[Discuss] Debian 13 PSA: Maybe Don't Upgrade Yet

[kentborg at borg.org (Kent Borg)]

On 9/5/25 8:18 AM, Rich Pieri wrote:
> I've been having problems with Debian 13. Among which the most notable
> are:
>
> In-place upgrades failing. I have been using Debian since Debian 6 or
> 7, and this is the first time an in-place major version upgrade has
> outright failed on me across multiple machines.
>
> It breaks Ansible. My plays all fail at the start because -- in a first
> for me -- the version of Python in Debian 13 is too new.
>
> I'll be sticking with Debian 12 for the foreseeable future.

I've been using Debian 13 on my Framework 12 laptop since it was in 
testing, and it has worked pretty well for me. I have also been using it 
successfully in various virtual machines; Debian for both host and guest 
OSs.

As for in-place upgrades, I have always been scared of such things, but 
I happen to have recently tried it?and it worked well. This was on a 
Linode/Akamai VM, which means it is their Debian repository (I don't 
know the differences between that and the official version, though the 
Linode/Akamai repository does seem to lag by a day or so) and it is a 
very stripped down installation, but it worked.

I don't use Ansible.


-kb, the Kent who has been using Debian for about as many years (ever 
since Ubuntu started really annoying him).