After two years of development, the new stable version of Debian 10 (Buster) was finally released , which is available for ten architectures: Intel IA-32 / x86 (i686), AMD64 / x86-64, ARM EABI (Armel), 64-bit ARM (arm64), ARMv7 (armhf), MIPS (mips, mipsel, mips64el), PowerPC 64 (ppc64el) and IBM System z (s390x).
The repository contains 57703 binary packages, which is approximately 6 more than suggested in Debian 9. Compared to Debian 9, 13,370 new binary packages were added, 7,278 (13%) obsolete or abandoned packages were removed, and 35,532 packages (62%) were updated.
For 91,5% of packages, support is provided for repeated assemblies, which allow to confirm that the executable file is assembled from the established source code and does not contain extraneous changes, the replacement of which, for example, can be done by attacking the infrastructure of compilation or bookmarks in the compiler.
Debian 10 Main New Features
This new version of the distribution stands out because it will have 5 years of update support, in addition to the fact that the Gnome desktop is translated by default to use Wayland and an X server-based session is offered as an option (the X server is still included in the number of packages included in the basic package).
Support for UEFI Secure Boot has also been implemented , for which the wedge loader is used, certified by a Microsoft digital signature (shim-signed), along with the certification of the kernel and the grub loader (grub-efi-amd64-signed) with its own project certificate (shim acts as an intermediate layer for use by the distribution of its own keys).
The shim and grub-efi-ARCH signed packages are included in the build dependencies for amd64, i386, and arm64. The loader and grub, certified by a working certificate, are included in the EFI images for amd64, i386 and arm64.
On the other hand, the distribution was enabled by default, the mandatory AppArmor access control system , which allows you to control process permissions by defining lists of files with the appropriate permissions (read, write, memory allocation and launch, set a lock on a file, etc.) for each application, as well as control network access (e.g., prohibit the use of ICMP) and manage POSIX capabilities.
In cryptsetup, a transition was made to the LUKS2 disk encryption format (previously used by LUKS1). LUKS2 features a simplified key management system, the ability to use large sectors (4096 instead of 512, reducing the decryption load), symbolic symbol identifiers (tags), and metadata backup tools with the ability to automatically restore metadata from a backup in case of damage.
During the upgrade process, existing LUKS1 partitions will be automatically converted to a LUKS2-compatible format, but due to header size restrictions, not all new features will be available to them.
In Live environments, the independently developed modular installer Calamares, with its Qt-based interface, was implemented . This installer is also used for the installation of Neon distributions such as Manjaro, Sabayon, Chakra, NetRunner, KaOS, OpenMandriva, and KDE. In standard installation builds, the Debian installer is still used.
In addition to what was previously available, a Live environment was created with the LXQt desktop and the Live environment without a graphical interface, only with the console utilities that make up the base system.
The Live environment of the console can be used to install a distribution package very quickly, since, unlike traditional installation images, the already cut directory is copied, without revealing individual packages using dpkg.
The installer added the ability to use multiple consoles simultaneously during the installation process. Support for ReiserFS was removed.
Regarding the updated software, we find the following graphics stack and user environments: Gnome 3.30, KDE Plasma 5.14, Cinnamon 3.8, LXDE 0.99.2, LXQt 0.14, MATE 1.20, and Xfce 4.12. The LibreOffice suite has been updated to version 6.1 and Calligra to version 3.1. Evolution has been updated to 3.30, GIMP to 2.10.8, Inkscape to 0.92.4, and Vim to 8.1.
The distribution includes a compiler for the Rust language (supplied by Rustc 1.34). Updated GCC 8.3, LLVM / Clang 7.0.1, OpenJDK 11, Perl 5.28, PHP 7.3, Python 3.7.2.