Debian pushes new point releases for its two latest operating systems

Anyone using Debian 12 or Debian 11 should update their systems to get themselves onto the latest point releases - Debian 12.2 and Debian 11.8. There is no major upgrade you need to do, just install all available updates.

The main purpose of point releases is to create new ISO images with all the latest updates included. This can help you save time if you’re performing a clean install of either Debian release.

It’s important to point out that there are no significant changes being made to Debian with these point releases, they are all about convenience when installing Debian. If you have old Debian installation media such as Debian 12.x or Debian 11.x, there is no need to throw this away but you will have more updates to install but this shouldn’t take too long.

Some of the packages that have been updated in Debian 12.2 include Calibre, ClamAV, Electrum, Linux kernel, MariaDB, OpenSSL, and many more. You can find full lists for Debian 12.2 and Debian 11.8 here.

Debian 12 and 11 were released on 10 June 2023 and 14 August 2021, respectively. Both versions will get five years of support when including long-term support.

Unless you have a specific reason to use Debian 11, such as certain software dependencies, then it’s best to go with Debian 12. Unlike Ubuntu, which is based on Debian Unstable, stable versions of Debian are rigorously tested so you should have a good experience using it.

One of the biggest drawbacks with using such extensively tested software is that Debian tends to ship with slightly older kernels. If you are on older hardware, everything will be fine, but if you just bought a brand new graphics card then you might want to use an OS with a newer kernel. Debian 11 has Linux 5.10 and Debian 12 has Linux 6.1.

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