Debian 11 ‘Bullseye’ Enters LTS: What You Need to Know
Debian 11, codenamed Bullseye and released on August 14, 2021, has now reached the end of its three-year regular security support period. Consequently, the Debian LTS team has taken over its maintenance, transitioning it into the extended security support phase.
The latest version, Debian 12 Bookworm, is currently available, and Debian 13 Trixie is set to be released soon. For users, continuing with Debian 11 or 12 poses no issues, as both are covered by LTS, ensuring a few more years of usability.
Now under the care of the LTS team, Debian 11 will receive security updates for an additional two years, with its overall lifecycle concluding on August 31, 2026, thus providing a total of five years of security support. Recently, the Debian project team issued an advisory recommending users upgrade to Debian 12 to enjoy new features and extended support. However, if users prefer not to upgrade, they can indeed continue using Debian 11.
Most of the core packages in Debian 11 will continue to be updated under the LTS team’s stewardship, though some packages may not be supported. To identify unsupported packages, users should install the debian-security-support package and run check-support-status to find those that are not maintained.
If your system has any unmaintained packages installed, you should remove them using the apt remove command. Typically, during the LTS phase, unmaintained packages are those whose upstream support has ended.
For those wishing to upgrade to Debian 12, please consult the guide on the Debian Wiki. The most critical advice is to back up your important data, as major version upgrades can sometimes introduce unforeseen issues. Therefore, it is always prudent to have backups.
