Debian 9 Finally Released After 26 Months of Development

Debian is an operating system and a distribution of free software. The Debian Project has recently announced that the Debian 9 “Stretch” is going to be available very soon. After about 2 years few months, the company announced the Debian 9 Stretch. The operating system will be supported for the next five years. But it will be superseded in three.

debian 9

Debian Project has dedicated this release as a special homage to its former head of Debian Project, Ian Murdock, who passed away on December 28, 2015, at an early age of 42. The Debian FTP mentions about this tribute. It also explains Murdock’s influence on Free Software and the Debian Project.

Let’s have a look at the different aspects of Debian 9. In this release, Iceweasel and Icedove have been replaced with Firefox and Thunderbird now that the project is allowed to include those trademarks in its releases. MariaDB has been made the default MySQL variant. Anyone who is opting to upgrade to this new release will get this switch automatically. Debian 9 is a major release in terms of security. A new version of GnuPG is packed in the new release. The update brings support for elliptic curve cryptography, improved default options, modular architecture, and improved smartcard support. Now 90% of source package in Debian 9 will build bit-for-bit binary packages for verification purposes.

Debian 9 provides you lots of updated packages. The Linux Kernel is now on version 4.9, LibreOffice is on version 5.2. and also almost all major desktop environments have been updated to the latest versions.

The mips64el architecture has been equipped with compatibility for 64-bit little-endian hardware, but support for 32-bit Motorola/IBM PowerPC (powerpc) has been removed.

Anik is an IT professional and Data Science Enthusiast. He loves to spend a lot of time testing and reviewing the latest gadgets and software. He likes all things tech and his passion for smartphones is only matched by his passion for Sci-Fi TV Series.