Debian 13 arrives with major updates for Linux users – what's new in 'Trixie'

Summary

Debian / Elyse Betters Picaro / ZDNET ZDNET's key takeaways The latest Debian Linux comes with multiple improvements.Debian will no longer support old 32-bit x86 architectures.Debian supports essentially all Linux desktop interfaces.Debian Linux is everywhere. Debian may only be ranked fifth on the DistroWatch list of Linux distributions, but other Linux distros, such as Mint, MX Linux, and Ubuntu, are built on its strong foundation. The latest release, Debian 13, codenamed Trixie, released on Aug. 9. What's new with Trixie?This latest version features numerous updates and introduces some notable changes. Perhaps the one alteration that will hit old-time Linux users the hardest is that Debian will no longer support the 32-bit x86 architecture. Also: 10 Linux features you should be using to get the best performance and functionalityThis change comes as no surprise. After all, Linus Torvalds bid adieu to the i386 CPU way back in 2012, saying, "I'm not sentimental. Good riddance," got rid of floppy drives in 2019, and dropped 32-bit support from the Linux kernel with the end of 486 and early Pentium processors earlier in 2025. If you want to run Linux on ancient hardware, Debian won't help you going forward. Instead, you'll need to, as Torvalds has said, "run museum kernels." Also: 8 ways I quickly leveled up my Linux skills - and you can tooDebian developers have also fixed a bug dating back to 2003 in this release. When an operating system is 31 years old -- more than old enough to drink, vote, and get a driver's license -- these kinds of things can happen. However, Trixie will officially support the newish RISC-V (riscv64) architecture. The new version also ships with Linux kernel 6.12. This shift is a major update from Debian 12, Bookworm's December 2022 vintage 6.1.27 Linux kernel. This release also features updated programming languages, including Python 3.13, PHP 8.4, PostgreSQL 17, GCC 14.2, and glibc 2.41. However, the Debian infrastructure still has trouble w...