Debian extends Debian 6.0 Squeeze support for almost two years

Debian has announced that support for the older Debian GNU/Linux 6.0, also codenamed Squeeze, will be extended until February 2016. The extended support period will only apply to the x86 and amd64 releases.

Debian GNU/Linux 6.0 Squeeze was released in February 2011 as a stable release. After the release of Debian 7.0 Wheezy in May last year, Squeeze became an oldstable release with only necessary updates and a limited support period. Formally, support for Debian 6.0 still expires on May 31, but the developers behind the popular Linux distribution have announced that support will continue for longer. This would have been decided at the request of parties and companies that want to be provided with security updates for longer.

The so-called LTS release of Debian 6.0, where LTS stands for long term support, will be supported until February 2016, five years after the official release of Squeeze. However, not all ports of the open source operating system are included: only the x86 and amd64 packages will be updated in the coming years. Also, some packages will no longer receive updates after May 31, such as the packages for a number of web apps. Debian promises to come up with a tool to recognize such packages.

The LTS version of Squeeze will not be maintained by the Debian security team after May 31, but by a group of volunteers and companies that will benefit from the extended support period. Based on the findings surrounding the new LTS release of Squeeze, it will be determined whether the current Debian 7 Wheezy and Debian 8 Jessie will also receive similarly long support periods.