Linux

48179 readers

1110 users here now

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

Rules

Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
No misinformation
No NSFW content
No hate speech, bigotry, etc

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

When Do Debian Packages Receive Updates? (lemm.ee)

submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

25 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I'm aware of Debian's reputation for not having the most up-to-date software in its repository but have just noticed that Thunderbird is on its current version. Which makes me ask:

When does Debian update a package? And how does it decide when to?

I'm particularly interested in when it will make available the upcoming major release of GIMP to 3.0.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 25 points 2 days ago

When does Debian update a package? And how does it decide when to?

These both can be answered in depth at Debian's releases page, but the short answer is:

Debian developers work in a repo called "unstable" or "sid," and you can get those packages if you so desire. They will be the most up to date, but also the most likely to introduce breaking changes.

When the devs decide these packages are "stable enough," (breaking changes are highly unlikely) they get moved into "testing" (the release candidate repo) where users can do QA for the community. Testing is the repo for the next version of debian.

When the release cycle hits the ~1.5 year mark, debian maintainers introduce a series of incremental "freezes," whereby new versions of packages will slowly stop being accepted into the testing repo. You can see a table that explains each freeze milestone for Trixie (Debian 13) here.

After all the freezes have gone into effect, Debian migrates the current Testing version (currently Trixie, Debian 13) into the new Stable, and downgrades the current stable version to old-stable. Then the cycle begins again

As for upgrades to packages in the stable/old-stable repos: see the other comments here. The gist is that they will not accept any changes other than security patches and minor bug fixes, except for business critical software that cannot just be patched (e.g. firefox).