Linux (Debian)

History

Debian is one of the oldest Linux distros in the market. It was created to be a fully open source operating system, and it is still now. It is one of the largest community-based distros out there. The Debian project was founded on 16th August, 1993 by Ian Murdock.

Features

Worldwide millions of people use Debian, or a version of Linux based on Debian (Like Ubuntu, Linux Mint etc.). So, you can understand the influence of Debian in the Linux distro community. Debian mainly provides stable release versions, so dependability, security and stability are the main features of Debian. That’s why Debian is used as a server OS in general. Additionally, it provides the largest repository (a marketplace-like place for available software) in Linux distributions, containing more than 50,000 packages. Debian is also one of the first Linux distros to start offering live CDs from where users can directly boot.

Why use it?

Debian is super popular among mass Linux users. Debian has gained popularity for a few reasons, mainly because it is stable and secure. If you want a stable operating system with stable software and a long release cycle, Debian is the best. As an open source, the community is huge and supportive. As the oldest distro in the market, Debian supports almost all the hardware architecture.

Debian is one of the oldest Linux distros in the market. It was created to be a fully open source operating system, and it is still now. It is one of the largest community-based distros out there. The Debian project was founded on 16th August, 1993 by Ian Murdock.

Features

Worldwide millions of people use Debian, or a version of Linux based on Debian (Like Ubuntu, Linux Mint etc.). So, you can understand the influence of Debian in the Linux distro community. Debian mainly provides stable release versions, so dependability, security and stability are the main features of Debian. That’s why Debian is used as a server OS in general. Additionally, it provides the largest repository (a marketplace-like place for available software) in Linux distributions, containing more than 50,000 packages. Debian is also one of the first Linux distros to start offering live CDs from where users can directly boot.

Why use it?

Debian is super popular among mass Linux users. Debian has gained popularity for a few reasons, mainly because it is stable and secure. If you want a stable operating system with stable software and a long release cycle, Debian is the best. As an open source, the community is huge and supportive. As the oldest distro in the market, Debian supports almost all the hardware architecture.

The Operating System

Release history

Debian 1.0 was never released, as a vendor accidentally shipped a development release with that version number. The package management system dpkg and its front-end dselect were developed and implemented on Debian in a previous release. A transition from the a.out binary format to the ELF binary format had already begun before the planned 1.0 release. The only supported architecture was Intel 80386 (i386).[6]

Debian 1.1 (Buzz)

Debian 1.1 (Buzz), released 17 June 1996, contained 474 packages. Debian had fully transitioned to the ELF binary format and used Linux kernel 2.0.[7]

Debian 1.2 (Rex)

Debian 1.2 (Rex), released 12 December 1996, contained 848 packages maintained by 120 developers.[8]

Debian 1.3 (Bo)

Debian 1.3 (Bo), released 5 June 1997, contained 974 packages maintained by 200 developers.[9]

Point releases:

• 1.3.1 (8 July 1997; 24 years ago)[10]
• 1.3.1r1 (Release date unknown)[citation needed]
• 1.3.1r2 (Release date unknown)[citation needed]
• 1.3.1r3 (Release date unknown)[citation needed]
• 1.3.1r4 (Release date unknown)[citation needed]
• 1.3.1r5 (Release date unknown)[citation needed]
• 1.3.1r6 (3 February 1998; 24 years ago)[11]

Debian 2.0 (Hamm)

Debian 2.0 (Hamm), released 24 July 1998, contained over 1,500 packages maintained by over 400 developers. A transition was made to libc6 and Debian was ported to the Motorola 68000 series (m68k) architectures.[12]

Point releases:

• 2.0r1 (24 July 1998; 23 years ago)[13]
• 2.0r2 (29 August 1998; 23 years ago)[citation needed]
• 2.0r3 (21 September 1998; 23 years ago)[citation needed]
• 2.0r4 (7 December 1998; 23 years ago)[citation needed]
• 2.0r5 (15 March 1999; 23 years ago)[citation needed]

Debian 2.1 (Slink)

Debian 2.1 (Slink), released 9 March 1999,[14] contained about 2,250 packages. The front-end APT was introduced for the package management system and Debian was ported to Alpha and SPARC.[15][16]

Point releases:

• 2.1r1 (Possibly never released)[17]
• 2.1r2 (27 June 1999; 22 years ago)[18]
• 2.1r3 (4 September 1999; 22 years ago)[19]
• 2.1r4 (15 December 1999; 22 years ago)[20]
• 2.1r5 (16 February 2000; 22 years ago)[21]

Debian 2.2 (Potato)

Debian 2.2 (Potato), released 14–15 August 2000, contained 2,600 packages maintained by more than 450 developers. New packages included the display manager GDM, the directory service OpenLDAP, the security software OpenSSH and the mail transfer agent Postfix. Debian was ported to the PowerPC and ARM architectures.[22][23][24]

Point releases:

• 2.2r1 (14 November 2000; 21 years ago)[25]
• 2.2r2 (5 December 2000; 21 years ago)[26]
• 2.2r3 (17 April 2001; 21 years ago)[27]
• 2.2r4 (5 November 2001; 20 years ago)[28]
• 2.2r5 (10 January 2002; 20 years ago)[29]
• 2.2r6 (3 April 2002; 20 years ago)[30]
• 2.2r7 (13 July 2002; 19 years ago)[31]

Debian 3.0 (Woody)

Debian 3.0 (Woody), released 19 July 2002, contained around 8,500 packages maintained by more than 900 developers. KDE was introduced and Debian was ported to the following architectures: IA-64, PA-RISC (hppa), mips and mipsel and IBM ESA/390 (s390).[32][33][34]

Point releases:

• 3.0r1 (16 December 2002; 19 years ago)[35]
• 3.0r2 (21 November 2003; 18 years ago)[36]
• 3.0r3 (26 October 2004; 17 years ago)[37]
• 3.0r4 (1 January 2005; 17 years ago)[38]
• 3.0r5 (16 April 2005; 17 years ago)[39]
• 3.0r6 (2 June 2005; 17 years ago)[40]

Debian 3.1 (Sarge)

Debian 3.1 (Sarge), released 6 June 2005, contained around 15,400 packages. debian-installer and OpenOffice.org were introduced.[41][42]

Point releases:

• 3.1r1 (20 December 2005; 16 years ago)[43][44]
• 3.1r2 (19 April 2006; 16 years ago)[45][46]
• 3.1r3 (1 September 2006; 15 years ago)[47][48]
• 3.1r4 (6 November 2006; 15 years ago)[49][50]
• 3.1r5 (18 February 2007; 15 years ago)[51][52]
• 3.1r6 (7 April 2007; 15 years ago)[53][54]
• 3.1r7 (28 December 2007; 14 years ago)[55][56]
• 3.1r8 (13 April 2008; 14 years ago) this is the final update for codename Sarge.[57][58]

Debian 4.0 (Etch)

Debian 4.0 (Etch), released 8 April 2007, contained around 18,000 packages maintained by more than 1,030 developers. Debian was ported to x86–64 (amd64) and support for the Motorola 68000 series (m68k) architecture was dropped.[59][60] This version introduced utf-8 and udev device management by default.

Point releases:

• 4.0r1 (17 August 2007; 14 years ago)[61][62]
• 4.0r2 (27 December 2007; 14 years ago)[63][64]
• 4.0r3 (17 February 2008; 14 years ago)[65][66]
• 4.0r4 (26 July 2008; 13 years ago)[67][68]
• 4.0r5 (23 October 2008; 13 years ago)[69][70]
• 4.0r6 (18 December 2008; 13 years ago)[71][72]
• 4.0r7 (10 February 2009; 13 years ago)[73][74]
• 4.0r8 (8 April 2009; 13 years ago)[75][76]
• 4.0r9 (22 May 2010; 12 years ago) this is the final update for codename Etch[77][78]

Debian 5.0 (Lenny)

Debian 5.0 (Lenny), released 14 February 2009, contained more than 23,000 packages. Debian was ported to the ARM EABI (armel) architecture.[79][80][81]

Point releases:

• 5.0.1 (11 April 2009; 13 years ago)[82][83]
• 5.0.2 (27 June 2009; 12 years ago)[84][85]
• 5.0.3 (5 September 2009; 12 years ago)[86][87]
• 5.0.4 (30 January 2010; 12 years ago)[88][89]
• 5.0.5 (26 July 2010; 11 years ago)[90][91]
• 5.0.6 (4 September 2010; 11 years ago)[92][93]
• 5.0.7 (27 November 2010; 11 years ago)[94]
• 5.0.8 (22 January 2011; 11 years ago)[95]
• 5.0.9 (22 January 2011; 11 years ago)[96]
• 5.0.10 (10 March 2012; 10 years ago) this is the final update for codename Lenny.[97]

Debian 6.0 (Squeeze)

Debian 6.0 (Squeeze), released 6 February 2011, contained more than 29,000 packages. The default Linux kernel included was deblobbed beginning with this release. The web browser Chromium was introduced and Debian was ported to the kfreebsd-i386 and kfreebsd-amd64 architectures (while that port was later discontinued), and support for the Intel 486, Alpha, and PA-RISC (hppa) architectures was dropped.[98][99][100][101]

Squeeze was the first release of Debian in which non-free firmware components (aka “binary blobs”) were excluded from the “main” repository as a matter of policy.[102][103][104][105]

Point releases:

• 6.0.1 (19 March 2011; 11 years ago)[106]
• 6.0.2 (25 June 2011; 10 years ago)[107]
• 6.0.3 (8 October 2011; 10 years ago)[108]
• 6.0.4 (28 January 2012; 10 years ago)[109]
• 6.0.5 (12 May 2012; 10 years ago)[110]
• 6.0.6 (29 September 2012; 9 years ago)[111]
• 6.0.7 (23 February 2013; 9 years ago)[112]
• 6.0.8 (20 October 2013; 8 years ago)[113]
• 6.0.9 (15 February 2014; 8 years ago)[114]
• 6.0.10 (19 June 2014; 7 years ago) this is the final update for codename Squeeze.[115]
• Squeeze long term support reaches end-of-life (29 February 2016; 6 years ago)[116]

Debian 7 (Wheezy)

Debian 7 (Wheezy), released 4 May 2013, contained more than 36,000 packages. Support for UEFI was added and Debian was ported to the armhf and IBM ESA/390 (s390x) architectures.[117][118][119][120]

Point releases:

• 7.1 (15 June 2013; 8 years ago)[121]
• 7.2 (12 October 2013; 8 years ago)[122]
• 7.3 (14 December 2013; 8 years ago)[123]
• 7.4 (8 February 2014; 8 years ago)[124]
• 7.5 (26 April 2014; 8 years ago)[125]
• 7.6 (12 July 2014; 7 years ago)[126]
• 7.7 (18 October 2014; 7 years ago)[127]
• 7.8 (10 January 2015; 7 years ago)[128]
• Debian 8.0 codename Jessie releases, Wheezy becomes oldstable (25 April 2015; 7 years ago)
• 7.9 (5 September 2015; 6 years ago)[129]
• 7.10 (2 April 2016; 6 years ago)[130]
• 7.11 (4 June 2016; 6 years ago) this is the final update for codename Wheezy.[131]
• Debian 9.0 codename Stretch releases, Wheezy becomes oldoldstable (17 June 2017; 4 years ago)
• Wheezy long term support reached end-of-life (1 June 2018; 4 years ago)[132]
• Wheezy extended long term support reached end-of-life (30 June 2020; 23 months ago).[133]

Debian 8 (Jessie)

Debian 8 (Jessie), released 25 April 2015, contained more than 43,000 packages, with systemd installed by default instead of init. (sysvinit and upstart packages are provided as alternatives.) Debian was ported to the ARM64 and ppc64le architectures, while support for the IA-64, kfreebsd-amd64 and kfreebsd-i386, IBM ESA/390 (s390) (only the 31-bit variant; the newer 64-bit s390x was retained) and SPARC architectures were dropped.[134][135][136]

Long term support ended June 2020.[137]

Point releases:

• 8.1 (6 June 2015; 7 years ago)[138]
• 8.2 (5 September 2015; 6 years ago)[139]
• 8.3 (23 January 2016; 6 years ago)[140]
• 8.4 (2 April 2016; 6 years ago)[141]
• 8.5 (4 June 2016; 6 years ago)[142]
• 8.6 (17 September 2016; 5 years ago)[143]
• 8.7 (14 January 2017; 5 years ago)[144]
• 8.8 (6 May 2017; 5 years ago)[145]
• Debian 9.0 codename Stretch releases, Jessie becomes oldstable (17 June 2017; 4 years ago)
• 8.9 (22 July 2017; 4 years ago)[146]
• 8.10 (9 December 2017; 4 years ago)[147]
• Regular security support updates have been discontinued (17 June 2018; 3 years ago)[148]
• 8.11 (23 June 2018; 3 years ago) this is the final update for codename Jessie.[149]
• Debian 10.0 codename Buster releases, Jessie becomes oldoldstable (6 July 2019; 2 years ago)
• Jessie long term support reaches end-of-life (30 June 2020; 23 months ago)[132]
• Jessie extended long term support reaches end-of-life (30 June 2022; 23 days’ time)[133]

Debian 9 (Stretch)

Debian 9 (Stretch) was released on 17 June 2017, two years and two months after Debian 8.0, and contained more than 51,000 packages.[150] The final minor update, called a “point release”, is version 9.13,[151] released on 18 July 2020; 22 months ago. Major upgrades include the Linux kernel going from version 3.16 to 4.9, GNOME desktop version going from 3.14 to 3.22, KDE Plasma 4 was upgraded to Plasma 5, LibreOffice 4.3 upgraded to 5.2 and Qt upgraded from 4.8 to 5.7. LXQt has been added as well.

The Intel i586 (Pentium), i586/i686 hybrid and PowerPC architectures are no longer supported as of Stretch.[152][153][154]

Point releases:

• 9.1 (22 July 2017; 4 years ago)[155]
• 9.2 (7 October 2017; 4 years ago)[156]
• 9.3 (9 December 2017; 4 years ago)[157]
• 9.4 (10 March 2018; 4 years ago)[158]
• 9.5 (14 July 2018; 3 years ago)[159]
• 9.6 (10 November 2018; 3 years ago)[160]
• 9.7 (23 January 2019; 3 years ago)[161]
• 9.8 (16 February 2019; 3 years ago)[162]
• 9.9 (27 April 2019; 3 years ago)[163]
• Stretch becomes oldstable, Buster is the current stable release (6 July 2019; 2 years ago)
• 9.10 (7 September 2019; 2 years ago)[164]
• 9.11 (8 September 2019; 2 years ago)[165]
• 9.12 (8 February 2020; 2 years ago)[166]
• 9.13 (18 July 2020; 22 months ago) this is the final update for codename Stretch.[167]
• Stretch long term support reaches end-of-life (30 June 2022; 23 days’ time)[168]

Debian 10 (Buster)

Debian 10 (Buster) was released on 6 July 2019; 2 years ago. It was two years and a month after Debian 9 (Stretch).[169] Debian 10 contains 57,703 packages, supports UEFI Secure Boot,[170] has AppArmor enabled by default, uses LUKS2 as the default LUKS format, and uses Wayland for GNOME by default.[citation needed]

Debian 10 ships with Linux kernel version 4.19.[171] Available desktops include Cinnamon 3.8, GNOME 3.30, KDE Plasma 5.14, LXDE 0.99.2, LXQt 0.14, MATE 1.20, Xfce 4.12. Key application software includes LibreOffice 6.1 for office productivity, VLC 3.0 for media viewing, and Firefox ESR for web browsing.[172]

Point releases:

• 10.1 (7 September 2019; 2 years ago)[173][174]
• 10.2 (16 November 2019; 2 years ago)[175]
• 10.3 (8 February 2020; 2 years ago)[176]
• 10.4 (9 May 2020; 2 years ago)[177]
• 10.5 (1 August 2020; 22 months ago)[178]
• 10.6 (26 September 2020; 20 months ago)[179]
• 10.7 (5 December 2020; 18 months ago)[180]
• 10.8 (6 February 2021; 16 months ago)[181]
• 10.9 (27 March 2021; 14 months ago)[182]
• 10.10 (19 June 2021; 11 months ago)[183]
• Buster becomes oldstable, Bullseye is the current stable release (14 August 2021; 9 months ago)[3]
• 10.11 (9 October 2021; 7 months ago)[184]
• 10.12 (26 March 2022; 2 months ago)[185]

Debian 11 (Bullseye)

Debian 11 (Bullseye) was released on 14 August 2021.[3] It is based on the Linux 5.10 LTS kernel and will be supported for five years.[186]

On 12 November 2020, it was announced that “Homeworld”, by Juliette Taka, will be the default theme for Debian 11, after winning a public poll held with eighteen choices.[187]

Bullseye dropped the remaining Qt4/KDE 4 libraries and Python 2.[188][189] The first of the code freezes, readying Debian 11 for release, began on 12 January 2021.[190]

Bullseye does not support the older big-endian 32-bit MIPS architectures.[191] This is not to be confused with the more common i386 32-bit architecture which is still supported.

Bullseye shipped with Qt 5.15 KDE Plasma 5.20.[192] Available desktops include Gnome 3.38, KDE Plasma 5.20, LXDE 11, LXQt 0.16, MATE 1.24, and Xfce 4.16.[193][194][195]

Development freeze timetable:

• January 12, 2021: transition freeze[190]
• February 12, 2021: soft freeze[196]
• March 12, 2021: hard freeze[197]
• July 17, 2021: full freeze
• August 14, 2021: release

Point releases:

• 11.1 (9 October 2021; 7 months ago)[198]
• 11.2 (18 December 2021; 5 months ago)[199]
• 11.3 (March 26, 2022; 2 months ago)[200]

Debian 12 (Bookworm)

Debian 12 (Bookworm) is the current testing release of Debian and is the next release candidate for Debian.

Debian 12 is expected to have link-time optimization (LTO) enabled by default.[201]

Debian 12 might reduce focus on i386 support, though this has yet to be determined.[202]

Debian version history - Wikipedia