What's New in Debian 13 “Trixie”

On August 9, 2025, a new version of one of the most popular Linux distributions, Debian 13 "Trixie", was released. The system has become fresher, faster and more modern, while maintaining its legendary stability and reliability. In this article, we will analyze the key changes and compare the new product with the beloved Debian 12 "Bookworm".

Kernel and Performance

Debian 13 "Trixie" is based on the Linux 6.12 LTS kernel, while the 12th version of the operating system uses the Linux 6.1 LTS kernel. This update is not a surprise and brings support for modern technologies (Wi-Fi 7, USB4 v2.0, etc.), improved compatibility with new processors and northern equipment. In real tests, the new version of the system has already shown an amazing result in the form of an average performance increase of 13% relative to Debian 12 on modern northern AMD EPYC processors.
Significant work has been done to optimize AVX-512 encryption, the tools of which are included in the main branch of the Linux kernel. Due to this, modern AMD and Intel processors show almost a twofold increase in encryption/decryption performance in some modes (AES-XTS 256b, AES-XTS 512b).
Various stress tests such as Stress-NG, PyPerformance, Local Score AI, Blender showed a clear performance gain in various tasks.
You can rent dedicated servers with AMD EPYC processors and Debian 13 on board from us: Dedicated servers in the Netherlands.

Supported Architectures

Officially added support for the RISC-V (64-bit) architecture. Removed support for the i386 (32-bit) architecture and some other MIPS architectures.
Debian is moving towards support for modern platforms.

Base Software Updates

Debian 13 "Trixie" ships with over 69,000 packages. Debian 12 had around 64,000 packages.
Key updates include new versions of OpenSSL 3.5, Python 3.13, MariaDB 11.8, PHP 8.4, PostgreSQL 17, Go 1.24, and many others.

Graphical environments also received updates: GNOME 48 (instead of GNOME 43 in Debian 12), KDE Plasma 6 (instead of Plasma 5.27) and others.
The APT package manager was also updated to version 3.0. Color highlighting, a new progress bar, improved work with dependencies, the rejection of apt-ket and much more we received in the new version of the package manager.

Life Cycle

Debian 13 "Trixie" will receive updates for 5 years:

• 3 years (until August 2028) - basic support;
• 2 years (until August 2030) - LTS (Long Term Support).

Debian 13 "Trixie" is an excellent modern solution for dedicated servers and VPS. A worthy successor to version 12, which retained all the best features of its predecessor, but became more secure, significantly more productive and modern. Considering that the life cycle of this OS is just beginning, Debian 13 is one of the best operating systems at the moment.
Debian 13 "Trixie" is now available for installation on our VPS in New Jersey, Bulgaria and Netherlands.