Stremio is finally in the Debian archive

Stremio was the first package I attempted to build when starting contributing to Debian as a regular contributor. It was quite a journey since the ones who have been following this blog know…

First, I packaged the old stremio-qt5 (based in QT5 who is reaching its end of life soon, so all the patches that were needed and the weeks fighting to make it compile are now an adventure to tell to my grandchildren.

Then, I packaged stremio-cef, the package based on Chromium Embedded Framework, that required to compile CEF itself as a library for Debian, a road that took me months to complete and was my introduction to contributing to the Debian Chromium team.

As of 24 September 2026, Stremio is part of Debian itself:

Package	Where	What it is
stremio 1.2.0+ds-1	Debian unstable, main	The GTK4 / libadwaita / WebKitGTK 6 client
stremio-server-installer 1	Debian unstable, contrib	Fetches the streaming server component at install time

Ten new Rust crates went into Debian main as prerequisites along the way
(webkit6, webkit6-sys, javascriptcore6, javascriptcore6-sys, epoxy, libmpv2, libmpv2-sys, byteorder-lite, piper, discord-rich-presence).

If you are on unstable/sid, install Stremio from Debian, not from here.

If you installed Stremio from my unofficial repository https://debian.vejeta.com/, read this

This repository used to ship a package called stremio at version
4.4.181+dfsg-1, which was the older Qt5 client. Debian’s package is 1.2.0+ds-1. Since 4.4.181 sorts above 1.2.0, apt treats Debian’s package as a downgrade and will not switch you over on its own. Two things are happening here, in two steps:

Step 1 (now). The Qt5 client has been renamed to stremio-qt5, and this repository ships a small transitional stremio package that pulls it in. Nothing breaks: the app you had keeps working, just under the name stremio-qt5, and apt moves the “manually installed” mark over to it by itself, so apt autoremove will not take it away later.

Note that plain apt upgrade will not do this: it is not allowed to
install new packages, so it reports stremio as kept back. Use:

sudo apt full-upgrade  

(verified in a clean unstable chroot against the packages actually published here). After it runs, the leftover transitional stremio package shows up as no longer required, and sudo apt autoremove clears it.

Step 2 (announced separately, later). This repository will stop shipping the stremio name entirely. From then on, stremio means Debian’s package, and you can switch with:

sudo apt remove stremio # removes only the empty transitional package  
sudo apt install stremio stremio-server-installer  

You can do that today already if you prefer, with:

sudo apt remove stremio  
sudo apt install stremio/unstable stremio-server-installer/unstable  

stremio-server-installer asks for confirmation and then downloads the streaming server component from Stremio’s own servers, verifying its checksum.

It replaces the old stremio-server package from this repository (which was in non-free and shipped that component directly), and it is now the piece all the clients share: it installs server.js under /usr/share/stremio/, which both Debian’s stremio and this repository’s stremio-qt5 read from.

If you use the CEF client, upgrade it before installing Debian’s stremio

The version of stremio-gtk published here until now installs three files that Debian’s stremio package also installs:

/usr/share/applications/com.stremio.Stremio.desktop  
/usr/share/icons/hicolor/scalable/apps/com.stremio.Stremio.svg  
/usr/share/metainfo/com.stremio.Stremio.metainfo.xml  

With that version installed, dpkg would refuse to unpack Debian’s package.

While this repository still serves the stremio name you will not hit it (apt gives you this repository’s package instead), but it becomes relevant as soon as you go for Debian’s. The new stremio-cef moves those files to com.stremio.Stremio.CEF.*, so sudo apt full-upgrade resolves it for you as part of moving you from stremio-gtk to stremio-cef.

Verified in a clean chroot: after that upgrade, Debian’s stremio and the CEF client install side by side, as /usr/bin/stremio and /usr/bin/stremio-cef.

What this repository still carries

Debian does not have these, so they stay here:

• stremio-cef (formerly stremio-gtk): the CEF-based client. Renamed because Debian’s own client is GTK4 too, so “-gtk” no longer distinguished anything; the real difference is the renderer. A transitional stremio-gtk package moves existing installs across.
• stremio-qt5: the Qt5 client, formerly published here as stremio
• stremio-qt6: the Qt6 port
• brow6el: minimal CEF-based browser
• libcef149, libcef150, libcef151, libcef-dev, libcef-common: Chromium Embedded Framework
• librust-cef-dev, librust-cef-dll-sys-dev: Rust bindings to CEF

Recommended: pin this repository below Debian

Now that the official packages come from Debian, it is worth telling apt to prefer Debian for anything that exists in both. Create
/etc/apt/preferences.d/99-vejeta:

Package: *  
Pin: origin debian.vejeta.com  
Pin-Priority: 100  

With priority 100 (below the default 500), packages from here are only used when Debian does not provide them, which is exactly what this repository is for from now on.

Debian stable and testing

Debian’s stremio is in unstable and will migrate to testing in the normal way and will eventually trickle down to Ubuntu and other Debian derivatives. Users of bookworm and trixie are not affected yet and can keep using this repository as before.