Bits from Debian - Blog from the Debian Project Bits from Debian Debian turns 33! On Sun 16 August 2026 with tags debian project anniversary birthday DebianDay Written by Debian Publicity Team It has now been thirty-three years since the Debian project was announced to the world by Ian Murdock, on August 16, 1993. This anniversary is an opportunity to reaffirm the goals, characteristics, and qualities of the Debian project: it’s an association of individuals who have made common cause to create a free operating system. Our distribution is characterized by a commitment to software freedom, as enshrined in the Debian Social Contract and the Debian Free Software Guidelines. It focuses on security and stability. This stability is crucial to Debian position in the free software ecosystem. With our users as our priority, Debian makes special efforts regarding accessibility with Debian-Accessibility and diversity with our Outreach Programs. Debian Day is a great opportunity to get together, whether for a local meetup, or simply to grab a coffee with other members of the Debian community. Check out the Debian Day wiki to see if there is a celebration near you. And if there isn't, maybe you can organize it next year! Today is also an opportunity for you to start or resume your contributions to Debian. For example, you can install the how-can-i-help package and see if there is a bug in any of the software that you use that you can help to fix, contribute small tips on how to install Debian on your machines to our wiki pages, or put a Debian live image in an USB memory and give it to some person near you, who still didn't discover Debian. Thanks to everybody who has contributed to develop our beloved operating system in these 33 years, and Happy birthday Debian! DebConf26 Local Team says goodbye On Mon 10 August 2026 with tags debconf26 debconf Written by Publicity team and DebConf26 Local Team Translations: es On Saturday 25 July 2026, the annual Debian Developers and Contributors Conference came to a close. The Debian Press team would now like to share this personal and beautiful message from the Santa Fe Local Team. Words from DC26 Local Team DebConf26 is over, and those of us who were part of the Local Team are trying to return to “normality”, if such a thing exists after organizing a DebConf. This event changed our lives and would not have been possible without the help of many great people. We would especially like to thank everyone who became part of our extended local team. Our endless thanks go to Gunnar —who also instigated this whole adventure—, Santiago, Nattie, Stefano, and Olasd. Thank you for supporting and guiding us, sharing your experience, and helping us find solutions throughout the entire process. It was also made possible thanks to the great work, strong support and patience of international teams: Fundraising, Bursaries, Content, Video, Treasury, Visa, Website, Accommodation, Front Desk, Cheese and Wine, Publicity as well as all the other teams and individuals who contributed. We apologize if we have forgotten to mention anyone; many people helped make this event possible. Our deepest thanks also go to everyone who joined us in working on the event, especially Fer, José, and Julián, who showed great commitment and took responsibility for several important tasks. We would also like to extend our gratitude to FICH, the Universidad Nacional del Litoral, the institutions, organizations, sponsors, suppliers, and everyone who contributed in one way or another to welcoming the Debian community to Santa Fe. And finally, a very special thank you to our families, to whom we dedicated little time these past few weeks, who supported us on this adventure, enduring the exhaustion, the calls and messages at all hours, and the occasional stressful situation. Always giving us that much-needed, encouraging hug with so much love. These were very intense weeks, during which we tried to give our best so that everyone could enjoy their stay and so that the Debian community had the necessary conditions to meet, work, share knowledge, and continue creating the magic that characterizes community life and the development of Debian. As happens at every DebConf, there were difficulties, unexpected situations, and challenges that required us to improvise, learn, and perform a few juggling acts. There were also moments that will certainly remain as memorable anecdotes: the “antisocial room”, some gas heaters worthy of a museum, and newly unlocked powers for negotiating with suppliers. We have no evidence, but also no doubt, that for many people the Conference Dinner was one of the best moments of the event. A few ingredients we had hoped would happen naturally were missing, such as more wine nights and at least one in-person football match. During the two weeks of DebConf, we experienced every kind of weather and a wide range of emotions. Above all, however, we saw people enjoying themselves and building friendships, which fills us with pride. Thank you very much to everyone who came and helped DebConf26 leave such a beautiful mark on our hearts. We hope our paths cross again somewhere in life. Best regards, Leonardo, Emmanuel, Mariano, Pablo, and Martín DebConf26 Local Team About Debian The Debian Project was founded in 1993 by Ian Murdock to be a truly free community project. Since then the project has grown to be one of the largest and most influential Open Source projects. Thousands of volunteers from all over the world work together to create and maintain Debian software. Available in 70 languages, and supporting a huge range of computer types, Debian calls itself the universal operating system. About DebConf DebConf is the Debian Project's developer conference. In addition to a full schedule of technical, social and policy talks, DebConf provides an opportunity for developers, contributors and other interested people to meet in person and work together more closely. It has taken place annually since 2000 in locations as varied as Scotland, Bosnia and Herzegovina, India, Korea, France. More information about DebConf is available from https://debconf.org/. Contact Information For further information, please visit the DebConf26 web page at https://debconf26.debconf.org/ or send mail to [email protected]. DebConf26 closes in Santa Fe and DebConf27 announced On Thu 06 August 2026 with tags debconf26 debconf27 announce debconf Written by Debian Publicity Team and Volunteers Artwork by Andrew McMillan On Saturday 25 July 2026, the annual Debian Developers and Contributors Conference came to a close. Over 270 attendees representing 35 countries from around the world came together for a combined 90 events (including some which took place during the DebCamp) including more than 27 Talks, 21 Short Talks, 29 Birds of a Feather sessions ("BoF" – informal meeting between developers and users), 8 workshops, and activities in support of furthering our distribution and free software, learning from our mentors and peers, building our community, and having a bit of fun. The conference was preceded by the annual DebCamp hacking session held 13 through 19 July where Debian Developers and Contributors convened to focus on their individual Debian-related projects or work in team sprints geared toward in-person collaboration in developing Debian. As has been the case for several years, a special effort has been made to welcome newcomers and help them become familiar with Debian and DebConf by organizing a sprint "New Contributors Onboarding" every day of Debcamp, followed more informally by mentorship during DebConf. Half a dozen new contributors joined the sessions and learned about Debian, free software, packaging and much more. This year, a week-long DebCamp session was dedicated to auditing, patching, and modernizing the Go ecosystem in Debian and enable the transition triggered by the recent upload of dh-golang enabling GO111MODULE=on by default in Experimental. In order to make the conference more accessible for local participants, a local language track was included in the schedule for talks in Spanish, as was done at DebConf19 in Brazil. The actual Debian Developers Conference started on Monday 20 July 2026. In addition to the traditional "Bits from the DPL" talk, the continuous key-signing party, lightning talks, and the announcement of next year's DebConf27, there were several update sessions shared by internal projects and teams. Many of the hosted discussion sessions were presented by our technical core teams with the usual and useful "Meet the Technical Committee", three talks about Linux Kernel, early boot and improving Debian’s kernel and installer support for Chromebooks, and about twenty BoFs and talks about Debian packaging policy, Debian infrastructure, security and privacy. This year, and echoing ongoing discussions within the Free Software community, Artificial Intelligence and Age Verification have been the subject of several talks. The Python, Perl, Ruby, Go, and Rust programming language teams also shared updates on their work and efforts. More than 17 BoFs and talks about community, diversity, and local outreach highlighted the work of various teams involved in not just the technical but also the social aspect of our community The schedule was updated each day with planned and ad hoc activities introduced by attendees over the course of the conference. Several traditional activities took place: a poetry performance, the traditional Cheese and Wine party, the Group Photos, and the Day Trip. For those who were not able to attend, most of the talks and sessions were broadcasted live and recorded. One can find the seventy hours of recorded videos available via the conference schedule, or alternatively through this link. Almost all of the sessions facilitated remote participation via IRC and Matrix messaging apps or online collaborative text documents which allowed remote attendees to "be in the room" and ask questions or share comments with the speaker or assembled audience. DebConf26 saw over 341 T-shirts, a day trip, and up to 130 meals planned per day. All of these events, activities, conversations, and streams coupled with our love, interest, and participation in Debian and F/OSS certainly made this conference an overall success both here in Santa Fe, Argentina and online around the world. The DebConf26 website will remain active for archival purposes and will continue to offer links to the presentations and videos of talks and events. Next year, DebConf27 will be held in Asahikawa, Hokkaido, Japan, from Sunday September 5th to Saturday September 11th, 2027. As tradition follows before the next DebConf the local organizers in Japan will start the conference activities with DebCamp with a particular focus on individual and team work towards improving the distribution. DebConf is committed to a safe and welcome environment for all participants. See the web page about the Code of Conduct on the DebConf26 website for more details on this. Debian thanks the commitment of numerous sponsors to support DebConf26, particularly our Platinum Sponsors: Infomaniak, and Proxmox, and our Gold Sponsors : Freexian, and Viridien. We also wish to thank our Video and Infrastructure teams, the DebConf26 and DebConf committees, our host nation of Argentina, and each and every person who helped contribute to this event and to Debian overall. Thank you all for your work in helping Debian continue to be "The Universal Operating System". See you next year! About Debian The Debian Project was founded in 1993 by Ian Murdock to be a truly free community project. Since then the project has grown to be one of the largest and most influential Open Source projects. Thousands of volunteers from all over the world work together to create and maintain Debian software. Available in 70 languages, and supporting a huge range of computer types, Debian calls itself the universal operating system. Abo…