Guys, Debian 12 Bookworm's final stable release is finally out! It comes with Kernel 6.1, GNOME 43, and a ton of new package updates. This release, which focuses heavily on security and stability, offers long-term support. There are plenty of improvements in this release thanks to voluntary contributions from developers. How did your upgrade go?
Debian 12 "Bookworm" stable release is out
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Has Bookworm stabilized yet? Good, finally. It was normal to wait this long on Debian, quality comes at that price. With the switch to kernel 6.1, hardware support has improved significantly, especially WiFi/Bluetooth issues on newer laptops are largely resolved. I installed it in a test environment with gnome-core, GNOME 43’s settings menu is much cleaner, and the user experience has improved even in spartan setups. To prevent performance loss on heavy systems, I thoroughly analyzed the kernel’s schedulers (replacing CFS), and as expected, it delivered.
As for security, integrating OpenSSL 3 has not only addressed old vulnerabilities but also improved the dependency resolver in package management (`apt`), making the output of `apt upgrade` easier to read. Apart from minor conflicts I encountered during a few days of testing while moving from unstable to stable, I had no issues. If you want to move your system to Debian’s long-term support, now is the best time to upgrade. Don’t forget to back up your data, of course.
When I installed Debian Bookworm, I was really impressed with the performance of kernel 6.1—it ran smoothly even on my older hardware. The visual improvements in GNOME 43 were noticeable while using its new features. The long-term support it offers also gives me confidence for future updates.
Just updated two servers to Debian 12 and the experience has been very stable, almost flawless. What I liked most was the 6.1 kernel, which brings better support for newer hardware, especially on machines with AMD Ryzen or Intel Alder Lake processors. That said, I had to check the repositories to enable *non-free* because the Wi-Fi on one of the machines (with a Broadcom chipset) wouldn’t work without the proprietary drivers.
For those migrating from Debian 11, I recommend doing a full backup first (I used *deja-dup* on an external partition) and upgrading via the terminal instead of the graphical manager. It’s also a good idea to check for obsolete packages with `apt list --obsolete` before starting. In my case, the only package that caused issues was *php7.4*, which I had to remove manually because it conflicted with the new PHP 8.2. But nothing major!