Debian version history



Debian releases do not follow a fixed schedule. Recent releases have been made around every two years by the Debian Project. The most recent version of Debian is Debian version 12, codename "Bookworm". The next up and coming release of Debian is Debian 13, codename "Trixie".

Debian always has at least three active branches at any time: "stable", "testing" and "unstable". The stable branch is considered the primary release and what most people refer to when talking about Debian. The testing branch contains packages that have been imported from unstable. Testing has significantly more up-to-date packages than stable and is frozen some time before a release to become the next version of Debian. The unstable release (also known as Sid) is the branch where active development takes place. It is the most volatile version of Debian.

When the Debian stable branch is replaced with a newer release, the current stable becomes an "oldstable" release. When the Debian stable branch is replaced again, the oldstable release becomes the "oldoldstable" release. Oldoldstable is eventually moved to the archived releases repository.

Naming convention
Debian distribution codenames are based on the names of characters from the Toy Story films. Debian's unstable trunk is named after Sid, a character who regularly destroyed his toys.

Release cycle
Debian Unstable, known as "Sid", contains all the latest packages as soon as they are available, and follows a rolling-release model.

Once a package has been in Debian Unstable for 2-10 days (depending on the urgency of the upload), doesn't introduce critical bugs and doesn't break other packages (among other conditions), it is included in Debian Testing, also known as "next-stable".

On average about every two years, Debian Testing enters a "freeze" cycle, where new packages are held back unless they fix critical bugs. This frozen state lasts on average 7 months (but can be as short as one month). Once Debian Testing doesn't contain any more release critical bugs, it is declared "stable" and released with a version number.

Release table
When a release transitions to long-term support phase (LTS-phase), security is no longer handled by the main Debian security team. Only a subset of Debian architectures are eligible for Long Term Support, and there is no support for packages in backports.

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).

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.

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

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

Point releases:
 * 1.3.1
 * 1.3.1r1 (Release date unknown)
 * 1.3.1r2 (Release date unknown)
 * 1.3.1r3 (Release date unknown)
 * 1.3.1r4 (Release date unknown)
 * 1.3.1r5
 * 1.3.1r6

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.

Point releases:
 * 2.0r1
 * 2.0r2
 * 2.0r3
 * 2.0r4
 * 2.0r5

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

Point releases:
 * 2.1r1 (Possibly never released)
 * 2.1r2
 * 2.1r3
 * 2.1r4
 * 2.1r5

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.

Point releases:
 * 2.2r1
 * 2.2r2
 * 2.2r3
 * 2.2r4
 * 2.2r5
 * 2.2r6
 * 2.2r7

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).

Point releases:
 * 3.0r1
 * 3.0r2
 * 3.0r3
 * 3.0r4
 * 3.0r5
 * 3.0r6

Debian 3.1 (Sarge)


Debian 3.1 (Sarge), released 6 June 2005, contained around 15,400 packages. debian-installer and OpenOffice.org were introduced. Point releases:
 * 3.1r1
 * 3.1r2
 * 3.1r3
 * 3.1r4
 * 3.1r5
 * 3.1r6
 * 3.1r7
 * 3.1r8 this is the final update for codename Sarge.

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. This version introduced utf-8 and udev device management by default.

Point releases:
 * 4.0r1
 * 4.0r2
 * 4.0r3
 * 4.0r4
 * 4.0r5
 * 4.0r6
 * 4.0r7
 * 4.0r8
 * 4.0r9 this is the final update for codename Etch

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.

Point releases:
 * 5.0.1
 * 5.0.2
 * 5.0.3
 * 5.0.4
 * 5.0.5
 * 5.0.6
 * 5.0.7
 * 5.0.8
 * 5.0.9
 * 5.0.10 this is the final update for codename Lenny.

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.

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.

Point releases:
 * 6.0.1
 * 6.0.2
 * 6.0.3
 * 6.0.4
 * 6.0.5
 * 6.0.6
 * 6.0.7
 * 6.0.8
 * 6.0.9
 * 6.0.10 this is the final update for codename Squeeze.
 * Squeeze long term support reaches end-of-life

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 z/Architecture (s390x) architectures.

Point releases:
 * 7.1
 * 7.2
 * 7.3
 * 7.4
 * 7.5
 * 7.6
 * 7.7
 * 7.8
 * Debian 8.0 codename Jessie releases, Wheezy becomes oldstable
 * 7.9
 * 7.10
 * 7.11 this is the final update for codename Wheezy.
 * Debian 9.0 codename Stretch releases, Wheezy becomes oldoldstable
 * Wheezy long term support reached end-of-life
 * Wheezy extended long term support reached end-of-life.

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.

Long term support ended June 2020.

Point releases:
 * 8.1
 * 8.2
 * 8.3
 * 8.4
 * 8.5
 * 8.6
 * 8.7
 * 8.8
 * Debian 9.0 codename Stretch releases, Jessie becomes oldstable
 * 8.9
 * 8.10
 * Regular security support updates have been discontinued
 * 8.11 this is the final update for codename Jessie.
 * Debian 10.0 codename Buster releases, Jessie becomes oldoldstable
 * Jessie long term support reaches end-of-life
 * Jessie extended long term support reaches end-of-life

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. The final minor update, called a "point release", is version 9.13, released on. 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.

Point releases:
 * 9.1
 * 9.2
 * 9.3
 * 9.4
 * 9.5
 * 9.6
 * 9.7
 * 9.8
 * 9.9
 * Stretch becomes oldstable, Buster becomes stable release
 * 9.10
 * 9.11
 * 9.12
 * 9.13 this is the final update for codename Stretch.
 * Stretch long term support reaches end-of-life
 * Stretch extended long term support reaches end-of-life

Debian 10 (Buster)


Debian 10 (Buster) was released on. It was two years and a month after Debian 9 (Stretch). Debian 10 contains 57,703 packages, supports UEFI Secure Boot, has AppArmor enabled by default, uses LUKS2 as the default LUKS format, and uses Wayland for GNOME by default.

Debian 10 ships with Linux kernel version 4.19. 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.

Point releases:
 * 10.1
 * 10.2
 * 10.3
 * 10.4
 * 10.5
 * 10.6
 * 10.7
 * 10.8
 * 10.9
 * 10.10
 * Buster becomes oldstable, Bullseye is the current stable release
 * 10.11
 * 10.12
 * 10.13 this is the final update for codename Buster

Debian 11 (Bullseye)


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

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.

Bullseye dropped the remaining Qt4/KDE 4 libraries and Python 2, and shipped with Qt 5.15 KDE Plasma 5.20. Available desktops include Gnome 3.38, KDE Plasma 5.20, LXDE 11, LXQt 0.16, MATE 1.24, and Xfce 4.16.

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

The first of the code freezes, readying Debian 11 for release, began on 12 January 2021.

Development freeze timetable:
 * 12 January, 2021: transition freeze
 * 12 February, 2021: soft freeze
 * 12 March, 2021: hard freeze
 * 17 July, 2021: full freeze
 * 14 August, 2021: release

Point releases:
 * 11.1
 * 11.2
 * 11.3
 * 11.4
 * 11.5
 * 11.6
 * 11.7
 * Bullseye becomes oldstable, Bookworm is the current stable release
 * 11.8
 * 11.9
 * 11.10

Debian 12 (Bookworm)


Debian 12 (Bookworm) was released on 10 June 2023. It is based on Linux kernel v6.1 LTS, and uses GNOME 43 as its default desktop environment, but as usual many other desktops are available, such as KDE Plasma 5.27, LXDE 11, LXQt 1.2.0, MATE 1.26, and Xfce 4.18.

On 13 October 2022, the Release Team announced the freeze development milestone timeline for this release: Point releases:
 * 12 January 2023: transition and toolchain
 * 12 February 2023: soft freeze
 * 12 March 2023: hard freeze
 * 12.1
 * 12.2
 * 12.3 (Cancelled, was intended to be released )
 * 12.4
 * 12.5
 * 12.6 ( (delayed from ))

Debian 13 (Trixie)
With the release of Debian 12 on June 10, 2023, testing is now also known by the codename Trixie which is anticipated to be released as Debian 13 in 2025.

Debian 13 will continue to support 32 bit x86 processors, however the lower limit is now i686.

Debian 13 will drop support for the mipsel architecture.

Debian 14 (Forky)
Following the release of Debian 13 (Trixie), testing will also be known by the codename Forky which is anticipated to be released as Debian 14 in 2027.

Port timeline
Many of past architectures, plus some that have not yet achieved release status, are available from the debian-ports repository.