alt Hacker NewsBiggest change for me is /tmp behavior. In Debian 13 /tmp become RAM-disk by default (instead of files on the file system) and uses up to 50% of available ram. But as expected of Debian the release notes included an easy fix to restore normal /tmp behavior for people and applications that place many small or large files there.
https://www.debian.org/releases/trixie/release-notes/issues....
>"You can return to /tmp being a regular directory by running systemctl mask tmp.mount as root and rebooting."
I kind of wish the distros had decided on a new /tmpfs (or /tmp/tmpfs, etc) directory for applications to opt-in to using ram-disk rather than replacing /tmp and having to opt-out.
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Infinite scroll length on terminals can chew through /tmp, and systems misbehave strangely when they're out of /tmp.
Also watch out for surprise file deletes in /tmp and /var/tmp at 10 and 30 days.
This too can be turned off.
This was discussed a ton in debian-devel. First, the tmpfs doesn't take much space already, and /tmp became a folder where persistence should not be expected over the years.
The problem with /tmp was many people and apps used it as an inter-user communication medium and expected persistency there, so it created both security problems and wasted disk space over time.
Since not many packaged apps used the /tmp like that and used the folder the way it should be used, the change was made.
I'm running Debian testing on one of my systems, and the change created no ill effects whatsoever. Not eating SSD write cycles can be considered a plus, even.
However, as I also noted in the relevant thread, the approach might have a couple of downsides in some scenarios.
If you have the time and the desire, discussion starts at https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2024/05/msg00014.html