Bits & Bobs: Debian 13 gets sixth update

By Larry Cafiero

Marcus Nestor at 9 to 5 Linux on Saturday reported that the Debian Project announced the availability of Debian 13.6, as the sixth update of the Debian 13 Trixie operating system series.

“Coming less than two months after Debian 13.5, the Debian 13.6 release is here to provide users with updated ISOs for those who want to deploy the latest Debian 13 ‘Trixie’ operating system series on new hardware without downloading lots of updates after the installation or those who had issues with the previous ISO releases,” the article states.

Number-wise, the article states that the Debian 13.6 release includes a total of 124 bug fixes for miscellaneous packages and 120 security updates. Details about these security updates and miscellaneous bug fixes can be found on the release announcement page.

“Debian 13.6 installation images are available for download . . . for 64-bit (amd64), AArch64 (arm64), RISC-V 64-bit (riscv64), PowerPC 64-bit Little Endian (ppc64el), IBM System z (s390x), and ARMhf (armhf) hardware architectures,” the article says.

The article also says that existing Debian 13 “Trixie” users “should update their installations only by running the sudo apt update && sudo apt full-upgrade commands in a terminal emulator or virtual console. Of course, you can also use a graphical package manager like Synaptic Package Manager to update your Debian system.”

Questing Quokka reaches end of life

Also from Marcus Nestor at 9 to 5 Linux is the news on Friday that Ubuntu 25.10 – more informally known as “Questing Quokka” – has reached the end of life on Friday, and his article urges those using Ubuntu 25.10 to upgrade to Ubuntu 26.04 at their earliest convenience.

“This is your friendly reminder that Ubuntu 25.10 ‘Questing Quokka’ reached the end of its supported life today, July 9th, 2026, and it is no longer supported by Canonical with software and security updates,” the article says.

According to the article, Ubuntu 25.10 was released on October 9th, 2025, “and, since it’s not an Ubuntu LTS (Long Term Support) release, it only received support for nine months, until July 2026.” As of July 9th, 2026, Canonical will no longer provide software and security updates to Ubuntu 25.10 systems, “which means that, in time, your installations will become vulnerable to all sorts of threats and attacks.”

Therefore, the article highly recommended that you upgrade to Ubuntu 26.04 LTS Resolute Raccoon, “which will receive software updates and security patches for five years or up to 10 years with a free Ubuntu Pro account,” the article concludes.

‘Frosted Glass’ comes to Cosmic DE

Michael Larabel at Phoronix on Friday reported that computer maker System76 has had their Pop_OS! developers create a “frosted glass” look for their Cosmic desktop environment, which is featured in the Pop_OS! System.

“System76 developers have for the past number of weeks been working on developing a ‘frosted glass’ appearance for the Cosmic desktop environment featured on their Pop!_OS Linux distribution,” the article states. “For Pop!_OS users this frosted glass feature is now available and will become more widespread for other Linux distributions once the next Cosmic release is formally tagged.”

According to the article, “System76 CEO Carl Richell shared today that the ‘frosted glass’ option is now available for Pop!_OS 24.04 users. Once updating to the latest updates, via Settings / Desktop / Appearance is now a ‘Frosted Glass’ option under Style.”

The article also says that Cosmic developers plan to tag their next release next week, after which this frosted glass feature should propagate to the Cosmic packages on other Linux distributions.

And that’s all for today. Don’t forget: Distro of the Week appears Wednesday – and it’s always a good one on hand – and Bits and Bobs will return on Friday.