Debian APT 2.6 Released With Updates For Non-Free Firmware Handling

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.

APT 2.6 incorporates changes for dealing with "non-free-firmware" following Debian's voting last year to better handle non-free firmware on their Linux distribution. This includes moving forward that non-free firmware packages are included on the official media, the non-free firmware binaries will be enabled by default when determined they are required, and the possibility for users to disable this at boot. These changes are being made to better support Debian across different hardware with non-free firmware often being required from GPUs to WiFi adapters for the open-source driver support to function, closed-source CPU microcode updates often delivering security fixes, etc.

Going along with the updated Debian Installer to deal with non-free firmware, the APT 2.6 release has its updates around this non-free-firmware section.

Details on these non-free-firmware APT changes and other package manager updates being made with Debian 12 "Bookworm" in mind can be found via today's release announcement.