Debian

**Debian** is a free operating system. It is a distribution of an operating system known as the GNU operating system, which can be used with various kernels, including Linux, kFreeBSD, and Hurd. In combination with these kernels, the operating system can be referred to as Debian GNU/Linux, Debian GNU/kFreeBSD, and Debian GNU/Hurd, respectively. Debian GNU/Linux is one of the most complete and popular GNU/Linux distributions, on which many others, like Ubuntu, are based.

## Brief history

The Debian Project officially started on August 16th, 1993, led by Ian Murdock. He was a computer programmer. Today, in this project, Debian is developed by more than 1,000 computer specialists all over the world.

The name "Debian" was taken after Ian Murdock and his wife Debra. Some people say or pronounce 'deb-ee-n' but others also say 'de-bi-an' or 'de-bai-an' and in Japan 'de-bi-a-n' and so on.

## Development steps

Software packages in development are either uploaded to the project distribution named _unstable_ (also known as _sid_), or to the _experimental_ repository. Software packages uploaded to _unstable_ are normally versions stable enough to be released by the original upstream developer, but with the added Debian-specific packaging and other modifications introduced by Debian developers. These additions may be new and untested. Software not ready yet for the _unstable_ distribution is typically placed in the _experimental_ repository.

After a version of a software package has remained in _unstable_ for a certain length of time (depending on how urgent the changes are), that package is automatically moved to the _testing_ distribution. The package's move to testing happens only if no serious (_release-critical_) bugs in the package are reported and if other software needed for package functionality qualifies for inclusion in _testing_.

Since updates to Debian software packages between official releases do not contain new features, some choose to use the _testing_ and _unstable_ distributions for their newer packages. However, these distributions are less tested than _stable_, and _unstable_ does not receive timely security updates.  In particular, incautious upgrades to working _unstable_ packages can sometimes seriously break software functionality. Since September 9, 2005  the _testing_ distributions security updates have been provided by the _testing_ security team.

After the packages in _testing_ have matured and the goals for the next release are met, the _testing_ distribution becomes the next stable release. The latest stable release of Debian (_Buster_) is 10.0, released on July 6, 2019. The next release is codenamed "_Bullseye_".

### Release history

|Legend||
| --- | --- |
|style="background-color:#F06C47;"|Release no longer supported|
|style="background-color:#A0E75A;"|Release still supported|
|style="background-color:#87CEEB;"|Future release|
|Version|Code name|Release date|Ports|Packages|Supported until|Notes||||||
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
|1.1|_buzz_|align="right"|17 June 1996|align="right"|1|align="right"|474|style="background-color:#F06C47;"|1996|<samp>dpkg</samp>, ELF transition, Linux 2.0||
|1.2|_rex_|align="right"|12 December 1996|align="right"|1|align="right"|848|style="background-color:#F06C47;"|1996|-||
|1.3|_bo_|align="right"|5 June 1997|align="right"|1|align="right"|974|style="background-color:#F06C47;"|1997|-||
|2.0|_hamm_|align="right"|24 July 1998|align="right"|2|align="right"|≈ 1,500|style="background-color:#F06C47;"|1998|glibc transition, new architecture: <samp>m68k</samp>||
|2.1|_slink_|align="right"|9 March 1999|align="right"|4|align="right"|≈ 2,250|style="background-color:#F06C47;"|2000-12|<samp>APT</samp>, new architectures: <samp>alpha</samp>, <samp>sparc</samp>||
|2.2|_potato_|align="right"|15 August 2000|align="right"|6|align="right"|≈ 3,900|style="background-color:#F06C47;"|2003-04|New architectures: <samp>arm</samp>, <samp>powerpc</samp>||
|3.0|_woody_|align="right"|19 July 2002|align="right"|11|align="right"|≈ 8,500|style="background-color:#F06C47;"|2006-08|New architectures: <samp>hppa</samp>, <samp>ia64</samp>, <samp>mips</samp>, <samp>mipsel</samp>, <samp>s390</samp>||
|3.1|_sarge_|align="right"|6 June 2005|align="right"|11|align="right"|≈ 15,400|style="background-color:#F06C47;"|2008-04|Modular installer, semi-official <samp>amd64</samp> support.||
|4.0|_etch_|align="right"|8 April 2007|align="right"|11|align="right"|≈ 18,000|style="background-color:#F06C47;"|2010-02-15|New architecture: <samp>amd64</samp>, dropped architecture: <samp>m68k</samp>. Graphical installer, udev transition, modular X.Org transition. Latest update 4.0r9 was released 2010-05-22||
|5.0|_lenny_|align="right"|14 February 2009|align="right"|11+1|align="right"|≈ 23,000|style="background-color:#F06C47;"|2012-02-06|New architecture/binary ABI: <samp>armel</samp>. SPARC 32-bit hardware support dropped.  Full Eee PC support. Latest update 5.0.8 was released 2011-01-22.||
|6.0|_squeeze_|align="right"|6 February 2011|align="right"|9+2|align="right"|≈ 29,000|style="background-color:#F06C47;"|2016-02-29|New architectures/kernels: <samp>kfreebsd-i386</samp>, <samp>kfreebsd-amd64</samp>, dropped architectures: <samp>alpha</samp>, <samp>arm</samp>. eglibc in favour of glibc.||
|7|style="text-align: left;"|wheezy|align="right"|4 May 2013|align="right"|13|align="right"|≈ 36,000|style="background-color:#F06C47;"|2018-05||
|8|style="text-align: left;"|jessie|align="right"|25–26 April 2015|align="right"|10|align="right"|≈ 43,000|style="background-color:#F06C47;"|2020-04||
|9|style="text-align: left;"|stretch|align="right"|17 June 2017|align="right"|10|align="right"|≈ 52,000|style="background-color:#F06C47;"|2022-06||
|10|style="text-align: left;"|buster|align="right"|6 July 2019|align="right"|10|align="right"|≈ 58,000|style="background-color:#A0E75A;"|2024-06||
|11|style="text-align: left;"|bullseye|align="right"|14 August 2021|align="right"|9|align="right"|59,551|style="background-color:#A0E75A;"|2026-06||
|12|style="text-align: left;"|bookworm|align="right"|10 June 2023|align="right"|10|align="right"|64,419|style="background-color:#A0E75A;"|2028||
|13|style="text-align: left;"|trixie|align="right"|19 Aug 2025||align="right"|69,830|||||
- 11 architectures + 1 additional ARM binary ABI (<samp>armel</samp>)
- 9 architectures with Linux kernel + 2 architectures with FreeBSD kernel

Due to an incident involving a CD vendor who made an unofficial and broken release labeled _1.0_, an official 1.0 release was never made.

## For other platforms

Debian has been ported to different architectures or platforms. One version, which is based on the developer release (sid) that has been ported to the Xbox is called Xebian.

## Related pages

- List of Linux distributions
- Intel

## References

- Notes

## Other websites

- http://www.debian.org/ - Debian Project Homepage

## Infobox (os)

- **name**: Debian
- **logo**: Debian-OpenLogo.svg
- **logo size**: 100px
- **logo alt**: Debian OpenLogo
- **screenshot**: Debian Trixie Gnome.png
- **screenshot alt**: Screenshot of Debian 13 (Trixie) with the GNOME desktop environment version 48.3
- **caption**: Screenshot of Debian 13 (Trixie) with the GNOME desktop environment version 48.3
- **developer**: The Debian Project
- **family**: Unix-like
- **working state**: Current
- **source model**: Open-source software, Open source
- **latest preview version**: 12 (Bookworm)
- **language**: 75 languages
- **updatemodel**: Long-term support in stable edition, rolling release in unstable and testing editions
- **package manager**: APT (Debian), APT (front-end), dpkg
- **supported platforms**: x86-64, arm64, [https://wiki.debian.org/ArmEabiPort armel], armhf, i386, MIPS architecture, mips, mipsel, MIPS architecture, mips64el, ppc64el, s390x, RISC-V, riscv64 (in progress)
- **kernel type**: Linux kernel
- **userland**: GNU Core Utilities, GNU
- **ui**: * GNOME on DVD
* XFCE on CD and non-Linux ports
* MATE (software), MATE available on Debian's website
* KDE Plasma 5, KDE Plasma available on Debian's website
* LXQt available on Debian's website
* LXDE available on Debian's website
* Cinnamon (desktop environment), Cinnamon available on Debian's website
- **license**: Debian Free Software Guidelines, DFSG-compatible licenses