Error instaling Reflex on Linux Debian 13

[rafael-morales]

I'm having trouble installing Reflex on Linux Debian 13. When I run **reflex init**, it seems to have some incompatibility with bun or Node.js.
Is anyone else having this problem? Any ideas or tutorials? Thanks.

[manimovassagh]

This is likely a bun compatibility issue with Debian 13 (Trixie). Reflex uses bun internally to manage the frontend build, and some Linux distributions have glibc or kernel version mismatches that cause bun to fail silently or crash.

Here is what to try:

1. Check the actual error

Run with verbose output:

reflex init --loglevel debug

This should show the exact bun or Node.js error.

2. Force Node.js instead of bun

If bun is the problem, you can tell Reflex to use Node.js/npm instead:

export REFLEX_USE_NPM=true
reflex init

Make sure Node.js 18+ is installed:

node --version
npm --version

3. Install bun manually

Sometimes the auto-installed bun binary is incompatible. Install it manually and make sure it works:

curl -fsSL https://bun.sh/install | bash
bun --version

If bun itself crashes, it is a bun + Debian 13 issue. Check if your glibc version is supported:

ldd --version

Bun requires glibc 2.27+, which Debian 13 should have, but there can be other library conflicts.

4. Check Python version

Reflex requires Python 3.9+. Verify:

python3 --version
pip show reflex

5. Clean state and retry

rm -rf .web __pycache__ .reflex
pip install --upgrade reflex
reflex init

If you can share the exact error output from reflex init --loglevel debug, that would help narrow it down further.