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What is Debian?

Debian is a free, or Open Source, operating system (OS) for your computer. An operating system is the set of basic programs and utilities that make your computer run. At the core of an operating system is the kernel. The kernel is the most fundamental program on the computer, does all the basic housekeeping and lets you start other programs. Debian is kernel independent. It currently uses the Linux kernel but work is in progress to provide Debian for other kernels, using the Hurd.

Read more...

Getting Started

The latest release of Debian is 2.1. It was released on 9 March 1999. Release information is available; there you can find information about what's new in Debian 2.1, notes on how to upgrade, and an Installation Manual, suitable for new users.

To get help in using or setting up Debian, see our support and our documentation pages.

News

[11 Feb 2000] Debian Wins User's Choice Awards
[16 Jan 2000] Code Freeze for Debian GNU/Linux 2.2 has begun
[17 Dec 1999] Alpha Processor and The Linux Store loan Alpha to Debian
[15 Dec 1999] Debian GNU/Linux 2.1r4 Released
[06 Dec 1999] New address for SPI
[20 Oct 1999] Debian Used at eBay

For older news items see the News Page. If you would like to receive mail whenever new Debian news comes out, subscribe to the debian-announce mailing list. Debian Weekly News is an in-depth summary of what's happened in the world of Debian.

Security Alerts

[14 Feb 2000] make -

symlink attack in make

[01 Feb 2000] apcd -

symlink attack in apcd

[09 Jan 2000] lpr -

access control problem and root exploit

[08 Jan 2000] nvi -

incorrect file removal in boot script

[15 Dec 1999] ssh -

remote buffer overflow in ssh

[15 Dec 1999] qpopper -

buffer overflow in qpopper v3.0

For older security alerts see the Security Page. If you would like to receive security alerts as soon as they're announced, subscribe to the debian-security-announce mailing list

Debian passed into the year 2000 with flying colors. Of the more than 4000 packages in Debian fewer than 10 had problems and none of them affected the usability of the program. The only commonly used programs affected were emacs and groff. The Debian Y2K page will be available for a few months and lists the packages that had problems. An update of Debian 2.1 will be released shortly which includes fixes for all the affected packages.

Software in the Public Interest, the non-profit umbrella organization that manages Debian's assets, is dedicated to making sure the hardware on your machine can be used with any operating system. Please see the Open Hardware Certification Program.