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Debian 7.0 ("Wheezy") Released
First time accepted submitter anarcat writes "After two years since the last Debian release (6.0, nicknamed "squeeze"), the Debian release team has finally published Debian 7.0 (nicknamed "Wheezy"). A newly created blog has details on the release, which features multi-arch support (e.g. you can now install packages for both i386 and amd64 on the same install), improvements to multimedia support (no need for third party repositories!) and improved security through hardening flags. Debian 7.0 also ships with the controversial Gnome 3 release, and the release notes explicitly mention how to revert to the more familiar 'Gnome classic' interface. Finally, we can also mention the improved support for virtualization infrastructure with pre-built images available for Amazon EC2, Windows Azure and Google Compute Engine. Debian 7.0 also ships with the OpenStack suite and the Xen Cloud Platform. More details on the improvements can be found in the release notes and the Debian wiki." An anonymous reader points out (from the announcement) that "[t]he installation process has been greatly improved: Debian can now be installed using software speech, above all by visually impaired people who do not use a Braille device. Thanks to the combined efforts of a huge number of translators, the installation system is available in 73 languages, and more than a dozen of them are available for speech synthesis too.
In addition, for the first time, Debian supports installation and booting using UEFI for new 64-bit PCs (amd64), although there is no support for Secure Boot yet."
Heh, kernel 3.2... this OS comes outdated out of the box.
It's not outdated. It is well tested.
Debian places a strong emphasis on stability compared to most distros. Instead of being on the bleeding edge they are conservative and try to provide a stable, bug free, and secure system which is well tested and well understood. Debian also has an extremely strong stance of software freedom, which appeals to some people. Debian is a solid enough distribution that plenty of other distros use it as a base, that should say something about the quality of the work they do. Without Debian there'd be no Ubuntu or Linux Mint since they both pull packages from the unstable (read: under testing / "current" ) Debian repos.
To offset political mods, replace Flamebait with Insightful.
Linux has been historically considered a good OS for servers, where uptime and stability are very important. Don't forget the Debian project goes back really far, 1993 or so if I'm not mistaken.
Once you have a server running that many people depend on, you become change-averse to it, because change = risk. So having mature, well-tested, stable software is more important than having the latest and greatest.
Until you put it under load on a mission critical server somewhere.
To offset political mods, replace Flamebait with Insightful.
Here's your quick and easy way to give back. I don't code in c/c++, I hate writing documentation, so share some bandwidth and seed the torrents for a few hours or a few gb.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
Right now, I am running wheezy with kernel 3.8.5. Noone keeps you from building your own kernel. It's just that the stable version (and the installer) come with 3.2.
Oh, the beautiful gloss of greality!