Debian 10 Buster, New features in Debian 10 Buster

1. Desktop GNOME 3.30

The GNOME 1.3.22 Desktop in Debian Stretch is updated to 1.3.30 in Debian 10 Buste. Some of the new packages included in this GNOME desktop release are gnome-todo, tracker instead of tracker-gui, so there is an automatic codec installation to play movies, etc. A big conversion step is that all packages are switch from libgtk2 + to libgtk3 +.

2. Linux Kernel 4.19.0-4

Debian uses LTS Kernel versions for better hardware support, as well as a 5-year maintenance and support cycle from Debian. You can check the Linux kernel version:

 $ uname -r 4.19.0-4-amd64 

3. OpenJDK 11.0

For a long time, Debian has been 'stuck' on OpenJDK 8.0. Now, Debian Buster is moving to OpenJDK 11.0 and there is a team that will take care of the new versions.

4. AppArmor is enabled by default

In Debian Buster, AppArmor will be enabled by default. Although this is a good thing, system administrators must carefully enable the correct policies. This is just the first step and will need to fix many scripts to make this tool useful.

5. Nodejs 10.15.2

For a long time, Debian had Nodejs 4.8 in the repo. In Buster, Debian switched to Nodejs 10.15.2. In fact, Debian Buster has many Javascript libraries like yarnpkg (an alternative to npm), etc.

Of course, you can install the latest Nodejs in Debian from the project repository, but it's good to see the new version right in the Debian archive.

6. NFtables replaces iptables

Debian Buster provides nftables as a complete replacement for iptables. This means better and easier syntax, as well as greater support for dual-stack firewalls ipv4-v6, etc.

7. Support a lot of SBC ARMHF and ARM 64 boards

There is a line of new SBC boards that Debian is supporting, the latest of which is pine64_plus, the pinebook for ARM64; Firefly-RK3288, u-boot-rockchip for ARMHF 64, as well as Odroid HC1 / HC2 boards, SolidRun Cubox -i Dual / Quad (1.5som) and SolidRun Cubox-i Dual / Quad (1.5som + emmc), Cubietruckplus .

Debian 10 Buster has support for Rock 64, Banana Pi M2 Berry, Pine A64 LTS Board, Olimex A64 Teres-1 as well as Raspberry Pi 1, Zero and Pi 3. There is also outstanding support for RISC- V.

8. Switch from Python 2 to Python 3

Python 2 will not be accepted as of January 1, 2020 by python.org. Debian has attempted to remove Python 2.7 from the repo after moving all packages to Python 3. Therefore, Python developers are encouraged to migrate the code base to be compatible with Python 3.

9. Mailman3

Mailman3 is finally available in Debian. Mailman has been broken down into components. Please install mailman3-full to get all the components.

10. Any Postgresql database used will need to be re-indexed

Because of the update of the glibc locale data, the way information is fed into the text index will change, so it will be helpful to re-index the data index so that data corruption will not occur in the near future.

11. Bash 5.0 by default

Perhaps you already know about the new features in Bash 5.0. The good news is that this version is already available in Debian.

12. Debian deploys / usr / merge

Although Debian wants to make the entire transition possible, it is likely that due to unforeseen circumstances, some binary files may not be in the right position to make changes. One thing to keep in mind is that / var and / etc / will remain the same so that people who are using containers or clouds don't have to worry too much.

13. Support secure-boot

With Buster, Debian now supports secure-boot. This means that Debian can be easily installed on machines with secure-boot bits and there is no need to disable or find a Secure Boot alternative.

14. Calameres Live-installer for Debian-Live image

For Debian Buster, Debian Live, Debian introduces Calameres Installer to replace the plain old Debian-installer. Although Debian-installer has more features than Calameres for newbies, Calameres offers a new option to install, different from Debian-installer. Below is a screenshot from the installation process.

It can be seen that installing Debian under Calamares is quite easy (only takes 5 stages).