Linux in The News 6-12-23

The Debian Project released today the final version of the Debian 12 “Bookworm” operating system, a major release that brings several new features, updated components, and many improvements.

After almost two years of hard work, Debian 12 “Bookworm” is finally here and it’s powered by the long-term supported Linux 6.1 LTS kernel series. This kernel brings new and updated drivers to support modern hardware and it will be officially supported until December 2026.

New features in Debian 12 “Bookworm” include a new non-free-firmware repository consisting of non-free firmware packages split from Debian’s non-free repository. Those upgrading from Debian 11 to Debian 12 will have to add the new non-free-firmware repository to their sources.list files.

Debian 12 also brings read/write support for APFS (Apple File System) with the apfsprogs and apfs-dkms utilities, a new tool called ntfs2btrfs that lets you convert NTFS drives to Btrfs, a new malloc implementation called mimalloc, a new kernel SMB server called ksmbd-tools, and support for the merged-usr root file system layout.

Other new features include Secure Boot support on UEFI-capable AArch64 (ARM64) systems, a new shiny-server package for Debian Med Blend that simplifies scientific web apps using the R language, as well as GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) 12.2 as default system compiler.

This release also includes completely new artwork called Emerald, designed (once again) by Juliette Taka. New fonts are also present in this major Debian release, along with a new fnt command-line tool for accessing 1,500 DFSG-compliant fonts.

Other noteworthy changes include the deprecation of os-prober by default in the GRUB bootloader to check for existing OS installations. This mainly affects dual-boot users, who will need to rely on dpkg-reconfigure now.

Debian Bookworm also deprecates the use of bash as /bin/sh, removes the libpam-ldap and libnss-ldap packages as they’re no longer maintained upstream and replaces them with libpam-ldapd and libnss-ldapd, removes the tempfile and rename.ul programs (mktemp and file-rename can be used as a replacement), and replaces rsyslog with the systemd journalctl utility for viewing logs.

Also deprecated is the which tool. The Debian Project recommends using command -v for writing shell scripts), as well as type or type -a for interactive Bash shell users. ZSH, CSH, and TCSH users are not affected by this change.

As with previous releases, Debian 12 is supported on 32-bit (i386), 64-bit (x86_64), AArch64 (arm64), Armel, ARMhf, MIPS 64-bit Little Endian (mips64el), MIPS (mipsel), PowerPC 64-bit Little Endian (ppc64el), RISC-V (riscv64), and IBM System z (s390x).

Debian 12″Bookworm” will soon be is available for download as live images from here pre-installed with the KDE Plasma 5.27 LTS, GNOME 43, Xfce 4.18, Cinnamon 5.6, MATE 1.26, LXDE 11, and LXQt 1.2.0 desktop environments. However, these live images are only supported on 64-bit systems.

Installation images for all supported architectures mentioned above will also be available for download from here. Upgrading from Debian 11 “Bullseye” to Debian 12 “Bookworm” is also possible and rather easy by following the official upgrade instructions (don’t forget to add the new non-free firmware repo).

Debian 12 “Bookworm” will be supported for five years, until June 2028. Here are a few screenshots of the boot menu, lock screen, and a live session featuring the KDE Plasma 5.27 LTS desktop environment.

Image credits: Debian Project

After six months of development, the Alpine Linux-based postmarketOS project released version 23.06 of this open-source Linux-based operating system for mobile devices that introduces new features, updated graphical environments, and other improvements.

Based on the latest Alpine Linux 3.18 operating system, postmarketOS 23.06 is here as the first-ever version to ship the GNOME Shell UI (GNOME Mobile) graphical interface for supported phones and tablets. GNOME Shell on Mobile 44 is included in this release, which comes with a much-improved GNOME Software package manager.

KDE Plasma Mobile 5.27.5, GNOME-based Phosh 0.27, and Sxmo 1.14.0 are among other graphical interfaces that are included by default and supported in the postmarketOS 23.06 release. Notable here is the fact that the Phosh 0.27 interface now comes with the Evince document viewer by default.

Other noteworthy changes in postmarketOS 23.06 include working USB tethering, backlight control and audio support for PineBook Pro, support for passwords with 6 characters in the installer images instead of 8, and translations installed by default with en_US.UTF-8 as default locale instead of C.UTF-8.

postmarketOS supports a wide range of devices, including ASUS MeMo Pad 7, Arrow DragonBoard 410c, BQ Aquaris X5, Lenovo A6000, Lenovo A6010, Motorola Moto G4 Play, Nokia N900, ODROID HC2, OnePlus 6, OnePlus 6T, PineBook Pro, PinePhone, PinePhone Pro, RockPro64, Purism Librem 5, and SHIFT6mq.

Samsung Galaxy A3 (2015), Samsung Galaxy A5 (2015), Samsung Galaxy S III (GT-I9300 and SHW-M440S), Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini Value Edition, Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0″, Samsung Galaxy Tab A 8.0, Samsung Galaxy Tab A 9.7, Wileyfox Swift, Xiaomi Mi Note 2, Xiaomi Pocophone F1, and Xiaomi Redmi 2 are also supported.

Those of you who have one of the supported devices listed above can install postmarketOS 23.06 right now by downloading the respective images and carefully following the instructions from the official website. You should also check out the release announcement for more details.