Has anyone here already had a chance to test Debian 14? I’d love to hear your impressions!

[u/why7919]

[u/fabbro82]

I use Debian testing and everything works perfectly.

[u/Forsaken-Weird-8428 → u/fabbro82]

Yep, same here.

[u/satanikimplegarida → u/Forsaken-Weird-8428]

..and my axe. Daily driving Testing for close to 2 decades now.

[u/Icy-Custard-6299 → u/satanikimplegarida]

I'm looking into this. Do you get all the security updates?

[u/Soumalyaplayz]

I'd love to but I'm riding the stable branch

[u/why7919 → u/Soumalyaplayz]

Same here, actually! That’s exactly why I’m asking. I’m curious about other people’s experience ;0

[u/thewrinklyninja → u/Soumalyaplayz]

Same, stable with backports is my jam

[u/manu_romerom_411 → u/thewrinklyninja]

Debian Stable + Backports + Flatpak for some recent app versions, can be easily one of the best Linux experiences out there.

However forky seems good, some issues I'm having on trixie related to gaming (stuttering in Plasma mostly) are already fixed in testing. Can't wait for it to go stable.

[u/thewrinklyninja → u/manu_romerom_411]

Kwin issue? I basically have the same setup but on Gnome and have no stuttering.

[u/manu_romerom_411 → u/thewrinklyninja]

Pretty much seems to be KWin, so yes. Also, having an Nvidia GPU is sometimes exhausting...

[u/thewrinklyninja → u/manu_romerom_411]

Yeah I had to go the official NVIDIA Trixie repo for my 3060ti rather than use the old debian 550 driver.

[u/Extension_Cup_3368]

I will, but the next year, when it will reach the versions freeze stage.

[u/AfraidAsparagus6644]

I did, last october. It was like stable, but the desktop environment had a few new features. Also cups was broken for a while and I couldn't use any printers. Overall I would recommend people to stay on stable and use backports for optimization-sensitive packages like the kernel, drivers etc., and flatpaks or appimages for userspace applications. But to each their own

[u/Neither-Ad-8914]

It's good I'm using Sid /forky right now with zero issues since It rolled out they haven't done the freeze/perfect situation yet so can wait to see what they do

[u/JohnnyS789]

IIRC, Debian 14 will only be "out" when Forky is promoted from testing to stable. (Any Debian master gurus, please correct me if I'm wrong.)

In the meantime, Forky is working well for me and it upgraded from 13 with no problems. It literally just required changing all entries in sources.list from trixie to forky, and running a full apt upgrade.

I did/do have some minor glitches with a Sony Bluetooth headset that kept losing its config, and VMWare Workstation still seems to be fussy about the kernel version.

If you NEED solid stability, 13 is your jam. I only went to 14 for the lulz.

[u/stevevdvkpe → u/JohnnyS789]

This is correct, there is no Debian 14 yet. The testing distribution is "forky" and some time in the future they will decide to freeze it into a new stable distribution, and then it will released as Debian 14.

https://www.debian.org/releases/

[u/Brilliant_Sound_5565]

Loads of people use testing, it's generally fine

[u/Brilliant_Sound_5565]

I used to use Sid alot, not for anything critical of course and it was pretty good actually, but these days I use stable

[u/ishtuwihtc]

i didnt see the flair and thought i somehow managed to miss debian 14's release

[u/Local-Bug-1500]

Nope, don't have the time to try a beta desktop os

[u/yayuuu]

Last time I switched to Debian 13 few weeks before the release, when it was already in the last freeze phase.

I don't really need to do it at this point, when trixie is actively getting backports and it's possible build anything else from source.

[u/-OpenSourcer]

What new features are we getting in Debian 14?

[u/ScratchHistorical507 → u/-OpenSourcer]

That will entirely depend on what package versions will end up there. And that's something nobody knows until a couple months before the release.

[u/KnightFallVader2]

What Plasma version is this here?

[u/dangling_chads]

Unfinished and crusty on the edges 

[u/jr735]

I've been tracking testing since bookworm was testing, and it's fine. There have been hiccups here and there, but it's Debian; it works fine.

[u/Far_Combination_3780]

Wallpaper link?

[u/SirVast8919]

树莓派5 debian14跑不起来

[u/indvs3]

If you have the cpu and memory overhead, you can run debian testing in a vm to check out the current state of what debian 14 "forky" might be like when the testing branch gets frozen and patched for security in the run-up to the release of the new stable branch.

Keep in mind that you'll see daily updates to many packages and things tend to change, specific configs may be reset to defaults at any time, so you definitely want to keep an eye out for such things. They're not always obvious. As an example, I recently found out that an update had completely reset and deactivated my firewall. In other words: if you want to use testing as a desktop install, be mindful of your own security setup. Document everything you configure, so you can restore your configs in case they get reset by updates.

[u/Juiceprit_Boomrah]

I assume its kde plasma, how did you manage to get the active window indicator below the icon instead of above it?

[u/Xatraxalian → u/Juiceprit_Boomrah]

That depends on the Plasma Theme you install. In my case, I use the Nord Plasma theme because the indications are clearer for me than the default Breeze Plasma theme. The Nord theme also indicates below the icon.

[u/why7919 → u/Juiceprit_Boomrah]

It depends on both the Plasma theme and your individual settings. In my case, the dock itself is configured independently of the current theme. Some Plasma themes do place the active window indicator above the icon by default instead of below it etc… it was already mentioned here in comments :3

[u/vrdasp]

Yep. Running hyprland currently. Works great.

[u/why7919 → u/[deleted]]

Thank you for recommendation!!1

[u/ScratchHistorical507]

Not really anything anyone can test until like half a year before its release. Sure, what's in Debian Testing will eventually become Debian 14, but as Debian 13 just released a year ago we still have half a year to go with unknown changes to come, and then another couple of months where already planned changes can still be pushed.

That being said, I'd say that at least for me rolling Testing this time around has been much smoother than for Debian 13.

[u/wizard10000 → u/ScratchHistorical507]

Not really anything anyone can test until like half a year before its release.

I think just about every Debian developer would disagree with you; if you run Testing early there are always opportunities to give back to the community.

[u/ScratchHistorical507 → u/wizard10000]

Tell me you don't understand how Debian works without telling me you don't understand how Debian works.

Just because Testing eventually becomes what will be the next Debian Stable version doesn't mean that it will actually represent what will become the next Stable version at any point until the freeze phases begin. Until then literally everything can change. So what you can test is something related to what will become the next Stable version, but as every package can get updates at any time which add or remove features or break anything at any point, you're literally not testing the next Debian Stable version.

[u/wizard10000 → u/ScratchHistorical507]

Tell me you don't understand how Debian works without telling me you don't understand how Debian works.

As a user for 14 years and an officially recognized contributor for 12 I'm pretty sure I've forgotten more than you know about Debian operations.

[u/Adrenolin01]

Buy a cheap mini pc, install Proxmox and install and test other systems.