I’m aware of Debian’s reputation for not having the most up-to-date software in its repository but have just noticed that Thunderbird is on its current version. Which makes me ask:
When does Debian update a package? And how does it decide when to?
I’m particularly interested in when it will make available the upcoming major release of GIMP to 3.0.
GIMP 3.0 will come with the next Debian release.
When will that come out?
When it’s ready.
You can get a bit of an idea where in the release process we are by looking at this graph:
Where the green and blue lines dip close to zero, there was a new release.
Next release is probably planned for October 2025.
Between releases, packages are only updated when it’s relevant for security or to fix bugs.
Thunderbird and Firefox are a bit of an exception. Those programs are so complex that backporting security fixes to the current Debian version isn’t feasible. So Debian is forced to ship the new version when security issues in the current version become known.
And they’re also not needed on servers, so the reduced stability doesn’t affect them.