Debian 10: Playing catch-up with the rest of the Linux world (that’s a good thing)

Enlarge / Buster is a good boy, but is he a good Linux distro release? (credit: Pixar / Disney)

The Debian project, the upstream mother of countless Linux distributions, has released Debian 10, also known as "Buster." And yes, that's a reference to the character from Toy Story. All Debian releases are named after Toy Story characters.

Over the years, Debian has built a well-deserved reputation as a rock-solid distro for those who don't want the latest and greatest and instead prefer the stability that comes from sticking with what works. Naturally, Debian gets security updates, bug fixes, and maintenance releases like any distro, but don't expect major updates to applications or desktop environments with this Linux flavor.

Right now, as with every release, Debian is pretty close to up to date with what the rest of the Linux world is doing. But Buster will be supported for five years, and Debian 11 won't arrive for at least two years (Buster comes just 26 months after Debian 9, though it has been five years since the big tweaks of Debian 8). So as time goes on, Buster will look increasingly outdated.

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