Evolution of Gnome-Update

Saturday,September 13, 2025

Sunday, September 7, 2025

Debian 13 Trixie

Gnome System Monitor Extension

Tips number 6 and 7 are for Gnome users.

Gnome is now shipping a system monitor extension which lets you get a glance of the current load of your machine from the top bar.

 I've found this quite useful for machines where I'm required to install third-party monitoring software that tends to randomly consume more resources than it should. If I feel like my machine is struggling, I can quickly glance at its load to verify if it's getting overloaded by some process.

The extension is not as complete as system-monitor-next, not showing temperatures or histograms, but at least it's officially part of Gnome, easy to install and supported by them.

Try it out:

sudo apt install gnome-system-monitor gnome-shell-extension-manager

And then enable the extension from the "Extension Manager" application.
7) Gnome setting for battery charging profile

After having to learn more about batteries in order to get into FPV drones, I've come to have a bigger appreciation for solutions that minimize the inevitable loss of capacity that accrues over time.

There's now a "Battery Charging" setting (under the "Power") section which lets you choose between two different profiles: "Maximize Charge" and "Preserve Battery Health".

On supported laptops, this setting is an easy way to set thresholds for when charging should start and stop, just like you could do it with the tlp package, but now from the Gnome settings.

To increase the longevity of my laptop battery, I always keep it at "Preserve Battery Health" unless I'm traveling.

What I would like to see next is support for choosing different "Power Modes" based on whether the laptop is plugged-in, and based on the battery charge percentage.

There's a GNOME issue tracking this feature, but there's some push back on whether this is the right thing to expose to users.

In the meantime, there are some workarounds mentioned in that issue which people who really want this feature can follow.

If you would like to learn more about batteries; Battery University is a great starting point, besides getting into FPV drones and being forced to handle batteries without a Battery Management System (BMS).

And if by any chance this sparks your interest in FPV drones, Joshua Bardwell's YouTube channel is a great resource: @JoshuaBardwell.

 AI Generated Information

Debian 13 "Trixie," released in August 2025, is the new stable release of Debian Linux, featuring updated software, new RISC-V architecture support, and the first release to include KDE Plasma 6 Desktop environments. Key highlights include Linux Kernel 6.12 LTS, GNOME 48, upgraded package versions, and improved 32-bit system compatibility with the Y2038 problem.
Key Features & Improvements

Updated Software
Trixie contains over 14,000 new packages and many updated ones, including GNOME 48, KDE Plasma 6, and LibreOffice 25.

New RISC-V Architecture Support:
This is the first official release to support the 64-bit RISC-V architecture, expanding hardware options.
Year 2038 (Y2K38) Readiness:
All architectures except i386 now use a 64-bit time\_t ABI, which resolves the Y2K38 problem where 32-bit systems would have issues handling dates beyond January 19, 2038.
 

Enhanced Translations
The manpages-l10n project has provided improved translations for manual pages in multiple languages.
 

Reproducible Builds
The push for byte-for-byte reproducible package builds continues, increasing security and reliability.
 

Desktop Environments
Trixie offers major desktop environments, including GNOME 48 and the new KDE Plasma 6.

Architecture & Support
 Supported Architectures: Trixie supports amd64, arm64, armhf, ppc64el, s390x, and riscv64.

Reduced i386 Support

Support for the legacy 32-bit (i386) architecture is limited to running 32-bit software on 64-bit systems and is expected to be removed in a future release.
ARM EABI (armel) Support: Support for the armel architecture is restricted to upgrades from Debian 12 and will also be removed in a future release.

Other Notable Changes

OpenSSH: DSA key support has been removed from OpenSSH.

MIPS Architecture Removal: The MIPS architecture has been completely removed from the distribution.

 ping Command: The ping command no longer requires elevated privileges.

Evolution of Gnome-Update

 Wednesday, May 29, 2024

Evolution of Gnome-Update

Debian Live 9.12.0-amd64-gnome.iso

This gave a Graphical Installer to install Debian, which I found was easy.

Partition table looked like this which I had no ides.

/root

/var

swap

/tmp

/home

I became aware of /var for variable data and I did not know how to use it.

Icon setup was primitive.

Only Ethernet and not compatible with wireless but whereas Ubuntu could (Emmabantus,too) configure wireless.

So installing new software was impossible and had to be stuck with what came with it.

It had LibreOffice.

Debian installer was clumsy and installing AbiWord was not possible and stuck with Emmabantus which had AbiWord

 These days I had fun with Apache Open Office.

Debian Live 10.12.0-amd64-gnome.iso

Similar to above comment but icon display was much better

Debian Live 11.6.0-amd64-gnome.iso

 Similar to above comment but icon display was much better but no ESP Grub

Debian Live 12 5 0 amd64 Gnome ISO

 This is the most elegant and has the new Calamara Installer.

Its ESP compatible and GRUB Loader is pretty good.

No problem with wireless connectivity.

This is my favourite and I use it on daily basis, it comes with Synaptic Package Manager (in fact Debian Package manger which is extensive) which I prefer to SNAP.

Ubuntu has gone SNAP but Synaptic Package Manager is still available for Ubuntu.

I am going to download all three of these isos from torrent files and see how I got addicted to Gnome.

I actually had the stable version installed in my very old PC and Live CD/DVD were collected for testing.

Yes, Debian 10 is the one who had a panel on the left side and dots on the right side when one sees whole lot of application items.

Ubuntu of cores successfully implemented live session with only a minimal of applications.

Al these images were less than 3GB and now they are nearing 5GB.

That is my conclusions, even Gnome getting bloated with each new version.

All these images had only one peer each.

Thank you to them.

BOX utility has made my life easier.

By the way, I have limited number of USBs and I have Ubuntu from 2020 version to 2024, for USB used up.

I did not do this with Debian since I had been using Debian fr over 10 years.

Nevertheless, I am catching up with Ubuntu.

Those days I had no interest in Ubuntu.

Ubuntu Install was minimal and I got addicted it later since it had the best GRUB file.

Of course I had Ubuntu CD/DVDS from its version 6 in my CD/DVD collection.

Gnome BOX utility is fantastic and I am going to run these isos in BOX Utility and see how Gnome evolved.

Linux is steady and incremental, stable and not flashy like Apple and Windows.

The is for those YouTube Linux pundits, some of whom are hell bent on saying bad things about Linux having not tested Gnome.

All of them only test Linux Mint and do not talk about LMDE (Linux Mind Debian Edition).

I think Ubuntu which is a derivative of Debian became popular by adopting Gnome 10 desktop.

Less I talk about Arch and Manjaro is better for my sanity.

I have been trying Debian from version 6.0 but full adoption was probably from version 9 in 2015 when,  I retired fro the University.

5.0           Lenny         14 February 2009
6.0           Squeeze       6 February 2011
7              Wheezy        4 May 2013
8              Jessie           25 26 April 2015  
9              Stretch        17 June 2017
10            Buster          6 July 2019
11           Bullseye      14 August 2021
12           Bookworm  10 June 2023