Debian 12.9 - the latest point-release of Debian "Bookworm" - emerged at the weekend and coming hot on its heels is one of the more interesting downstreams, MX Linux 23.5.
Although MX Linux is based on Debian, it is significantly different - for instance, it contains the new Xfce 4.20 desktop, which appeared in late December.
This is only the eighth point-release of Debian 12 because version 12.3 was canceled. The version 12.9 release notes list 72 bugfixes and 38 vulnerabilities that have been resolved. As ever, though, because this is a stable release, it contains the same versions of its component packages.
Debian 12 "Bookworm" appeared about 18 months ago, which means it's now about three-quarters of the way through its lifecycle. The next version, codenamed "Trixie," is expected around the middle of this year. If you're hoping for things like new versions of your preferred desktop, you'll need to wait for Debian 13, probably out in mid-June.
This old-components issue is one of the selling points that pushes people towards downstream Debian meta-distributions. (Ubuntu is by far the biggest of these, to the extent that it has lots of downstreams of its own.) In forums and groups all around the internet, The Reg FOSS desk notes growing dissatisfaction with Ubuntu, especially the way that successive Ubuntu releases are replacing more and more components with snap-packaged versions. In our experience, snap works very well in recent releases, and we prefer its simple, understandable design to the Lovecraftian horrors that Flatpak conceals, but Flathub is FOSS and the Snap store isn't, and that's enough for many people.
Some unhappy Ubuntu users move to Debian, or if they dislike the infamous systemd as well, to Devuan. Both of those eliminate snaps - but Debian's very slow-moving release cycle can come as an unpleasant shock, and that applies equally to Devuan.
MX Linux is a pretty good answer to this issue. It's based on a Debian core, but although it inherits much, it also makes deep changes. We were very impressed by MX Linux 23. It comes with lots of graphical administration and system-tweaking tools, such as for installing binary drivers and choosing your preferred kernel version. It doesn't use systemd as its init system, but for enhanced compatibility, the developers chose not to completely eliminate it. (We note that it has now joined the list on No systemd.) You can even choose to boot your PC using systemd to install something that checks for it - or to remove that package again afterward.
For desktop use, we find MX Linux to be more polished and less work than either Devuan or Debian, and the Raspberry Pi edition works pretty well too. MX Linux 23.5 followed just a couple of days after Debian 12.9 on January 13, and contains all the updates from upstream. It also adds its own fresher components - for instance, its default desktop environment is now the latest Xfce 4.20. There's also a special "Advanced Hardware Support" edition, which is x86-64 only and based on the Liquorix alternative kernel - currently on version 6.12-11.
If you're running either Debian or MX Linux already, the next time you update, you will receive the new versions automatically and fresh installation media is available for both. ®
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