The Debian Long Term Support (LTS) team has made official announcement, reminding that support for Debian 10, codenamed “Buster”, will end on June 30, 2024.
Launched on July 6, 2019, this marks nearly five years of continuous updates and security patches, which is the standard period for which Debian’s stable releases receive support.
As the curtain draws on Debian 10, users currently operating on it are being urged to start their migration to Debian 11 (Bullseye) if they have not already done so. After June, Debian will stop all security updates for the Buster release.
Debian 11, the projectโs current oldstable release, which debuted on August 14, 2021, will begin its LTS phase on August 14, 2024, taking over from where the standard security updates leave off.
For those new to the topic, we clarify that Debian stable releases receive three years of regular support plus two years of Long Term Support, which exhausts the five-year life cycle to which the Debian team is committed.ย With that said, Debian 11 (Bullseye) will be receiving security updates until August 31, 2026.
Okay, what happens next? It is possible to extend the lifetime of Debian releases that have reached end-of-life by another five years, up to 10, by theย Extended Long Term Support (ELTS) program. However, this program provides only a limited set of package security updates.
But what’s more important to understand is that this is a paid service provided by third parties that is in no way part of the Debian project, so Debianโs infrastructure and other resources are not involved.
So, it is easy if you’re still using Debian 10 and want to upgrade to Debian 11! Follow the two guides below for a smooth transition. Once you’re on 11 Bullseye, you can upgrade to the latest stable version, 12 Bookworm.
It is important to remember that you can’t upgrade directly from Debian 10 to 12. Instead, first, you must upgrade as an intermediate step to Debian 11, and then you can move on to Debian 12.
Visit the official announcement for more information about Debian 10’s end-of-life. For an in-depth introduction to Debian in general, we highly recommend reading our detailed article on the subject.
