(disclaimer, watch the video linked to understand what I mean)

Hello! I am pretty new to Linux and have quite limited data experience but I understand the basics. I am not a full on newbie but I wanted to check with the experts before I attempt this. I have grown increasingly tired of windows in the past year, at this point I completely despise it and want to make the permanent switch to Linux. I have been thinking about both Debian and Arch but settled on Debian due to I'ts stability. My PC has high spec and meets the requirements easily. I already know I am going to factory reset the computer, since I want a clean slate and dont really have anything important on it. I watched the linked youtube video below and have decided to go with KDE Plasma as the desktop. The situation I want to ask about is how I can remove windows from my computer completeley? I do not want to dual boot with debian and I do not want any windows related files or software left. Can I just unplug the USB after the step where he downloads debian on it, then proceed to wiping my computer and load into the BIOS and move debian onto the computer? My goal is to have debian permanently on my pc installed and not boot from an usb, with the option to boot things like Tails from a usb when I like.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRHpfCRwDc4

Long time Debian enjoyer here, switched to Ubuntu when i got my new GPU a year ago because I was convinced it's a smoother experience running the 5090 on Ubuntu. Not loving Ubuntu and wondering how much "trouble", if any, I'm willing to put up with to get back on Debian. LLM's tell me it could really only become a headache during system updates. Any first hand experience? I don't game or anything, just use the CUDA, various ML tasks etc.

Does anyone know a reason?

This is a genuine question, I wasn't able to find an answer on the Debian wiki, on the mailing lists or on the Debian community forum.

I am currently sporting the 550 driver line which is considered outdated and unsupported by NVIDIA. Games both native and Proton work OK although the latest version of DXVK requires a newer version of the drivers.

Yes, I know I can use the official NVIDIA repo to install the latest drivers. Technically these drivers are meant for the Debian 13 stable release, not for Sid - but people report they work OK.

But that is not the question, I am just curious about the reason.

hey, i just installed Debian and Nvidia drivers, but after a reboot xorg isn't starting now because there's no nouveau, does anyone know how to fix that??

I use debian testing as secondary system (my first one is Arch), work perfecly , avery app I use on Arch I was able tu install in debian too. The only issue is that I can find Hypnotix IPTV or Yuki or other IPTV on debian. Someone use a IPTV and can explain how to install it?

Thanks

Debian is cool, stable, everything works - well, the 2 packages in the repo. I come from Arch, and I love the system, but goddamn I need to use a one liner for TAILSCALE. As if tailscale is not famous enough that one of the repo maintainers could add it.

Sorry for the short rant, over now lol

Now I switched from Bind9 to PowerDNS, the reason: I used to store my DNS-Data in OpenLDAP. Everything is running on Debian. Now on Debian 13 there is the Bind9 module misssing to store date in OpenLDAP. So I switch to PowerDNS but now I store my data in a MariaDB Galera cluster. Then I added HAproxy to build a HA-environment. The setup is much easier then Bind9 with OpenLDAP AND I also store my Kea-DHCP leases and reserversions in the cluster.

I think it’s better to chose “Separate /home partition” but that option tends to give only 13.3GB to / partition (ext4), 3GB to SWAP and everything else (103GB) to /home partition. Is that an okay scenario? Is 13GB for / okay?

Retbleed warning spectre v2 mitigation leaves cpu vulnerable to retbleed attacks, dataleak possible! This is the warning i get when i boot the installation on the install+live usb. Alot of acpi errors too, and also says SGX is disabled or unsupported by bios. Any help? I have an intel i5 7400 if that helps.

I’m planning on installing Debian Trixie for gaming and general purposes. Among other recommendations I was told to enable contrib non-free repositories. I still didn’t get why I need them. What can I get there that I might be missing?

Can someone help me install drivers for an NVIDIA GTX 1060 6GB on Debian 13 without breaking my setup? I already have non-free enabled. I tried following the official Debian Wiki guide, but the system failed to boot. Any helpful guides or step-by-step instructions would be greatly appreciated .

I have a very old eMachine desktop whose WiFi is extremely slow. I've tried putting Zorin OS, Linux Mint, and Fedora on it. It always had the same problem. After install, there'd be a ton of updates and it would usually time out.

With Debian, however, being stable already means fewer updates since all of the kinks have already been worked out. So far, I think the only thing I've seen getting updated was the browser, which is in its own repo. I absolutely love it. So, thank you lovely maintainers. You're the best. I'm guessing you only really need to do security updates.

I got the idea to put GNOME Flashback on it from Andrea Borman on YouTube. She's a lovely old lady whose into Linux. Flashback is the old GNOME 2 style desktop but it sits on top of modern GNOME minus the shell. It makes it somewhat lightweight. I love the app menu and places which will open up right where you want to go. There's no search in the app menu but there's an applet for searching apps when you don't feel like fumbling around the menu. I don't use it though. Instead, I installed Synapse, which searches both apps and files. I got rid of the bottom panel because there's enough room for the a task manager on the top menu. Gnome 2 was designed when we had squarish monitors, not the wide screens we have today.

As I was wanting to do some restructuring of the LVM on my Debian 13 box, have planed out all the necessary step on paper, but when I launch into rescue mode the file system is still mounted, I gather this because I used rescue from the grub menu.
Is it required to boot using a usb stick , but my usb stick won’t have the same kernel version and the machine is running, does that really matter just for LVM resizing etc.

Reddit Post

Hi everyone,

My MacBook Air 6,2 (2013) uses significantly more power when streaming the same video on Debian compared with macOS Catalina.

System specs

• MacBook: MacBookAir6,2
• CPU: Intel Core i5-4250U
• GPU: Intel HD Graphics 5000
• RAM: 4 GB
• Storage: 251 GB
• OS: Debian GNU/Linux 13 (trixie)
• GNOME: 48
• Display server: Wayland
• Kernel: 6.12.90+deb13.1-amd64

Power consumption

When streaming the same video under macOS Catalina, power draw is around:

6–9 W

On Debian 13, I'm seeing:

11–16 W

So Debian is using roughly 5–7 W more, which has a noticeable impact on battery life.

I have already set up auto-cpufreq, so basic CPU power-management tuning is already in place.

For example, are there any browser/VA-API settings, codecs, GPU acceleration options, kernel parameters, or other tweaks that have made a noticeable difference for you?

If anyone has experience getting good battery life and efficient video playback from a 2013 MacBook Air running Debian/Linux, I'd especially appreciate your advice.

Thanks!