- Technical previews of two new ports which runs on the FreeBSD kernel instead of the Linux kernel. This means FreeBSD will be powering the operating system while the users still get to use all the great tools in the Debian user-land.
- The Linux kernel has been scrubbed free of all the closed sourse firmware files. In other words, you get a completely Free as in Freedom Linux distribution in Debian 6.0 if you opt to download the package with Linux kernel instead of the FreeBSD kernel. Richard Stallman should definitely be pleased with this one.
- Boot times have improved drastically because of parallel execution of boot scripts.
- Most software has been updated to the more modern versions. Linux kernel 2.6.32 , KDE 4.4.5, GNOME 2.30, X.Org 7.5 and over 29,000 other ready to use software packages.
Did you know that Debian supports diverse hardware ranging from Intel 32-bit and 64-bit architecture, Motorola/IBM PowerPC, Sun/Oracle Sparc, MIPS (big-endian & little-endian), Intel Itanium, IBM S/390, and ARM EABI ? That is a total of 9 architectures.
Another really nice feature found in Debian 6.0 is the introduction of what is called "Debian Pure Blends".
Debian pure blends are customized Debian images which cater to a specific user profile. For example, if you wish to install Debian for your kids, you could download Debian-Jr which is specifically customized with children in mind. Similarly there are other pure blends such as Debian Med, Debian Science, Skolelinux and so on.
The Debian installer has also seen minor improvements in the form of easier language and keyboard selections, partitioning disk for RAID, Logical Volumes, and Encrypted systems. And the installer supports a whopping 70 languages.
You can download Debian 6.0 via BitTorrent, jigdo, or HTTP.
[Source : Debian News Release ]
