Debian 9 Stretch
released
June 17th, 2017
After 26 months of development the Debian project is proud to present
its new stable version 9 (code name Stretch
), which will
be supported for the next 5 years thanks to the combined work of the
Debian Security team
and of the Debian Long Term
Support team.
Debian 9 is dedicated to the project's founder Ian Murdock, who passed away on 28 December 2015.
In Stretch
, the default MySQL variant is now MariaDB.
The replacement of packages for MySQL 5.5 or 5.6 by the MariaDB 10.1
variant will happen automatically upon upgrade.
Firefox and Thunderbird return to Debian with the release of Stretch
,
and replace their debranded versions Iceweasel and Icedove, which were
present in the archive for more than 10 years.
Thanks to the Reproducible Builds project, over 90% of the source packages included in Debian 9 will build bit-for-bit identical binary packages. This is an important verification feature which protects users from malicious attempts to tamper with compilers and build networks. Future Debian releases will include tools and metadata so that end-users can validate the provenance of packages within the archive.
Administrators and those in security-sensitive environments can be
comforted in the knowledge that the X display system no longer requires
root
privileges to run.
The Stretch
release is the first version of Debian to feature the
modern
branch of GnuPG in the gnupg
package.
This brings with it elliptic curve cryptography, better defaults,
a more modular architecture, and improved smartcard support.
We will continue to supply the classic
branch of GnuPG as gnupg1
for people who need it, but it is now deprecated.
Debug packages are easier to obtain and use in Debian 9 Stretch
.
A new dbg-sym
repository can be added to the APT source list to
provide debug symbols automatically for many packages.
The UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface
) support first
introduced in Wheezy
continues to be greatly improved in Stretch
,
and also supports installing on 32-bit UEFI firmware with a 64-bit kernel.
The Debian live images now include support for UEFI booting as a new
feature, too.
This release includes numerous updated software packages, such as:
- Apache 2.4.25
- Asterisk 13.14.1
- Chromium 59.0.3071.86
- Firefox 45.9 (in the firefox-esr package)
- GIMP 2.8.18
- an updated version of the GNOME desktop environment 3.22
- GNU Compiler Collection 6.3
- GnuPG 2.1
- Golang 1.7
- KDE Frameworks 5.28, KDE Plasma 5.8, and KDE Applications 16.08 and 16.04 for PIM components
- LibreOffice 5.2
- Linux 4.9
- MariaDB 10.1
- MATE 1.16
- OpenJDK 8
- Perl 5.24
- PHP 7.0
- PostgreSQL 9.6
- Python 2.7.13 and 3.5.3
- Ruby 2.3
- Samba 4.5
- systemd 232
- Thunderbird 45.8
- Tomcat 8.5
- Xen Hypervisor
- the Xfce 4.12 desktop environment
- more than 51,000 other ready-to-use software packages, built from a bit more of 25,000 source packages.
With this broad selection of packages and its traditional wide
architecture support, Debian once again stays true to its goal of being
the universal operating system. It is suitable for many different use
cases: from desktop systems to netbooks; from development servers to
cluster systems; and for database, web, or storage servers. At the same
time, additional quality assurance efforts like automatic installation
and upgrade tests for all packages in Debian's archive ensure that
Stretch
fulfills the high expectations that users have of a
stable Debian release.
A total of ten architectures are supported:
64-bit PC / Intel EM64T / x86-64 (amd64
),
32-bit PC / Intel IA-32 (i386
),
64-bit little-endian Motorola/IBM PowerPC (ppc64el
),
64-bit IBM S/390 (s390x
),
for ARM, armel
and armhf
for older and more recent 32-bit hardware,
plus arm64
for the 64-bit AArch64
architecture,
and for MIPS, in addition to the two 32-bit mips
(big-endian)
and mipsel
(little-endian), there is a new
mips64el
architecture for 64-bit little-endian hardware.
Support for 32-bit Motorola/IBM PowerPC (powerpc
)
has been removed in Stretch
.
Want to give it a try?
If you simply want to try Debian 9 Stretch
without installing it,
you can use one of the available live images which loads and runs the
complete operating system in a read-only state via your computer's memory.
Should you enjoy the operating system you have the option of installing
from the live image onto your computer's hard disk. The live image is
available for CDs, USB sticks, and netboot setups. Initially, these
images are provided for the amd64
and i386
architectures only. More information is available in the
live install images section of
the Debian website.
Should you choose to install Debian 9 Stretch
directly onto your
computer's hard disk you can choose from a variety of installation media
such as Blu-ray Disc, DVD, CD, USB stick, or via internal network.
Several desktop environments — GNOME, KDE Plasma Desktop and
Applications, LXDE, and Xfce — may be installed through those
images with your desired selection chosen from the boot menus of
the install media.
In addition, multi-architecture CDs and DVDs are available which support
installation of multiple architectures from a single disc. Or you can
always create bootable USB installation media
(see the Installation Guide
for more details). For cloud users Debian also offers
pre-built
OpenStack images for amd64
and arm64
architectures, ready to use.
Debian can now be installed in 75 languages, with most of them available in both text-based and graphical user interfaces.
The installation images may be downloaded right now via
bittorrent (the recommended method),
jigdo, or
HTTP; see
Debian on CDs for further information. Stretch
will
soon be available on physical DVD, CD-ROM, and Blu-ray Discs from
numerous vendors too.
Upgrading Debian
Upgrades to Debian 9 from the previous release, Debian 8
(codenamed Jessie
), are automatically handled by the apt-get
package management tool for most configurations.
As always, Debian systems may be upgraded painlessly, in place,
without any forced downtime, but it is strongly recommended to read
the release notes as
well as the installation
guide for possible issues, and for detailed instructions on
installing and upgrading. The release notes will be further improved and
translated to additional languages in the weeks after the release.
About Debian
Debian is a free operating system, developed by thousands of volunteers from all over the world who collaborate via the Internet. The Debian project's key strengths are its volunteer base, its dedication to the Debian Social Contract and Free Software, and its commitment to provide the best operating system possible. This new release is another important step in that direction.
Contact Information
For further information, please visit the Debian web pages at https://www.debian.org/ or send mail to <press@debian.org>.