After releasing the Raspberry Pi 3 Model A+ yesterday, the Raspberry Pi Foundation today announced Raspbian 2018-11-13 as the latest update to their Debian-based Linux distribution for these low-cost ARM SBCs.

Debian packages have supported the concept of vendor-specific patches whereby when DPKG unpacks a source package on different operating systems / distributions (such as Debian vs. Ubuntu), different patches could be selectively applied. Ubuntu is one of the main benefactors of this feature while effective immediately these vendor-specific patches to source packages will be treated as a bug and will be unpermitted following the Debian 10 "Buster" release.

Debian 9.6 is out this weekend as the latest stable update to the Debian GNU/Linux "Stretch" series.

For fans of the Rust programming language, it's now running on 14 different Debian architectures -- including all of the release architectures -- as we move towards the Debian 10.0 "Buster" release next year.

Debian developers have been discussing what to many seems like a rather unorthodox idea of not allowing questions/answers following presentations at their annual DebConf conference. This idea of banning questions and answers follows a policy by a Python conference that forbids questions/answers following presentations and is meant to help ease newcomers.

While Debian has tens of thousands of packages in its archive and users often tend to cite the size of a package archive as one of the useful metrics for evaluating a OS/distribution or package manager's potential, not all packages are maintained the same. In acknowledging that not all packages are maintained to the same standard and some ultimately slip through the cracks, Debian developers are discussing a salvaging process.

At this past week's DebConf18 Debian conference was an update on running Debian GNU/Linux on various mobile / ultra-portable devices.

AutoDeb is a long-standing effort to try to automate the creation of Debian packages as much as possible for trying to determine necessary dependencies of a program, will configure/build the program for Autotools-based projects, and end up generating a Debian binary package. AutoDeb was worked on as part of this year's Google Summer of Code for automatic Debian packaging.

It looks like that by the time Debian 10.0 "Buster" rolls about in roughly one year, the UEFI SecureBoot support should be in good shape.

In addition to Keith Packard talking about the state of the Debian GNU/Linux stack for gaming in 2018, during this week's DebConf 18 was a talk by Debian developer Markus Koschany on the state of games for the Linux distribution.

Making good on their word to release the LMDE 3 beta by the end of July, officially out today is the beta of Linux Mint Debian Edition 3 "Cindy".

Happening now in Hsinchu, Taiwan is Debian's DebConf 18. Of the many interesting talks at this multi-day event is X11 veteran Keith Packard talking about gaming on Debian.

Taking place this week was DebCamp while officially starting this weekend is DebConf18, the first DebConf (Debian Conference) to be held in Asia.

Another open-source operating system doing a stable update this morning is Slax, the revived Linux distribution focused on delivering a lightweight desktop that when the project was restarted last year shifted off its Slackware origin and onto a Debian stable base.

Debian GNU/Linux 9.5 is out today as the latest stable update to the "Stretch" series.

Collabora has announced their latest project as Debos, a new way for building Debian operating system images.

For those still using the Debian 8 GNU/Linux "Jessie" release, the 8.11 point release is now available and it's also the last planned update.

The third alpha release of the Debian Installer to be used by Debian 10 "Buster" is now available for testing.

If you are more the artistic type than a software developer, Debian is looking for your help. They are soliciting proposals for the artwork/theme for next year's Debian 10 "Buster" release.

Devuan 2.0 has now been released as stable, the downstream of Debian GNU/Linux that aims for "init freedom" by decoupling the packages from being dependent upon systemd.

Devuan remains the prominent Debian fork that is focused on "init freedom" by stripping out Debian's dependence on systemd.

UEFI SecureBoot support didn't make it for Debian 9.0 "Stretch" but progress is now being made on this "security" feature and it's looking like it could be squared away for the Debian 10.0 release expected next year.

The Debian release team has put out their latest information concerning the upcoming Debian 10 "Buster" release.

Following the very short RC period, the lightweight Slax 9.4 distribution is now available.

The first release candidate of the Debian-based Slax Linux distribution is now available.

It looks like current Debian Project Leader Chris Lamb will be serving another term.

Debian 9.4 is now available as the latest maintenance release for the Stretch release series.

It's been a while since last having anything to report on Devuan, the Debian derivative focused on "init freedom" by shipping the Debian packages without any dependence on systemd. But just in time for Valentine's Day, Devuan 2.0 Beta is now available.

Rolling out as beta this Christmas is Debian Salsa.

The Debian project had a very successful year with the release of Debian 9 "Stretch" and let's not forget about Debian GNU/Hurd 2017, the installer alpha test releases beginning for Buster, Devuan 1.0 as Debian without systemd, and the continued maintenance releases.