Debian 13 Trixie environments release notes
There is some significant evolutions since previous debian11 environments.
Common componants changes (Debian)
| Componant | Debian 11 Bullseye | Debian 13 Trixie |
|---|---|---|
| Linux kernel | 5.10 | 6.12 |
| GCC | 10.2 | 14.2 |
| LLVM/Clang toolchain | 11 | 19 |
| Perl | 5.32 | 5.40 |
| Python | 3.9 | 3.13 |
| Ruby | 2.7 | 3.3 |
| OpenJDK | 17 | 25 |
| Qemu | 5.2 | 10.0 |
| RDMA | 33.2 | 56.1 |
| Open MPI | 4.1 | via modules |
For more informations, see debian.org Release Notes.
Environments specific changes
Available in debian13-big and debian13-std (default) environments :
| x86_64 (AMD64) componants | debian11 envs | debian13 envs |
|---|---|---|
| Nvidia drivers | 535.x | 580.x |
| Nvidia CUDA | 11.2.x | via modules |
| AMD drivers (amdgpu) | 6.3.x | 30.x |
| AMD ROCm | 6.3.x | via modules |
| Singularity | 4.1.2 | N/A |
| Apptainer (Singularity replacement) | N/A | 1.4.5 |
| aarch64 (ARM64) componants | debian11 env | debian13 env |
|---|---|---|
| Nvidia drivers | N/A | 580.x |
| Nvidia CUDA | N/A | via modules (planned) |
Note some “old” Nvidia GPU clusters use a new dedicated environment named debiannvlegacy13-big and debiannvlegacy13-std (default). The only change in this environment flavor is that the proprietary nvidia module kernel is used, instead of the more recent open source one, as it is mandatory for Nvidia GPU Compute Capability < 7.5 .
For more informations, see this Nvidia explanation.
Some other useful informations:
Modules evolution
The default provided modules are no more build with Spack, but with GUIX
For more informations, see
TODO - Check
Note ARM64 CPU architecture modules are not available for now. We are working on it.
CUDA and ROCm
Only nvidia and amdgpu drivers (kernel modules) are provided in big and default environments. Tools like CUDA and ROCm have to be loaded with module commands.
Nvidia CUDA modules
TODO - Check
An example if environment debian13 : module load cuda-toolkit nvidia-driver-libs (default is currently cuda-toolkit/13).
An example if environment debiannvlegacy13 : module load cuda-toolkit/12 nvidia-driver-libs
Compatibility matrix:
| environment | Nvidia kernel module | Nvidia GPU compute capability | CUDA 12.9 | CUDA 13 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| debiannvlegacy13 | proprietary (legacy) | < 7.5 | OK | KO |
| debian13 | open | ≥ 7.5 | OK | OK |
For more informations on CUDA GPU Compute Capability, see Nvidia documentation.
AMD ROCm (Radeon Open Compute) modules
TODO - Check
ROCm module has some others modules dependencies. module load rocm-hip-runtime hipblas hipblas-common rocblas rocm-toolchain gcc-toolchain
To make it easier to use, a rocm-abaca meta module to load has been defined : module load rocm-abaca
Open MPI
TODO - Check
Openmpi is no more installed in the environment. You have to load it with module load gcc-toolchain openmpi.
Tools changes
DHCP client and IPv6
ISC DHCP tools (client and server) are deprecated. See ISC Note.
The client has been replaced by dhcpcd. So the commonly used dhclient <interface_name> is no more available, and is replaced by dhcpcd <interface_name>.
Node network interface will have both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses by default.
Network Time Protocol (NTP) client
For system time synchronizaton, ntpsec and ntpsec-ntpdate are used instead of no more available ntp et ntpdate tools packages.
CPU frequency scaling
cpufrequtils has been replaced by linux-cpupower (introduced with kernel 3.1).
See the cpupower manpage for more informations.
Singularity to Apptainer
Apptainer is available in replacement of Singularity.
PMem (Persistent Memory)
Debian ipmctl package, a utility for configuring and managing Intel® Optane™ Persistent Memory modules is not compatible with python 3.13 provided by Debian 13 repository.
So the Troll cluster in Grenoble featuring PMem remains on debian11 environnement by default.
Custom Linux kernel
For big and std environments variants, we had to use a custom Linux kernel build to enable and continue using control groups v1 (cgroupv1) instead of newer cgroupv2 to keep compatibility with currently used OAR 2.5.10.