Stable (Debian)
The stable distribution of Debian is the latest version which was released for wide use. This means it was tested for a long time before enough problems were corrected to obtain what the Debian release process deems a stable operating system.
Debian releases stable when the release team is confident that fewer peculiar problems will occur with a new release than with the former one. When a release occurs, the version that was previously stable becomes the oldstable distribution, while the version that is testing takes the place of stable, but stays testing too. Therefore, immediately after a release, the contents of stable and testing are identical.
Versions and codenames
Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 sarge is currently the stable release of Debian.
The obsolete Debian stable releases are:
The next release is codenamed etch. The version number is not decided yet.
Point releases
The so-called point releases are relatively regular updates to the stable distribution that include all security fixes that Debian made available separately on the Internet since the last point release. Sometimes they also include fixes for grave bugs, and removals of content that has been found to be legally problematic to distribute. These releases increment the rN part of stable's version number (for example 3.0r5 becomes 3.0r6).
External links
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