14 DAY TRIAL // On November 5, 2016, Debian developers Emilio Pozuelo Monfort and Niels Thykier were proud to announce that the upcoming Debian GNU/Linux 9 "Stretch" operating system entered the Transition Freeze development stage.
GNU/Linux distributions have various milestones during a full development cycle, such as Alpha, Beta and RC releases, Beta Freeze, Feature Freeze, etc., and for Debian GNU/Linux 9 "Stretch," which will be the next major release of the popular and powerful Debian OS, it looks like Transition Freeze is in full effect.
"That means no new library transitions or package transitions that involve a large number of packages. Please note that some transitions are ongoing or about to start in the next couple of days. We will work hard to make those as smooth as possible, so please bear with us while things finally settle," reads the mailing list announcement.
Debian GNU/Linux 9 "Stretch" enters Full Freeze on February 5, 2017
Next in the development cycle of the Debian GNU/Linux 9 "Stretch" operating system will be a Soft Freeze stage, which was set for the 5th of January 2017, meaning that new packages and updates to existing ones must land in the Debian Testing repositories before the said date.
Debian GNU/Linux 9 "Stretch" enters Full Freeze on February 5, 2017, which means that all changes will require approval. While not stated in the announcement, this also means that the final release of the operating system won't be far away from the Full Freeze development stage and it could launch later in February or in early March 2017.
But, as the Debian developers always say, Debian GNU/Linux 9 "Stretch" will be released "when it's ready." Stay close to this space, as we bring you all the latest and exclusive updates from the Debian world. In the meantime, you can test drive Debian 9 by switching to the Debian Testing repos.