Super Bowl Sunday may be tomorrow, but for Linux nerds, there is something far more exciting than watching the Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers play championship football. You see, The Debian project has just released the fifth update to its stable distribution, Debian 12, codenamed “Bookworm.” And so, if you don’t care about NFL Football, Taylor Swift, or her boyfriend Travis Kelce, installing this Linux distribution could be a fun thing to do instead of watching “the big game.”
Version 12.5 of the operating system primarily focuses on implementing corrections for security vulnerabilities and making a few adjustments to address significant issues. Detailed security advisories, which have been previously published, are referenced in this update for users’ convenience.
It’s important for users to understand that this update does not introduce a new version of Debian 12 but rather updates specific packages within the distribution. Consequently, existing “Bookworm” media remains valid, and after installation, users can upgrade their packages to the current versions by utilizing an up-to-date Debian mirror.
For those who regularly install updates from security.debian.org, there will be minimal packages to update, as most of these updates are incorporated into the point release. The Debian project has also announced that new installation images reflecting these updates will soon be available at the usual locations.
The update brings significant corrections to several packages, including apktool, atril, base-files, and more, addressing various vulnerabilities and improving the overall stability and security of the distribution. Notably, fixes for issues such as arbitrary file writes, crashes when opening specific files, and security vulnerabilities are part of this release.
Security updates constitute a major component of this point release, with advisories covering a range of packages from roundcube to chromium, libreoffice, xorg-server, and more. In addition to package updates, the Debian installer has been updated to incorporate the fixes and improvements introduced in this point release.
Current Debian Bookworm users are encouraged to update their systems to benefit from these improvements. New users (or those just wanting to create fresh installation media) can download the operating system here.
