Debian 7, also known as the “Wheezy”, has been out for a while, but a lot of companies are still using Debian 6, the “Squeeze”, for their servers and enterprise machines and the problem is that in a few months Debian 6 will reach end of support.



Debian 6, the “Squeeze”, has been released in February 2011. This version has a life cycle of three years, which means that it will reach an end of support in 2014, creating a lot of problems regarding security.

This decision might look absolutely reasonable, since Debian 7 is currently stable and Debian 8 is on its way. Unfortunately, they did not think about the business market, which is using still Debian 6 at the moment. Microsoft is the obvious choice when you are looking for an OS, in both desktop or server segments, but Linux has quite an extensive user base, especially on Debian. If you are a company, and you are using Debian 6 and you do not want to change it, the only savior could be Debian 6 LTS (Long Time Support), which will postpone the end of support until February 2016, giving you more than enough time to switch to Debian 7, or even Debian 8.

The Squeeze-LTS will be developed for an i386 and AMD64 architectures, but the developing team will be different from the one which worked on Debian 6. As it always often happens in the GNU/Linux world, any kind of external help is welcomed, since the project is based on volunteer work. Debian 6 LTS will not be compatible with many applications at the beginning, but soon enough the tool will be released, which will tell you which version of a specific application is compatible with Debian 6 LTS. If you are using Debian 6 right now, you are safe and sound, but the best thing to do would be to switch to Debian 7 as soon as possible.





Source: Le Comptoir du Hardware.