Debian Operating System is an association of individuals who have made common cause to create a free operating system. This operating system is called Debian GNU/Linux, or simply Debian for short. Debian systems currently use the Linux kernel.
Linux is a completely free piece of software started by Linus Torvalds and supported by thousands of programmers worldwide. Of course, the thing that people want is application software: programs to help them get what they want to do done, from editing documents to running a business to playing games to writing more software.
Debian comes with over 8000 packages (precompiled software that is bundled up in a nice format for easy installation on your machine) - all of it free. It's a bit like a tower. At the base is the kernel. On top of that are all the basic tools.
Next is all the software that you run on the computer. At the top of the tower is Debian -- carefully organizing and fitting everything so it all works together.
Among versions of Linux, Debian is fairly unique, unlike most distributions it isn't backed by any for profit venture and instead is an all volunteer organization. There is no for profit company, or business plan behind Debian, it is a wide ranging project along the lines of GNU. Debian also provides the basis for a number of other Linux distributions, such as Lindows, Xandros, Libranet, and Knoppix.
The linchpin of Debian is a combination package management system and distribution network called forth by the mighty apt-get command. What makes this network so exceptional is that the dpkg-deb files which make up Debian packages contain information on their underlying dependencies so installing a package from the Debian network will call up all of its dependent packages.
As an example, installing a KDE application would make sure that KDE, X windows, and everything underneath was already installed on the system, and if the prerequisite packages weren't already installed than the packages would automatically be downloaded and installed from the Debian network.
Product's homepage
What's New in This Release: [ read full changelog ]
· aide Properly support large files on 32-bit systems; fix group for bind9 log files
· approx Don't try caching InRelease or non-.gz compressed files
· apr Fix apr_ino_t changing size depending on -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS on kfreebsd-*
· apt Fix file size calculation on big-endian arches; don't prompt for CD re-insertion on "apt-get update"; add XZ support
· apt-listchanges Correctly handle NEWS files containing only one entry
· base-files Update /etc/debian_version
· clive Adapt for liveleak.com changes
· dbus Fix local DoS for system services (CVE-2011-2200)
· deborphan Exclude libreoffice from --guess-section output; trap WINCH in a POSIX way; minor translation fixes
· dokuwiki Fix an ACL bypass issue in the XMLRPC interface
· dpkg Fix regression in 'dpkg-divert --rename'; dpkg-split: don't corrupt metadata on 32-bit systems; fix vsnprintf() compat declaration
· e2fsprogs Various bug fixes
· fakechroot Fix 'debootstrap --variant=fakechroot'
· fcgiwrap Fix init script's 'stop' target
· gdm3 Reset SIGPIPE handler before starting the session; execute the PostSession script even when GDM is killed or shut down
· git Allow remove and purge in one step by terminating the git-daemon/log service before removing the gitlog user
· gnome-settings-daemon Work around possible race condition when starting Xsettings manager
· ia32-libs Refresh packages from stable and proposed-updates.
· iceowl Security updates
· im-config Avoid breaking login via GDM if im-config is removed but not purged
· inn Stop using 'sort +1n' in makehistory; disable outdated CHECK_INCLUDED_TEXT option by default
· josm Give more verbose explanation to users who haven't agreed to the new OSM license
· kde4libs Wildcard SSL certificate and XSS security fixes; ktar checksum and UTF-8 longlink fixes
· kdenetwork Improve fix for CVE-2010-1000 directory traversal issue
· kernel-wedge Add hpsa and pm8001 to scsi-extra-modules; add bna to nic-extra-modules
· kerneltop Increase line buffer size to 1024 bytes
· klibc ipconfig: escape DHCP options and correctly handle multiple connected network devices (CVE-2011-1930)
· krb5 Fix DoS; fix interoperability with w2k8r2 KDCs; fix invalid free and double free; don't make authentication fail if PAC verification fails
· kupfer Use correct parameter type to allow keybindings to work again
· libapache2-mod-perl2 Rebuild against apr 1.4.2-6+squeeze3 to pick up apr_ino_t size fix on kFreeBSD
· libburn Don't create images with overly-restrictive permissions
· libfinance-quotehist-perl Disable test suite, broken by website changes
· libmms Fix alignment issues on arm
· linux-2.6 New hardware support; add longterm 2.6.32.41; fix oops via corrupted partition tables
· linux-kernel-di-amd64-2.6 Rebuild against kernel-wedge 2.74+squeeze3
· linux-kernel-di-armel-2.6 Rebuild against kernel-wedge 2.74+squeeze3
· linux-kernel-di-i386-2.6 Rebuild against kernel-wedge 2.74+squeeze3
· linux-kernel-di-ia64-2.6 Rebuild against kernel-wedge 2.74+squeeze3
· linux-kernel-di-mips-2.6 Rebuild against kernel-wedge 2.74+squeeze3
· linux-kernel-di-mipsel-2.6 Rebuild against kernel-wedge 2.74+squeeze3
· linux-kernel-di-powerpc-2.6 Rebuild against kernel-wedge 2.74+squeeze3
· linux-kernel-di-s390-2.6 Rebuild against kernel-wedge 2.74+squeeze3
· linux-kernel-di-sparc-2.6 Rebuild against kernel-wedge 2.74+squeeze3
· lua-expat Fix the 'billion laughs' DoS attack
· monkeysphere Fix monkeysphere-host revoke-key
· nagios-plugins Allocate a big enough buffer to handle all IPs of hosts being pinged
· nsd3 Remove statoverride before removing the package's user
· openldap Fix possible database corruption issues, several security issues and dpkg-reconfigure
· php-svn Rebuild against apr 1.4.2-6+squeeze3 to pick up apr_ino_t size fix on kFreeBSD
· php5 Rebuild against apr 1.4.2-6+squeeze3 to pick up apr_ino_t size fix on kFreeBSD
· pianobar Update API keys for XMLRPC v30
· postgresql-8.4 New upstream bugfix release; fix pg_upgrade use with TOAST tables
· prosody Fix the 'billion laughs' DoS attack
· puppet Fix service provider to properly use update-rc.d disable API
· python-apt Strip multiarch by default in RealParseDepends; add XZ support
· python-gudev Add missing dependency on python-gobject
· q4wine Stop shipping the library in lib64
· qemu Don't register qemu-mips(el) with binfmt on mips(el)
· qemu-kvm Fix division by 0 with some guests; fix vnc zlib overflow; don't abort on user hardware errors; fix migration on 32-bit
· qt4-x11 Blacklist some fraudulent SSL certificates; fix weakness in wildcard certificate verification
· rapidsvn Rebuild against apr 1.4.2-6+squeeze3 to pick up apr_ino_t size fix on kFreeBSD
· refpolicy Various permissions fixes
· reprepro Handle Release files which don't contain md5sums
· ruby1.8 Fix upgrades from lenny by making libruby1.8 conflict/replace irb1.8 and rdoc1.8
· samba Fix undefined symbol error from tdb2.so; several printing related bugs and a gid leak in winbind / idmap. Document the new and potentially disruptive 'map untrusted to domain'
· schroot Fix loading of dchroot.conf
· softhsm Remove statoverride entries before the package's user
· sun-java6 New upstream security update
· tzdata New upstream version
· vimperator Resolve compatibility issues with iceweasel
· widelands Fix potential security issue in Internet games
· xenomai Adapt kernel patch to apply cleanly to squeeze's kernel
· xserver-xorg-video-tseng Fix driver initialisation
Find us on Google+
