The long wait is finally over. After almost 2 years of constant development, the Debian project is proud to present its new stable version 8 (code name 'Jessie'), which will be supported for the next 5 years. This new stable version is the first Debian release to use systemd as the default init software. It offers support for two new architectures, arm64 and ppc64el, while dropping support for the IA-64 and Sparc architectures. Debian Jessie ships with GNOME Shell 3.14 as the default desktop environment and a number of code hardening features have been added to the build process.

Debian Jessie is also available in the following editions:

• Cinnamon
• Mate
• Kde
• Xfce
• Lxde

Jessie can be downloaded in several editions, including a full DVD set, a CD image, a set of live DVD images with popular desktop environments, and a minimal "net-install" image. See the release announcement and realease notes for more information.