After about two years the Debian project has released version 6.0, code-named Squeeze, of its famous distribution. In addition to the classic Debian GNU/Linux there’s the official release of Debian GNU/kFreeBSD, the Debian distribution based on the FreeBSD kernel though not all the advanced features for the desktop are supported.
The architectures supported by Debian GNU/Linux are: Intel i386, EM64T, Itanium and x86-64, Motorola/IBM PowerPC, Sun/Oracle SPARC, MIPS, ARM IBM S/390 and EAB. The architectures supported by Debian GNU/kFreeBSD are i386 and x86-64.
Debian 6.0 includes the traditional desktop environments KDE, Gnome, Xfce and LXDE.
With Debian 6.0 the Linux kernel is completely free, with no firmware with ambiguous licenses or anyway not in accordance with the Debian project standards. Following the philosophy that has always characterized the work of this distribution, the user who chooses Debian is given the choice to use non-free software so the packages removed from the kernel have been added to the non-free Debian archive.
Debian 6.0 has a new dependency-based boot system that allows a system to start faster in a more robust way with parallel execution of startup scripts and the tracking of their dependencies.
Among the updated software packages in Debian 6.0 Squeeze there are:
- KDE Plasma Workspaces and KDE Applications 4.4.5
- an updated version of the GNOME desktop environment 2.30
- the Xfce 4.6 desktop environment
- LXDE 0.5.0
- X.Org 7.5
- OpenOffice.org 3.2.1
- GIMP 2.6.11
- Iceweasel 3.5.16 (an unbranded version of Mozilla Firefox)
- Icedove 3.0.11 (an unbranded version of Mozilla Thunderbird)
- PostgreSQL 8.4.6
- MySQL 5.1.49
- GNU Compiler Collection 4.4.5
- Linux 2.6.32
- Apache 2.2.16
- Samba 3.5.6
- Python 2.6.6, 2.5.5 and 3.1.3
- Perl 5.10.1
- PHP 5.3.3
- Asterisk 1.6.2.9
- Nagios 3.2.3
- Xen Hypervisor 4.0.1 (dom0 as well as domU support)
- OpenJDK 6b18
- Tomcat 6.0.18
Debian 6.0 includes a total of almost 30,000 software packages that can be easily installed. More than 10,000 packages were added from the previous version.
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Debian 6.0 may be used through a Live disk or installed using a disc, a USB device or through your network. Gnome is the default desktop environment but it’s possible to get the images of the CDs containing the other alternative desktop environments.
As always it took a long time to see a new version of the Debian distribution but in the end you can see the impressive work done to make it even better for all uses as a server or a desktop.
Each new version has an incredible amount of software yet the next one surpasses it by adding thousands of other programs, all carefully tested and “packaged” to be installed with the Debian system.
The Debian project is a non-profit organization and is carried on by volunteers around the world but obviously to provide this unique distribution there are costs so if you can contribute in some way go to the donations page on the Debian site to see how you can help.
It’s no coincidence that a trendy distribution such as Ubuntu is based on Debian and no doubt part of its success is based on this choice. Long live Debian!
