Brief: This article discusses Debian 9 release date and the new features in Debian 9 codenamed Stretch.
Debian 9 release date has been announced. The stable version is releasing on 17 June 2017.
“We plan to release on 2017-06-17. If you want to celebrate it, please consider attending a Debian release party, or hosting your own,”
The upcoming Debian 9 Stretch is being released two years after the last major release Debian 8 codenamed Jessie. Before we see Debian 9 features, let me add an anecdote about those funny sounding code names.
Logic behind Debian codenames
Did you know that Debian codenames are based on the characters in the animated movie series Toy Story? This is the reason why you see codenames like Buzz, Woody, Jessie etc. All of these are Toy Story characters. Debian 9 release has been named after the Octopus toy Stretch.
You can read this article to learn the logic behind the codenames of other Linux distributions. Now that you learned some fun facts, let’s see what are the new features in Debian 9.
New Features in Debian 9 Stretch
Main highlights of the Debian 9 release are:
- Support for 32-bit PCs with i586 architecture has been dropped
- Linux Kernel 4.9 LTS series
- Set of new digital forensic tools
- PHP 7.0 will be the default
- GCC 6 will be the default compiler
- Python 3.5 will default
- MariaDB to replace MySQL
- X.Org Server 1.19.2
- systemd 232
You can find more on the changes in Debian 9 here.
For more details and download links, visit the official web page of Debian 9:
systemd is a touchy topic here. Though most big distributions such as Debian, Arch, Ubuntu etc moved to systemd, it prompted some developers to work on projects to retain init.
And thus we see the first stable release of Devuan Linux last week. Devuan is a systemd-free fork of Debian 8. So, now you have a choice between Debian and a systemd-free Debian version.
Back to Debian 9. Did you like Debian 9 features? Do you have a plan to upgrade to the latest version or will you hold it for some time?