Samuel Henrique (samueloph)

Debian 13: My list of exciting new features

2025-08-28T17:30:00+00:00

Beyond Debian: Useful for other distros too</h1>
Every two years Debian releases a new major version of its Stable series, meaning the differences between consecutive Debian Stable releases represent two years of new developments both in Debian as an organization and its native packages, but also in all other packages which are also shipped by other distributions (which are getting into this new Stable release).</p>
If you're not paying close attention to everything that's going on all the time in the Linux world, you miss a lot of the nice new features and tools. It's common for people to only realize there's a cool new trick available only years after it was first introduced.</p>
Given these considerations, the tips that I'm describing will eventually be available in whatever other distribution you use, be it because it's a Debian derivative or because it just got the same feature from the upstream project.</p>
I'm not going to list "passive" features (as good as they can be), the focus here is on new features that might change how you configure and use your machine, with a mix between productivity and performance.</p>

Debian 13 - Trixie</h1>
I have been a Debian Testing user for longer than 10 years now (and I recommend it for non-server users), so I'm not usually keeping track of all the cool features arriving in the new Stable releases because I'm continuously receiving them through the Debian Testing rolling release.</p>
Nonetheless, as a Debian Developer I'm in a good position to point out the ones I can remember. I would also like other Debian Developers to do the same as I'm sure I would learn something new.</p>
The Debian 13 release notes contain a "What's new" section </a>, which lists the first two items here and a few other things, in other words, take my list as an addition to the release notes.</p>
Debian 13 was released on 2025-08-09, and these are nice things you shouldn't miss in the new release, with a bonus one not tied to the Debian 13 release.</p>

Have you ever had to download a file from your terminal using curl and didn't remember the parameters needed? I did.</p>

Nowadays you can use wcurl</code>; "a command line tool which lets you download URLs without having to remember any parameters."</p>

Simply call wcurl</code> with one or more URLs as parameters and it will download all of them in parallel, performing retries, choosing the correct output file name, following redirects, and more.</p>

Try it out:</p>

wcurl</span></span> example.com</span>
</span></code></pre>
wcurl</code> comes installed as part of the curl package on Debian 13 and in any other
distribution you can imagine, starting with curl 8.14.0.</p>
I've written more about wcurl in its release
announcement</a>
and I've done a lightning talk presentation in DebConf24, which is linked in
the release announcement.</p>
2) HTTP/3 support in curl</h2>
Debian has become the first stable Linux distribution to ship curl with support
for HTTP/3. I've written about this in July
2024</a>, when we
first enabled it. Note that we first switched the curl CLI to GnuTLS, but then
ended up releasing the curl CLI linked with OpenSSL (as support arrived later).</p>
Debian was the first stable Linux distro to enable it, and within
rolling-release-based distros; Gentoo enabled it first in their non-default
flavor of the package and Arch Linux did it three months before we pushed it to
Debian Unstable/Testing/Stable-backports, kudos to them!</p>
HTTP/3 is not used by default by the curl CLI, you have to enable it with
--http3</code> or --http3-only</code>.</p>
Try it out:</p>
curl</span></span> --</span>http3</span> https://www.example.org</span>
</span>curl</span></span> --</span>http3-only</span> https://www.example.org</span>
</span></code></pre>
3) systemd soft-reboot</h2>
Starting with systemd v254, there's a new soft-reboot</code> option, it's an
userspace-only reboot, much faster than a full reboot if you don't need to
reboot the kernel.</p>
You can read the announcement from the systemd v254 GitHub
release</a></p>
Try it out:</p>
#</span></span> This will reboot your machine!</span>
</span></span>systemctl</span></span> soft-reboot</span>
</span></code></pre>
4) apt --update</h2>
Are you tired of being required to run sudo apt update</code> just before sudo apt upgrade</code> or sudo apt install $PACKAGE</code>? So am I!</p>
The new --update</code> option lets you do both things in a single command:</p>
sudo</span></span> apt --</span>update</span> upgrade</span>
</span>sudo</span></span> apt --</span>update</span> install $</span>PACKAGE</span></span></span>
</span></code></pre>
I love this, but it's still not yet where it should be, fingers crossed for a
simple apt upgrade</code> to behave like other package managers by updating its
cache as part of the task, maybe in Debian 14?</p>
Try it out:</p>
sudo</span></span> apt upgrade --</span>update</span></span>
</span>#</span></span> The order doesn't matter</span>
</span></span>sudo</span></span> apt --</span>update</span> upgrade</span>
</span></code></pre>
This is especially handy for container usage, where you have to update the apt
cache before installing anything, for example:</p>
podman</span></span> run debian:stable bin/bash -</span>c</span> '</span>apt install --update -y curl'</span></span></span>
</span></code></pre>
5) powerline-go</h2>
powerline-go</code> is a powerline-style prompt written in Golang, so it's much more
performant than its Python alternative powerline</code>.</p>
powerline-style prompts are quite useful to show things like the current status
of the git repo in your working directory, exit code of the previous command,
presence of jobs in the background, whether or not you're in an ssh session,
and more.</p>
 
Try it out:</p>
sudo</span></span> apt install powerline-go</span>
</span></code></pre>
Then add this to your .bashrc</code>:</p>
function</span> _update_ps1</span>(</span>)</span> {</span>
</span></span>    PS1</span>=</span>"</span>$</span>(</span>/usr/bin/powerline-go</span></span> -</span>error</span> $</span>?</span></span> -</span>jobs</span> $</span>(</span>jobs</span></span> -p</span> |</span> wc</span></span> -</span>l</span></span>)</span></span></span>)</span></span>"</span></span></span>
</span></span>
</span></span>    #</span></span> Uncomment the following line to automatically clear errors after showing</span>
</span></span></span>    #</span></span> them once. This not only clears the error for powerline-go, but also for</span>
</span></span></span>    #</span></span> everything else you run in that shell. Don't enable this if you're not</span>
</span></span></span>    #</span></span> sure this is what you want.</span>
</span></span></span>
</span></span>    #</span></span>set "?"</span>
</span></span></span>}</span></span>
</span>
</span>if</span> [</span> "</span>$</span>TERM</span></span>"</span></span> !=</span> "</span>linux"</span></span> ]</span></span> &&</span> [</span> -</span>f</span> "</span>/usr/bin/powerline-go"</span></span> ]</span></span>;</span> then</span>
</span>    PROMPT_COMMAND</span>=</span>"</span>_update_ps1; $</span>PROMPT_COMMAND</span></span>"</span></span></span>
</span>fi</span>
</span></code></pre>
Or this to .zshrc</code>:</p>
function</span> powerline_precmd</span>(</span>)</span> {</span>
</span></span>    PS1</span>=</span>"</span>$</span>(</span>/usr/bin/powerline-go</span></span> -</span>error</span> $</span>?</span></span> -</span>jobs</span> $</span>{</span></span>$</span>{</span></span>(%</span></span></span>):%j</span>}</span></span></span></span>:-</span></span>0</span>}</span></span></span>)</span></span>"</span></span></span>
</span></span>
</span></span>    #</span></span> Uncomment the following line to automatically clear errors after showing</span>
</span></span></span>    #</span></span> them once. This not only clears the error for powerline-go, but also for</span>
</span></span></span>    #</span></span> everything else you run in that shell. Don't enable this if you're not</span>
</span></span></span>    #</span></span> sure this is what you want.</span>
</span></span></span>
</span></span>    #</span></span>set "?"</span>
</span></span></span>}</span></span>
</span></code></pre>
If you'd like to have your prompt start in a newline, like I have in the
screenshot above, you just need to set -newline</code> in the powerline-go
invocation in your .bashrc</code>/.zshrc</code>.</p>
6) Gnome System Monitor Extension</h2>
Tips number 6 and 7 are for Gnome users.</p>
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.</p>
 
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.</p>
The extension is not as complete as
system-monitor-next</a>,
not showing temperatures or histograms, but at least it's officially part of
Gnome, easy to install and supported by them.</p>
Try it out:</p>
sudo</span></span> apt install gnome-system-monitor gnome-shell-extension-manager</span>
</span></code></pre>
And then enable the extension from the "Extension Manager" application.</p>
7) Gnome setting for battery charging profile</h2>
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.</p>
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".</p>
 
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</code> package,
but now from the Gnome settings.</p>
To increase the longevity of my laptop battery, I always keep it at "Preserve
Battery Health" unless I'm traveling.</p>
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.</p>
There's a GNOME
issue</a>
tracking this feature, but there's some pushback on whether this is the right
thing to expose to users.</p>
In the meantime, there are some workarounds mentioned in that issue which
people who really want this feature can follow.</p>
If you would like to learn more about batteries; Battery
University</a> is a great starting point, besides
getting into FPV drones and being forced to handle batteries without a Battery
Management System (BMS).</p>
And if by any chance this sparks your interest in FPV drones, Joshua Bardwell's
YouTube channel is a great resource:
@JoshuaBardwell</a>.</p>
8) Lazygit</h2>
Emacs users are already familiar with the legendary magit</code>; a terminal-based
UI for git.</p>
Lazygit is an alternative for non-emacs users, you can integrate it with neovim
or just use it directly.</p>
I'm still playing with lazygit</code> and haven't integrated it into my workflows,
but so far it has been a pleasant experience.</p>
 
You should check out the demos from the lazygit GitHub
page</a>.</p>
Try it out:</p>
sudo</span></span> apt install lazygit</span>
</span></code></pre>
And then call lazygit</code> from within a git repository.</p>
9) neovim</h2>
neovim has been shipped in Debian since 2016, but upstream has been doing a lot of
work to improve the experience out-of-the-box in the last couple of years.</p>
If you're a neovim poweruser, you're likely not installing it from the official
repositories, but for those that are, Debian 13 comes with version 0.10.4,
which brings the following improvements compared to the version in Debian 12:</p>


Treesitter support for C, Lua, Markdown, with the possibility of adding any
other languages as needed;</p>
</li>

Better spellchecking due to treesitter integration (spellsitter);</p>
</li>

Mouse support enabled by default;</p>
</li>

Commenting support out-of-the-box;</p>
Check :h commenting</code> for details, but the
tl;dr is that you can use gcc</code> to comment the current line and gc</code> to comment
the current selection.</p>
</li>

OSC52 support.</p>
Especially handy for those using neovim over an ssh
connection, this protocol lets you copy something from within the neovim
process into the clipboard of the machine you're using to connect through ssh.
In other words, you can copy from neovim running in a host over ssh and paste
it in the "outside" machine.</p>
</li>
</ul>
10) [Bonus] Running old Debian releases</h2>
The bonus tip is not specific to the Debian 13 release, but something I've
recently learned in the #debian-devel</code> IRC channel.</p>
Did you know there are usable container images for all past Debian releases?
I'm not talking "past" as in "some of the older releases", I'm talking past as
in "literally every Debian release, including the very first one".</p>
Tianon Gravi "tianon" is the Debian Developer responsible for making this
happen, kudos to him!</p>
There's a small gotcha that the releases Buzz (1.1) and Rex (1.2) require a
32-bit host, otherwise you will get the error Out of virtual memory!</code>, but
starting with Bo (1.3) all should work in amd64/arm64.</p>
Try it out:</p>
sudo</span></span> apt install podman</span>
</span>
</span>podman</span></span> run -</span>it</span> docker.io/debian/eol:bo</span>
</span></code></pre>
Don't be surprised when noticing that apt/apt-get</code> is not available inside the
container, that's because apt</code> first appeared in Debian Slink (2.1).</p>
Changes since publication</h1>
2025-08-30</h2>

Mention that Arch also enabled HTTP/3.</li>
</ul>



DebConf24 was fun! Security, curl, wcurl, Debian's quality
2024-09-04T00:00:00+00:00

tl;dr</h4>
DebConf24</a> was fun!</p>
A playlist of all of my talks, with subtitles (en, pt-br) and chapters is
available on YouTube</a>.</p>
Overview</h1>
DebConf24 was held in Busan, South Korea, between Sunday July 28th to Sunday August 4th 2024.</p>
As usual for DebConfs, I had a great time meeting my friends, but also met new
people and got to learn a bit about the interesting things they're working on.</p>
I ended up getting too excited during the talk submission stage of the
conference and as a result I presented 5 different activities (3 talks, 1 BoF
and 1 lightning talk).</p>
Since I was too busy with the presentations, I did not have a lot of time to
actually hang out with folks, or even to go out in the city, I guess I've
learned my lesson for next time.</p>
The main purpose of this post is to write about all of the things I presented
at the conference. I did want to list some of the interesting talks I've
watched, but that I would not be able to be fair as I'm sure I would miss some.</p>
You can get the schedule and the recordings of any talks from the conference's website:
https://debconf24.debconf.org/schedule/</a></p>
wcurl Lightning Talk</h1>
The most fun of my presentations, during the second-to-last day of the
conference, I've asked for help from Sergio Durigan Junior <sergiodj> to
setup an URL containing a whitespace and redirecting that to wcurl</a>'s
manpage.</p>
I then did a little demo to showcase why me (and a lot others) struggle
with downloading things with curl, and how wcurl</a> solves that.</p>
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eM8M5qa4pPM</a>

    </iframe>
</div>
</p>
Fixing CVEs on Debian: Everything you probably know already</h1>
I've always felt like DebConf was missing security-related talks, so I decided
to do something about it and presented a few of the things I've learned when
fixing CVEs for Debian.</p>
This is an area where we don't get a lot of new contributors, I'm trying to
change that, and this talk can be used to introduce newcomers to it.</p>
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzNVVILVyUM</a>

    </iframe>
</div>
</p>
The secret sauce of Debian</h1>
Debian is not very vocal about all of the nice things it has regarding
quality-assurance, testing, or CI, even though it's at the state-of-the-art for
a lot of things.</p>
This talk is an initial step towards making people aware of the cool
things happening behind the scenes. Ideally we should have it
well-documented somewhere.</p>
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_X2IBnpjic</a>

    </iframe>
</div>
</p>
"I use Debian BTW": fzf, tmux, zoxide and friends</h1>
One of my earliest good memories of Debian was when it started coming with a
colored PS1 by default, I still remember the feeling of relief whenever I
jumped into a Debian server and didn't have to deal with a black and white PS1.</p>
There's still a lot of room for Debian to ship better defaults, and I think
some of them can actually happen.</p>
This talk is a bit of a silly one where I'm just making people aware of the
existence of a few Golang/Rust CLI tools, and also some dotfiles configurations
that should probably be the default.</p>
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfto3Seokn4</a>

    </iframe>
</div>
</p>
curl</h1>
The curl project does such a great job with their security advisories that it
will likely never receive the amount of praise it deserves, but I did my best
at mentioning it throughout my CVEs talk</a>.</p>
Maybe I will write more extensively about this someday, but in case I don't:</strong></p>

There's no other project which always consistently mentions the exact range of
commits that are affected by a given CVE.</p>
Forget about whether the versions are EOL, curl doesn't have LTS releases, yet
they do such a great job at clearly documenting their CVEs that I would take
that over having LTS releases anytime (that's for curl at least, I
acknowledge some types of projects have a different need for LTS
releases).</p>
Not only that, but they are also always careful about explaining alternative
mitigations such as configuration changes, build flags that defuse the
exploitation, or parameters that you should not use.</p>

Just like we tend to do every time we meet, me and the other Debian curl
maintainers spent the first 2 or 3 days of the conference talking about how we
wanted to eventually meet up to discuss the package.</p>
It was going to be informal, maybe during the Cheese and Wine
party</a>, but then
I've realized we should make it part of the official schedule, which would
also give us the recordings for later.</p>
And so the "curl maintainers BoF" happened, where we spoke about HTTP3,
GnutTLS, wcurl</a> and other things.</p>
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fL7hSypUTdM</a>

    </iframe>
</div>
</p>
wcurl</h1>
Right after that BoF, Daniel Stenberg
asked</a> if we were interested
in having wcurl</a> adopted into curl, which we
definitely were, so wcurl is now part of the curl
project</a>.</p>
Daniel was also kind enough to design a logo for the project, which makes me
especially happy because I can stop with my own approach at a logo (which I had
to redo every few days):</p>
 
And here is the new logo:</p>
 
Much better, I would say :)</p>
curl Swag</h1>
DebConf24 was my chance at forwarding some curl swag items to the other
curl maintainers, so both Sergio Durigan Junior <sergiodj> and Carlos
Henrique Lima Melara <charles> got the curl-up
t-shirt</a>
and the very cool curl PCB
coaster</a>, both gifted
by Daniel Stenberg.</p>
Unfortunately I didn't have any of that for DebConf attendees, but I did drop
loads of curl stickers at the stickers table, they were gone very quickly.</p>
 
For the future</h1>
I used to think the most humbling experience you could have as someone who presented
a talk was to have to watch it yourself, you notice a lot of mistakes and
you instantly think about things that should be done differently.</p>
It turns out the most humbling thing to do is actually to write subtitles for
your talks, I noticed every single mistake, often multiple times.</p>
So after spending more than 30 hours writing the subtitles for both English and
Brazilian Portuguese for my talks, I feel like it's going to be much easier to
avoid committing the same mistakes again. After some time you stop feeling shame
about those mistakes and you're just left with feelings of annoyance, and at
that point it becomes easier to consciously avoid them.</p>
I am collecting a list of things I wish I had done differently on all of those
talks, so if I end up presenting any one of them again, it will be an improved
version.</p>
 

Photography: Aigars Mahinovs <[email protected]>

License: CC-BYv3+ or GPLv2+</p>

Debian's curl now supports HTTP3

2024-07-04T00:00:00+00:00

tl;dr</h4>
Starting with curl 8.0.0-2</strong>, you can now use HTTP3.</p>
curl</span></span> --</span>http3-only</span> https://example.com</span> </span></code></pre> Or, if you would like to try it out in a container:</p>
podman</span></span> run debian:testing /bin/bash -</span>c</span> '</span>apt install --update -y curl && curl --http3-only https://example.com'</span></span></span> </span></code></pre> (in case you haven't noticed, apt now has the --update</code> option for the upgrade</code> and install</code> commands, although not available on stable yet)</em></p>
Availability</h5>Debian unstable - Since 2024-07-02</li> Debian testing - Since 2024-07-18</li> Debian 12/bookworm-backports - Since 2024-08-25</li> Debian 12/bookworm - Due to the mechanisms we have in place to make sure Debian stable is in fact stable, we will never be able to ship this in the regular repository. Users can make use of the backports</a> repositories instead.</li> Debian derivatives - Rolling releases will get it by the time it's on Debian testing (e.g.: Kali Linux). Stable derivatives only in their next major release.</li> </ul> The challenge</h1> HTTP3 is fresh new, well... not really, but at least fresh enough that I'm not aware of any other Linux distribution supporting it on curl, the reason is likely two-fold:</p> OpenSSL is not there yet</h3> OpenSSL still doesn't have proper HTTP3 support, and given that OpenSSL is so widely used, almost every curl distributor/packager will build curl with it and thus changing the TLS backend to something else is risky.</p> Unfortunately, proper support for the OpenSSL libcurl is unlikely to come anytime before the end of this year, the OpenSSL performance is not good enough yet as of version 3.3</a>.</p> Daniel Stenberg has written about the state of this multiple times, most recently at HTTP/3 in curl mid 2024</a>, if you're interested, I suggest reading through his other posts as well.</p> Some might have noticed that nginx does support HTTP3 through OpenSSL</a>, although when you look closely, it's not exactly perfect:</p> An SSL library that provides QUIC support is recommended to build nginx, such as BoringSSL, LibreSSL, or QuicTLS. Otherwise, the OpenSSL compatibility layer will be used that does not support early data.</p> </blockquote> As you can see, they don't recommend using OpenSSL, and when doing so, you don't get complete support.</p> </li> HTTP3 support for GnuTLS/nghttp3/ngtcp2 is recent</h3> The non-experimental support arrived back in October 2023</a>, and so that's when I started seriously planning for this.</p> curl has been working on HTTP3 support for years, and so it did support other TLS backends before that, but out of them, the one most feasible for a distribution to ship would be GnuTLS, which gets HTTP3 support through ngctp2 and nghttp3</a>.</p> </li> </ol> How it was done</h1> The Debian curl package has historically shipped at least two variants of libcurl, an OpenSSL and a GnuTLS one.</p> The OpenSSL libcurl can't support HTTP3 for the reasons explained above, but the GnuTLS libcurl can (with ngtcp2 and nghtp3).</p> Debian packages can choose which version of libcurl to link against (without having to modify any upstream source code). Debian's "git" package being a famous example of a package that links against the GnuTLS libcurl.</p> Enabling HTTP3 on curl was done in three steps:</p> Make sure all required dependencies fulfill the minimum requirements.</li> Enable HTTP3 for GnuTLS libcurl.</li> Change the libcurl used by the curl CLI, from OpenSSL to GnuTLS.</li> </ol> curl's HTTP3 support requires a somewhat recent version of nghttp3 and updating that required a transition</a> (due to the SONAME bump), while we've also had months of freeze for transitions due to the time_t transition</a>.</p> After the dependencies were in place, enabling HTTP3 for the GnuTLS libcurl was straightforward</a>.</p> Then, for the last part, we had to switch the TLS backend used by the curl CLI. Doing the swap is also quite easy</a> on the packaging level, but we have to consider the chances of this change breaking our users' environments.</p> Ensuring there are no breakages</h1> The first thing to consider regarding breakages is that this change is not going to be pushed directly to the current Debian stable releases, it will be present in the next stable release (13/trixie) but the current one will stick to the version that's already shipped.</p> Secondly, we have to consider the risk of losing the ability to use certain parameters from the curl CLI which could be limited to the OpenSSL backend. During curl-up 2024</a>, the curl developers pointed out the existence of a page that lists the TLS related options and the backends they work with</a>.</p> Analysing that page, ignoring all of the options that are suffixed with "BLOB" (only pertinent to the library, not the CLI), the only one left which is attention worthy is CURLOPT_ECH</a>.</p> This experimental feature requires a special build of OpenSSL, as ECH is not yet supported in OpenSSL releases. In contrast ECH is supported by the latest BoringSSL and wolfSSL releases.</p> </blockquote> As it turns out, Encrypted Client Hello</code> is experimental and it's not supported by the vanilla OpenSSL.</p> This was enough of an investigation for me to go ahead with the change. Noting that even in the worst case scenario (we find a horrible regression), we can rollback without having affected a single stable release.</p> Now that the package is on Debian unstable, the CI tests (autopkgtest) of every package that depends on curl is currently running, the results are compared against the migration-reference (in this case, the curl CLI with OpenSSL, before the change).</p> If everything goes right, curl with HTTP3 support will migrate to Debian testing in around 5 days. If we spot any issues, we'll have to solve them first and it's going to be hard to predict how long it takes, although it's fair to expect less than a month.</p> Feedback</h1> Feel free to join the Matrix room for the Debian curl maintainers: https://matrix.to/#/#debian-curl-maintainers:matrix.org</a></p> Acknowledgements</h1> It took us a bit longer than expected to be able to enable HTTP3, nonetheless it's still early enough to be excited about.</p> A lot of people were crucial to make this happen.</p> I should recognize in the first place, obviously, the curl developers and the developers of the supporting libraries: GnuTLS, nghttp3, ngtcp2. Participating in the curl-up 2024</a> conference helped me get motivated to push this through, besides becoming aware of the right documentation to research for impact.</p> On the Debian side, Sakirnth Nagarasa <sakirnth> was responsible for updating and taking care of the transition for nghttp3 and ngtcp2.</p> Also on the Debian side, I've got loads of help and support from the co-maintainers of the curl package: Sergio Durigan Junior <sergiodj> and Carlos Henrique Lima Melara <charles>.</p> Changes since publication</h1> 2025-03-08</h2> Fix podman command, the previous one was not running all commands inside the container.</li> Change the podman command to use Debian testing instead of unstable.</li> </ul> 2024-08-28</h2> Mention availability in bookworm-backports.</li> </ul> 2024-07-18</h2> Update date of availability for Debian testing and expected date for bookworm-backports.</li> Remove mention of language spoken in the Matrix room, we are using English now.</li> </ul>
Announcing wcurl: a curl wrapper to download files 2024-07-03T00:00:00+00:00 </iframe> </div> tl;dr</h4> Whenever you need to download files through the terminal and don't feel like using wget:</p> wcurl</span></span> example.com/filename.txt</span> </span></code></pre> Manpage: https://curl.se/wcurl/manual.html</a></p> Availability (comes installed with the curl package):</h5> Debian unstable - Since 2024-07-02</li> Debian testing - Since 2024-07-18</li> Debian 12/bookworm-backports - Since 2024-08-25</li> Debian 12/bookworm - Due to the way changes are planned for Debian Stable, wcurl will not be present in bookworm. Users are recommended to either manually download wcurl or use the bookworm-backports repository. wcurl will be present in Debian 13/trixie.</li> Debian derivatives - Rolling releases will get it by the time it's on Debian testing (e.g.: Kali Linux). Stable derivatives only in their next major release.</li> </ul> If you don't want to wait for the package update to arrive, you can always copy the script and place it in your /usr/bin</code>:</p> curl</span></span> -</span>fLO</span> https://github.com/curl/wcurl/releases/latest/download/wcurl</span> </span>chmod</span></span> +x wcurl</span> </span>sudo</span></span> mv wcurl /usr/bin/wcurl</span> </span></code></pre> After this announcement, wcurl has joined the curl organization: https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2024/08/08/curl-welcomes-wcurl-to-the-team/</a></p> Project homepage: https://curl.se/wcurl/</a></p> Smoother CLI experience</h1> Starting with curl version 8.8.0-2</strong>, the Debian's curl package now ships a wcurl executable.</p> wcurl is the solution for those who just need to download files without having to remember curl's parameters for things like automatically naming the files.</p> Some people, myself included, would fall back to using wget whenever there was a need to download a file. Sometimes even installing wget just for that usecase. After all, it's easier to remember "apt install wget" rather than "curl -L -O -C - ...".</p> wcurl consists of a simple shell script that provides sane defaults for the curl invocation, for when the use case is to just download files.</p> By default, wcurl will:</p> Percent-encode whitespaces in URLs;</li> Download multiple URLs in parallel if the installed curl's version is >= 7.66.0;</li> Follow redirects;</li> Automatically choose a filename as output;</li> Avoid overwriting files if the installed curl's version is >= 7.83.0 (--no-clobber);</li> Perform retries;</li> Set the downloaded file timestamp to the value provided by the server, if available;</li> Disable curl's URL globbing parser so {} and [] characters in URLs are not treated specially;</li> Percent-decode the resulting filename;</li> Use "index.html" as default filename if there's none in the URL.</li> </ul> </blockquote> Example to download a single file:</p> wcurl</span></span> example.com/filename.txt</span> </span></code></pre> If you ever need to set a custom flag, you can make use of the --curl-options</code> wcurl option, anything set there will be passed to the curl invocation. Just beware that if you need to set any custom flags, it's likely you will be better served by calling curl directly. The --curl-options</code> option is there to allow for some flexibility in unforeseen circumstances.</p> The need for wcurl</h1> I've always felt a bit ashamed of not remembering curl's parameters for downloading a file and automatically naming it, having resorted to wget most of the times this was needed (even installing wget when it wasn't there, just for this). I've spoken to a few other experienced people I know and confirmed what could be obvious to others: a lot of people struggle with this.</p> Recently, the curl project released the results of 2024's curl survey</a>, which also showed this is as a much needed feature, just look at some of the answers:</p> Q: Which curl command line option do you think needs improvement and how?</h4> -O, I really want wget like functionality where I don't have to specify the name</p> </blockquote> Downloading a file (like wget) could be improved - with automatic naming of the file</p> </blockquote> downloading files - wget is much cleaner</p> </blockquote> I wish the default behaviour when GETting a binary was to drop it on disk. That's the only reason 'wget foo.tgz" is still ingrained in my muscle memory .</p> </blockquote> Maybe have a way to download without specifying something in -o (the only reason i used wget still)</p> </blockquote> --remote-time should be default</p> </blockquote> --remote-name-all could really use a short flag</p> </blockquote> Q: If you miss support for something, tell us what!</h4> "Write the data to the file named in the URL (or in redirects if I'm feeling daring), and timestamp the file to the last-modified-date". This is the main reason I'm still using wget.</p> </blockquote> I can finally feel less bad about falling back to wget due to not remembering the parameters I want.</p> Idealization vs. reality</h1> I don't believe curl will ever change its default behavior in such a way that would accommodate this need, as that would have a side-effect of breaking things which expect the current behavior (the blast radius is literally the solar system</a>).</p> This means a new executable needs to be shipped side-by-side with curl, an opportunity to start fresh and work with a more focused use case (to download files).</p> Ideally, this new executable would be maintained by the curl project, make use of libcurl under-the-hood, and be available everywhere. Nobody wants to worry if their systems have the tool or not, it should always be there.</p> Given I'm just a Debian Developer, with not as much free time as I wish, I've decided to write a simple shell script wrapper calling the curl CLI under-the-hood.</p> wcurl will come installed with the curl package from now on, and I will check with the release team about shipping it on the current Debian stable as well. Shipping wcurl in other distros will be up to them (Debian-derivatives should pick it up automatically, though).</p> We've tried to make it easy for anyone to ship this by using the curl license, keeping the script POSIX-compliant, and shipping a manpage</a>.</p> Maybe if there's enough interest across distributions, someone might sign up for implementing this in upstream curl and increase its reach. I would be happy with the curl project reusing the wcurl name when that happens. It's unlikely that wcurl would be shipped by curl upstream as it is, assuming they would prefer a solution that uses libcurl direclty (more similar to curl the CLI, to maintain).</p> In the worst case, wcurl becomes a Debian-specific tool that only a few people are aware of, in the best case, it becomes the new go-to CLI tool for simply downloading files. I would be happy if at least someone other than me finds it useful.</p> Naming is hard</h1> When I started working on it, I was calling the new executable "curld" (stands for "curl download"), but then when discussing this in one of our weekly calls in the Debian Brasília community, it was mentioned that this could be confused for a daemon.</p> We then settled for the name "wcurl", suggested by Carlos Henrique Lima Melara <charles>. It doesn't really stand for anything, but it's very easy to remember.</p> You know... "it's that wget alternative for when you want to use curl instead" :)</p> Feedback</h1> The code is hosted in GitHub, feel free to open an issue to provide feedback. https://github.com/curl/wcurl</a></p> We also have a Matrix room for the Debian curl maintainers: https://matrix.to/#/#debian-curl-maintainers:matrix.org</a></p> Acknowledgments</h1> The idea for wcurl came a few days before the curl-up conference 2024</a>. I've been thinking a lot about developer productivity in the terminal lately, different tools and better defaults. Before curl-up, I was also thinking about packaging improvements for the curl package. I don't remember what exactly happened, but I likely had to download something and felt a bit ashamed of maintaining curl and not remembering the parameters to download files the way I wanted.</p> I first discussed this idea in the conference, where I asked the participants about it and there were no concerns raised, and some people said I should give it a go. Participating in curl-up was a really great experience and I'm thankful for the interactions I've had there.</p> On the Debian side, I've got reviews of the code and manpage by Sergio Durigan Junior <sergiodj>, Guilherme Puida Moreira <puida> and Carlos Henrique Lima Melara <charles>. Sergio ended up rewriting the tool to be POSIX-compliant (my version was written in bash), so he takes all the credit for the portability.</p> Changes since publication</h1> 2025-01-19</h2> Mention that wcurl will not be added to Debian 12/bookworm, it will be present in Debian 13/trixie.</li> </ul> 2024-12-14</h2> Update list of wcurl features.</li> Point out to wcurl homepage and mention that it's now part of curl.</li> Reorder this changelog to have latest changes on top.</li> </ul> 2024-08-28</h2> Mention availability in bookworm-backports.</li> Link to wcurl lightning talk from DebConf24.</li> </ul> 2024-07-18</h2> Update date of availability for Debian testing and expected date for bookworm backports.</li> Mention charles as the person who suggested "wcurl" as a name.</li> Update wcurl's -o/--opts options, it's now just --curl-options.</li> Remove mention of language spoken in the Matrix room, we are using English now.</li> Update list of features of wcurl.</li> </ul> Hello World 2024-04-18T00:00:00+00:00 This is my very first post, just to make sure everything is working as expected.</p> Made with Zola</a> and the Abridge theme</a>.</p>

Samuel Henrique (samueloph)

Debian 13: My list of exciting new features

3) systemd soft-reboot</h2> Starting with systemd v254, there's a new soft-reboot</code> option, it's an userspace-only reboot, much faster than a full reboot if you don't need to reboot the kernel.</p>

4) apt --update</h2> Are you tired of being required to run sudo apt update</code> just before sudo apt upgrade</code> or sudo apt install $PACKAGE</code>? So am I!</p> The new --update</code> option lets you do both things in a single command:</p>

Changes since publication</h1> 2025-08-30</h2> Mention that Arch also enabled HTTP/3.</li> </ul>

2025-08-30</h2> Mention that Arch also enabled HTTP/3.</li> </ul>

DebConf24 was fun! Security, curl, wcurl, Debian's quality

Debian's curl now supports HTTP3

tl;dr</h4> Starting with curl 8.0.0-2</strong>, you can now use HTTP3.</p>

Availability</h5> Debian unstable - Since 2024-07-02</li> Debian testing - Since 2024-07-18</li> Debian 12/bookworm-backports - Since 2024-08-25</li>

The challenge</h1> HTTP3 is fresh new, well... not really, but at least fresh enough that I'm not aware of any other Linux distribution supporting it on curl, the reason is likely two-fold:</p>

OpenSSL is not there yet</h3> OpenSSL still doesn't have proper HTTP3 support, and given that OpenSSL is so widely used, almost every curl distributor/packager will build curl with it and thus changing the TLS backend to something else is risky.</p>

2024-08-28</h2> Mention availability in bookworm-backports.</li> </ul> 2024-07-18</h2> Update date of availability for Debian testing and expected date for bookworm-backports.</li> Remove mention of language spoken in the Matrix room, we are using English now.</li> </ul>

2024-07-18</h2> Update date of availability for Debian testing and expected date for bookworm-backports.</li> Remove mention of language spoken in the Matrix room, we are using English now.</li> </ul>

Announcing wcurl: a curl wrapper to download files

tl;dr</h4> Whenever you need to download files through the terminal and don't feel like using wget:</p>

Q: Which curl command line option do you think needs improvement and how?</h4> -O, I really want wget like functionality where I don't have to specify the name</p> </blockquote>

Hello World

`Changes since publication</h1> 2025-08-30</h2> Mention that Arch also enabled HTTP/3.</li> </ul>`

2025-08-30</h2>

Mention that Arch also enabled HTTP/3.</li> </ul>

2024-08-28</h2>

Mention availability in bookworm-backports.</li> </ul>
2024-07-18</h2>

Update date of availability for Debian testing and expected date for bookworm-backports.</li>
Remove mention of language spoken in the Matrix room, we are using English now.</li> </ul>

2024-07-18</h2>

Update date of availability for Debian testing and expected date for bookworm-backports.</li>
Remove mention of language spoken in the Matrix room, we are using English now.</li> </ul>