What is Debian?
Debian is a free operating system (OS) for your computer. An operating system is the set of basic programs and utilities that make your computer run. Debian uses the Linux kernel (the core of an operating system), but most of the basic OS tools come from the GNU project; hence the name GNU/Linux.
Debian GNU/Linux provides more than a pure OS: it comes with over 25000 packages, precompiled software bundled up in a nice format for easy installation on your machine.
Getting Started
The latest stable release of Debian is 5.0. The last update to this release was made on September 4th, 2010. Read more about available versions of Debian.
If you'd like to start using Debian, you can easily obtain a copy, and then follow the installation instructions to install it.
If you're upgrading to the latest stable release from a previous version, please read the release notes before proceeding.
To get help in using or setting up Debian, see our documentation and support pages.
Users that speak languages other than English should check the international section.
People who use systems other than Intel x86 should check the ports section.
News
[05 Sep 2010] Backports service becoming official
[04 Sep 2010] Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 updated
[03 Sep 2010] Italian Debian Community Conference 2010 - 17th-19th September, Perugia (PG - Italy)
[31 Aug 2010] Debian Project mourns the loss of Frans Pop
[16 Aug 2010] Debian celebrates its 17th birthday
[06 Aug 2010] Debian 6.0 Squeeze
frozen
For older news items see the News Page. If you would like to receive mail whenever new Debian news comes out, subscribe to the debian-announce mailing list.
Security Advisories
[06 Sep 2010] DSA-2104 quagga - several vulnerabilities
[05 Sep 2010] DSA-2103 smbind - sql injection
[03 Sep 2010] DSA-2102 barnowl - unchecked return value
[31 Aug 2010] DSA-2101 wireshark - several vulnerabilities
[30 Aug 2010] DSA-2100 openssl - double free
[30 Aug 2010] DSA-2099 openoffice.org - buffer overflows
[29 Aug 2010] DSA-2098 typo3-src - several vulnerabilities
[29 Aug 2010] DSA-2097 phpmyadmin - insufficient input sanitising
[24 Aug 2010] DSA-2096 zope-ldapuserfolder - missing input validation
[23 Aug 2010] DSA-2095 lvm2 - insecure communication protocol
For older security advisories see the Security Page. If you would like to receive security advisories as soon as they're announced, subscribe to the debian-security-announce mailing list.