After almost two years, the developers released a stable distribution of Debian 12, codenamed Bookworm, which became the successor to Demain 11 Bullseye from 2019. As is typical for this distribution, the new assembly did not receive a large number of innovations – the developers continue to focus on stability and “predictability”. However, they themselves do not recommend anyone and everyone to install Debian 12, even though it is a stable release.
The release of the first “patch” is expected in July. There are some bugs in the current assembly that were known in advance
Debian 12 is based on the Linux 6.1 kernel – not the newest version (6.3 is already available), but supported until 2027. The default desktop environment is GNOME 43 (Pipewire and WirePlumber are also used), but other updated environments are available, including KDE Plasma 5.27, LXDE 11, LXQt 1.2.0, MATE 1.26, and Xfce 4.18. The new release is the first to have an ISO containing both free and non-free software. At the same time, when moving from Debian 11, the developers removed 10% of packages that are already considered obsolete, while 11,089 new packages appeared, and there are 64,419 in total.
Debian 12 ships with LibreOffice 7.4.5.1, Evolution 3.46.4-2, Transmission 3.0 and Mozilla Firefox ESR. Users will surely notice the new Emerald design, covering the boot screen, installer, desktop wallpaper and documentation.
Other important changes:
- GRUB bootloader no longer starts os-prober by default;
- new implementation of malloc;
- the syslog daemon is no longer installed by default;
- The fonts have been extensively updated, including Google Fonts.
Despite everything, even a few days before the release of Debian 12, developers warned that there were 100 known bugs in the system. And they emphasized that if users want maximum stability, it is better to wait for the July 12.1 update.