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 * Users of laptops with a touchpad, running GNOME, may find that the touchpad does not work. If this happens to you, try installing DebianPkg:xserver-xorg-input-libinput and removing DebianPkg:xserver-xorg-input-synaptics if it is installed. See [[https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2016/07/msg00266.html|this debian-devel post]] for details.

What's new in the Stretch (Debian 9) release?

(Also see the official stretch release notes.)

New features

  • Linux kernel series 4.9, GNU libc 2.24.
  • Desktop environments: GNOME 3.22, KDE Plasma 5.8, MATE 1.16, Xfce 4.12 and others.
  • Programming languages: GCC 6.3, Perl 5.24, Python 3.5, PHP 7.0 and others.
  • nftables is available as a replacement for iptables. See this nftables blog post for details.

If you install fresh instead of upgrading...

  • Network interfaces will have predictable names (predictable by software, not by humans) instead of the familiar eth0, wlan0, etc.

  • iproute2 (ip(8)) is installed by default, but net-tools (ifconfig(8) et al.) is not. The net-tools commands have been deprecated for some time now, and users are encouraged to switch to iproute2 commands.

Changes

  • The dmesg command requires superuser privileges.

  • The X server is no longer setuid, and may be started without root privileges. If the startx command is run as a non-root user, the Xorg.0.log (or Xorg.*.log for alternative displays) file will be written to ~/.local/share/xorg/ instead of /var/log/.

  • All MySQL packages have been superseded by equivalent MariaDB packages (e.g. mariadb-server-10.1). The mysql-server and default-mysql-server metapackages are transitional, and will bring in the MariaDB server.

  • PHP 7.0 replaces PHP 5.6. There are new metapackages without a version number in them: php-fpm, php-cli, etc. You may use these for future compatibility.

  • Most of the library packages with debugging symbols have been moved to a new repository. If you require these packages, you will need to add an entry to your sources.list or sources.list.d. Also note that the package names are different (ending with -dbgsym instead of -dbg).

Upgrade issues

  • For many Intel graphics chipsets, the Stretch X server will use the modeset driver instead of the intel driver. The modeset driver may require non-free firmware (firmware-misc-nonfree) to activate features, even on systems which did not use this firmware under Jessie.

  • For some older graphics chipsets, support has been relegated to "legacy drivers", which require the old setuid X server to run. Install xserver-xorg-legacy if you require one of these drivers.

  • Users of laptops with a touchpad, running GNOME, may find that the touchpad does not work. If this happens to you, try installing xserver-xorg-input-libinput and removing xserver-xorg-input-synaptics if it is installed. See this debian-devel post for details.