The Debian Linux operating system distribution is in the limelight for another significant stride. As of August 14th, 2021, it has successfully transitioned from Debian 10 Buster to the new and improved Debian 11 Bullseye. It is a stable version that accommodates various desktop applications and environments.
Debian Supported Desktop Environments
Expect it to be compatible with the following desktop environments.
- KDE Plasma 5.20
- Gnome 3.38
- LXQt 0.16
- LXDE 11
- Xfce 4.16
- MATE 1.24
Debian 11 Bullseye Interesting Improvements
Unlike Debian “buster”, Debian “bullseye” has more software packages to offer its users. It presents 11294-plus new packages out of 59551-plus total packages.
Most of this distribution’s software packages are either updated or upgraded with 16% of Debian “buster” packages excluded in Debian “bullseye” due to their obsolete status.
1. Desktop and Other System Applications
Apart from the highlighted desktop environment support, the following productivity application upgrades are available to LibreOffice 7.0, Calligra 3.2, and GNUcash 4.4.
Debian “bullseye” software package update extends to other popular apps like:
- Apache 2.4.48
- BIND DNS Server 9.16
- GIMP 2.10.22
- Lighttpd 1.4.59
- MariaDB 10.5
- Nginx 1.18
- OpenSSH 8.4p1
- Perl 5.32
- PHP 7.4
- Postfix MTA 3.5
- PostgreSQL 13
- Python 3.9.1
- Vim 8.2.
2. Driverless Scanning and Printing
There is a high likelihood of SANE scanning and CUPS printing which will remove the need for non-free driver software that is bound to specific hardware types.
CUPS Driverless Printing
CUPS and cups-filters implementation of driverless printing already exist as modern printers’ attributes through Ethernet and wireless connections. Debian “bullseye” introduces a cups-daemon recommended package called ipp-usb.
This package takes advantage of modern printers’ IPP-over-USB vendor-neutral protocol. With this protocol in place, driverless printing accommodates USB-connected printers since they are now categorized as network devices.
The ipp-usb daemon is initiated by an ipp-usb systemd service file upon a successful USB-connected printer setup. This device pre-configuration is bound to take place automatically through cups-browsed.
SANE Driverless Scanning
Libsane1, through sane-escl, facilitates the SANE driverless backend. Sane-airscan is another driverless backend option. It is independently developed. Both sane-airscan and sane-escl adhere to the eSCL protocol. However, it is only sane-airscan that is flexible with the WSD protocol. Your Debian 11 “bullseye” system should accommodate these two backends just to be safe.
The WSD and eSCL network protocols condition their USB connection operability to the existence of an IPP-over-USB device. The ipp-usb package in libsane1 leads to the automatic setup of a USB device through a driverless backend driver once the device is successfully plugged into a functional USB port.
3. New Generic Open Command
Debian users get the opportunity to extend their command-line flexibility through the addition of a new interactive open command alias to run-mailcap and xdg-open. It is an additional way of opening default application files from the system terminal for non-GUI display or to be piped to a GUI display app.
4. Control Groups v2
Systemd defaults to cgroupv2 or control group v2 in Debian “bullseye”. It facilitates the provision of a merged resource-control hierarchy. If you feel like going back to the legacy cgroups, you can re-enable them through the availed kernel command line parameters.
5. Persistent Systemd Journal
Systemd defaults to persistent journal functionality in Debian 11. The storage location of these journal files is “/var/log/journal”. In this system, the systemd-journal group and adm members can access and read journal files. This permission setup has zero interference to rsyslog and other traditional login daemon performances.
6. Fcitx 5 Input Method
This new input feature accommodates many languages like Korean, Japanese, and Chinese. This version boasts of better addon support on top of supporting Wayland.
7. Debian Med Blend
With the COVID-19 epidemic still ongoing, the Debian Med team has included a software package in Debian 11 that focuses on sequence-level research of the Coronavirus through referencing epidemiology tools. Search for med-* metapackages for the installation of the Debian Med team’s maintained packages.
8. exFAT Kernel Support
You can now mount eFAT file systems thanks to Debian 11 for being the first Linux distribution to facilitate the feature functionality. Also, exfat-fuse package facilitation of filesystem-in-userspace implementation is no longer a requirement. However, through invoking mount.exfat-fuse helper when an exFAT filesystem is under-mount, filesystem-in-userspace can be re-implemented.
9. Improved Man Page Translations
Projects relating to OpenSSH, util-linux, Mutt, and systemd in languages like Macedonian, Spanish, and French have undergone substantial improvements in terms of their manual pages documentation. With xx being your Debian system’s preferred natural language code, you should run the installation command for manpages-xx to benefit from this feature.
Download ISO Images Of Debian 11
From the provided links, choose a download URL that points to your preferred Debian desktop environment.
For Debian 11 “bullseye” installation, reference the Debian installation guide based on your system architecture after downloading and testing the Debian Live image.
Upgrade to Debian 11 Bullseye
Upgrading to Debian 11 “bullseye” from Debian 10 “buster” is achievable through the APT package manager.
1. First, backup all important files and then open the “/etc/apt/sources.list” file with a command-line editor and edit out all instances of “buster” and replace them with “bullseye”.
$ sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list
Trace the security line entry and replace “buster/updates” with “bullseye-security”.
2. Next, do a system update.
$ sudo apt update
3. Prepare for system upgrade.
$ sudo apt upgrade
4. Upgrade to Debian 11 “bullseye”.
$ sudo apt full-upgrade
Lastly, reboot your system to start enjoying Debian 11 and all the features it has to offer.
Final Note
Debian 11 “bullseye” stable release comes with unique updates and upgrades features. Be sure to test it out and come back with your performance index ratings.
Where can I find a full ISO of Debian 11?
I need to install Debian offline (any help is much appreciated).
@Mehdi,
You can download the full Debian ISO from the official website: https://www.debian.org/distrib