Debian GNU/Linux 6.0 'Squeeze' Has Been Released

Finally, Debian 6.0 (codenamed Squeeze) has been unleashed after a 24-month development period. This latest stable version comes in two varieties. Apart from the usual Debian GNU/Linux edition, a Debian GNU/kFreeBSD flavor is available for the first time ever and is offered as a technology preview. The release will also be the first to use a totally free Linux kernel, which means it absolutely has no non-free firmware files.

Utilizing the noted Debian/GNU userland, Squeeze launches technical previews of two new ports to the kernel of the FreeBSD project namely kfreebsd-i386 and kfreebsd-amd64. The combination of Debian and FreeBSD further enhances and fully supports common server software. Although, these new ports still have limited functionality and don’t have support for other features.

The Debian 6.0 installer is better and easier to use than ever before and is now available in 70 languages. You can select language and keyboard settings, partition your logical volumes, RAID and encrypted systems without trouble. Btrfs and ext4 filesystems are finally supported in this release.

To speed up and improve stability during system start-up, Debian 6.0 introduces a dependency based boot system. The parallel execution of boot scripts and the precise dependency tracking between them made it possible.

Debian GNU/Linux 6.0 comes with GNOME, Xfce, LXDE, and KDE desktop environments and variety of server programs. It also offers compatibility with the FHS v2.3 and software developed for version 3.2 of the LSB.

Squeeze provides over 10,000 new packages that include Chromium, Icinga, Software Center, wicd, Corosync, and more. Here is a list of some of the updated software packages in this latest version:

* Linux 2.6.32

* KDE 4.4.5

* GNOME 2.30

* X.Org 7.5

* OpenOffice.org 3.2.1

* GIMP 2.6.11

* MySQL 5.1.49

* GNU Compiler Collection 4.4.5

* Apache 2.2.16

* Samba 3.5.6

* Python 2.6.6, 2.5.5 and 3.1.3

* Perl 5.10.1

* PHP 5.3.3

* Nagios 3.2.3

* Tomcat 6.0.18

If you are planning to install Debian GNU/Linux 6.0, you may visit its download page HERE. For those of you who are upgrading from Debian 5.0 Lenny, you could simply use the apt-get package management tool to quickly start the upgrade process.