Debian 12 is due next weekend but still contains 100 known bugs

Debian 12, codenamed Bookworm, is set to release next Saturday (June 10) but despite its reputation for being rock solid, it could ship with up to 100 bugs. Paul Gevers from the Debian project mentioned the number of known bugs in the Debian mailing list but said the release was still going ahead regardless.

Gevers said that it’s likely even more bugs will be found once Debian 12 has been installed on more computers after release and these issues shall have to be patched afterwards and deployed as an update. He said that the bugs will be listed in the Release Notes, so if stability is critical for you, consult the Release Notes to check you won’t be affected.

One of the nice things about Debian is that the project rolls new ISO images every couple of months and marks them as a new point release containing all the latest fixes up to that point. Gevers said that Debian 12.1 is due out around July, so if you want more stability, hold off installing Debian 12 until then.

“There are still about 100 known RC bugs affecting bookworm, but we have accepted to release having them included,” Paul Gevers said. “Most of them will be mentioned in the Release Notes.”

“No doubt, more issues will be found after the release when more systems will be running bookworm. As on previous occasions, we anticipate that the first point release for bookworm will occur approximately one month after the release.”

Debian is not the most popular Linux distribution among end users but it’s wildly popular as a base for other Linux distributions. Ubuntu, the most popular Linux distro, is based on Debian and Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu. The Linux Mint team also maintains a Debian-based version too, should anything happen to Ubuntu.

Source: Debian via Phoronix

Debian 12 is due next weekend but still contains 100 known bugs