Debian News Archives

Debian's MIPS64EL that is a 64-bit little endian port using the N64 ABI is at risk due to declining access for building the Debian 64-bit MIPS packages. MIPS64EL is now being treated as an "out of sync" architecture due to lacking sufficient build daemon resources for timely building new packages and if the situation doesn't improve, it may not be suitable as a release architecture for Debian 13 "Trixie".

Debian 12 had aimed to have a merged "/usr" file-system layout similar to other Linux distributions, but The Debian Technical Committee earlier this year decided to impose a merged-/usr file movement moratorium. But now with Debian 12 having been out for a few months, that moratorium has been repealed.

Following the release of Debian 12.1 in July, Debian 12.2 was released this weekend to incorporate all of the latest security fixes and other stable back-ports for Debian 12 Bookworm.

Debian developers will be discontinuing their 32-bit MIPS little-endian "mipsel" CPU architecture port moving forward.

In addition to Debian promoting RISC-V to an official CPU architecture for the newly in development Debian 13 cycle, another CPU architecture/port change is adding LoongArch "Loong64" as a new Debian Port.

Devuan is still alive and well for those wanting to run Debian GNU/Linux but without systemd. Devuan 5.0 is out today as the newest distro release that is now rebased atop Debian 12 Bookworm.

RISC-V is now an official Debian architecture for the Debian 13 "Trixie" release to happen in about two years time. Over the weekend a brief status update was issued surrounding this newest CPU architecture to be supported by the Debian GNU/Linux team. Arguably most interesting is how they are currently building out the Debian RISC-V packages.

Debian 13 "Trixie" has been aiming for official RISC-V support and indeed it will happen: RISC-V has now been promoted to an official Debian CPU architecture.

Building off last month's release of Debian 12.0, Debian 12.1 is out today to ship dozens of bug fixes.

Following this weekend's release of Debian 12.0, the Debian GNU Hurd port has been released that rather than utilizing the Linux kernel is making use of GNU Hurd.

With today's release of Debian 12 the official ports are for AMD64, AArch64, ARMEL, ARMHF, i386, MIPS, 64-bit MIPS, POWER, and IBM System Z. There isn't RISC-V 64-bit as an official port but that is likely to change for Debian 13.

Following more than one and a half years in development, Debian 12 is officially shipping today as the latest major release for this long-maintained Linux distribution.

Debian 12 remains on track for releasing next week even with around 100 known RC bugs that likely won't be resolved pre-release. The Debian release team says overall things are on-track.

Armbian 23.05 is out today as this Arm-focused Debian-based Linux distribution effort is approaching its tenth anniversary.

The Debian 12 "Bookworm" release is quickly approaching with an early June release date while for helping facilitate more last minute testing is a fourth release candidate of the updated Debian Installer.

The Debian Technical Committee has voted to reinstate the merged-/usr file movement moratorium.

Ahead of Debian 12.0 releasing in June, a third release candidate of the Debian 12 "Bookworm" installer has been released.

Debian's APT packaging tool that is also used by downstreams like Ubuntu has begun seeing initial support for "snapshots" introduced.

In preparing for releasing Debian 12.0 "Bookworm" in June, out this weekend is the second release candidate of the Debian Installer for this next major Debian Linux release.

The Debian release team has just announced a tentative ship date for Debian 12.0 "Bookworm".

While Debian and its derivatives are quite popular with ARM single board computers, the ARM64 Secure Boot support has been broken for at least two years. But a fix is on the way and it should appear for this year's Debian 12 "Bookworm" release.

CoreCtrl as the open-source utility for managing your system's performance/vitals and supporting various application profiles has landed in Debian as well as being picked up for easy installation on the upcoming Ubuntu 23.04.

The Debian Installer for the upcoming Debian 12 "Bookworm" release has reached its release candidate phase.

Following last month's soft freeze for Debian 12 "Bookworm", this popular Linux distribution is now in its hard freeze until its release time.

Debian developers today released APT 2.6 as the newest version of this package manager that will ship as part of the upcoming Debian 12 "Bookworm" release.

Debian 12 "Bookworm" is now under its soft freeze while out this weekend is the second alpha release for the Debian Installer.

After last month's initial Debian 12 freeze, this week the "Bookworm" Linux distribution release entered its soft freeze.

Debian 12 (codenamed "Bookworm") is expected to be released later this year and as such the first of several code/package freezes has begun.

Being introduced to the Debian package archive this week is accel-config as Intel's new user-space component for configuring the DSA accelerators found with the new 4th Gen Xeon Scalable "Sapphire Rapids" processors.

While Debian 12.0 "Bookworm" will hopefully be out around mid-2023, Debian 11.6 is out this weekend as the newest point release to the current Debian 11 "Bullseye" stable series.

The upcoming Debian GNU/Linux 12 release is codenamed "Bookworm" and is expected to be released in 2023. Meanwhile Debian 13 will be out around 2025 and it was already announced under the Trixie codename. Now today it's been announced that Debian 14 come 2027 will also be known as the "Forky" release.

There's been a lot happening in Debian recently from improving their handling of non-free firmware to switching to PipeWire and WirePlumber with Debian 12. Another change on the way is picking up Ubuntu's work on dynamic triple buffering for the GNOME desktop.

Debian developers have been figuring out an updated stance to take on non-free firmware considering the increasing number of devices now having open-source Linux drivers but requiring closed-source firmware for any level of functionality. The voting on the non-free firmware matter has now concluded and the votes tallied...

In addition to Ubuntu 22.10 switching to PipeWire as the default audio server replacement to PulseAudio, upstream Debian has done the same ahead of their Debian GNU/Linux 12 release next year.

The first alpha release of the Debian Installer to be used by Debian 12 "Bookworm" is now available for early testing.

The Debian project today released Debian 11.5 and Debian 10.13 as the newest versions of their free GNU/Linux operating system.

Debian has begun a general resolution process to solicit a vote by its stakeholders what to do with non-free firmware.

At DebConf22 in Kosovo that recently wrapped up, Lenovo's Mark Pearson who leads the company's Linux initiatives talked in-person about their 2022 platform support for Linux and their progress over the past year. In 2022 they expect 30+ platforms with Linux support.

After the COVID-19 pandemic hiatus, Debian's annual conference "DebConf" is back to being an in-person event and started this morning in Kosovo.

Debian 11.4 is out as the fourth stable release update to "Bullseye" of this popular community-based Linux distribution.

While most Linux distributions will include linux-firmware.git firmware files as the collection of firmware/microcode binaries needed by various mainline Linux kernel drivers, Debian does not. While the kernel drivers are open-source, the firmware files tend to be binary-only/closed-source, but these days are increasingly necessary for any level of functional support. Thus Debian is left in the awkward position of either providing poor hardware support and users left wondering what's going on or to make some improvements to better deal with today's world of firmware necessities.

Debian 12 "Bookworm" is coming next year while out this weekend is Debian 11.3 as the newest update in the "Bullseye" series.

The Linux Mint crew have today released Linux Mint Debian Edition 5 (LMDE5). This is the effort carried out as a safeguard should Linux Mint in the future determine it unsuitable to continue basing their flagship distribution atop Ubuntu.

While Debian 11 "Bullseye" released just last August, there is already talk of development milestone dates for Debian 12 "Bookworm" for a likely release in 2023.

Debian 11.2 is out today as the newest point release to "Bullseye" that premiered earlier this year.

When it comes to the state of packaged web browsers for Debian GNU/Linux, unfortunately it leaves a lot to be desired at the moment and for those wanting to be secure and up-to-date it can mean resorting to proprietary or un-packaged browser builds.

Devuan 4.0 "Chimaera" is officially out today as the latest stable release of this Linux distribution known for being a close rebuild of Debian but without a dependence on systemd.

Debian 11 "Bullseye" debuted back in August as the latest major release for this popular community Linux distribution. Today it's been succeeded by Debian 11.1.

Debian 11 "Bullseye" has been officially released now after just over two years in development.

In addition to Debian GNU/Linux 11 set for release today, Debian GNU/Hurd 2021 has been released as the unofficial port of Debian to the GNU Hurd micro-kernel.