Congratulations to the Debian Community
The Debian Project just released version 11 (aka “bullseye”) of their free operating system. In total, over 6,208 contributors worked on this release and were indispensable in making this launch happen. We would like to thank everyone involved for their combined efforts, hard work, and many hours spent in recent years building this new release that will benefit the entire open source community.
We would also like to acknowledge our in-house Debian developers who contributed to this effort. We really appreciate the work you do on behalf of the community and stand firmly behind your contributions.
What’s New in Debian 11 Bullseye
Debian 11 comes with a number of meaningful changes and enhancements.
The new release includes over 13,370 new software packages, for a total of over 57,703 packages on release. Out of these, 35,532 packages have been updated to newer versions, including an update in the kernel from 4.19 in “buster” to 5.10 in bullseye.
Bullseye expands on the capabilities of driverless printing with Common Unix Printing System (CUPS) and driverless scanning with Scanner Access Now Easy (SANE). While it was possible to use CUPS for driverless printing with buster, bullseye comes with the package ipp-usb, which allows a USB device to be treated as a network device and thus extend driverless printing capabilities. SANE connects to this when set up correctly and connected to a USB port.
As in previous releases, Debian 11 comes with a Debian Edu/Skolelinux version. Debian Edu has been a complete solution for schools for many years. Debian Edu can provide the entire network for a school and then only users and machines need to be added after installation. This can also be easily managed via the web interface GOsa².
Debian 11 bullseye can be downloaded here. For more information and greater technical detail on the new Debian 11 release, please refer to the official release notes on Debian.org.
Contributions by Instaclustr Employees
Our Debian roots run deep here. Credativ, which was acquired by Instaclustr in March 2021, has always been an active part of the Debian community and visited every DebConf since 2004. Debian also serves as the operating system at the heart of the Instaclustr Managed Platform.
For the release of Debian 11, our team has taken over various responsibilities in the community. Our contributions include:
- 90% of the PostgreSQL packaging of the new release
- Maintenance work on various packages
- Support as Debian-Sys-Admin
- Contributions to Debian Edu/Skolelinux
- Development work on kernel images
- Development work on cloud images
- Development work for various Debian backports
- Work on salsa.debian.org
Many of our colleagues have made significant contributions to the current release, including:
- Adrian Vondendriesch
- Alexander Wirt (Formorer)
- Bastian Blank (waldi)
- Christoph Berg (Myon)
- Dominik George (natureshadow)
- Felix Geyer (fgeyer)
- Martin Zobel-Helas (zobel)
- Michael Banck (azeem)
- Michael Meskes (feivel)
- Noël Köthe (Noel)
- Sven Bartscher (kritzefitz)
How to Upgrade
Given that Debian 11 bullseye is a major release, we suggest that everyone running on Debian 10 buster upgrade. The main steps for an upgrade include:
- Make sure to backup any data that should not get lost and prepare for recovery
- Remove non-Debian packages and clean up leftover files and old versions
- Upgrade to latest point release
- Check and prepare your APT source-list files by adding the relevant Internet sources or local mirrors
- Upgrade your packages and then upgrade your system
You can find a more detailed walkthrough of the upgrade process in the Debian documentation.
All existing credativ customers who are running a Debian-based installation are naturally covered by our service and support and are encouraged to reach out.
If you are interested in upgrading from your old Debian version, or if you have questions with regards to your Debian infrastructure, do not hesitate to drop us an email or contact us at [email protected].
Or, you can get started in minutes with one of open source technologies like Apache Cassandra, Apache Kafka, Redis, and OpenSearch on the Instaclustr Managed Platform. Sign up for a free trial today.