Debian
| Debian | |
|---|---|
Screenshot of Debian 13 (Trixie) with the GNOME desktop environment version 48.3 | |
| Developer | The Debian Project |
| OS family | Unix-like |
| Working state | Current |
| Source model | Open-source |
| Initial release | August 1993 |
| Latest release | 13.4 (Trixie) / 14 March 2026 |
| Repository | salsa.debian.org |
| Available in | 78 languages |
List of languages Arabic, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese, Croatian, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Portuguese (Brazil) (partially), Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Spanish, Spanish (Latin America) (partially), Swedish, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese | |
| Update method |
|
| Package manager | APT, dpkg |
| Supported platforms | |
| Kernel type | Monolithic (Linux kernel) |
| Userland | GNU |
| Default user interface | GNOME (others available) |
| License | DFSG-compatible licenses, plus proprietary firmware files |
| Official website | www |
Debian (/ˈdɛbiən/) is a Linux distribution developed by the Debian Project, established by Ian Murdock in August 1993.
Debian is developed openly by a team of volunteers guided by the Debian Project Leader and three foundation documents: the Debian Social Contract, the Debian Constitution, and the Debian Free Software Guidelines.
As of January 2026, the Debian community has over 1,400 active contributors, who maintain, document, and support more than 94,000 free packages.
The Free Software Foundation sponsored the project from November 1994 to November 1995, ending their sponsorship over technical disagreements and Debian's inclusion of optional non-free software and firmware repositories. In response, members of the Debian Project founded the non-profit organization Software in the Public Interest in 1997 to enable the project to accept donations and provide legal backing for its trademarks.
Debian is the second-oldest Linux distribution still in active development; only Slackware is older. Debian forms the basis of many other Linux distributions.