Debian 13 is just around the corner, yes, only four days left until its release. Meanwhile, the Debian Installer team has officially announced what looks to be the third—and final—release candidate for Debian 13 “Trixie.”
As you’d expect, there aren’t any new features or surprises this time around. Right now, Trixie is in a full freeze, which means nothing new can be added to the final release—unless a major security issue pops up that absolutely needs fixing.
So, you can think of this RC 3 as a pretty good preview of what the final stable version will look like in just a few days. That said, there are a couple of changes worth mentioning.
First, the installation images for the ppc64el architecture now include the linux-image-powerpc64le-64k kernel package. Plus, the Linux kernel ABI is bumped to version 6.12.38+deb13, bringing users the latest improvements and security patches.
There have also been improvements to the so-called “depthcharge” images, which matter for some ARM-based systems, and a fix in the hardware detection routine to avoid unnecessarily copying firmware files that are already present in the installer’s initial ramdisk.
Like we mentioned recently, the Plasma 6.3.6 desktop—KDE’s latest bugfix release in the 6.3 series—made it into the Trixie release at the very last minute last week. Meanwhile, the other major desktop environment, GNOME, is represented by version 48.
It’s also worth noting that the “choose-mirror” component now includes an updated master list of Debian mirrors, making it easier for users to find fast and reliable download sources during installation.
Lastly, the good news is that, according to the Debian Installer team, there are currently no major known bugs, suggesting we can expect the final stable release to land right on schedule, on August 9.
The Debian Installer team is pleased to announce the third and likely final release candidate of the installer for Debian 13 “Trixie”. There seems to be no known major bug as of yet.
We’re all looking forward to this moment—it’s just a few days away now. And when it finally arrives, you can bet we’ll have our full review of the new 13th release ready for you. Until then, for those who are impatient, you can grab the Debian 13 RC3 installer images from here.
