When Debian issues a point release, as it just did with the current Stable distribution Lenny going from 5.0.3 to 5.0.4, it's no big deal. They happen. But you don't need to throw out your Lenny install CDs or do any kind of reinstallation.

The venerable Debian Linux distribution has experienced a significant new release with its latest update, dubbed Lenny. While Debian is still not the easiest Linux distro to install and use, Lenny makes significant leaps forward and remains one of the most powerful Linux options.

I just saw the news that Debian Etch will no longer receive updates from the Debian Security Team as of Feb. 15, 2010. As you may or may not know, the current Stable version of Debian is Lenny, which received that "Stable" designation on Feb. 15, 2009. See the pattern?

"Debian Lenny’s release is getting closer and closer and many people will want to upgrade their Etch servers to Lenny, maybe even before Lenny is declared stable (at RC1 at this time). Even people that don’t want to upgrade to lenny might find some useful information in this post ;-) ..."

Debian Lenny comes by default with OpenOffice 2.6.4, but in the meantime OpenOffice 3.1 was released. You can easily install it on your Debian box by using the Debian Lenny backports repository, which is a repository including newer versions of applications than the ones which come by default with Lenny. Just follow the steps...

I looked back in the blog, and I began running Debian Lenny as my main desktop distribution just about two months ago. Debian is snappy, as it has always been for me, even with GNOME. I don't even see any performance issues due to using fully encrypted LVM. And with that encryption on my laptop, any anxiety over it being lost or stolen is gone.

The Debian development community has officially released version 5.0 of the venerable open source Linux distribution. The new version, which is codenamed Lenny, includes updated software, security enhancements, and improved hardware support.

After nearly two years of work the the Debian development team have published Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 (Lenny). Our trials show what you can expect from Lenny.

"It seems that the Debian team doesn't like to release minor versions anymore. After Debian 4.0 (code name 'Etch') released last year, the next Debian release (code name 'Lenny') will be numbered as Debian 5.0 as announced yesterday by Marc Brockschmidt: 'For reading this far, you receive the small reward of the knowledge that Lenny will be shipped as Debian 5.0.'

"Also interesting enough he mentioned that Lenny might be released with KDE4..."