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<chapter id="nextrelease"><title>Changes expected in the next major release of Debian</title>
<para>
With each new release, the Debian project tries to focus on a set of topics.
These are known as "Release Goals" and they are all described in <ulink url="https://wiki.debian.org/ReleaseGoals/"/>.
Please note that the following sections might not be fully up-to-date, please
refer to the Wiki for more information and the up-to-date status of these
goals.
</para>
<section id="hardening"><title>Hardening the system</title>
<para>
It is a goal for the Debian project to ensure that any system installed is
hardened and secure against attacks.  There are several ways to achieve this,
which include:
</para>
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
<para>
Improve programs' security by compiling them with <ulink
url="https://wiki.debian.org/ReleaseGoals/SecurityHardeningBuildFlags">Security
Hardening Build Flags</ulink> in order to enable various protections against
known security issues,
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
Improve the default system configuration to make it less vulnerable to attacks
(both local or remote),
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
Enable security features delivered by new versions of the kernel.
</para>
</listitem>
</itemizedlist>
<para>
All of these are done in an ongoing basis.  For the first item, a set of
security hardening build flags that try to prevent known attacks such as stack
smashing, predictable locations of values in memory, etc.  is used.  The target
is to cover at least all packages that are part of the basic installation as
well as packages that had to be updated through a Security Advisory since 2006.
As of this writing, around 400 packages have been modified since this effort
was first started.  All the issues are <ulink
url="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?tag=goal-hardening;users=hardening-discuss@lists.alioth.debian.org">tracked
in the BTS</ulink>.
</para>
</section>

<section id="i18n"><title>Extended support for non-English users</title>
<para>
Debian already has very good support for non-English users, see <xref
linkend="nonenglish"/>.
</para>
<para>
We hope to find people who will provide support for even more languages, and
translate programs and documents.  Many programs and Debian-specific documents
already support internationalization, so we need message catalogs translators.
However, still some programs remain to be properly internationalized.
</para>
<para>
The GNU Translation Project <ulink url="ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/ABOUT-NLS"/>
works on internationalizing the GNU programs and different projects, such as
the Desktop environments GNOME or KDE have their own translation teams.  The
goal of Debian is not to replace or to repeat the work done by these projects,
indeed, Debian benefits from the work done by translators in these projects.
However, there are still many programs which are not in the scope of those
projects and which are translated within Debian.
</para>
<para>
Previous Debian releases have focused in topics such as:
</para>
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
<para>
I18n support in all debconf-using packages: Packages using the Debian
configuration management must allow for translation of all messages displayed
to the user during package configuration.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
I18n support for package descriptions: Update package management frontends to
use the translated descriptions of packages.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
UTF-8 debian/changelog and debian/control.  This way, e.g. names of people
from asian countries can get typeset the right way in changelogs.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
I18n support in the Debian Installer including full support for some languages
that require the use of the graphical interface.
</para>
</listitem>
</itemizedlist>
</section>

<section id="di"><title>Improvements in the Debian Installer</title>
<para>
Lots of work has been done on the Debian Installer, resulting in major
improvements.  We'll mention just two of them here.
</para>
<para>
Starting the installer from Microsoft Windows: It is now possible to start the
installer directly from Microsoft Windows without the need to change BIOS
settings.  Upon insertion of a CD-ROM, DVD-ROM or USB stick, an autorun program
will be started, offering a step-by-step process to start the Debian Installer.
</para>
</section>

<section id="morearches"><title>More architectures</title>
<para>
Complete Debian system on other architectures.  Notice that even though some
architectures are dropped for a given release, there still might be a way to
install and upgrade using the latest <literal>sid</literal>.
</para>
</section>

<section id="morekernels"><title>More kernels</title>
<para>
In addition to Debian GNU/Hurd, Debian is being ported also to BSD kernels,
namely to <ulink
url="https://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/">FreeBSD</ulink>.  This port
runs on both AMD64 ("kfreebsd-amd64") and traditional Intel ("kfreebsd-i386").
</para>
</section>

</chapter>

