The long-anticipated Debian 4.0 may only just have made its debut this week, but it's never too soon for the developer community to be making plans for its successor.

Codenamed 'etch', Debian 4.0 was officially released on 8 April, 2007. Although the release comes four months later than its early December 2006 target, developers are calling the project a success

The Debian Project is pleased to announce the official release of Debian GNU/Linux version 4.0, codenamed etch, after 21 months of constant development. Debian GNU/Linux is a free operating system which supports a total of eleven processor architectures and includes the KDE, GNOME and Xfce desktop environments. It also features cryptographic software and compatibility with the FHS v2.3 and software developed for version 3.1 of the LSB.

The Debian GNU/Linux Project has a new leader. Sam Hocevar, a French developer, who has been with the project since 2000, was elected as leader for 2007-08 on Sunday.

The Debian project has updated the stable distribution Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 (codename sarge). This update mainly adds security updates to the stable release, along with a few corrections to serious problems. Those who frequently update from security.debian.org won't have to update many packages and most updates from security.debian.org are included in this update.

In preparation for the upcoming release of Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 (codename etch), Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 will be moved to the oldstable part of the archive. Users who would like to continue using Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 are advised to update their /etc/apt/sources.list network source to refer to sarge instead of stable.

The livecd system is upgraded to use AuFS instead of UnionFS, which brings more estability and less bugs to the system, also the Kernel (2.6.18), SquashFS and Linux Live are upgraded.

This is the first release candidate for the KDE Edition of Bianca. The Stable release is planned for the 20/04/2007.

The project team of Damn Small Linux, one of the most lightweight Linux distributions available, released version 3.3 on April 4. The latest "DSL" features a 2.6.20.4 kernel, the Fluxbox window manager, and a rich set of applications, wrapped up tight in a 49.6 MB package.

Sun Microsystems has announced that it is to support Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop on its x64 workstation line, providing something of a boost for desktop Linux.

This new release, is firstly dedicated to someone that is not beside me anymore, my dad. The Beta testing team, Luca, our developers and me, agree that is the most perfect, complete and stable version ever released. It's faster, smarter, lightier and comes with a ton of exciting and highly awaited features. It's a tank and you can't do much against it.

The Debian GNU/Linux project has come to some kind of crossroads - due to many factors, some of them artificial - and the man who takes over leadership next month will have to make some crucial decisions on the future direction of the project.

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