The kernel team is open to backporting some features from later kernel
versions, particularly to support newer hardware.

Featuresets
———–

The only featureset provided will be ‘rt’ (realtime), currently built
for amd64 only. If there is interest in realtime support for other
architectures, we may be able to add that. However, we do need to
consider the total time taken to build binary packages for each
architecture.

If there are particular container features that should be enabled or
backported to provide a useful replacement for OpenVZ or VServer,
please let us know. We cannot promise that these will all be enabled
but we need to know what is missing.

Compatibility
————-

If you maintain a package for which the current stable version is not
compatible with Linux 3.2, excluding kernel module packages, please
consider making a stable update that fixes this.

If you maintain a kernel module package, please ensure that this is
compatible with Linux 3.2 in time for the freeze. Any modules that
are not compatible will not be included in the release. I recently
tested building all the module packages I could find against Linux 3.1
and have filed bugs against those that failed to build; however I have
not tested against Linux 3.2 and would prefer that the respective
maintainers did so.

We intend to switch to 2-component upstream version numbers in the
kernel version string, e.g. 3.3-1-amd64. This change has been
deferred until after wheezy to avoid incompatibility with packages in
squeeze that assume 3-component version numbers. If your package uses
uname(1) or uname(2) please ensure that it is prepared for this *in
wheezy* so that we can make the change immediately after.

Upstream support
—————-

Debian, Ubuntu and others will work upstream on a 3.2.y longterm
series of bug fixes.

Ben.

– Ben Hutchings We get into the habit of living before acquiring the habit of thinking. – Albert Camus

1: http://www.debian.org/releases/etch/
2: http://www.debian.org/releases/lenny/
3: http://www.debian.org/vote/2006/vote_007
4: http://www.debian.org/vote/2008/vote_003

We have nonetheless kept on working on splitting away non-free bits from
the Linux kernel, thanks to the work of the Debian Kernel team [5] and
various Linux upstream developers. We are proud to announce that, to the
best of our knowledge, all issues are solved and that we will be able to
deliver a Linux kernel which is completely Free, according to the Debian
Free Software Guidelines (DFSG) [6], with Debian Squeeze. We hereby
reaffirm Free Software as one of our priorities, as documented in the
Debian Social Contract [7].

5: http://wiki.debian.org/DebianKernel
6: http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines
7: http://www.debian.org/social_contract

In accordance with the Debian Social Contract, we acknowledge that some
users require the use of works that do not conform to the DFSG and that
those works might include non-free firmware bits. For the time being, we
have added to the “non-free” area of our archives alternative installation
images and additional packages for Debian Squeeze, that include non-free
firmware bits needed to enable specific pieces of hardware. They are not
part of Debian, they should be looked for explicitly by interested users,
and we cannot support them to the same extent of Free firmware as we do not
have access to the corresponding source code. We encourage hardware
manufacturers to release only DFSG-free firmware and we cannot accept other
kind of firmware as part of Debian.

About Debian
————

The Debian Project was founded in 1993 by Ian Murdock to be a truly
free, community project. Since then the project has grown to be one of
the largest and most influential open source projects. Over three
thousand volunteers from all over the world work together to create and
maintain Debian software. Translated into over 65 languages, and
supporting a huge range of computer types, Debian calls itself the
“universal operating system”.

Contact Information
——————-

For further information, please visit the Debian web pages at
http://www.debian.org/ or send mail to .

The current (January 2009) kernels distributed by Debian don’t quite support the full functionality of the Aspire One – one of the biggest issues is that the wifi won’t work.