It’s no exaggeration to say that Debian—arguably the most respected Linux distribution out there—is also one of the most poorly represented online. Just look at the official website. It feels like stepping back 20+ years in time, and navigating it is a real challenge.
The same applies to another major aspect of the distribution: its Wiki. Calling it outdated, clunky to navigate, and way behind modern web standards is, honestly, putting it mildly. But the good news is—that’s all about to change.
Members of the Debian project have launched an ambitious new initiative: to rebuild the Debian Wiki from the ground up using a whole new solution—MediaWiki, a modern, free, and open-source platform for collaboration and documentation that’s widely used across today’s web.
What’s the problem with the current solution? While there’s no official explanation yet for why a change is being considered, it’s not too hard to guess. The platform in use is the Python‑based MoinMoin—decent for its time, but by today’s standards, it’s showing its age, falling short in terms of modern web expectations.
Additionally, MoinMoin (with its long-standing 1.9.x line, the last stable version being 1.9.11 from November 2020) still runs on Python 2, which has been phased out almost everywhere. Yes, MoinMoin 2 is in development and aims to introduce Python 3 support, but progress has been slow. And honestly, the project just hasn’t kept pace with the modern web landscape.
Debian has already taken its first steps toward switching to MediaWiki—the new platform is now up and running, and it can be checked out at wiki2025.debian.org.
Before you get too excited, let’s dial it back a bit—there’s really nothing to see just yet. Currently, it’s just a plain MediaWiki installation, and not even the logo has been swapped out for Debian’s. But the important thing is that the first step has been taken.
That said, there is still tons of work ahead. Rebranding and design are just the tip of the iceberg. The entire Debian Wiki, an extensive collection of content, needs to be migrated and updated as needed. That’s going to take a lot of time and coordination across the Debian team. So, realistically, we shouldn’t expect anything close to production-ready anytime soon.
Finally, if you’re interested in the effort to move the Debian Wiki over to MediaWiki, there’s now a brand-new mailing list just for that—debian-wiki. It’s the place to follow along with the discussions and see how the project team plans to tackle this challenging transition.
