Total or free? Up to 50% total sounds like it might bring unexpected and unwelcome RAM usage spikes to the 1-2GB RAM servers.
Did they also tweak default swappinness to accomodate for the change and reduce SSD wear?
Total. You can change the default to any % or GiB, but I couldn't figure out how to apply that to /etc/tmpfiles.d, had to switch to fstab.
Every single change mentioned is absolutely an incremental improvement. Nothing transformative at all. Which is exactly what is expected and desired.
Slop article. Skip if you value your time.
Wayland isn't actively on my radar, but I am sufficiently aware of it, that I would like to consider it, but only if it has gotten past the early adopter stage. My Debian desktop system is my daily workhorse. I don't futz with it to try out bleeding edge stuff.
Wayland is slowly becoming more mature across major desktop environments, but you're right to be cautious. In Debian 13 (Trixie), Wayland is the default session for GNOME, and the experience has definitely improved compared to earlier releases. That said, X11 is still available and officially supported, so you’re not forced to switch.
A few practical updates:
Firefox, Chromium, and most GTK4 apps now run well under Wayland.
NVIDIA proprietary driver support under Wayland has improved, though still not flawless—especially with multiple monitors or screen recording.
Screen sharing on Wayland is finally usable in tools like OBS and Zoom with PipeWire.
Some DEs like KDE Plasma 6 (not in Debian 13 by default) have arguably reached parity, but GNOME on Wayland in Debian 13 is getting very close for many workflows.
If you don’t rely on niche legacy apps or certain X-based workflows (like manual xrandr configurations or very custom keybind setups), you could try Wayland on a secondary user session just to test it out.
But to answer your question directly: it’s not bleeding edge anymore, but maybe not quite “boring stable” either, depending on your hardware and use case. I'd say Debian 14 might be the milestone where it's ready for everyone by default without any caveats.
Since its a protocol it does depend on what compositor you use. KDE Plasma and GNOME are very mature, GNOME was a little funkier with fractional scaling last I tried.
cyanmagenta•6mo ago
That’s not a knock on the distro. Debian is great. It’s just a strange state of affairs.
GianFabien•6mo ago
The most fundamental alternative would be to build the core Linux system, e.g. following the Linux from Scratch process and then downloading each application from its repository and compiling, installing and configuring. That too is a valid choice but one that some of us don't care to indulge in.
m463•6mo ago
What is interesting is that after the initial hard install, you just keep on updating incrementally and there is never a "giant upgrade" like debian12 -> debian13