ZDNET’s key takeaways
- Debian 13 (aka “Trixie”) is now available for general use.
- This latest release is an elegant, smooth, and stable OS.
- Trixie ships with plenty of applications, a new theme, and a modern kernel.
Debian is often called the “mother of all distributions” because so many distributions (such as Ubuntu) use it as a base. The reason for this is twofold: Debian is user-friendly and is absolutely rock-solid. It’s a rare occasion that I run into an operating system that is as reliable as Debian. Part of the reason for this is the time the developers take before releasing a new iteration. The time between releases allows them to do extensive testing, which ensures the release is sound.
As far as what’s new in the release, you can check out this detailed description from my brother in open-source, Steven Vaughan Nichols. For this piece, I want to give you my initial impression of the latest iteration of that Linux distribution that inspires so many others.
Debian 13.
It is, in a word… smooth.
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But what is smooth, with regard to an operating system?
It’s simple: as you use Debian 13, you feel calm, like you’re interacting with an old friend who somehow always looks and behaves much younger than they should. While you’re with them, you always seem at peace.
That’s the feeling I get with Debian 13.
It’s not a showstopper
I don’t mean this in a bad way. If you’ve used Debian for any length of time, you know full well that each release isn’t going to bring massive, profound, and eye-opening changes. With this distribution, it’s all about subtlety.
At least on the surface.
There are some significant changes that have been undertaken below the surface (such as the new /tmp behavior, apt 3.0, a new default theme, and all the upgrades to whatever desktop environment you choose), but from the naked eye, it looks very much like “second verse, same as the first.”
Again, that’s not a bad thing. In fact, it’s that familiarity that keeps many a user sticking with Debian. I can’t remember a time when I’ve installed a new Debian release and thought, “Wow! That’s changed a lot!” It’s always, “This looks surprisingly just like the last release.”
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Of course, that also depends on which desktop environment you select. I went with KDE Plasma for my testing, and it looks pretty much like every KDE Plasma-based distribution I’ve tried lately (only with a slightly different theme). Of course, I immediately switched themes (I’m not a fan of dark themes), which is as easy as going to System Settings > Colors & Themes and selecting Breeze.
Debian 13 ships with kernel 6.12 and KDE Plasma version 6.3.6. Those two together make a brilliant combination. Apps open quickly, animations and scrolling are buttery smooth, font rendering is stellar, updates/upgrades are fast, and everything behaves exactly as you’d expect from a high-performing desktop operating system.
And, of course, it’s KDE Plasma, so it looks great and is highly configurable. In just a few quick clicks, I changed the look and feel of the desktop (even adding widgets).
A reconfigured panel and a newly downloaded theme was all it took to achieve this look.
Jack Wallen/ZDNET
Preinstalled apps
With Debian 13, you get plenty of preinstalled applications. Of course, the list of applications you have will depend on the desktop environment you choose. For example, with KDE Plasma, you get those apps associated with Plasma (such as KMail, KOrganizer, Discover, Konqueror, etc.). If you go with the GNOME desktop, you’ll get the default GNOME apps. On top of that, you’ll find LibreOffice, GIMP, Firefox ESR, Dragon Player (videos), JuK (music), and plenty of utilities. In other words, Debian 13 is ready to go, right out of the gate.
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The one thing I did find missing was the universal package manager, Flatpak. I’m not really surprised by this, as Debian tends to keep things in-house. You can, of course, install Flatpak with the command (run as the admin user):
apt-get install flatpak
The reason you have to run the above command as the admin user (by issuing the command su – first) is that Debian doesn’t give standard users admin privileges. Why? Security. Of course, you can always add your standard users to sudoers with (after you su to the admin user first):
usermod -aG sudo username
After that, reboot and your user will have sudo privileges.
One app that really surprised me was Konqueror. Of course, this is a KDE Plasma thing and not a Debian thing, but KDE’s old faithful web browser (which also once served as a file manager) is actually quite good. It even ships with ad blocking (you have to enable it), the ability to block JavaScript, and even custom identification options. Would I use Konqueror as my default? No. Why? It lacks some privacy and security features that I feel are necessary. But I can’t deny how much the little browser that could has evolved.
Konqueror has come a long, long way.
Jack Wallen/ZDNET
The overall effect
New Debian releases never surprise me, but also always do. Let me clarify. Even though there’s very little obvious change between releases, I’m always surprised at how much the latest has improved. With Debian, it’s always a bunch of tiny steps forward that come together to make one giant leap ahead, and that’s exactly what Trixie has done. Debian 13 feels like a brand new acquaintance, while still feeling like an old friend.
It’s fast, smooth, clean, and (as always) rock solid.
If this sounds like an operating system you’d want, hop on over to the download page, grab an ISO, burn it to a USB drive, and install the latest release of Debian.
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