in the stable distribution until I really need a new version of some software. Should not happen too soon.
butz 2 years ago
> The overall disk usage for "bookworm" is 365,016,420 kB (365 GB)
Time to flex new SSD drive and install ALL the packages. Of course, I'll do it a bit later, when downloads will get back to normal levels.
kmos17 2 years ago
Congrats and major props to the Debian community! Running Debian in vm’s is such a pleasure, very fast boot times, rock solid, easy install. In contrast recent ubuntu installs have only given me problems.
BaudouinVH 2 years ago
https://i.imgur.com/X9B5kFb.png <-- 365 Go (or should that read 365 Mo?)
ErneX 2 years ago
All my VMs are Debian. Thanks a lot to everyone involved.
nairboon 2 years ago
Nice! Debian just works, since decades. Except when you break it yourselves or update Nvidia drivers.
hsjqllzlfkf 2 years ago
I'm not a Linux expert, I just want an OS that works well, and that's debian for me. Now, how do I upgrade? Just apt upgrade? Does it matter that I have i3wm instead of whatever the default is?
- zargon 2 years ago
  The upgrade instructions are in the release notes. It looks long but is pretty straightforward if you haven't installed software from outside the debian ecosystem or created a frankenstein mix of packages from non-stable, non-backports distro versions.
  https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/i386/release-notes/ch...
  - hsjqllzlfkf 2 years ago
    I've installed vs code by downloading a .Deb, not an apt repo. Does that count as "software Frankenstein"? Follow up question, what's the worse that can happen? Vscode will break, or might the os get corrupted?
    - zargon 2 years ago
      The Frankenstein stuff usually involves mixing package repos. Software distributed as a stand-alone .deb is generally pretty self-contained. I personally usually leave them alone. If you're following along with the upgrade instructions, it will have you remove "obsolete" packages. "Obsolete" packages are those which are not referenced from any currently configured package repo. So manually installed packages will show up there. You can decide whether to keep them or not when reviewing that list.
- e12e 2 years ago
  > Now, how do I upgrade?
  Read the documentation, follow it.
  https://www.debian.org/releases/bookworm/amd64/release-notes...
  > Just apt upgrade?
  Mostly (please do RTFM):
```
  # update to latest point release of current system:
  sudo apt update
  sudo apt upgrade
  sudo apt full-upgrade
  sudo apt --purge autoremove

  # Update sources list
  sudo sed -i 's/bullseye/bookworm/g' /etc/apt/sources.list

  # upgrade to bookworm:
  sudo apt update
  sudo apt upgrade --without-new-pkgs
  sudo apt full-upgrade
  sudo apt --purge autoremove
```
  > Does it matter that I have i3wm instead of whatever the default is?
  Generally no, unless you've specified/use third party (or to a lesser extent "back port") software sources.
kayson 2 years ago
This is great news! I really like Debian as a docker host for self hosting since it doesn't have a lot of fluff. The old package versions do cause occasional problems though...
kramerger 2 years ago
Do you recommend switching from Ubuntu TLS to this one? Even to a heavy LXC and multipass user?
What had kept me on Ubuntu so far has been their out of box laptop support (I.e. WiFi drivers).
- marcrosoft 2 years ago
  I switched away from Ubuntu when they started putting advertisements in the motd and login screens.
  - kramerger 2 years ago
    That didn't bother me much as it is "advertisement" about things related to my system.
    What I did not like was Firefox taking 20s to start.
    - marcrosoft 2 years ago
      No I’m not talking about useful things like last login, average cpu, etc. they were advertising their cloud products.
    - themoonisachees 2 years ago
      Ubuntu has (used to at least) ads as apps in the app launcher, served by canonical and not at all related to the software you're using.
- 28304283409234 2 years ago
  Moved back to Debian because of lxc on Ubuntu requiring snaps. Turns out same problem on Debian. Snapd consumes 100% cpu. All. The. Time. Hoping Bookworm will solve it. Else I will be moving to Archlinux, which has lxc without snapd.
  - yrro 2 years ago
    I don't think lxc on Debian has ever needed snapd?
    https://packages.debian.org/bullseye/lxc
    - sm1ch 2 years ago
      lxd (not just lxc) is now also available as a deb package in debian:
      https://wiki.debian.org/LXD
      https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=768073
    - aragilar 2 years ago
      They're probably running lxd (which is only packaged for snap as far as I know), lxd is controlled by the "lxc" command (which isn't part of lxc...).
  - CoolCold 2 years ago
    Interesting - I don't observe such behavior with snap/lxd on my Ubuntu 20.04 and 22.04 boxes.
    Not a heavy user though - maximum 15-20 VEs (virtual enforcements) per server.
  - aragilar 2 years ago
    The "lxc" command runs lxd, you need to run "lxc-'command'" for actual lxc.
  - yokem55 2 years ago
    Bookworm now has lxd as natively packaged deb's in the main repository. It's very nice to setup.
igtztorrero 2 years ago
This is a Real Hacker News
Yeeei My favorite Fast Linux distro keep going !!!
Congratulations
bacchusracine 2 years ago
Does anyone know if Bookworm includes the Ubuntu-Mate version of the Mate desktop?
- ech0plex88 2 years ago
  Unfortunately no, the panel layouts aren't there by default. However, I've written some guides that can help close the appearance & capabilities gap.
  https://www.reddit.com/r/debian/comments/12gyjpg/debian_mate...
  https://www.reddit.com/r/debian/comments/13ueaub/debian_12_m...
  - bacchusracine 2 years ago
    Thank you for those links, since tomorrow I expect most of Reddit to go dark I took the liberty of archiving them so I can be sure I can go into more depth then.
    https://archive.is/iH9un
    https://archive.is/R0oBe
    https://archive.is/IKViC
    https://archive.is/1Pyzs
- bikenaga 2 years ago
  I'm on testing, which just released as Debian 12. mate-desktop is 1.26.0, but a few things (like mate-applets) are 1.26.1 and a few (like mate-panel) show up as 1.27.0. I don't use Ubuntu, so I don't know how these compare to whatever Ubuntu uses.
jedisct1 2 years ago
The dnscrypt-proxy package doesn't exist any more?
- pabs3 2 years ago
  There was a build failure in one of its dependencies and that bug didn't get fixed in time for it to re-enter bookworm before the freeze.
  https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/dnscrypt-proxy https://tracker.debian.org/news/1366204/dnscrypt-proxy-remov...https://bugs.debian.org/1017302
_joel 2 years ago
Have they released netinst images yet, can only see 11.7
xinul 2 years ago
[dead]
sylware 2 years ago
Finally with init system alternatives or do they still shove systemd down our throat (if so I'll stick to devuan gnu/linux instead)?
- yrro 2 years ago
  Finally? Debian has always shipped sysvinit and a bunch of other less-used init systems.
  - sylware 2 years ago
    I cannot find install images without systemd and with sysvinit.
    Do I miss something?
    - biorach 2 years ago
      That's because systemd is the default. You can choose sysvinit during installation
      https://wiki.debian.org/Init#Changing_the_init_system_-_at_i...
- shawnz 2 years ago
  You have it backwards: Devuan shoves sysvinit down your throat, whereas Debian is the one that supports alternatives
  - cf100clunk 2 years ago
    Devuan does exactly what it says on the tin. If that suits you, use it, otherwise you are free to not use it. It follows that since nobody forces anyone to use Devuan, nothing is being shoved down throats.
    - shawnz 2 years ago
      Yes, I was only copying the hyperbolic language of the parent commenter.
- vbezhenar 2 years ago
  That's one of the reasons I don't like Debian. All this old cruft for compatibility with stuff nobody should be using. Just embrace systemd, jesus.
  - sylware 2 years ago
    Actually, on my custom elf/linux distro, I have neither systemd nor sysvinit.
    But one is grotesquely and absurdely bigger and kludgier than the other one, so this is more about choosing the lesser evil...
- gsich 2 years ago
  systemd is the superior init system.
  - stracer 2 years ago
    How did you came to that conclusion? In my experience, sysvinit comes with less bloat, and hangs randomly much less than systemd. I've worked with both old debian (sysvinit) and current centos (systemd) systems, and if I had a problem with init, it was always with systemd. If something related to disks or user login sessions fails, with sysvinit most of the time things proceed promptly, while with systemd, you're in for a waitfest/eternal hang.
    Systemd seems to be propelled by distro packagers and developers, but for admins/users, it's not that great.
    - gsich 2 years ago
      Because it works and writing init files with startup dependencies is cumbersome.
  - sylware 2 years ago
    Its superiority in kludge and bloat is not a matter of discussion, we all know that.
    - ycombin23918 2 years ago
      [flagged]