If you are rocking Debian 10 on a desktop or server, you will need to upgrade it by June 30, as the long-term support will be ending on that date.
For those not familiar, new Debian versions come out every two years and receive normal security updates for three years. They are then shifted to the long-term support branch, where they are supported by another team for a further two years. That’s the phase that’s ending now for Debian 10.
You have two options if you want to stay on Debian: you can either jump to Debian 11, in which case, you’ll need to do another update in two years, or you can go to Debian 12 and upgrade again in 2028 – if you don’t like messing around with your system, this seems like the best option. If you choose to do an in-place upgrade, you may need to upgrade through Debian 11 and then to 12.
In the announcement made about the upcoming end of life, the Debian Project said:
“The Debian LTS Team will prepare afterwards the transition to Debian 11 bullseye, the current oldstable release. Thanks to the combined effort of different teams including the Security Team, the Release Team, and the LTS Team, the Debian 11 life cycle will also encompass five years. To make the life cycle of Debian releases easier to follow, the related Debian teams have agreed on the following schedule: three years of regular support plus two years of Long Term Support. The LTS Team will take over support from the Security and the Release Teams on August 14, 2024, three years after the initial release on August 14, 2021. The final point update release for bullseye will be published soon after the final Debian 11 Security Advisory (DSA) will be issued.
Debian 11 will receive Long Term Support until August 31, 2026. The supported architectures remain amd64, i386, arm64 and armhf.”
If you are on Debian 10 and need to upgrade, you can find out how to do that on the Debian Wiki, which has full instructions.