Debian Lenny finally out
It took 22 months of solid, and often difficult, development but Debian 5.0 has been released. Codenamed Lenny, after the binocular character in animated film Toy Story, Debian 5.0 was originally expected to be released last year but a huge number of problems and unresolved bugs pushed the release into 2009.
Debian is perhaps not the most popular Linux version available – that honour likely goes to Ubuntu – but it is one of the most important Linux versions. Debian is traditionally very stable and conservative which doesn’t appeal to most fans of the cutting edge but is a favourite among system administrators and long-time free software fans. But perhaps Debian’s most valuable contribution is that it is the base for many of the most popular Linux versions available today. Ubuntu, for example, is based on Debian and the work done in the Debian team plays a key role in ongoing releases from Ubuntu.
Debian is also the base for important releases such as Knoppix which largely pioneered the idea of "live" CD releases – so called because users could run the entire operating system from a CD without installing anything to the hard disk.
Wide-ranging
One of the most oustanding features of Debian is its built-in support for multiple processor platforms. Debian 5.0 takes this to a new level with support for no less than 12 processor achitectures including Sparc, Alpha, Intel and AMD processor-based machines.
Lenny includes a range of desktop environments including KDE, Gnome, Xfce and LXDE, although the default interface is Gnome.
Typically, Debian 5.0 is more conservative in its application selection than many other popular Linux distributions. Lenny includes, for example, OpenOffice.org 2.4.1 which is the version prior to 3.0 which was released last year. KDE also has a new release out – version 4.2 – but Debian is sticking with version 3.5.10 which will be popular among those users that are not KDE 4x fans.
Debian GNU/Linux can be installed from various installation media such as DVDs, CDs, USB sticks and floppies, or using the Internet. work.
Loading ...